‘Aye, Ah will!’ raising his brows and glaring.
‘Ah’d like to see y’ do it.’
‘Dare me to -‘ clenching his fists. The other boys, hearing the altercation gathered round and commenced to egg the boys on to fight with catcalls.
Tom, who never had any intention of fighting, cast about for a means whereby he could extricate himself from his difficult position. ‘Dare me to,’ Harry had said, and now stood, fists clenched, lips set, desperately hoping that Tom would not dare him.
Tom curled his lip: ‘Yaaah,’ he sneered, ‘It was either Larry Meath or Ned Narkey as got y’ put in front o’ me. … On’y a-cause they’re dead nuts on your Sal!’
Harry blushed: ‘Liar! They ne’er have nowt t’ do wi’ our Sal.’
‘Liar y’ sel’! She’s bin jazzin’ wi’ Ned an’ Ah’ve seen her talkin’ t’ t’other feller.’ He pushed his prominent nose towards Harry and glared at him through his steel-rimmed glasses, adding, defiantly: ‘Call me a liar now,’ then, with contempt: ‘Narkey’s pet!’
The jibe was monstrous. Before Harry knew what had happened he had punched out, wildly hitting Tom upon the nose. Tom roared, clapped his hand to his face and screamed: ‘Oh, me eyes, me eyes, me glasses…._Oh, me eyes!’
The spectators chorused approval, urging Harry to sail in to finish off Tom on the grounds that Tom’s roars were mere pretence with which to hide his cowardice. Even had he wished Harry could not have continued. He was trembling with agitation and nervousness. Besides the very idea of striking Tom again was absurd: he was crouched, cowering against a lathe holding his hands to his face, still shouting.
Jack Lindsay went up to him, gripped a handful of his limp, oily hair and pulled his head back revealing a bloody nose: ‘Yaaah,’ he cried contemptuously: ‘Shut y’ row, y’ ain’t hurt … You make me sick, y’ big squawker.’ He gave him a push which sent him on his knees: with a shrug he said, to the others: ‘Carm on, leave him to have his squawk out.’
They moved away, Harry following. But he scarce had gone a half-dozen paces when curiosity made him pause to gaze back at Tom who now had risen to his feet standing, lonely and forsaken. His face was averted; he was sniffing and wiping his incarnadined nose. A sudden access of pity and compassion compelled Harry to return. He felt in his pocket and withdrew a cigarette: ‘He’ y’ are, Tom,’ he said, impulsively: ‘Ah didn’t mean t’ ‘urt y’… .An Ah didn’t want t’ fight.’
Without looking at him Tom took the cigarette, sniffed awhile, then shot a sheepish glance at Harry and mumbled: ‘Ah didn’t mean owt agen your Sal. … Though she has bein jazzin’ wi’ Ned Narkey an’ Ah did see her talkin’ t’ Larry Meath,’ with warmth, and in self-justification: ‘You’d ha’ felt same if somebody had bin put in front o’ you,’ recklessly: ‘But Ah don’t care. Let ‘em stick their — lathes!’
‘Ne’er heed, Tom,’ replied Harry, feeling very magnanimous: ‘You ne’er heed. There was a mistake, Ah bet, that’s all…’
The siren interrupted. They returned to their work. In a moment all was forgotten.
2
What a change to hand over brass checks to raw apprentices! Brass checks with ‘2510’ stamped upon them. To say to the boys, in impressive tones of voice: ‘Hey, you, tek this t’ t’ stores an’ see y’ quick about it,’ watch them scurry off, as zealously as he had done when first engaged. Pleasant, too, to answer, condescendingly, their timid questions regarding the machinery’s mechanism, to pretend to a thoroughly comprehensive knowledge of all the engineering processes, and generally, to act as though your work was of the supremest importance.
He inspired, deeply, vastly pleased with himself.
Suddenly, the pleased expression faded: he stood, transfixed, as a shocking thought raised tumult in his brain: his skin crept; involuntarily his hand went to his mouth; he gaped, unseeing, at the lathe’s remorseless revolutions.
‘Blimey!’ he muttered, scared.
He had been superseded by younger boys! This was the price that had to be paid for promotion. Its consequences were crushing.
No longer would he run errands for the men; the new boys would do that, and, at week-end, they would receive those coppers which had made all the difference to his life. Incredulously, he asked himself to imagine the fact that, for the future, he would only have the shilling spending money his mother gave to him. Two packets of Woodbines, admission to the pictures of a Saturday, two penn’orth of sweets, a threepenny bet, and, lo! he would be penniless until the following Saturday. It was monstrous. Nor would there be any relief until four years had elapsed, until he had concluded his apprenticeship and found another place where he would receive the full rate of pay. ‘Blimey!’ he muttered, and repeated: ‘Blimey, Ah ne’er thought o’ this.’
His world was upset; everything appeared in a new, unfamiliar and chilling perspective. Terrifying intimations tiptoed through the numb silences of his mind; insistent voices whispered the harsh truth that he was no longer a boy. This new batch of shop boys had pushed him, willy-nilly, along the path of Age, a road he had no inclination to follow. And they had given no warning; the transition had not been gradual but precipitate.
He looked back a couple of years. Why, the ‘men’ as he had called them, Billy Higgs, for example who had given him the half-crown when he, Billy, had made that very profitable bet - these ‘men’ hadn’t been men at all; they were grown up apprentices, nothing more. Theirs had been precisely the same circumstances as his own: they had earned no more money than he. Yet how did they manage to buy a new suit once a year, to give pennies to the boys and to afford sixpenny and shilling wagers? They went to football matches, too, and occasionally, treated ‘tarts’ to the pictures. It perplexed and bewildered him. He was now in their class: as things now were he could not afford to do any such thing. What he could do, the only thing that remained, was to arrange with his mother to have a greater share of his earnings than had been customary and to depend upon her for new suits and the rest of his clothes and other requirements.
Of course, there was nothing else for it, those older apprentices whom, in his ignorance, he had considered men, must have made precisely similar arrangements. They weren’t men at all, never had been. Even those with moustaches, who were twenty-one years of age, were, from the point of view of money, only overgrown boys, dependent on the support and generosity of their parents. Yet they were doing men’s work. It was outrageous. Something ought to be done about it.
A sense of heavy responsibility crushed him. He now was in the class of senior apprentice: he was sixteen, the eldest among them was only four years and a few months his senior. Year by year would see him taking a step upward as the eldest were gradually displaced until he, too, reached the top rung five years from now when to be numbered among the time-served men.
For a moment the inexorable quality of Time’s flight appeared to him in an alarmingly vivid glimpse. Until now a year had seemed an interminable age, something that stretched away into the hazy infinity of the future and could not be comprehended. In a flash he saw twelve months each treading on the other’s heel in a never-ending suffocating circle, monotonous, constrained, like prisoners exercising mechanically in the confines of the prison yard.
He’d been at Marlowe’s nearly two years now. And they were gone! Irretrievably. He felt perplexed, puzzled, cheated.
Sixteen years old, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. Five years hence he would be a man. ‘A man.’ It was inconceivable. Yet Billy Higgs was a man and always had looked it. Think on it! When he first had commenced here Billy was only nineteen, just three years older than he, Harry, was at this moment. Why, in three years’ time…!
A vivid recollection of the war years occurred to him. He saw himself standing on the kerb clutching his mother’s skirts and thrilling to the martial music as he watched the latest batch of Lancashire soldiers marching to their death in the Dardanelles. He had thought how fine and big and strong the nineteen-year- ol
d soldiers had looked and had been strangely perplexed by hearing his mother say, to Mrs Bull who stood with her:
‘Ay, ain’t it shameful. Childer they are and nowt else. Sin and a shame, Mrs Bull. Sin and a shame.’
Them as start wars, Mrs ‘Ardcastle,’ Mrs Bull had replied, emphatically: Them as start wars should be made t’ go’n fight ‘urn. An’ if Ah’d owt t’ do wi’ it, fight ‘urn they would. They’d tek no lad o’ mine. Luk at them lot there, boys an’ nowt else.’
The recollection amazed Harry. Why, those soldiers had only been three years older than he. They were men at nineteen, then. Had he been their contemporary he, too, would have been a soldier; a corpse, probably, in some foreign land. He shivered.
Try as he would he could not bring himself to think himself a man. Did he lack some masculine quality which others possessed? Lacking it or no he would be forced into it.
There were some little boys at school at this moment, who, two years from now would be engaged by Marlowe’s. He licked his lips. These newcomers would see him as he had seen Billy Higgs, a man. He blinked and licked his lips again; wanted to go search out these boys to tell them that he wasn’t a man at all, had no intention of being a man: ‘Ah ain’t no man,’ he told them, in his mind: ‘Ah ain’t no man…. D’y’ understand? Ah’ll on’y be eighteen when you start here. D’y’ see? On’y four years older’n you. Aye, an’ y’ll be gettin’ more’n me to spend an’ Ah’ll nearly be out o’ me time,’ to himself: ‘Blimey, kids o’ fourteen gettin’ more’n me to spend when Ah’m eighteen. Blimey, Ah’ll on’y be earnin’ sixteen bob a week then and pay me own insurance.’
Glimmerings of truth began to dawn. A million mysteries slowly unfolded their secrets; what had been tinged with glamour crumbled to stark and fearful reality.
He saw groups of young men lounging at street corners; young men serving their time or not serving their time: the sight was so commonplace that nobody ever noticed it. Why were they lounging there? Why didn’t they go to the picture theatre or some place of amusement? Why didn’t they smarten themselves by wearing their Sunday suit of an evening? He knew why they never went in search of amusement, because they were as he, lacking the necessary money. And the remembrance of rows and rows of Sunday suits at Price and Jones’s told their own tale. The suits belonged to Price: every week-end he hired them out to those who had bought them. And even those who didn’t pawn them daren’t wear them every evening. The clothes had to be made to last a twelvemonth, the procurement of which explained the presence of the Good Samaritan Clothing Club collectors in Hanky Park every Saturday noon. Two shillings a week for fifty-two weeks equals one new suit, etc.
But there was a point on which he still was puzzled. Take Billy Higgs, a typical example. Never, to Harry’s knowledge, had Billy been inconvenienced by his penury: contrary, Harry had vivid recollections of Billy’s throwing money about prodigally; he saw him oozing complacence and beaming good-naturedly on everybody.
‘How many times?’ he asked himself.
‘Aye,’ he murmured, ‘How many times?’ Once, and once only, when Billy had made that profitable bet.
Slowly the explanation crystallized. Billy’s extraordinary good fortune on that solitary occasion had made him a cynosure;
attention had been focused on him, nothing more. It was so unusual for anyone to have a temporary sufficiency of money that when such good fortune did fall an individual’s way, all the other penurious wretches saw a nimbus of glory glowing round the fortunate one’s head. It was a seven days’ wonder. You remembered them and their luck as you remembered the fire at Harmsworth’s mill. In the ordinary course of events you never looked at Harmsworth’s mill: it was a mill, part of the landscape and nothing more. But when it was blazing people rushed from all parts, and, ever afterwards, the memory of the conflagration stuck. When the fire was extinguished and the damage repaired, things resumed normalcy, nobody raised their eyes to the sooty buildings. The same with Billy Higgs. Nobody looked at him now; the nimbus had faded with the spending of his money. He was now unemployed. Only last night Harry had seen him lounging at the street corner with the rest of the dole birds feeling in his pocket for a fag-end that wasn’t there.
All in the same boat: all hard up; there was a sorry kind of consolation in being one of a crowd.
But he resented the intrusion of the new boys: they had stolen money out of his pocket with their coming. He felt resentful of everybody who was prosperous. Resentful of Sam Grundy, the bookie, of Alderman Grumpole the fat money-lender proprietor of the Good Samaritan Clothing Club, and of Price, J.P., the cadaverous pawnbroker.
Then fears and panic clutched him: he became afraid. Was this what was meant by growing older? And money. A shilling a week was impossible. Cigarettes, pictures and threepence for a bet and - broke until next pay day. Gosh! He must find a winner; must be extremely painstaking with his threepenny wagers. His heart contracted to remember that only once in two years had he won, and then only two shillings.
Ah, but he had been careless, then; hadn’t spent time studying form. Then there were the competitions in the newspapers: ‘£500 for First Four in the Derby’. ‘Spot the Ball and win £1,000’. But the prospect of winning here was remote. And, ten to one, if he did succeed in placing the Derby horses correctly, his prize would be like that of the man’s in the next street who had performed, successfully, the difficult prognostication and had received, instead of £500, a letter and a package from the Competition Editor, saying:’… therefore, owing to the huge number of successful competitors, list of which may be had on application plus cost of postage, it has been found impracticable to divide the money prize. Enclosed, however, is a magnificent photogravure plate of H.R.H. the Prince of Wales.’
‘Aw, blimey,’ he muttered: ‘Ah’m fed up, Ah am.’
Where was that feeling of confidence of the future? of the imminence of joys to be?
Where was Helen? He wanted her, urgently; wanted to confess his fears to her attentive and sympathetic ear. He’d take her to Dawney’s Hill tonight where they could talk, confidentially, without fear of interruption. Take her, if she would go… . Suppose she declined. Imagine if she transferred her affections elsewhere!
Oh, Helen, Helen. Only she could assuage this fear of the future that loomed, large and foreboding like a great, dark cloud on the horizon.
CHAPTER 2 - HE IS HAPPY
DAWNEY’S HILL (how it came by that name I cannot say) lies about a half-mile to the west from Hanky Park. It is a huge deposit of sand, a high eminence with a grass-capped brow. In genial weather and when the darkness falls, urban lovers sit out their evenings here kissing and fondling, wisely snatching happiness whilst it is there.
If the heavens have ears they must have listened to millions of promises and plans from the lips of young factory hands scheming as to their futures.
The hill’s popularity as a rendezvous may be accounted for in that there is free access, no pay-boxes, turnstiles or warnings to keep off the grass. At sunset Venus presides. And the dirty grass has provided the nuptial couch for many and many a moment’s ineffable bliss, prelude, sometimes, to premature and hasty marriages. No doubt it will continue so to do for just as long a period as the Two Cities Municipal Authorities take to sell Dawney’s Hill, a cart-load at a time, to any and all speculative builders who find themselves in need of sand.
From its brow, if you sit with your back to the setting sun, the huge, stricken area of the Two Cities sprawls away east, north and south. Like a beleaguered city from which plundering incendiaries have recently withdrawn, a vast curtain of smoke rises as from smouldering ruins. And the tall chimneys standing in clusters like giant ninepins, spouting forth black billowing streamers, write their capricious signatures on the smudgy skies. The same today as in the not-long-ago when old people told tales of cows being called home from where below were once lush meadows; days when the soaring larks beat wings against unspotted skies, and, of a night, gawmless calves, the daft
loons, stood gaping at the moon, and, aloft, the stealthy midnight owl sharply eyed the moonlit green below.
By east, north and south sprawls the cities’ area.
The sensible lovers never face it; they look towards the northwest where the prospect is pleasanter. There still are fields, and, where the river twines and turns about a mile distant as the crow flies, its steep northern bank gives hospitality to congregations of trees. Town trees and town fields.
Helen sighed contentedly and gazed at Harry lying supine in the grass by her side.
His attitude towards her this last day or so had changed completely. He seemed to desire her company, her exclusive company; yet she was cautious, distrustful of her optimism. She did not wish to build on the premature hope of its permanency.
There were encouraging signs, though. He was growing older perceptibly; no longer did he seem to hanker for the company of the other boys. Indeed there was a change in the demeanours of them all; they all were more or less subdued. Its cause was not far to seek. Of a Saturday evening nowadays only a ghost of their erstwhile boisterousness remained; no more did they fling money about carelessly. A new generation had taken their places by Hulkington’s, the grocer’s shop; the same in the Saturday picture theatre queues. The younger boys evinced the same habits, the same prodigality; different boys, that was all.
‘It’s rotten, Helen. Kids like that gettin’ more to spend than me. Older y’ grow, more work y’ do an’ less money y’ get t’ spend. ‘Tain’t fair.’
As she sat here with him by her side she recalled his words, turned them over thoughtfully. They pleased her: yet they made her feel very sorry for him. She gazed at him, he was lying staring into the sky, a hand carelessly plucking at a tuft of grass. The more she looked at him the more urgent and warm her love of him seemed to grow, until, at last she could not resist an impulse to confess her feelings. On a sudden she leaned towards him and murmured, with suppressed ardour: ‘Oh, Harry, Ah do love y’… Ah do, really.’
Love on the Dole Page 8