‘Slosh’ was a very suitable word; very descriptive of the manner in which the work was done. The cornices of the staircase ceilings were enriched with plaster ornaments. These ceilings were supposed to have been washed off, but as the men who were put to do that work had not been allowed sufficient time to do it properly, the crevices of the ornaments were still filled up with old whitewash, and by the time Harlow and Easton had ‘sloshed’ a lot more whitewash on to them they were mere formless unsightly lumps of plaster. The ‘hands’ who did the ‘washing off’ were not to blame. They had been hunted away from the work before it was half done.
While Harlow and Easton were distempering these ceilings, Philpot and the other hands were proceeding with the painting in different parts of the inside of the house, and Owen, assisted by Bert, was getting on with the work in the drawing-room, striking chalk lines and measuring and setting out the different panels.
There were no ‘political’ arguments that day at dinner-time, to the disappointment of Crass, who was still waiting for an opportunity to produce the Obscurer cutting. After dinner, when the others had all gone back to their work, Philpot unobtrusively returned to the kitchen and gathered up the discarded paper wrappers in which some of the men had brought their food. Spreading one of these open, he shook the crumbs from the others upon it. In this way and by picking up particles of bread from the floor, he collected a little pile of crumbs and crusts. To these he added some fragments that he had left from his own dinner. He then took the parcel upstairs and opening one of the windows threw the crumbs on to the roof of the portico. He had scarcely closed the window when two starlings fluttered down and began to eat. Philpot watching them furtively from behind the shutter.
The afternoon passed uneventfully. From one till five seemed a very long time to most of the hands, but to Owen and his mate, who was doing something in which they were able to feel some interest and pleasure, the time passed so rapidly that they both regretted the approach of evening.
‘Other days,’ remarked Bert, ‘I always keeps on wishin’ it was time to go ’ome, but today seems to ’ave gorn like lightnin’!’
After leaving off that night, all the men kept together till they arrived down town, and then separated. Owen went by himself: Easton, Philpot, Crass and Bundy adjourned to the ‘Cricketers Arms’ to have a drink together before going home, and Slyme, who was a teetotaller, went by himself, although he was now lodging with Easton.
‘Don’t wait for me,’ said the latter as he went off with Crass and the others. ‘I shall most likely catch you up before you get there.’
‘All right,’ replied Slyme.
This evening Slyme did not take the direct road home. He turned into the main street, and, pausing before the window of a toy shop, examined the articles displayed therein attentively. After some minutes he appeared to have come to a decision, and entering the shop he purchased a baby’s rattle for fourpence halfpenny. It was a pretty toy made of white bone and coloured wool, with a number of little bells hanging upon it, and a ring of white bone at the end of the handle.
When he came out of the shop Slyme set out for home, this time walking rapidly. When he entered the house Ruth was sitting by the fire with the baby on her lap. She looked up with an expression of disappointment as she perceived that he was alone.
‘Where’s Will got to again?’ she asked.
‘He’s gone to ’ave a drink with some of the chaps. He said he wouldn’t be long,’ replied Slyme as he put his food basket on the dresser and went upstairs to his room to wash and to change his clothes.
When he came down again, Easton had not yet arrived.
‘Everything’s ready, except just to make the tea,’ said Ruth, who was evidently annoyed at the continued absence of Easton, ‘so you may as well have yours now.’
‘I’m in no hurry. I’ll wait a little and see if he comes. He’s sure to be here soon.’
‘If you’re sure you don’t mind, I shall be glad if you will wait,’ said Ruth, ‘because it will save me making two lots of tea.’
They waited for about half an hour, talking at intervals in a constrained, awkward way about trivial subjects. Then as Easton did not come, Ruth decided to serve Slyme without waiting any longer. With this intention she laid the baby in its cot, but the child resented this arrangement and began to cry, so she had to hold him under her left arm while she made the tea. Seeing her in this predicament, Slyme exclaimed, holding out his hands:
‘Here, let me hold him while you do that.’
‘Will you?’ said Ruth, who, in spite of her instinctive dislike of the man, could not help feeling gratified with this attention. ‘Well, mind you don’t let him fall.’
But the instant Slyme took hold of the child it began to cry even louder than it did when it was put into the cradle.
‘He’s always like that with strangers,’ apologized Ruth as she took him back again.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Slyme. ‘I’ve got something upstairs in my pocket that will keep him quiet. I’d forgotten all about it.’
He went up to his room and presently returned with the rattle. When the baby saw the bright colours and heard the tinkling of the bells he crowed with delight, and reached out his hands eagerly towards it and allowed Slyme to take him without a murmur of protest. Before Ruth had finished making and serving the tea the man and child were on the very best of terms with each other, so much so indeed that when Ruth had finished and went to take him again, the baby seemed reluctant to part from Slyme, who had been dancing him in the air and tickling him in the most delightful way.
Ruth, too, began to have a better opinion of Slyme, and felt inclined to reproach herself for having taken such an unreasonable dislike of him at first. He was evidently a very good sort of fellow after all.
The baby had by this time discovered the use of the bone ring at the end of the handle of the toy and was biting it energetically.
‘It’s a very beautiful rattle,’ said Ruth. ‘Thank you very much for it. It’s just the very thing he wanted.’
‘I heard you say the other day that he wanted something of the kind to bite on to help his teeth through,’ answered Slyme, ‘and when I happened to notice that in the shop I remembered what you said and thought I’d bring it home.’
The baby took the ring out of its mouth and shaking the rattle frantically in the air laughed and crowed merrily, looking at Slyme.
‘Dad! Dad! Dad!’ he cried, holding out his arms.
Slyme and Ruth burst out laughing.
‘That’s not your dad, you silly boy,’ she said, kissing the child as she spoke. ‘Your dad ought to be ashamed of himself for staying out like this. We’ll give him dad, dad, dad, when he does come home, won’t we?’
But the baby only shook the rattle and rang the bells and laughed and crowed and laughed again, louder than ever.
19
The Filling of the Tank
Viewed from outside, the ‘Cricketers Arms’ was a pretentious-looking building with plate-glass windows and a profusion of gilding. The pilasters were painted in imitation of different marbles and the doors grained to represent costly woods. There were panels containing painted advertisements of wines and spirits and beer, written in gold, and ornamented with gaudy colours. On the lintel over the principal entrance was inscribed in small white letters:
‘A. Harpy. Licensed to sell wines, spirits and malt liquor by retail to be consumed either on or off the premises.’
The bar was arranged in the usual way, being divided into several compartments. First there was the ‘Saloon Bar’: on the glass of the door leading into this was fixed a printed bill: ‘No four ale served in this bar.’ Next to the saloon bar was the jug and bottle department, much appreciated by ladies who wished to indulge in a drop of gin on the quiet. There were also two small ‘private’ bars, only capable of holding two or three persons, where nothing less than fourpennyworth of spirits or glasses of ale at threepence were served. Finally, the public bar, the largest compartmen
t of all. At each end, separating it from the other departments, was a wooden partition, painted and varnished.
Wooden forms fixed across the partitions and against the walls under the windows provided seating accommodation for the customers. A large automatic musical instrument – a ‘penny in the slot’ polyphone – resembling a grandfather’s clock in shape – stood against one of the partitions and close up to the counter, so that those behind the bar could reach to wind it up. Hanging on the partition near the polyphone was a board about fifteen inches square, over the surface of which were distributed a number of small hooks, numbered. At the bottom of the board was a net made of fine twine, extended by means of a semicircular piece of wire. In this net several india-rubber rings about three inches in diameter were lying. There was no table in the place but jutting out from the other partition was a hinged flap about three feet long by twenty inches wide, which could be folded down when not in use. This was the shove-ha’penny board. The coins – old French pennies – used in playing this game were kept behind the bar and might be borrowed on application. On the partition, just above the shove-ha’penny board was a neatly printed notice, framed and glazed:
NOTICE
Gentlemen using this house are requested to
refrain from using obscene language.
Alongside this notice were a number of gaudily-coloured bills advertising the local theatre and the music-hall, and another of a travelling circus and menagerie, then visiting the town and encamped on a piece of waste ground about half-way on the road to Windley.
The fittings behind the bar, and the counter, were of polished mahogany, with silvered plate glass at the back of the shelves. On the shelves were rows of bottles and cut-glass decanters, gin, whisky, brandy and wines and liqueurs of different kinds.
When Crass, Philpot, Easton and Bundy entered, the landlord, a well-fed, prosperous-looking individual in white shirtsleeves, and a bright maroon fancy waistcoat with a massive gold watch-chain and a diamond ring, was conversing in an affable, friendly way with one of his regular customers, who was sitting on the end of the seat close to the counter, a shabbily dressed, bleary-eyed, degraded, beer-sodden, trembling wretch, who spent the greater part of every day, and all his money, in this bar. He was a miserable-looking wreck of a man about thirty years of age, supposed to be a carpenter, although he never worked at that trade now. It was commonly said that some years previously he had married a woman considerably his senior, the landlady of a third-rate lodging-house. This business was evidently sufficiently prosperous to enable him to exist without working and to maintain himself in a condition of perpetual semi-intoxication. This besotted wretch practically lived at the ‘Cricketers’. He came regularly every morning and sometimes earned a pint of beer by assisting the barman to sweep up the sawdust or clean the windows. He usually remained in the bar until closing time every night. He was a very good customer; not only did he spend whatever money he could get hold of himself, but he was the cause of others spending money, for he was acquainted with most of the other regular customers, who, knowing his impecunious condition, often stood him a drink ‘for the good of the house’.
The only other occupant of the public bar – previous to the entrance of Crass and his mates – was a semi-drunken man, who appeared to be a house-painter, sitting on the form near the shove-ha’penny board. He was wearing a battered bowler hat and the usual shabby clothes. This individual had a very thin, pale face, with a large, high-bridged nose, and bore a striking resemblance to the portraits of the first Duke of Wellington. He was not a regular customer here, having dropped in casually about two o’clock and had remained ever since. He was beginning to show the effects of the drink he had taken during that time.
As Crass and the others came in they were hailed with enthusiasm by the landlord and the Besotted Wretch, while the semi-drunk workman regarded them with fishy eyes and stupid curiosity.
‘Wot cheer, Bob?’ said the landlord, affably, addressing Crass, and nodding familiarly to the others. ‘’Ow goes it?’
‘All reet me ole dear!’ replied Crass, jovially. ‘’Ow’s yerself?’
‘A.1,’ replied the ‘Old Dear’, getting up from his chair in readiness to execute their orders.
‘Well, wot’s it to be?’ inquired Philpot of the others generally.
‘Mine’s a pint o’ beer,’ said Crass.
‘Half for me,’ said Bundy.
‘Half o’ beer for me too,’ replied Easton.
‘That’s one pint, two ’arves, and a pint o’ porter for meself,’ said Philpot, turning and addressing the Old Dear.
While the landlord was serving these drinks the Besotted Wretch finished his beer and set the empty glass down on the counter, and Philpot observing this, said to him:
‘’Ave one along o’ me?’
‘I don’t mind if I do,’ replied the other.
When the drinks were served, Philpot, instead of paying for them, winked significantly at the landlord, who nodded silently and unobtrusively made an entry in an account book that was lying on one of the shelves. Although it was only Monday and he had been at work all the previous week, Philpot was already stony broke. This was accounted for by the fact that on Saturday he had paid his landlady something on account of the arrears of board and lodging money that had accumulated while he was out of work; and he had also paid the Old Dear four shillings for drinks obtained on tick during the last week.
‘Well, ’ere’s the skin orf yer nose,’ said Crass, nodding to Philpot, and taking a long pull at the pint glass which the latter had handed to him.
Similar appropriate and friendly sentiments were expressed by the others and suitably acknowledged by Philpot, the founder of the feast.
The Old Dear now put a penny in the slot of the polyphone, and winding it up started it playing. It was some unfamiliar tune, but when the Semi-drunk Painter heard it he rose unsteadily to his feet and began shuffling and dancing about, singing:
‘Oh, we’ll inwite you to the wedding,
An’ we’ll ’ave a glorious time!
Where the boys an’ girls is a-dancing,
An’ we’ll all get drunk on wine.’
‘’Ere! that’s quite enough o’ that!’ cried the landlord, roughly. ‘We don’t want that row ’ere.’
The Semi-drunk stopped, and looking stupidly at the Old Dear, sank abashed on to the seat again.
‘Well, we may as well sit as stand – for a few minutes,’ remarked Crass, suiting the action to the word. The others followed his example.
At frequent intervals the bar was entered by fresh customers, most of them working men on their way home, who ordered and drank their pint or half-pint of ale or porter and left at once. Bundy began reading the advertisement of the circus and menageries and a conversation ensued concerning the wonderful performances of the trained animals. The Old Dear said that some of them had as much sense as human beings, and the manner with which he made this statement implied that he thought it was a testimonial to the sagacity of the brutes. He further said that he had heard – a little earlier in the evening – a rumour that one of the wild animals, a bear or something, had broken loose and was at present at large. This was what he had heard – he didn’t know if it were true or not. For his own part he didn’t believe it, and his hearers agreed that it was highly improbable. Nobody ever knew how these silly yarns got about.
Presently the Besotted Wretch got up and, taking the india-rubber rings out of the net with a trembling hand, began throwing them one at a time at the hooks on the board. The rest of the company watched him with much interest, laughing when he made a very bad shot and applauding when he scored.
‘’E’s a bit orf tonight,’ remarked Philpot aside to Easton, ‘but as a rule ’e’s a fair knock-out at it. Throws a splendid ring.’
The Semi-drunk regarded the proceedings of the Besotted Wretch with an expression of profound contempt.
‘You can’t play for nuts,’ he said scornfully.
; ‘Can’t I? I can play you, anyway.’
‘Right you are! I’ll play you for drinks round!’ cried the Semi-drunk.
For a moment the Besotted Wretch hesitated. He had not money enough to pay for drinks round. However, feeling confident of winning, he replied:
‘Come on then. What’s it to be? Fifty up?’
‘Anything you like! Fifty or a ’undred or a bloody million!’
‘Better make it fifty for a start.’
‘All right!’
‘You play first if you like.’
‘All right,’ agreed the Semi-drunk, anxious to distinguish himself.
Holding the six rings in his left hand, the man stood in the middle of the floor at a distance of about three yards from the board, with his right foot advanced. Taking one of the rings between the forefinger and thumb of his right hand, and closing his left eye, he carefully ‘sighted’ the centre hook, No. 13; then he slowly extended his arm to its full length in the direction of the board: then bending his elbow, he brought his hand back again until it nearly touched his chin, and slowly extended his arm again. He repeated these movements several times, whilst the others watched with bated breath. Getting it right at last he suddenly shot the ring at the board, but it did not go on No. 13; it went over the partition into the private bar.
This feat was greeted with a roar of laughter. The player stared at the board in a dazed way, wondering what had become of the ring. When someone in the next bar threw it over the partition again, he realized what had happened and, turning to the company with a sickly smile, remarked:
‘I ain’t got properly used to this board yet: that’s the reason of it.’
He now began throwing the other rings at the board rather wildly, without troubling to take aim. One struck the partition to the right of the board: one to the left: one underneath: one went over the counter, one on the floor, the other – the last – hit the board, and amid a shout of applause, caught on the centre hook No. 13, the highest number it was possible to score with a single throw.
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Page 25