by Alan Hackney
“I always find this one very satisfying,” said Kitey, showing Stanley Collective Childhood and Factory Manhood. “It’s by Ilya Vichinsky, you’ve probably heard of him at Oxford, one of my favourite writers, you know.”
“No, I hadn’t, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh? Some people find him a bit heavy going but I’m sure you won’t. He’s very descriptive.”
“Well, thank you.”
“Oh yes, very descriptive. Tells you about factory life, what it’s like in a socialist country, but I won’t spoil it for you.”
“Factory life’s a bit—well, dull, though, don’t you think?”
“Ah, here, I grant you. But that’s because you’re working for capitalists. That’s what it is.” He sighed. ‘It’s different in the Soviet Union.”
His tone was reminiscent of Wallace’s “It’s different in Bangkok’, so Stanley asked: “Have you been to Russia, then?”
Kitey shook his thin head. “No, I haven’t yet, but it’s the one place abroad I want to go. Course, it’s money. But those miles of cornfields, and ballet in the evening.” His eyes glazed.
At this point Mrs Kite came: stout, with a cigarette. “Evening,” she said. “Dad on at you about the Soviet Union is he?” She began spreading the table with a rather unsuccessful and lumpy non-iron seersucker cloth.
“Yes,” said Stanley. “Good evening.”
“Don’t you let him,” advised Mrs Kite. “We hear nothing else.” She unrolled the cloth as far as Collective Childhood, which was on the table. “Is this your book, Mr Er …?” she asked, prepared to move it ceremoniously.
“No,” said Stanley. “It’s——”
“Oh, one of his,” said Mrs Kite, her deferential approach changing to one of business-like clearing-up. She was about to whisk it away.
“Mr Kite’s lending it to me,” explained Stanley hastily, and Mrs Kite’s approach instantly changed again to one of solicitude. “Oh, I’ll just put it over here then, while I get the cloth on,” she smirked. “Sorry.”
“Cynthia in for tea?” asked Kitey. He seemed to have shut up like a clam about Russia now, and was looking outwards and upwards through the window. “Seems to be clouding over,” he said.
There was rather a large tea: stew, followed by bread and butter with jam, and then jelly and custard. Cynthia appeared as soon as it was laid, and despite her wispy appearance ate everything. There was not much talking during the meal, what conversation there was being conducted mainly by Mrs Kite and Stanley. Cynthia did not say a word.
“I dare say you find it a bit strange at Missiles after what you’ve been used to,” said Mrs Kite. “D’you like it? I never hear from him or Cynthia.”
“It’s quite amusing for a bit,” said Stanley. “Of course I haven’t been there long but they seem a nice lot to work with.”
“You’d never know it from what he says,” observed Mrs Kite. “I only hear a lot about demarcation, I think he calls it.”
Kitey was stung into a reply to this.
“You don’t appreciate it,” he said. “Only you would if the bosses and the shareholders had their way and we was fighting for our jobs.”
“I wish you’d leave off all that and enjoy yourself once in a while like other people,” said Mrs Kite. “He’s always so miserable,” she explained to Stanley.
“Someone’s got to be vigilant,” said Kitey darkly. “Otherwise we’d all go plunging down the precipice like Gadarene swine.”
“I wish you’d watch your language when you get niggly like this,” said Mrs Kite. “Another cup, Mr Windrush?”
“I must be going,” announced Stanley when they had finished.
“Yes, you’ll want to get changed, I expect,” said Mrs Kite. “Nearly time I was at the Regal. Where are you off to, Cynthia?”
“Up West, I expect,” said Cynthia.
“Who with? Brenda?”
“Yes.”
“Going to the Astoria?”
“Probably.”
“Dancing?”
“Yes.”
“Well, are you meeting her there or is she calling?”
“She’s gone early.”
“Why don’t you go up to Victoria with Mr Windrush, then?”
“She doesn’t talk much for a girl her age,” explained Mrs Kite when Cynthia had gone up to put on her dancing kit.
“I expect she will when she gets to yours,” observed Kitey. “Well, Stanley, I’ll say so long. I’ve got this meeting. See you in the morning.”
“Goodbye and thank you again,” said Stanley, and Kitey went off.
“We’re most of us out most evenings,” explained Mrs Kite.
“Oh, I thought most people stayed in if they had television.”
“Oh no, we’ve had it so long now. Last time we all stayed in there was ever such a fuss about keep wanting to switch over programmes. That was during the last strike. We stayed in for economy, only usually we’re most of us out most of the time.”
Cynthia came down in her dancing kit. To Stanley’s eyes she looked enchanting in the slim black blouse and skirt. He was relieved to see that she did not chew gum, and her air of inertness he construed as a dignified repose. Her faintly stunned manner attracted him extraordinarily.
“Right, let’s be off then,” suggested Mrs Kite. She led the way to the street door and locked it after them. At the end of the street she said: “Well, we go different ways. Tata, then, Mr Windrush. Hope you have a nice time.”
“Me?” said Stanley. “I was going home.”
“Why don’t you go with Cynthia, once you’ve changed? Go on, you’re only young once.”
“Well, all right. Can I come, Cynthia?”
“I don’t mind.”
In the train to Victoria Stanley said: “Your mother seems a gay old bird.”
“Oh, mum,” said Cynthia.
“She’s always going off to the pictures, she says. She must be quite an authority.”
“Pardon?”
“She must know a lot about them.”
“Not really, she goes to sleep usually.”
Heavy going though it was, Stanley was delighted with her.
“If you’ll come round to where I live,” he said, “I won’t be a minute changing. Then we can go on to this dance.”
His two great-aunts were listening to the wireless when they arrived.
“I hope you don’t mind if we don’t switch this off,” said Great-Aunt Dolly. “I rather want to hear it; it’s an old friend of mine recording his reminiscences. The BBC do it with a lot of people when they get to eighty, to catch them in time. You don’t mind, my dear?”
“No.”
Cynthia was sat down while Stanley changed into a suit. The talk was still on when he came down again and they left with a silent exchange of little waves with the aunts. Following them through the door, the sprightly, gnome-like voice of the ex-lover of Dolly Tracepurcel retailed the account he had heard as a boy of the Waterloo celebrations in London, told to him by a grandmother who had witnessed them as a girl of fifteen.
Presently they arrived at the dance hall. The hall itself was above the entrance passageway, and from above came a continuous thumping. The ceiling strained like the timbers of a wooden ship to the constant clacking and shuffling of several hundred feet.
“I suppose your friend Brenda is somewhere in that lot?”
“I expect so.”
“I suppose we ought to go up and find her.”
On the way up the stairs Cynthia began blossoming into some sort of life, a sort of limbering-up as the music began to be distinguishable. Stanley, who had begun to share something of Cynthia’s glazed dreaminess, realized with a shock that it was the sort of dance that reminded him of an assault course. But it was too late now: Cynthia, apart from her face, which remained deadpan, had finally come to life. She flung him about, with only brief intervals, for a full hour. It was obviously for this that Cynthia husbanded her energy and packed away her food.
At the announcement of an interval, which aroused a formalized booing from the dancers, Cynthia at once relaxed to her former inertness, so that Stanley was able to sag against a pillar in an exhausted silence, thankful that he was not expected to talk as well. In time, a lost-looking girl approached and stood by Cynthia. This was evidently Brenda, for the two held a brief conversation.
“All right?”
“M’m.”
“Who you been with?”
“Baz.”
“Over the bar now, is he?”
“M’m. That your friend?”
“M’m.”
“Doesn’t he look tired?”
Presently the band reappeared and the person called Baz came to collect Brenda. He was somewhat younger than Stanley and appeared to have suffered no ill effects, approaching with a jaunty lunging gait on enormous suèded and crêped feet.
He nodded cheerfully to them, with a head garnished with five partings.
“All right, Cynth?” The cut of Baz’s jacket gave him an unnaturally burly look which assorted strangely with the tasselled black cord on a rolled gold slide he wore in lieu of a tie. He secured Brenda and took her off as the band began to thump again.
“All right?” assumed Cynthia. Reinfused, she plucked Stanley from his pillar, refusing to permit him to be one of the ten per cent casualties it would have seemed sensible to allow for. The whole business, to Stanley’s mind, was acutely different from what he had had in mind. In this sort of dance there were no close-ups and an entire absence of sentiment. And when it came to it, there was not even a last waltz, merely a few bars of changed rhythm before the final chorus, a sort of hint at the convention, which hardly affected the dancers. Even the final departure of the band had no significance for several couples who continued their evolutions like so many demented geometricians.
Stanley waited while Cynthia got her jacket and then escorted her in a drooping silence to Victoria.
CHAPTER 12
“YOU HAVE a look at Collective Childhood?” asked Mr Kite in the morning. “I’m always interested in people’s first impressions of it. Funny when they was on that collective farm the way they all chased that cow that went barmy.”
“No, I’m sorry, I couldn’t manage it,” confessed Stanley. “I went to a dance with Cynthia, you see.”
Mr Kite looked disappointed, but he said: “Oh well, I won’t spoil it for you. You’ll find it very descriptive. I hadn’t heard, not about you and Cynthia. She doesn’t say much.”
“No,” agreed Stanley.
“Funny she’s never married,” observed Kitey, as though Cynthia would never see fifty again. “Takes after her mother’s family, you know. They were never ones for serious discussion or thinking about anything bar tomorrow’s dinner. Well, best get on, but your heart’s not really in it, working for private profits.” He sighed. “It’s different in the Soviet Union.”
*
The Personnel Manager, Mr Hitchcock, shuffled the letters in his tray biliously and looked dubiously at the new Time and Motion man.
“What’s it you feel like doing?” he asked indifferently.
The Time and Motion man, a youngish and keen-seeming fellow, brought out a notebook and said: “I rather wanted to have a go at the handling side of things.”
“Fair enough,” said Mr Hitchcock. “But it’s only fair to warn you you’ll have to be really teed up, they’re a pretty crafty lot.”
“As bad as that?”
“Oh, an absolute shower. Always let you down. Look how they were all lounging about yesterday when those Coloured Conference gents were traipsing around. You know why that was? They were afraid someone would stopwatch them when they weren’t looking. Of course, those were the chaps on piece rates, but the chaps on day-work are just as bad. I got this job,” he went on, wagging a pencil, “on the strength of Man Management, the stuff you do in the army, always see the men are fed first, and so forth—nothing to it, of course, they could always scrounge food—however, here I sit, thinking up all sorts of jolly attractions, darts tournaments and what have you during the dinner hour, dealing with suggestions and being a father confessor to the girls, moving chaps about when they don’t like a job, but one gets no thanks for it. For instance, look what I got this morning from the suggestions box.” He held up a note and read out: “‘To reduce costs, cut out the frills, e.g. ping-pong tournament and the Arse and Tartan Club.’”
“The what?”
“That’s what they call the Scottish Country Dancing Club. I started it last winter. Chap called MacAngus in the foundry runs it. At a loss, of course. Well, there you are. I’m regarded as a key-figure, you know, the essential link between the management and the unions—chaps like old Kitey, for example. Have you met him yet?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Well, no doubt you will. He’ll tell you all about the Soviet Union and lend you books on it as soon as look at you. He belongs to GEEUPWOA, known as the General for short. That’s one of the big unions here. The other big one’s called ANTEGS—that’s the Amalgamated National Technical and Engineering Guilds Society, known as the Amalgamated. Charlie Prince is the usual mouthpiece for that lot. ‘Bonny’ Charlie Prince, they call him. Funnily enough, he’s one of the bitterest opponents of the Scottish Dancing Club. I can’t think why.”
“They get on well together, these unions?”
“Oh, absolutely. Mind you, they all think I’m a shit, but that’s the way you have to work it. All the while they hate my guts they forget about hating each other’s guts, so we get by. Some of them even send me vulgar postcards when they’re on holiday—you can see a few of this year’s crop over there.”
“If only they realized‚” said the young Time and Motion man earnestly, “the way to a higher standard of living depends on higher output, and casting aside all the old prejudices …”
“Oh, they know all about that.” Mr Hitchcock waved a deprecating hand. “The thing is, chaps like you won’t let them settle down to a natural rhythm. That’s how they work best. To a natural rhythm.”
“Ah, but …”
“Oh, I know what you’re going to say. Their natural rhythm’s quite disgustingly slow. You’re absolutely right, but so it is for most of us, my dear fellow.” He leaned back. “You probably don’t know it yet, but there’s chaps here can break out in a muck sweat merely by standing still. It’s absolutely astonishing. And they can hear a stopwatch ticking with compressed air and road drills going full belt.”
“I have a sort of vision,” explained the Time and Motion man, “of management and unions sinking all differences and working harmoniously side by side to double and treble our national production and give us living standards that will, er—astonish us today.”
“Oh, absolutely,” agreed Mr Hitchcock moodily. “As long as everyone turns up. I suppose you’ve heard of absenteeism? We had a bit of a blitz over a lot of chaps absent on the afternoon of the Derby, but they all swore blind they were sick and put it in writing. Listen to this.” He took a pile of papers from a drawer and read out: “My absence from work is that I never had any corn and feet plasters which ease the pressure on the ball of the foot. You see, going to the Derby is all part of their natural rhythm. If you go and stopwatch them the odds are you’ll just upset everybody, but by all means have a go. People have had a go before, after all.”
“Yes, I know. I’ve seen the figures.”
“Jolly good. Well, you can see from the figures the only time they haven’t put one over on the management was the time your predecessor did a timing with binoculars through an open window last summer, and what we saved on that one we lost when the union rate went up in the spring. But my point is, once that chap had done that bit of timing he used to get booed whenever he came out of his office. Oh, he lost a stone in weight. Became a dead loss to the company. Resigned in the end. Another cigarette?”
“No, thanks. You’re not putting me off, you know.”
“Oh no, no.
Far be it from me. Just putting you in the picture. You see, frankly, you’ve got to forget all that stuff they told you on your course and get to know how industry really works. Surely you want to know that?”
“Oh, of course. Still, if we can get costs down …”
“My dear chap, what it amounts to is: we pay union rates and charge trade association prices. That way everyone’s miserable, but it keeps the peace. You take a small firm. You ever worked for a small firm? No, well, I shouldn’t. It’s a sweat, I can tell you, and where’s the next order coming from? Perhaps you can do a small job at a cut rate, but a big order has to go to a big firm. Take this couple of million whatnots we’re just starting to do for the Agyppian government. Now, if you want to get a big order like that done quickly, you’ve got to kid the chaps along with a fair rate for the job, not keep showing them how to do it twice as quick when it doesn’t come naturally. A big firm like this can take the whole thing in its stride if you give it half a chance.”
“Well, I’d still like to see what they really could do if they’re let off the leash.”
“You carry on, old boy. But don’t let old Kitey catch you.”
*
“It is nice to see you again so soon, Bertie,” said Great-Aunt Dolly. “I hope you’ll keep it up.”
“Of course I shall, Mother. May I pour you some more tea?”
“Thank you, Bertie. Oh, by the way, I had a chat to Hawthorn.”
“Hawthorn?”
“Yes, he’s senior partner at the solicitors now. He showed some interest in your scheme, but he definitely advised me against it.”
“He’s very stuffy.”
“Oh, I do so agree, but he does know about these things.”