I'm All Right Jack

by Alan Hackney

  “Yes. What about ‘Industrial production was down two per cent last year. If we go on that way we shall lose our position. This strike, which I did not want, is helping us down the precipice’?”

  “Those are objective facts. You can check the figures. We had your permission to do any rewriting necessary, remember. And let’s be fair. The stuff is human interest now—much more than it was.”

  “Oh goodbye,” said Stanley irritably.

  The six million Rapid readers certainly would be interested. And there was no doubt what they would think, either. Looking over the article again, it became clear to Stanley that there was no future for him at Missiles, or indeed anywhere else as a member of GEEUPWOA. Nor would any other union be likely to give him a card, or collect dues from him on a Friday.

  “And I didn’t even win any of Kitey’s raffles,” he thought bitterly.

  The telephone rang again and it was Knowlesy.

  “You shouldn’t have written all that, Squire,” said Knowlesy.

  “I didn’t,” said Stanley.

  “It won’t suit Kitey to believe that,” said Knowlesy.

  Taking it all round, Stanley was glad he had decided against queueing for his strike pay on the Friday.

  There was, however, still the question of Cynthia. He had looked in at the television programme she was supposed to have been in, but found it difficult to spot her. When the camera came close enough to the girls for identification he had had one or two glimpses of her, though she was not altogether plainly recognizable in the unfamiliar costume. Her legs, which he had not seen properly before, were apparently up to the general standard, as, he realized, ten million viewers would be able to appreciate. He was rather disposed to resent this, though Cynthia herself showed no signs of minding. She certainly looked more at home with this than with her daily thousands of diesel injectors.

  If he could not visit Cynthia at home, Stanley thought, he must ring up the Variety Department of the BBC to find out where the girls rehearsed, and see Cynthia there.

  But he was occupied all the morning in answering the telephone. Large numbers of people, mostly eccentric, were ringing him up to congratulate him on his outspoken article. Several appeared to be adulatory middle-aged women, others were secretaries or members of small hot-headed organizations, one or two were old-age pensioners. He rashly promised, under pressure, to add his name to several petitions and manifestoes they intended sending.

  Because of these interruptions he missed the one o’clock news, on which it was reported that the strike was spreading.

  *

  The BBC said that the rehearsals for ‘Name Your Poison’, the show in which Cynthia was dancing, were being held at the Palmerston Boys’ Club in Chiswick, an unlikely place, but one often used because of the shortage of rehearsal rooms in Central London. Stanley found it after some difficulty, and no one took much notice of him when he went in.

  There were a large number of technical fellows in shirtsleeves, bandsmen, and several despairing script-writers slumped in parish-hall chairs along one wall. Somewhat to Stanley’s disappointment, the dancing girls were not in uniform, but trousers, with pullovers or blouses. They had just finished a routine and were all panting speechlessly. Various ropes hung from the ceiling. Cynthia, he noticed at last, was sagging on a vaulting horse.

  “I must see you, Cynthia,” he said. “I’ve got enough money to set up house. Isn’t it splendid? Now, what about it?”

  “Have you seen Piggy, sweet?” came a voice by Stanley’s ear before Cynthia could make any reply. “I must find him. I’ve got a superb thing for that flight of steps bit.” It was one of the male dancers.

  “No, I’m sorry,” said Stanley.

  Cynthia shook her head, still gasping for breath.

  “Two minutes, girls!” called a voice. Groans went up from one or two corners.

  “Well, Cynthia? Do speak to me.”

  Cynthia wiped the sweat from her brow and puffed.

  “I can’t,” she got out. “Won’t have us if we’re married. Might spoil our figures.”

  “Oh, surely you could give it up?”

  “Don’t want to. Signed. Contract. Anyway.”

  “Let’s have you, girls!”

  “Please, Cynthia. Why not?”

  “Don’t want to give it up.” (Pant) “Don’t want to marry you.”

  “Oh.”

  “Never did.” (Pant)

  “But damn it, you said——”

  “Places please, girls!”

  “No. Must think of my career.”

  “But, Cynthia——”

  “No. I like dancing. I don’t like you. Sorry. ’Bye.”

  “OK, girls.” The number started.

  Stanley watched despondently for a little while, until the movements spread across the gymnasium floor and enveloped him. Then he threaded his way through the edges of it to the door, where he bumped into the male dancer again.

  “I say, have you seen Piggy?” asked the dancer. “Oh no, I’ve asked you. I must find Piggy. Oh damn-damn-damn.”

  Stanley turned at the door but Cynthia shook her head energetically at him and he went sadly away.

  *

  When Stanley got in he found Uncle Bertram and Cox waiting for him.

  “Well, Stanley. Let’s come to it straight away,” said Bertram. “Things are looking a bit serious.”

  “You don’t know how serious,” said Stanley. “I’m in bad with my union and look here, Cox, you’ve done for me with Cynthia, filling her head with this gallivanting. She’s thrown me over. I’m ruined. I just don’t know what way to turn.”

  “Kuh,” said Cox, surprised. “Poor old Stan. Fancy young Cynthia doing that.”

  “Oh, it’s all right for you,” complained Stanley, dropping into a chair. “And don’t go telling me some other girl’ll turn up. It was Cynthia I wanted. I wanted to marry her and she was thinking it over. It was all going along all right until this strike. And why did you have to get her this job to annoy her father?”

  Uncle Bertram cleared his throat.

  “Perhaps we’d better not go into all that now,” he said. “The big thing at the moment is that this strike is spreading. There are five thousand out in Manchester and another two thousand in Leeds, not to mention Scotland and Wales. It’s got to stop before it becomes nation-wide. If you’re not quick about it you’re going to paralyse the country.”

  “Me? And quick about what?”

  “Oh yes, you, my old Stan,” confirmed Cox. “You ask anyone who reads the papers who the strike’s over and they’ll say you.”

  “So you see it’s up to you to put matters right,” resumed Uncle Bertram. “You’ve got to nip smartly along to Missiles tomorrow and resign. Ask for your cards. Otherwise half the working population of the country will be out idle. But if you resign, you remove the root cause of it all and the whole thing can be settled.”

  “But I don’t want to resign. I was getting good money and it was going to be ten bob a week more on the new schedule.”

  “My dear Stanley,” said Bertram, “we’re going to have to drop that new schedule, and, quite frankly, it’s not going to be very comfortable for you going back—not that there’s much prospect of your being allowed back for ages. Once you get two unions scrapping like this it can go on for months. Look at that business of who was to drill the holes in that shipyard. Besides, we don’t want the Ministry of Labour stepping in to investigate it all.”

  “It’s not much to ask, is it, Stan boy?” said Cox. “All you got to do is hand in your resignation with a lot of publicity.”

  “Well, that’s exactly what Hitchcock asked me to do and I refused.”

  “Ah, but he couldn’t make it worth your while, my old Stan, and I could.”

  “Perhaps you could, but why should you?”

  “Well,” Cox coughed discreetly, “if it becomes nationwide, they wouldn’t work at my firm, Shipshape Harpoons, and then there’d be hell to pay. I got a co
ntract to do. I’d lose my profit.”

  “And I might add that Cox’s firm is doing a contract of great public importance,” said Uncle Bertram. “Heaven knows what might happen if they don’t get straight on with it,” he added, thinking of what Mr Mahommed might say. “So you see where your duty lies.”

  “That’s right, my old Stan,” said Cox hopefully. “So you will go and do it, won’t you?”

  “I don’t know. The Daily Rapid paid me two hundred and fifty pounds for blighting my future and I don’t think it was worth it.”

  “Certainly it wasn’t, Stan boy,” agreed Cox. “If you go and resign, and stop my future being blighted, I’ll give you twenty-five hundred. Cash, naturally.”

  “I’ve got to live on something,” sighed Stanley. “Thanks very much.”

  The other two heaved audible sighs of relief.

  “Well done,” exclaimed Uncle Bertram.

  “Good boy,” said Cox.

  “But I don’t quite see why you should be so relieved, Uncle.”

  “Well, you see, Stan,” explained Cox, “it’s because of the black men. Mr Mahommed and them. Your uncle promised he’d get another firm to do their rockets for them and he doesn’t want to let them down, do you, Bertie?”

  “Certainly not. If they don’t get their rockets pretty smartly it’ll upset the balance of power in the Middle East.”

  “Who is supplying their rockets now?”

  “I am,” said Cox. “So you see, my old Stan, you’ve just got to do it.”

  In the morning Stanley had not made up his mind. The collaboration of Cox and his Uncle Bertram seemed somehow fishy, but though he felt uneasy, he could not quite put his finger on what was illegal about it. But a letter from his father decided him.

  My dear Stanley,

  Heartiest congratulations on your article yesterday. Your only honourable course now is to resign and sever your connections with these two disgraceful and misguided bodies of workmen. Having done that, and it is your plain duty to do so, you must then settle down to some entirely different work in which you will be able to feel a satisfactory exhaustion at the end of the day.

  There is no mental repose without physical sweat.

  Splendid that another bright and warm spell is starting.

  Your affectionate,

  Father

  The newspaper announced:

  FOUR MILLION IDLE

  ALL GEEUPWOA AND ANTEGS OUT IN SYMPATHY TODAY

  Cox telephoned.

  “Stan, mate, you got to do it.”

  “I’m on my way,” said Stanley.

  CHAPTER 20

  WHEN STANLEY arrived at the main gate of Missiles Limited, an unexpected difficulty arose. The gate was strongly picketed by members of the Amalgamated. A rival picket from the General stood nearby. Nobody was going to be allowed in.

  As Stanley turned the bubble car towards the gate, the Amalgamated picket closed its ranks and would not be induced by hooting to give way. Its members waved him away with cries of disapproval, and all towered over the vehicle, peering in through the perspex roof. Above the noise of the engine, strong advice to be off came floating in to Stanley.

  “Hop it. Get out of it. Scab. Creep.”

  This last word came from Brenda’s friend, Baz, who appeared to be an active member of the picket.

  “I say, Baz,” said Stanley, pushing some of his face through one of the little side windows, “call these chaps off, will you? I want to see the Personnel Manager. Very important.”

  Cries of dissent arose from all sides.

  “You ain’t going to work today, cock. Off you go, scabby.”

  “But I don’t want to work——”

  Derisive noises drowned the rest of this protest.

  “Let’s see him off, boys!” cried Baz. “One, two.” And despite Stanley’s protests a number of them lifted the bubble car and turned it round facing the other way.

  “But damn it——” cried Stanley as he bumped down to earth.

  “Go on! On your way!”

  The General picket did not come to the aid of one of their members. When they saw which member it was they made a rude noise or two but remained otherwise inert.

  Stanley made a little circle to face the gates again, but they picked the car up again, upside down this time, and carted him to the corner of the street before putting it down again.

  “Off you go, creep!”

  There was nothing to do but retire. Stanley drove round the corner and waited sadly for Mr Hitchcock to come out, not daring to go away for fear of missing him. He sat there, getting steadily hungrier, until the middle of the afternoon when he saw the Personnel Manager’s car come out and go past. Tooting his horn, he set off in pursuit.

  For some time, Mr Hitchcock did not respond. He could not see the bubble car in his driving mirror. Stanley finally came alongside him at some traffic lights and made it known that he wanted to speak.

  Mr Hitchcock pulled up again beyond the lights and got out.

  “Sir,” said Stanley, clambering out of his cockpit‚ “I must see you. I want to hand in my notice.”

  “Oh do you,” said Mr Hitchcock. “Well, you’ve left it a bit bloody late. The whole industry’s at a standstill. It’s out of your hands now.”

  “Oh.”

  “What’s more, I’m under notice because of all this. You see what you’ve done, Windrush? Playing silly-buggers. Quite frankly, Windrush, you’ve acted like a sheer Charlie.”

  *

  At Plantagenet House, the Coloured Conference was witnessing the liveliest hour of its unprofitable life.

  In ringing tones, the Agyppian delegate, Mr Mahommed, was denouncing the aggression of Solomonia, whose troops that morning had begun a most efficacious invasion. Reports were confused, but seemed to suggest that the capital, Rak, was already in the invaders’ hands.

  Bitterly, Mr Mahommed laid the blame for this catastrophe at the door of Great Britain, whose failure to maintain a balanced supply of arms in the area, he claimed, had led to the present disgrace.

  “I accuse Britain of this swindle,” he cried. “It is old policy of divide and rule once more, with no thought for coloured peoples. Officials of the Foreign Office have not been able to conceal contempt, this is my personal experience here, and while we have been shown examples of Western know-how and so forth, the old game has gone on. Supply of arms for the defence of my country has been sabotaged by British Government using Communist agents to make strikes.

  “And I accuse Emmanuel, representing Solomonia here, together with his Government, of unprovoked attack on peace-loving peoples. I call on all in the name of my government to condemn the action of Solomonia and support case of my country in United Nations.”

  The Solomonian delegate rose to reply, pointing out that the Agyppians were far from peace-loving in their attitude to Solomonia.

  “Large-scale arming in Agyppia has been well known to the world, as well as my own government,” he maintained. “Even the civilian population, including large group well known as Sons of Sunshine, and sometimes as Mahommed’s Nature Boys, has been engaged for weeks in military drill. This was designed to wage war on neighbours, and not for peaceful uses. The Agyppian delegate cannot deny this.

  “Nor can his Government deny the line-up of their troops along our frontiers, and tomorrow the world will be able to see their captured equipment, under guard of our troops, whose gallant and brilliant manœuvres today were able to forestall wicked aggressions planned by Agyppia.”

  A note was handed to him while he spoke.

  “In addition to this,” he continued, having read the note, “I must challenge the authority of Mr Mahommed to speak, however persuasively, on behalf of his Government. The information which just reaches me is that his Government is no longer in power.”

  Mr Mahommed got up, and walked with his entourage out of the Conference.

  Several speeches followed, some supporting one side and some the other, but all of them ex
pressing the loss of their confidence in the power and the policies of Great Britain.

  *

  Mr Brimpton, the Minister of State, was missing this.

  He sat in the House of Commons for Question Time, deputizing for the Foreign Secretary, who was in America. The success of the Coloured Conference was going to be a vital step in his ascent to a peerage, and he listened with bored impatience to the replies of the Minister of Works. Minister of Labour next. Poor old Eldritch; in for a tough time over these strikes. He looked in a languid fashion at his Order Paper:

  32. Mr Socket to ask the Minister of Labour whether he proposes to intervene in the current engineering strike—in particular, to safeguard the interests of individuals wishing to pursue their normal employment, as in the case of Mr Stanley Windrush?

  ‘Windrush?’ thought Mr Brimpton. ‘I seem to remember there was a chap at the Office …’

  His thoughts were interrupted by an urgent call from behind the Speaker’s Chair.

  Mr Brimpton dashed to Plantagenet House, but before he arrived the Coloured Conference had finally and irreparably broken down.

  *

  Stanley sent in his resignation by post. Nobody, presumably, was going to stop the postman getting in. There seemed to Stanley to be no real place for him in the postwar world. He had tried Government service and both sides of industry. One side would not have him, and he had let the other side down. There was still advertising, but he knew in his heart there was no crying need for him there. For a few seconds he allowed himself to entertain the idea of a monastery. His rejection by Cynthia must have put this into his mind, but the thought of all the other Toppers quickly put it out again. He certainly did not want to see nothing more of women. What was there for him? School-mastering? Charlie and Shower though Mr Hitchcock might call him, he was not as big a fool as that. There was nothing left.

  He packed his few belongings in his grip, and parcelled up Kitey’s books, still unread. These he left with Mildred, asking her to post them, for he was recognized everywhere he went now, and he hated the thought of stares in the Post Office.