Love on the Dole (12 page)

His hand fell to his side; his collar, wagging between his fingers, attracted the cat’s attention; it clawed up at it, playfully.

He stared at Sally’s averted face. Lately she had been more than usually inclined to snappy moodiness; on the least provocation her temper flared. He wondered what ailed her; she was spending much time dancing. She ought to be having a good time, he thought. He sighed, murmured, ‘Ah wanted you t’ do ‘em, Sal. Ah didn’t want Helen t’ know as Larry Meath gev ‘um me.’

She looked up, quickly: ‘Who?’ she asked.

He stared at her, astonished: ‘Larry Meath gev ‘um me,’ he said, in surprised tones: ‘Ah ain’t pinched ‘um.’

‘Oh,’ she said. She turned away, confused, picked up the cushion of the rocker chair and straightened it unnecessarily: ‘You can leave ‘um. … Leave them there,’ she said, without looking at him, ‘I’ll do them.’

‘Thought you was goin’ to a dance?’

‘I’m not partic’.’

‘All right. Thanks for doin’ ‘em, Sal.’

She did not touch the collars; they lay on the edge of the table. Dawdling around the house he perceived a certain restlessness in her: every time he made a move she glanced at him, quickly, expectantly. Finally, she exclaimed, with a trace of exasperation: ‘Aren’t y’ goin’ out tonight?’

He muttered something, picked up his cap and sauntered to the front door not caring to offend her. Her attitude was puzzling: he lingered by the front door, curious. He heard her reaching for the work-basket; there came the metallic rattle of scissors then the creak of the rocker chair as she sat down. He heard her humming.

‘She’s daft, must be,’ he said to himself, and moved off.

THE question of a new suit became an obsession. He dreamed on it; wore it so often in fancy that, on waking of a Sunday morning, he was fully convinced that it hung behind the bedroom’s curtained-off alcove which served as wardrobe.

It wasn’t there. What met his eyes when he opened them was grim reality decorating the bed end, those wretched reach-me- downs bought second-hand from an auction at the Flat Iron Market. Sulkily he would rise.

Of a Sunday the streets did not see him nor would he give Helen truthful reason why. He lay abed until noon, sat in the house the remainder of the day fretting and brooding, sometimes sneaking out for a half-hour after darkness had fallen.

When alone with his mother and father he pestered them unceasingly: ‘When am Ah goin’ t’ have that there new suit?’ he mumbled with an expression of sulky petulance.

His mother sighed: ‘Ay, lad, what can Ah do? Y’ know Sal’s on short time, an’ y’ pa’s ne’er sure of a full week’s work.’

‘Ah know, ma. But Ah’ve ne’er had a proper suit yet. An’ me nearly eighteen. Ah’m ashamed t’ go out of a Sunday,’ warmly: ‘Luk at Bill Lindsay an’ th’ others. They can have ‘em. Why can’t I?’

Mrs Hardcastle glanced at her husband nervously, then said to Harry, apologetically: They get ‘um from Good Samaritan, Harry. … Y’know y’ father don’t like weekly payments.’ She glanced at her husband again. Harry, too, looked at him.

Hardcastle removed his pipe from his mouth, spat into the fire and addressed his newspaper: ‘Y’ll have t’ mek do wi’ what y’ve got, lad. It’s tekkin’ us all our time t’ live. Y’ll get one when things buck up.’

Tears of vexation swam in Harry’s eyes. The awful indefini-tiveness of: ‘When things buck up.’ He felt sickeningly impotent. He was tired of it, tired of everything. ‘Prosperity in sight. Trade turning the corner.’ He had thrilled at that when first he had become interested in newspapers about a year ago; the headline had seemed so full of promise of impending universal joy. The same line appeared every three months or so. But the prosperity was an unconscionable time a-coming.

‘It’s lies,’ he said to himself.

‘Trade turning the corner?’
He
was employed busily enough; so were the rest of the young men and boys at Marlowe’s. Then to what part of the community was the headline addressed? There was Billy Higgs and his generation mouching the streets, threadbare and unemployed. There was Hardcastle irregularly employed at the pits: Helen and Sally were finding it unusual to have a full week’s wages of a Friday. And he, Harry, although fully employed, was only earning a boy’s…. A glimpse of truth frightened him: scared, he appreciated that he was fully employed only on terms. Nearly all the hands who were working full time at Marlowe’s were youths such as he: youths, young men - nay, had the present been war time the authorities would have termed him a man and would have hauled him off to the trenches. Youths, young men, men, performing men’s work but only being paid boys’ wages. Seventeen shillings a week they gave him now. Why, before long he’d be out of his time, a fully qualified engineer. Then, if trade didn’t improve he would join Billy Higgs at the street corner.

Trade improve? Well, suppose it did improve, aside from the fact that he couldn’t see how trade could improve more since he and the rest were fully employed. Just suppose, though, that it improved in some mysterious fashion. Would Marlowe’s re-engage Billy Higgs and the rest of the displaced time-served men? Or would more machinery be installed, everybody find themselves promoted and the gap at the bottom filled by hordes of raw boys just left school?

His spirits withered. Remember the installation of that new automatic machinery previous to the wholesale dismissal of Billy Higgs’s generation? At that time it had held no significance for him except that it had meant promotion; it was merely newer and more up-to-date machinery whose functions were marvellous, whose capacity was manifold and infinite. The screw-cutting lathe that needed only the assistance of a hand to switch on the current; that could work, ceaselessly, remorselessly, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week without pause for meals; a Thing that fed itself, functioned with mathematical precision, ‘could do anything except talk’, as someone had put it

The novelty of such machinery was gone now; they were commonplace, established; their predecessors were antediluvian. They made of inexperienced boys highly skilled men. And the latest boys knew of nothing else; were as to the manner born.

Every year new generations of schoolboys were appearing, each generation pushing him and his a little nearer to that incredible abyss of manhood and the dole.

Why, the supply of boys was inexhaustible; there were millions of them at school; Marlowe’s could keep going for ever. What was to become of him and his when their time was served? Where would openings occur if every firm was playing Marlowe’s game?
If!
A horrible suspicion clutched him. Suppose that this present was an already established new order, that once a fellow came out of his time he remained unemployed for ever!

But what had all this to do with the question of a new suit? Oh, it made you dizzy, weary, having to think on all these things. His mind switched back to the question of the suit ‘Y’ll have to make do wi’ what y’ve got. Wait till things buck up,’ his father’s answer.

Harry’s lip quivered: at that rate he’d remain shabby for ever: ‘Why can’t Ah have one through t’ Good Samaritan like th’ others?’ he mumbled.

‘Ah’m shovin’ no millstone o’ weekly payments round me neck,’ replied his father, bluntly: ‘What we can’t pay for cash down we’ll do bout (without).’

‘But th’ others do it,’ Harry grumbled: ‘An’ here Ah am workin’ full time an’ ain’t got nowt t’ go out in o’ week-ends.

‘Aaach! Ah’ve worked all me bloody life, lad, and what Ah’ve Ah got? All me bloody clo’es i’ pawn t’ get food t’ eat,’ warningly: ‘Don’t you set me off, now. Don’t you set me off.’

Nettled, Harry, in a burst of uncontrollable temper, blurted out: ‘Well, Ah’m sick of it all Ah can tell y’. Nowt t’ spend an’ nowt t’ wear an’ me workin’ full time.’

Hardcastle jumped to his feet, blazing and flung his newspaper aside: ‘God A’mighty,’ he cried. This
is
a bloody life, this is. Ah come home t’ rest an’ what do Ah get? If it ain’t you it’s her (Sally). Blimey, man, d’y’ think blasted money grows on trees. … Aaach, let me get out o’ here.’ He snatched up his seedy cap and coat and stamped out. Nobody understood a fellow’s feelings. Here he was, a man, married to a woman, father to a couple of grown children, working hard and had always worked hard, yet couldn’t afford to dress his children respectably. Blimey, didn’t either of them ever think how he must feel about it?

Mrs Hardcastle, awed, fingering her apron, nervously, stared at Harry and murmured; ‘Now see what y’ve done.’

Harry flung himself upon the couch and wept unrestrainedly out of sheer impotence.

Such episodes became common. He even invoked God’s assistance: ‘
Please
God let th’ old man get me that there suit. Ah ain’t ne’er had a proper un an’ Ah’m sorry Ah stopped goin’ t’ church an’ choir.’ Uninvited, a choir, in his brain, complete with organ accompaniment, began to make a nuisance of itself by singing that interminable composition, the sevenfold Amen.

He did not, however, place his cause wholly in the hands of the Deity. He persisted on his own behalf plaguing his father on every suitable occasion. After all, what disgrace was there in availing oneself of the facilities offered by Alderman Grumpole’s Good Samaritan Clothing Club? Everybody hereabouts were its patrons, otherwise nobody would have new clothes. The Good Samaritan was a firmly established institution. It angered him to think that only his father’s obstinate prejudice against credit dealings stood between him and his desires. Blimey, all this to-do arising out of a legitimate desire to be dressed properly. It made him boil.

His querulous complaints began to wear his father’s nerves. The boy seemed absolutely impervious to reason. Weren’t they in debt enough without contracting more for such inessential things as new suits? Such a suit as the lad desired would cost three pounds easily. That meant three shillings interest to be found before Grumpole would issue an order to the outfitter; then would follow twenty weeks’ instalments of three shillings. Three shillings a week, though!

This kind of thing, not being able to provide adequately for one’s family made a man feel an irresponsible fool, humbled him, haunted him to the point of driving him to frantic, foolhardy expedients. Money, money, money. The temptation to go drown worry and misery in drink was, betimes, almost irresistible. Walking abroad he would find himself brooding, muttering to himself ‘Worked every hour God sent, every day o’ me life. An’ what have Ah t’ see for it? Every bloody day, every bloody hour an’ worse offn when Ah was fust wed.’

Harry was unaware that his father’s absences from home were contrived. Every time he caught the boy’s gaze it said, mutely: ‘When am I to have the suit, father?’ He couldn’t bear to look. Better to keep out of the lad’s way as much as possible. His cause was just; the poor little devil wasn’t fit to be seen; he was the only one in the house working full time; and he gave up every penny of his wages. Oh - ! Hardcastle felt an urgent desire to be able to take out his brains and plunge them in cold water.

To Harry, his father’s stern visage was a perfect mask: had he known he would have been astounded that his father should be afraid of meeting him.

He persisted until one Sunday evening, Hardcastle, in desperation, exclaimed: ‘Oh, missis, for God’s sake get him that blasted suit Blimey, sick of it all, Ah am.’

Victorious, Harry’s hungry joy amounted to hysteria. In his excitement the haggard, relaxed expression on his father’s face meant nothing to him.

HARDCASTLE closed the front door. Sally and her mother were left alone in the house.

‘Have
y’
‘ad enough t’ eat, lass?’ Mrs Hardcastle asked, preparing to clear the table.

Sally murmured an affirmative, linked a leg over the arm of the rocker chair and stared into the fire. She could feel her mother’s gaze upon her: knew that she, her mother, was burning with curiosity to have an account of what had transpired on the ramble yesterday. Eagerly, Sally waited her mother’s introductory query; listened, impatiently, to the series of nervous coughs with which her mother usually primed herself on such occasions. Oh, why did she hesitate? Couldn’t she see that Sally was bursting to confide in her?

Mrs Hardcastle’s heart was fluttering. Out of this promising affair of Sally’s with Larry Meath, she, Mrs Hardcastle, was stealing a vicarious enjoyment. Already, in her heart, she had built up a wonderful romance out of the situation. It was delectable food to that starved side of her nature whose existence she would not admit even to herself.

But how to introduce the subject? If she asked a direct question Sally might resent it. Children could be very uncommunicative to their parents: there was an even possibility of Sally’s answering: ‘Mind your own business.’ They never thought how their callousness hurt. It wasn’t that she wished to interfere: she only wanted to steal a little of Sally’s pleasure second-hand. Would Sally understand?

She coughed, nervously, made a great noise with the plates in the enamel wash bowl on the slopstone then ventured, timidly: ‘It was late when you come in last night, Sal.’ She did not look at her daughter.

‘Um,’ Sally replied.

Pause.

Sally topped the pegged rug impatiently.

Mrs Hardcastle sighed, picked up the pot towel and said: ‘Ay, he’s a nice young man is that Mr Meath. Ah do like him, Ah do.’

Beaming, eyes shining, Sally strained round in her chair: ‘D’y’ really, ma?’ she exclaimed, eagerly.

‘Ah do. Ah reckon he’s a gentleman,’ she answered, emphatically, ‘an’ a credit t’ t’ neighbourhood an’ ne’er heed what folks say about Labour men.’