Love on the Dole (8 page)

No scratching and scraping today; kitchen table littered with groceries; sugar in buff bags; fresh brown crusted loaves; butter and bacon in greaseproof paper; an amorphous, white-papered parcel, bloodstained, the Sunday joint; tin of salmon for tomorrow’s tea; string bag full of vegetables; bunch of rhubarb with the appropriate custard powder alongside. Ma rushing about, now to the slopstone, now to the cupboard stowing things away, now to the frying-pan on the fire where the dinner was frizzling, now impatiently lifting the cat out of the way with her toe as it, the cat, clawed the table leg, miaowing, licking its lips and sniffing the Sunday joint, hungrily:
‘Get
out o’ my way, cat. Ain’t y’ ne’er had enough?’

After handing his wages over and receiving his spending money, he, while waiting dinner, sauntered, unwashed, to Mr Hulkington’s, the grocer’s corner shop where swarms of noisy children were spending Saturday halfpennies. He purchased two penn’ worth of Woodbines, then stood with the rest of the boys on the kerb, hands in pockets jingling his money.

This was life! Nothing else was to be desired than to stand here smoking, spitting manfully, chatting wisely on racing and forking out threepence for a communal wager: ‘Ah tell y’, lads, the — thing’s a dead cert, a dead — cert,’ said Bill Simmons, adding, confidentially: ‘Ar owld man (father) heard it from another bloke whose sister-in-law’s one o’ Sam Grundy’s whores.
He
wouldn’t tell
her
that i’ he hadn’t heard summat good, him bein’ a bookie. Anyway, Ah’m havin’ thippence on it. Wha’ d’y say?’

They handed their threepences over. Bill departed and returned a moment later from Grundy’s back entry all smiles: ‘It’s on,’ he said. But, like most ‘dead certs’, the information rarely proved profitable. Still, it gave one something of a thrill; inflated one with the anticipation of success, caused one to expand and to respond to the entertaining bustle of Hanky Park of a Saturday noon.

Harry surveyed it with complacence.

Crowds of shabby mill girls clattering home, arms linked, four and five abreast. There would be a metamorphosis wrought in their appearances after tea; arrayed in their cheap, gaudy finery in readiness for dancing, nobody would recognize them as the same girls. Tom Hare, naturally, had to observe, aloud, on their anatomies: he was a disgusting fellow.

He turned from him to watch the women scurrying from Price and Jones’s loaded with redeemed pledges. Mrs Nattle, pushing with great dignity, a perambulator piled with bundles, three of Mrs Cranford’s children at her heels carrying the superflux. Mrs Dorbell, withered and threadbare, shuffling out of her stricken home talking to herself as she walked. Drawing alongside Harry she stopped, suddenly, and, interrupting her own conversation, exclaimed: ‘Eee! Ah’ve come out bout (without) me baskit!’ she about faced, shuffled into the house to reappear with an old basket on the crook of her arm. She trudged away talking to the pavement.

Two handcarts, with attendants, stood in the middle of the street, the one selling cooked ribs, the other fish, and around the last swarmed nearly every cat in the neighbourhood, stalking, fawning round the fishmonger and his conveyance, tails in air or sitting on their backsides waiting the trimmings which he flung to them whenever he made a sale.

A second-hand clothes dealer crying his trade, stopping by Blind Joe Riley who was standing puffing his pipe on his doorstep : ‘Any ole clo’es, mate?’

‘Aye, lad, all on ‘em,’ replied Joe, and went on puffing.

Clothing-club collectors and insurance men, afoot or riding into the street on bicycles, knocking briskly upon the open doors, poking their heads within and shouting the name of the company or firm whom they represented.

‘Prudential, Mrs Jike.’

‘Good Samaritan, Mrs Bull.’ (The Good Samaritan was a clothing club owned by Mr Alderman Ezekiah Grumpole, a fat and greasy citizen who, also, was a money-lender.) The collectors withdrew their heads from the doorways, flourished pen or pencil in a businesslike manner, then beamed upon the tribes of dirty children standing or lying about the pavements, all of whom would have breathed more freely had they blown their noses. Afterwards, the hopeful collectors whistled or hummed tunes and surveyed the grey skies with such unconcern as suggested that the collection of money was the last thing in their minds.

‘Call next week, lad,’ from stout Mrs Bull, the local, uncertified midwife and layer out of the dead. She sat at her kitchen table, jug and glass at hand: ‘Call next week, lad. Ah broke teetotal last night,’ with assurance: ‘Ah’ll have it for y’ when y’ call agen. Mrs Cranford’s expectin’ o’ Tuesday, an’ owld Jack Tuttle won’t last week out. Eigh, igh, ho, hum! Poooor owld Jack,’ a guzzle at the glass.

‘But y’ missed payin’ last week, y’ know, Mrs Bull,’ plaintively, from the collector, scowling at the snotty-nosed children standing on the kerb endeavouring to ring the bell on his bicycle.

‘Aaach. … Get away wi’ y’,’ loudly, so that Mrs Cake, Mrs Bull’s mortal enemy standing on her doorstep across the street waiting the collector, heard every word. Mrs Cake curled her lip, shrugged her shoulders and displayed her payment book conspicuously as she heard Mrs Bull exclaim: ‘Tell owld Grumpole t’ put me i’ court,’ louder, as she glimpsed, through the window, Mrs Cake’s contemptuous expression: ‘An’ y’ can tell her wi’ lum - ba - go across street wot thinks she’s a lady that we ain’t
all
married to ‘usbands wots lets wife wear the trousers.’

‘Aye, it’s all right, Mrs Bull,’ sulkily, from the collector: ‘But y’ get me in trouble keep missin’ like this.’

‘Aach, trouble, eh? Tha’ll thrive on it when tha gets as owld as me.’

The collector turned, grumbling, pushed his bike across the street, removed the scowl from his face to smile, unctuously, upon Mrs Cake, who, lips pursed, eyes a-glitter, handed over her book and money: ‘Some folks,’ she cried, loudly, staring at Mrs Bull’s open front door: ‘Some folks as could be named ain’t got principle of a louse,’ to the street, generally, as she received her book of the collector who prepared to ride away: ‘Fair play,
that’s
my motto. Owe nowt t’ nobody an’ stare everybody in face!’

‘Willage blacksmith!’ jeeringly from Mrs Bull who laughed, hugely, into her glass. Mrs Cake slammed the door and retired to the kitchen where to express herself irritably on her husband and children.

At the street corner Jack Lindsay chuckled and pointed to one of the houses. The boys turned to see tiny Mrs Jike, accordion under her arm, disappear into the home of Mr and Mrs Alfred Scodger. Grins broke on their faces. ‘Now for it,’ said Jack.

Presently, from the Scodger abode, came the concerted cacophony of accordion and trombone. As an accordionist Mrs Jike was as ungifted a performer as Mrs Scodger was upon the trombone, nevertheless, between them, they managed to provide musical accompaniment to the hymn singing at the spiritualists’ mission situated over the coal yard at the far end of the street.

The noise of the music attracted the children: congregating round the door and under the window, some, more curious than the rest, muscled themselves on to the sill to peer through and to feed their gazes on the strange spectacle of the two musicians, tiny Mrs Jike stretching and pressing her instrument, buxom Mrs Scodger, puffing, pushing and pulling on the brass, between them managing to arouse the suspicion in a chance auditor that the tune they were playing was ‘Whiter than the Snow’, a hymn of which the mission was inordinately fond. Though not Mr Alfred Scodger, the unmuscular blacksmith.

Disturbed from his after-dinner nap, the peeping children saw him appear in the threshold of the door dividing the two rooms: his face, enormously moustached, wore an expression of indignant protestation: his sparse hair bristled wryly as one just risen from bed or sofa; he held his rusty billycock in his hand, his coat was on his arm and his boots were unlaced, the tongues protruding like those of rude boys making faces at the teacher behind his back: ‘ ‘Ere!’ he cried, elevating his brows and holding out the hand carrying the billycock.

The music ceased: Mrs Scodger lowered her chin and frowned at the blacksmith over her spectacles. She jerked her thumb, rudely, towards the room at the back and replied, peremptorily: ‘Kitchen,’ adding, imperiously: ‘An’ tek them there Sunday clo’es off. You ain’t goin’ out o’ this house till I’m ready to’ go wi’ y’,’ Mrs Jike watched, patiently, resting her instrument in her lap, fingers still engaged to the stops.

‘ ‘Ere!’ repeated Mr Scodger, more indignant than before.

‘You heard me …’

He stared at her, indecisively, but, as he saw her knee commence to bob up and down beating time, and as she nodded to Mrs Jike and then raised her instrument to her lips, he, with a sudden blaze of revolt, stamped to the front door, opened it, turned upon his wife who had lowered her instrument and now was gaping at him incredulously, turned upon her and exclaimed angrily: ‘Sick an’ tired of it, Ah am. … If you think Ah’m gonna spend me Sat’day afternoon listenin’ t’ that there - ‘ stabbing the air with his forefinger in the direction of the trombone - ‘that there
thing,
you’re - you’re. Oh, Yaah.’ He stamped out, slamming the door, taking good care to hurry off down the street. Mrs Scodger, when she found herself able to believe her ears, hurried to the door and fulfilled the expectations of the boys at the street corner by shouting out, loudly, and, at the same time, shaking the trombone as she would have a club:
‘Alfred scodger!’
But Alfred, though he heard, did not heed.

Instantly, Bill Simmons, Sam Hardie, Tom Hare and Harry, at the instigation of Jack Lindsay who beat time with his hands, exclaiming: ‘All together boys,’ commenced to sing, in harmony, a vulgar parody of the mission’s favourite hymn.

Universal laughter; grinning neighbours, accustomed to the boys’ irreverence, came to stand on their doorsteps. And Tom Hare, who was an expert, made a very loud and extremely rude noise with his mouth which caused still more mirth. It embarrassed Mrs Scodger, who, red in the face, retired, muttering, whilst Alfred, trembling with emotion, passed through the open doors of the Duke of Gloucester public-house, where, leaning against the bar, Harry saw Ned Narkey, mug raised to his mouth. Phoo! The way he could guzzle beer! At half-past two he would go reeling down the street to his digs, sleep off his drunkenness in readiness for evening. Harry thought him a fool; wondered how long Ned’s army money would last at this rate. Everybody knew how he was spending it on women (he’d the nerve to invite Sal go dancing with him! Harry had heard it from Helen who had heard it of Sal herself. The impudence of Narkey, classing Sal with those women with whom he associated! It filled him with unease to think of her even speaking to him). Narkey. Harry regretted Ned’s muscularity; nobody could gainsay his striking appearance: either in his workaday apparel or his flashy week-end clothes his figure rendered him conspicuous. He’d be all right if he wasn’t so overbearing, so downright, so ostentatiously vain. He thought every girl in the place had only to see him, to fall in love with him. Although Harry did not know it his lip was curling as he stared at Ned’s broad back, so engrossed was he in telling himself how much he disliked Narkey.

He dismissed the thought from his mind, stretched, yawned, and, seeing Larry Meath passing on the other side, rucksack on his back, cried, warmly: ‘Aye, aye, Larry,’ and grinned.

‘Hallo, Harry. Still like the job?’

‘Not half,’ Harry answered; ‘It’s great’

Larry smiled, nodded and turned the corner.

Bill Simmons, throwing away the end of his cigarette, spat and said, as he stared after Larry: ‘He’s a queer bloke, if y’ like. I seen him up Clifton way when I was out ferritin’ wi’ Jerry Higgs, y’ know, along cut bank. Aye, an’ there he was, large as life, lyin’ on his belly in grass watchin’ birds through them there glasses o’ his,’ curling his lip: ‘Fancy a - feller seein’ owt in watchin’ bloody birds. He’s barmy, if y’ ask me.’

Tom Hare laughed: ‘Jus’ depends on what kind o’ birds he’s watchin’. Them as wear skirts is more i’ my line…. An’ there’s some hot ‘uns down cut bank. Maggie Elves. Ha! She’ll let y’ do owt for a tanner.’

Harry scowled: ‘Aw … tarts agen. Blimey, don’t
you
e’er think about nowt else?’

Tom winked, clapped his hands together, grinned and showed his decayed teeth: ‘Ay, Harry, lad. Y’ want t’ go out wi’ Maggie fr a night, it’d do y’ good… On’y a tanner, then y’ could call y’self a man.’ He winked again at the others, sniggered and added: ‘He knows nowt about tarts, does he?’

Harry blushed: he hated to give the other boys the impression of his being a prude; at the same time he shrank from the thought of being in a class with Tom Hare. He protested, with warmth: ‘Aw, you wouldn’t talk like that if y’ ma heard y’. An Ah’ don’t believe y’ anyway, about this Maggie Elves. She must be a bright spark an’ hard up t’ have owt t’ do wi’ a guy like you.’

‘Me?’ replied Tom, not at all put out: ‘Me? Ha! Any tart’ll let y’ do what y’ want if y’ve enough money. Aye, any!’

‘Oh, no, they won’t,’ Harry retorted, thinking on Sal and Helen: ‘Ha, the kind as’d luk at
you,
might. They ain’t partic, anyway,’ impatiently: ‘Oh, but you make me sick,’ raising his brows and concluding, in tones of warning: ‘You let y’ ma hear y’ talkin’ like that. She’ll gie y’ Maggie Elves an’ cut bank.’

Tom made a grimace: ‘Me ma, eh. They’re all same, her an th’old man. … So’re all of ‘em as is married. That’s what they get married for… . Your ma an’ pa … ‘

‘Shut it, Hare,’ snapped Harry, white, a threatening stare in his eyes: ‘You leave me ma and pa out of it…’