Boys and Girls Come Out to Play (42 page)

“You have been Larry’s best friend and helper,” said Harriet, speaking as firmly as her husband.

“This will help to broaden your mind,” said the engineer, handing him the cheque. “To refuse it would be a reflection on my integrity.”

“Well, I shall only hand it over to some worthwhile organization,” said Divver.

“That’s your business, not mine,” said the engineer.

“I shall give it to the Zionists.”

At that moment Mr. Hovich knocked. “Awn-tray!” cried the engineer.

“I am most relieved to find you, sir,” groaned the Representative. “Every moment wasted will seem unfortunate to you, I know.”

“Get to the point, sir! Am I to be sent to Siberia?”

“Why, nothing of any such sort, sir,” said the Representative, looking wonderingly at the engineer, who was turning and twisting his hands violently. “I was informed by the
Ministry at midday that at some time tomorrow afternoon the Minister himself, Mr. Tevil, who is touring this neighbourhood, will arrive to inspect the mines.”

“Oh. In plain words,” said the engineer, looking at Mr. Hovich in the way Divver had looked at Morgan, but far more ferociously: “Your master has decided to come and spy on me.”

“Sir, it is part of a general inspection, sir.”

“Oh, it is! And like all snoopers and politicians, your superior intends to come suddenly, to see if he can catch me on the wrong foot.”

“How unfair!” his wife cried.

“That is why I so greatly wished to find you, sir,” said Mr. Hovich.

At this, the engineer drew himself up haughtily and said: “May I ask what you mean? Are you suggesting that there is anything about my work that I would wish to have time to conceal?”

Trapped, Mr. Hovich mumbled dismally.

“I will see you
tomorrow,
sir,
at the normal time,
” said the engineer, opening the door and showing him out.

“What a stupid man!” said Harriet.

“You
are a stupid
woman
,” her husband said. “You don’t see that Hovich knows which side his bread’s buttered. Well, good evening,” he said brusquely to Divver and Morgan. “I shall have to put my papers in order. Thank you for coming.”

Divver and Morgan walked out together, and when they came to the baize door, Divver said again, clearly and loudly, as to a witness: “I shall give it to the Zionists.”

*

He found that the mines, like Mell and himself and his friends, had changed greatly. Only fifty yards from the villa headquarters stood an impressive double row of thirty renovated
mills, mounted on a wide concrete bed and tied to the main quarry by a set of narrow-gauge rails. A broad asphalt road ran past the villa, and beside it, squatting and lounging in a most unusual manner, were some hundred workmen. Morgan began to feel tremors of excitement, but he entered the villa as unobtrusively as possible and, seeing that all the chairs were occupied by a row of foremen, sat in a corner on the floor. A man ran in just behind him, and he heard the engineer say: “That man is an hour late on the job”; and the Representative, who already looked exhausted, replied: “He is the one who had to visit his sick relative, sir.” “Yes,” said the engineer, “you could fill the Baltic with sick relatives on an inspection day. O.K., let’s go.”

He took out a sheet of hotel paper covered with pencilled notes and read each item aloud in the form of an order, pausing after each while Mr. Hovich translated. In a moment, one foreman after another was nodding and walking quickly out of the door, where the members of his shift collected around him, listened to his instructions and went off almost at a run. In a half hour, every man was off to work; Streeter followed the last foreman out and stood in the sunshine, chewing his lip.

It was clear even to Morgan that the engineer’s concentration had nothing to do with his knowledge of gold-mining and everything to do with his knowledge of officialdom. He knew that an inspected area must show rugged attention to essentials, but not to the point of being offensive to a dainty taste. If Mr. Tevil, while proceeding toward some admirable piece of new machinery, were to step on an old barrel-hoop, the pain in his shin might cause him to wonder if the new machine had been properly set up. And so, some twenty workmen, working harder than ever before, were collecting stray iron hoops and bolts and dumping them in packing-cases. Some took shovels and tidied the trampled dumps of gravel, sand, and coal. Some tore up bushes that overhung sections
of the rail-bed and made it seem shorter than it was. Some dragged into prominence objects which had been pushed into the background because they were not wanted. One man bicycled into town and bought thumbtacks, with which the Representative coolly nailed up on the inside wall of the villa a large number of unnecessary blueprints. The engineer was pleased when an apprentice ran up with brush and bucket and sloshed blue limewash on the stones that marked the path to the villa. But when the ambitious lad wanted to limewash the outside wall of the villa too, Streeter sharply dismissed him: the wall was covered with sketches and figures drawn by himself with a carpenter’s pencil, and they were impressive. Each man, from the most elderly foreman to the youngest oil-checker, laboured with the enthusiasm that is aroused by any fruitless, stupid break in a daily routine; each was excited by the thought of danger in the form of ignorant, arbitrary authority; even those who disliked the engineer flew to obey his orders and found themselves thinking that the most brutal director is a good egg when there is a chance of his being replaced by a strange bird. The engineer, as though he knew all this very well, paid not the slightest tribute to their ardour: like many bosses in a tight spot he preferred to floodlight the nature of his maryrdom by making his subordinates look as useless as a covey of squealing girls. Mr. Hovich, caught in the unhappy position of being both the representative of the inspecting minister and the subordinate of the inspected manager, soon decided where his bread and butter came from and, sweating furiously, put all his efforts into making the mine a show-place: and him, too, as though well aware of how the struggle had ended, Streeter treated with sharpness and sneers. To Morgan and Divver he said nothing at all, except for snide remarks that were better muttered in their common language: “I knew Mr. Minister-of-Mines Ladislaus Tevil when he was a third-rate clerk in the Polish Embassy at
Cairo”; “A good day’s work wasted on a man who doesn’t know a gold-pan from a piss-hole in the snow.” Divver sat beside him on the bench outside the villa, checking off the orders of the day as the engineer reviewed them; a harmless work which the engineer tolerated until he saw that Divver was wearing his work-clothes. “You’d better take those decorations off,” he said; “I don’t want Tevil to think I’m using imported labour.” “Oh, hell!” said Divver, “all my suits are in the hotel.” “Then borrow a bicycle and fetch one,” said the engineer: “I can’t spare a boy to fetch and carry for you. And while you are there, you might bring all of us out some sandwiches and beer.”

Divver pedalled away, a common worker; he pedalled back, a common man. “The news has got around,” he said: “they’ve strung up the Flags of All the Nations over the square.” Streeter laughed contemptuously, and Divver doled out the sandwiches. “Somehow I forgot
you
were here,” he said to Morgan, scratching his head crossly. “James may have half of mine,” said the engineer.

They ate. The workmen opened their lunch-pails and ate too. When all were finished, Streeter gave an order, and a boy collected all the paper wrappings, gristle, string and lettuce leaves, and burned them.

In Areas B and C, where the engineer had not yet taken over, the individual mill-owners were clearing up their areas, and even sticking little flags on the stamp-tops, perhaps in the hope of persuading the Minister that they were as efficient as an American manager. “Tell them to lay off all that,” the engineer told Mr. Hovich. “Say they can put up one flag if they wish, but no wasting good time on things that don’t matter.”

At two o’clock the boilerman touched his cap and reported a good head of steam in the big, new engine. The feed-bins were loaded to the brim, the oil-drips checked by a couple of running
boys, the water tanks filled until the water streamed down the sides. Streeter himself opened the valve on the big engine, and at once the double row of mills began to function impressively: the curved arms whirled around, caught the ninety stamps on the upgrade and flung them up like leaping dancers; the water poured in glistening streams over the mercury plates and foamed away down a slick drainage channel. The hammering of the falling stamps had none of the discordant rattle of the old one-mill set-ups: firmly aligned in their solid bed, the mills merely trembled with energy and raised a united roar. They had not yet reached a stage where they could run continuously in this manner, but they were far enough along to make a splendid pretence. After they had run for fifteen minutes and Streeter had thrown his eye carefully over each mill, he signalled to the boilerman to turn off the big cock. Then, like a general on the eve of battle, he stalked into the villa, saying: “No interruptions, if you please, Hovich,” and went to sleep for a half-hour.

The Representative dusted the big table and arranged the papers in the right degree of untidiness. A boy bicycled into Mell for a bottle of whiskey. At three o’clock some eager little town boys arrived, with dirty flannel drawers fringing their trousers and scabs on their knees. A foreman wagged a large stick at them, and they withdrew, scowling horribly, to a clump of bushes, where the smaller ones ran to and fro pretending to tidy things up, and the biggest boy stepped out of a limousine and inspected the results. “Everything must be done over again,” he said: “and six months in jail.”

At three-thirty Streeter came out and began to pace the road. A cloud of dust appeared in the air above the road from Mell; there was great excitement; but it was only the local bus.

The atmosphere became depressing. One foreman kept slipping his silver-plated watch out of his vest pocket and examining it nervously. The workmen’s enthusiasm degenerated;
some of them boldly lay down in the shade. It was hard to know what to do with them: the mine looked bad if they went to sleep; it would look worse if they went to work.

The three Americans and Mr. Hovich sat on the bench in silence, smoking hard. The boy who had limewashed the stones and burned the lettuce leaves came up the path with a shy, sycophant smile and carefully collected butts and match-ends in a tin can. “Just give him twenty years or so and he’ll be a Minister too,” said Streeter. The Representative winced. “And
you
keep out of the way, please,” the engineer told Divver. “No interviewing, no reporting. If any questions are asked, you are simply a visitor: I shall not introduce you. Understand?” Divver nodded; but the four of them now sat with some awkwardness, as though each was either a spy or about to be the victim of a spy. The engineer’s face was unusually red, and his fingers trembled incessantly.

Around four o’clock a new haze of dust arose. The Representative left the bench, and with embarrassingly false casualness bent double and peered through the trees until he was dizzy. Suddenly he turned to Streeter and nodded vigorously.

The foreman gave their orders in quick shouts. The drowsy workmen jumped up and ran to the mills and quarries. The boilerman spun the wheel-cock; there was a swish of steam and the rows of stamps burst into action. The ground trembled; Streeter had to shout: “Now, stay out of the way, for God’s sake,” he bellowed at Divver and Morgan. They fell back to one side of the villa, beside a tall lilac bush, where they were joined by the excited little boys.

A heavy, black limousine showed through the trees. The body, sprung for ministerial comfort, slowly rose and fell on the bumpy road like a state coach. A natty young secretary sprang out from beside the chauffeur and helped out the Minister, a tall man who was as well dressed as the salesmen in the goldsmiths’ shops, and who immediately broke into a happy smile.
He was followed by a permanent official of the Ministry of Mines, a grim-looking expert with a brief-case. The expert at once started to glare about him in an expert way; but the Minister advanced to meet Streeter at a bent lope, as though in his case Nature’s leggy undercarriage must proceed at twice normal speed to keep up with the impetuous drive of the higher brainpan. As the Minister loped, he swayed his eyes amiably from side to side, as if the limewashed stones which flanked his passage were rows of voters. Half-way down the path he met the engineer and clasped him by the hand. Both men at once began to shout; but only occasional remarks could be heard: “A long time,” “Cairo, I think,” “An admirable chance to brush off my English,” “A genial work,” “Assuredly happier days, ts! ts!” Then the Minister gave Mr. Hovich a friendly pat on the shoulder and the five men disappeared into the villa. The door was closed and nothing more was seen from outside, except when a hand protruding from a black sleeve and white shirt cuff, closed on the neck of the whiskey bottle and removed it from the window sill.

The chauffeur took off his peaked cap and ate a sandwich, sprawling haughtily on the running-board. The little boys approached the limousine with the caution of Indian scouts: when one of them fingered a chromium handle, the chauffeur was suddenly inflamed and drove them all away.

The villa door flew open as suddenly as it had closed, and the five men shot out again and moved toward the mills. It was still impossible to hear what they said, but they all seemed to be in a fine mood; and once the Minister stopped dead and sawed his arm up and down, apparently driving home an intensely witty point, because his secretary almost doubled up laughing. Streeter took the lead when they reached the mills, and all five paraded down the flashing, leaping line, their faces grave. Once or twice the Minister locked his fingers behind his back and peered into something, while the secretary reached out a hand
to prevent his coat from being drawn into the machinery. Half-way down the line the Minister paused to smile at one of the mechanics, who removed his cap and blushed: the Minister’s lips moved and he patted the man on the shoulder, and then passed on, raising his eyebrows in refined but playful surprise on noticing a very young oil-checker. Having distinguished each of the indistinguishable mills, Streeter led the party to a point where the nearest of the old, shambling, unreorganized mills was visible: he waved his hand at it very casually; and after the contrast had sunk in, he brought them all back and led them slowly up the shining rails of the new track, where their black figures could be observed standing respectfully at the edge of the big quarry. A gap appeared in the row when the expert jumped down into the quarry and returned with a chunk of ore, which was passed from hand to hand with interest. Then they walked slowly back to the mills, where Streeter, it seemed, invited the Minister to scrape a plate. The Minister did so in a thoroughly jolly way, not caring a scrap how dirty his cuffs got, and wielding the rubber block as smartly as if it were a rubber stamp. When he had scraped half the plate—the others all watching him with genial smiles—he passed the block to the expert, who finished off the plate in a more clumsy, professional manner. Then Streeter collected the grey scrapings into a chamois bag, which he screwed so tightly at the neck that the scrapings were forced into a ball, and the excess quicksilver burst through the bag’s pores in a pretty silver shower that astonished the Minister. Streeter then took out the little ball of amalgam, and with a mock bow presented it to the Minister, who tossed it up and down happily, gave it to the secretary, who also tossed it, and handed it on to the expert, who gave it a blasé glance and turned it over to a mechanic. The expert then began to question Streeter closely; apparently technicalities were introduced, because very soon the Minister took a little stroll down the mills and made friendly remarks to
the workmen, cupping his hand behind his ear and bending courteously to hear their stuttered answers: he wrote down one man’s name and address in a little notebook.