Kindling (8 page)

He paused. “So far as I can see, the nursing here is good—very good indeed. I’ve nothing to complain about. I can’t judge of the surgery, of course. But he seems to have done a good job on me, and I’ve seen no bloomers
on that side. And yet there’s this high percentage of deaths. It’s unusual, isn’t it?”

“Yes. But you know why it happens as well as I do.”

“I promise you I don’t.”

In turn, she gave him a coldly, appraising look. “How long have you been out of work, Mr. Warren?”

He met her eyes. “About six months,” he said steadily. “You must remember that I only know conditions in America, and American hospitals. I’ve only been in this country for a fortnight.”

She softened. “I forgot.” She glanced at him queerly. “You’ve come from the New World, and you don’t know anything about your own country. Funny.”

“What do you mean?”

She answered his question with another. “What did you think of your country when you came back to it again? What did you think of Sharples?”

“I’ve never seen Sharples.”

“But how did you get here?”

“I got picked upon the road when I was ill, and brought along here on a motor lorry.”

She got up from the bed. “You’ve got a lot to learn about this country, Mr. Warren,” she said coldly. “You’d have done better to have stayed in America. In this country a man on public assistance gets about five shillings a week for his food—not that, unless he’s economical. After five years of that you can’t expect him to stand operations very well. I should have thought that was obvious, even in America.”

She swept away, and left Warren to his own reflections.

Five shillings a week for food—it didn’t seem very much. The riveter had told him that his weekly income
from the public assistance committee was thirty-one and six, out of which nine and threepence went for rent. That left twenty-two and threepence for everything else, for four people. If you deducted something for fuel—he did not know how much—and for clothing, it looked as if five shillings was an overstatement.

How much food could you get for five shillings? Like most men, Warren was lamentably ignorant of the price of food. Eggs, he thought, were twopence each; if you lived exclusively on eggs that would be four and a half eggs a day for five shillings a week. You wouldn’t get fat on that. There were probably cheaper foods than eggs—bread and stuff. However, there was not much nourishment in those.

And there was no contingency at all to cater for bad management, or ignorance.

The reason for the listlessness of the patients became clear to him. This was the result of unemployment for five years, of living at a gradually decreasing standard of nourishment. Gradually decreasing, because all families would have some capital, something that could be sold from time to time throughout the early period, to add to the family income. There would be things to be picked up, too, at first, firewood from the deserted shipyard, loose coal from the idle slag heaps—trifles unconsidered in the time of general prosperity. Gradually, as time went on, the town would become swept bare, till at last there would be nothing to supplement the weekly dole.

And that, it seemed, meant undernourishment. You did not die when you were drawing public assistance money, but you certainly did not remain alive.

Unlike most hospitals, Warren thought, there was no
wireless laid on to the beds. That evening after tea, however, Miss MacMahon appeared with an electric portable, set it on a table at the end of the ward, and plugged it to a concert of “old favourites”. The effect upon the ward was magical. Men who had lain inert all day turned their heads and raised themselves on one elbow; the ward woke up. The Almoner strolled over to Warren’s bed.

“Good thing, that,” he said. “Gives them an interest.”

She nodded. “I wish we could have it laid on properly, with headphones at the beds. Having it like this means you can only have it when there’s nobody very ill in the ward.” She smiled at him wryly. “And as you’ve pointed out, that isn’t very often.”

He said, “I’m sorry if I spoke out of turn this morning.”

“I was unnecessarily rude,” she said. “Forget it.”

The ward was thoroughly awake. The men were humming the familiar tunes, singing in low, discordant tones, beating rhythmically with one hand on the counterpane. Warren lay and watched them for a time.

“How much does it cost to put in wireless to the beds?” he asked. “I should have thought it would have paid.”

“It would pay in results,” she said. “But there just isn’t the money in this town for things like that. We ought to have done it five years ago, when things were good. It costs about five hundred pounds, or a bit more. We got a quotation once.”

The concert was drawing to a close before the News. “And now,” said the announcer, “before we finish up we’ve just got time for one old favourite that we all
know.” And the orchestra struck up the opening bars of “Land of Hope and Glory”.

Warren smiled, a little cynically. The girl saw it, and was angry with him.

The music rose and swelled through the ward, lifting the spirits of the men with its derided appeal. Warren, watching, smiling, had the smile wiped off his face, there was nothing here to laugh about. The music rose and swelled through the ward, and now the men were singing from their beds, singing and meaning every word of it.

“Five shillings a week,” thought Warren. “My God!”

The music rose, lifted the spirits of the men, held them for a time, and died into silence before the first News. For a moment there was stillness in the ward, then someone moved, and the spell was broken.

Warren turned to the girl. “Land of Hope and Glory,” he said bitterly. “I suppose that’s Sharples on the dole.”

She eyed him for a moment. “You’re poking fun at us, Mr. Warren,” she said coldly. “That isn’t very nice. We’ve done our best for you.”

He shook his head. “I wasn’t poking any fun.”

“What did you mean, then?”

“I was wondering what made them sing that thing like that,” he said. “I suppose they understand the words.”
She flushed angrily and was about to speak, but he stopped her. “ ‘Land of Hope and Glory’,” he said quietly. “The land that gives them five bob a week to live on—and forgets. There’s no Glory for them in this land, and very little Hope. And yet they sing that thing like that.”

She stood there looking down at him. “Curious, isn’t it?” she said. “I suppose you’d call it mass hysteria.”

“I might.”

“I might say that it’s because they’ve been born and bred in this country, and they still like it a bit.”

He smiled. “And you might just as well be right as me.”

Behind her back a steady stream of news, in dulcet tones, flowed from the wireless. “You mustn’t take the unemployment too much to heart, Mr. Warren,” she said seriously. “Things will come right. You’re out of a job, and going through a bad patch. Things are bad all over the country, and here in Sharples they’re just terrible. But it
is
only a bad patch. The ships in service are all getting worn out, they say. A lot more ships will be needed before long. It can’t be more than a year or two before we’re all busy again.”

He was silent.

“Things are terribly bad here now, and they’re getting worse each year. But there’s a limit to it. We haven’t got to stick it out much longer. Then we’ll all have jobs again.”

He raised his head and met her eyes, and his heart sank. “You believe that—really?” he said.

“Absolutely.”

From his own knowledge, deep within himself, he
said, “I’m terribly sorry.” But he said no word aloud, and presently the Fat Stock Prices came upon the air; she went to the wireless, turned it off and took it to another ward, thinking she had reassured him for the future.

Warren lay awake for half the night with mingled feelings. Predominating, curiously, he was deeply ashamed, he did not know of what.

Next day the surgeon on his morning round stopped at his bed, asked a few questions of the house physician, and examined the wound.

“Better start getting him up a bit,” he said to the physician. “An hour or two each day.”

He turned to Warren. “Not a Sharples man, are you?”

“No,” said Warren. “I was on the road.”

“Out of a job?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you going to?”

“I was walking down to Hull. Then if I couldn’t get anything there, I was going on to London.”

The surgeon eyed him keenly. “You’re an educated man. What’s your job?”

“I’m a bank clerk.”

The surgeon got up from the bed. “Well,” he said, “you won’t be fit to walk to Hull for a couple of weeks yet.”

He moved on to the next bed. At the end of his round he walked down to the Secretary’s office, and through it to the Almoner’s little room. He found Miss MacMahon at her desk.

“That bank clerk in the surgical,” he said. “He’ll be ready for discharge in three or four days—say at the end
of the week. But I understand he’s walking the roads.”

“That’s right, sir. He told me he was walking to Hull.”

The surgeon considered for a minute. “He won’t be fit to walk to Hull for a fortnight. You’d better go down to the Labour Exchange and see if he can draw a fortnight’s benefit here before he leaves the town. Tell them he’s convalescing.”

The Almoner made a little grimace. “I’ll try it on, Doctor, but I don’t know that we’ll get away with it. You remember that man Halliday?”

The surgeon did; he hesitated. “Well, try it on. They can’t expect us to support a man when he’s fit for discharge. Besides, I want the bed.”

The Almoner nodded. “I’ll go down right away.”

Behind their backs the Secretary spoke. “If he’s a bank clerk, I could use him for a fortnight here.” They turned to him. “With Vernon off sick I’m that behind with my books I just don’t know how we’ll get through. There’s the auditors coming in the middle of next month. Could he check the ledgers, do you think?”

“I don’t know,” said the Almoner. “I suppose he could.”

“Let him come down, and let me have a word with him,” said the Secretary. “I’ll know if he can help us, then. It might suit both.”

“We’d have to fit him in somewhere else to sleep for that fortnight,” said the Almoner. “I could see the Matron about that.”

The surgeon turned away. “Fix it up that way if you like,” he said. “We can’t afford to keep him after he’s fit to walk, though. And get him out of the ward by the end of the week.”

By the end of the week Warren was sitting in the Secretary’s office totting up ledgers. It was a great many years since he had served his apprenticeship in his father’s bank and he had some difficulty with the work; there are few things so difficult to the amateur as simple addition on the scale required for an audit. Miss MacMahon asked the Secretary after the first day:

“How’s your new clerk doing?”

He smiled dourly. “I’m not surprised he’s out of a job.”

She was interested. “Isn’t he any good?”

“He’s slow—very slow. A good lad of sixteen would do it quicker.”

“I suppose it’s not the sort of work he’s used to. If he’s no good to you we’ll have to think of something else.”

The Secretary rubbed his chin. “Leave him a while. I’d no say that he’s no use, only he isn’t handy with the books. He was telling me the way they make up the charges in the bank, which is a thing I never rightly understood—no more than anyone else. He was showing me the way we could save half of one per cent on the overdraft. That’s over a hundred a year saved—if he’s right.”

The girl smiled. “If he’s saved us a hundred a year already we can afford to keep him for the next fortnight,” she said. “Whether he can tot up books or not.”

“It’s no saved yet,” said the Secretary cautiously. “I must think on it.”

The next afternoon Warren had his first walk in Sharples.

He went first to the Post Office nearby, and sent a
postcard to Morgan, giving his address and strict instructions that he was not to be written to except on the most urgent necessity. Having thus satisfied his business conscience, he set off to inspect Sharples, walking slowly with a stick.

The town was dreary with the sad Northern uniformity of long rows of grey houses on a minor scale. Dreary, he thought, but not so bad as some. The houses were better and larger than those which he remembered on his visits to other similar places on the north-east coast, Gateshead, Jarrow, and Sunderland; he judged the town to have been built more recently than those.

It seemed to be a place of about forty thousand inhabitants; later he found that this guess of his was very nearly right. It stood on the edge of the river Haws a mile or so up from the sea; behind the town the hill rose gently to the north, crowned with sparse fields and the gaunt slag heaps of an idle mine.

He found the one main street, Palmer Street, near the hospital. Like all the streets in the town this one was laid out with granite setts; there were rusted tram tracks down the middle of the street, but no trams ran. The shops were mostly small and unpretentious; a great number of them were unoccupied, with windows boarded up. He passed by two closed banks. On a fine corner site an extensive store was shuttered and deserted. On the façade above the windows he traced the outline letters of the sign that had been taken down, and realised that he was standing in a town that could no longer support Woolworths.

He walked the length of Palmer Street. There were very few people to be seen although the afternoon was
warm and sunny; he passed a few knots of men standing idle at the corners, but he saw few women and fewer children. Very few vehicles passed him; for a time he was puzzled to identify an aspect of the town that was familiar and that yet eluded him. At last he realised it was the cleanness of the streets. There was no mud upon the granite setts, no rubbish in the gutters of the road, no smoke in the pale sky. The town was clean as a washed corpse.

“It’s like Russia,” he muttered to himself. The empty streets, the shuttered shops, the lean, despondent people put him irresistibly in mind of Leningrad, where he had been some years before.