Love on the Dole (21 page)

He looked at her, his heart melting towards her. He surprised her, saying: ‘I’d have to start saving, Sal . … I’ve no money laid by. But if you’d wait…’

Her face lit up with incredulous joy, became transfigured, beatified. Breathlessly she whispered his name.

AN erstwhile reformatory school for erring boys, an ugly, barrack-like building, serves as one of the Two Cities’ labour exchanges. Hemmed in on three sides by slums, tenements and doss houses, the remaining side stares at the gas works and a cattle-loading mound, into, and out of which, bleating sheep, cows and bulls, their eyes rolling, their parched tongues lolling, are driven by loutish men and cowed dogs. And the slum children, seeing in the inoffensive creatures a means to exercise then-own animal instincts, come out of their dens armed with whips and sticks and stones to belabour the animals as they pass, meanwhile indulging in the most hideous inhuman screams, shouts and howls such as occasions horror in the mind of a sympathetic observer and, doubtless, terrified bewilderment on the parts of the doomed beasts as they, smarting under whip, stick and stone, run blindly along the dinning unfamiliar streets finally to find themselves packed, suffocatingly, in wretched cattle trucks.

A high wall, enclosing an asphalt yard, ran round the building. On it was scrawled in chalk, and in letters a foot high: ‘Unemployed Mass Meeting Today 3 o’clock.’ The handiwork of Communists five or six weeks ago.

Harry Hardcastle, white mercerized cotton scarf wrapped loosely about his neck, a tuft of fair hair protruding from beneath the neb of his oily cap, patches on the knees and backside of his overalls, stood in a long queue of shabby men, hands in pockets, staring fixedly and unseeing at the ground. At street corners, leaning against house walls or squatting on the kerbstones, were more men, clothes stinking of age, waiting until the queue opposite went into the building when they would take their places in forming another. And all through the day, every quarter-hour, would see another crowd of fresh faces coming to sign the unemployed register at their appointed times.

The day was Monday. The Saturday previous, Harry’s apprenticeship, together with those of Tom Hare, Bill Simmons, Jack Lindsay, Sam Hardie and the rest of their contemporaries, had come to an end. They now were fully qualified engineers. They also were qualified to draw the dole.

Harry had not yet told Helen. Perhaps there wouldn’t be any need. As he stood there his thoughts were often infused by glows of high optimism as he marvelled on the immense possibilities of the situation. Imagine it! If, now that he had served his time, he found another situation, his wage would be that of a skilled man! Forty-five shillings a week! Wealth unspend-able! It was incredible.

Already, in fancy, he had found himself a job; had bought himself and Helen endless necessities and, with excitement and exhilaration, was making elaborate plans for their wedding.

His confidence would ebb, precipitately; chill terrors froze his heart. Suppose. … Billy Higgs had been unemployed these three years now. You wouldn’t know the man; such a change; a threadbare, shuffling, stoop-shouldered furtive old man, that, not long ago, had known laughter. Suppose…

Then, again, Helen had to be told…. Still, after he had ‘signed on’ he could, nay,
would
go the rounds of Trafford Park and visit the other engineering shops. Why, it only needed a ‘Yes’ from a foreman and everything would be as it never had been before. He would use all his powers of persuasion and ingratia-tion. He would. … Oh, hurry there, hurry, hurry, hurry.

Someone struck him a flat hand blow on the back. He turned, startled. Jack Lindsay, grinning: ‘Wharro, Harry,’ he cried, falling into the queue by Harry’s side: ‘Ain’t this a bit of a lark, eh, lad?’

‘What?’

‘Why, y’ silly sod, lyin’ abed listenin’ t’ t’ bloody buzzers when rest o’ t’ folk ‘re sloggin’ at it.’ He grinned anew. Harry grunted. Jack continued: ‘Ain’t it funny the way streets are … y’know … all quiet-like an’ nobody about’: a laugh: ‘Ah felt as though Ah was playin’ wag.’

A pause.

Harry said, impulsively: ‘Ah’m gunna g’ round lukkin’ for work when Ah’ve signed on. A’you?’

Jack made a wry face: ‘Ah’m gunna have a week or two’s grass fust. Cuss work an’ cuss them as made it It’s bin nowt but work e’er sin’ Ah was owld enough t’ peddle newspapers. They give us seventeen an’ a’ tanner dole an’ that’s more’n we got at Marlowe’s after they’d stopped us our insurance money and we’d paid shop lads for runnin’ us errands,’ as an afterthought surlily: ‘Besides, there ain’t no bloody work. Y’on’y waste shoe leather lukkin’ for it. Another crowd o’ schoolkids tuk on at Marlowe’s this mornin’. Ar Albert wus one on ‘em an …’

There was a sudden shuffling of feet; a movement on the part of the queue. It surged into the asphalt yard and broke into two rivers, one comprising men already on the books, the other, new claimants for benefit These last ran pell mell across the yard to a room on the ground floor marked: ‘New Claims’. Instantly, the men at the street corners crossed the road to assemble in a new and quickly growing queue; newcomers sauntered to the street corners, some seating themselves on the kerbstones to wait

The room in which Harry and Jack, with the rest of the crush, found themselves, was oblong shaped, the upper parts of its bare brick walls painted a dull green, the lower, chocolate. An L-shaped counter ran the length of two sides behind which clerks sat at tables or searched filing cabinets for documents. Here and there, at regular intervals, more clerks sat to the counter attending to the new claimants. A dozen or so rows of chairs faced the counter’s shortest arm, and were quickly occupied the instant the men rushed in. Those coming later lounged against the wall.

When one of those seated was called to the counter, his immediate neighbour took his seat, the remainder, with much shuffling of feet and grating of chairs, all moved up a place so that none of the chairs ever were vacant, the queue waiting for them often stretching into the yard. The proceeding had come to be known as ‘Musical chairs’, prefixed, always, by unprintable epithets.

Harry and Jack found places on the third row from the front.

He looked about him, scanned the notices plastering the walls. Government subsidized schemes for emigration illustrated by a couple of pictures, the one of a down at heel unemployed man standing staring up at a miniature facsimile of the picture, the other of the same man, now dressed like a cowboy, smiling broadly, looking very prosperous, holding a hand out, invitingly, while waving the other towards the distant prospect of a nice homestead, and beyond, of wide, rolling cornlands where hundreds of the erstwhile unemployed man’s employees garnered his wheat. ‘Canada for me!’ he was saying. Pasted next to it was a pink bill, a warning to the unemployed, telling how a local man who had drawn benefit for his employed wife whom he had represented not to be working, had been sentenced to
‘THREE MONTHS’ HARD LABOUR’.

His gaze wandered; was attracted by a constant procession of men visiting one part of the counter marked: ‘Situations Vacant’. Engineers in overalls, joiners and painters and clerks in seedy suits; stevedores, navvies and labourers in corduroys. They came singly and in couples, stood in front of the taciturn clerk, offered their unemployment cards, received answer by way of a shake of the head, turned on their heels and went out again without speaking.

They were soon attended to, Harry thought. Different from having to sit here where the waiting was interminable. He sighed and shifted restlessly, as he eyed the clerks behind the counter working with leisurely indifference. He wanted to be off in search of work; felt petulant that this business should delay him.

From the rooms above came the ceaseless rumbling of the feet of the unemployed who, segregating into a dozen or so serpentine queues, two, three, and four deep, moved forward, slowly, over the sawdusted floor towards the long counter divided into compartments and numbered, where the registers were signed.

‘This
is
a bloody, blindin’ lousy hole, anyway,’ said Jack Lindsay: ‘Luk at that,’ he jerked his thumb towards a conspicuous notice forbidding smoking: ‘Watch me seat, Harry,’ he said: ‘Ah’m off for a puff in t’ yard.’

A quarter-hour passed: every five minutes or so the end seat on the front row would be vacated: all would move up a place, noisily. Jack returned: ‘Hey,’ he said: ‘Jesus! Ain’t y’ moved? Blimey, if Ah’d ha’ known Ah’d ha’ fetched me dinner.’ Harry forced a smile: ‘Ah’m goin’ for a smoke, Jack. Not be long.’

He went into the asphalt yard, lit a cigarette and stood staring at the constant traffic of unemployed men. Staring, depressed, the cigarette smouldering unheeded between his fingers.

He found himself fretting and fuming, petulantly indignant that he should be numbered as one of them. Just when he and Helen were making plans for the future: ‘Oooo, Ah
do
hope Ah can get a job afore tonight,’ he muttered to himself, fervently.

He found that he had lost the desire to smoke, extinguished the cigarette and returned to the room, writhing inwardly with impatience and asking himself, angrily, how the devil could a fellow get a job when all these men were out of collar. Still, he reassured himself, when he calmed down, still, perhaps it was true what the papers and people said about these fellows. Perhaps these fellows never looked for work, didn’t want it. Yet - He glanced, surlily, at the ‘Situations Vacant’ counter. There was a steady trickle of men there. He stared at the floor, brooding.

Presently he was called to the counter to answer many questions which were documented by the clerk. When this was concluded and Harry had received a yellow card with instructions to sign the register twice weekly, he with a timid, ingratiating grin, asked the clerk: ‘Any chance of a job?’ Without looking up the clerk inclined his head towards the far end of the counter: ‘Apply at the vacancies,’ he said. The man at the vacancies shook his head but did not speak.

Harry went outside. You couldn’t very well expect them to find work for you: you’d got to find it yourself. ‘Ah wus daft for askin’, anyway. Ah should ha’ known.’

Queues still were forming. Women, with unwashed faces and matted hair stood on their doorsteps, arms folded, leaning against the doors idly watching their filthy, half-naked children playing in the gutters. Some of the women held loud conversation with their neighbours across the street.

Jack had asked Harry to await his coming. Harry forgot him the moment he stepped into the street: only one thought was in mind: would he succeed in his quest for work? ‘Gor, blimey. Ah hope Ah do. Aw, God, let me gerra job, will
y?’
So much depended on it, nay,
everything
depended on it. Phew! suppose he was unsuccessful. He wouldn’t have the nerve to tell Helen. Something akin to panic clutched his heart: he quickened his pace as though a job waited on speediness.

Trafford Park is a modern miracle. Thirty years ago it was the country seat of a family whose line goes back to the ancient British kings and whose name the area retains. Thirty years ago its woodlands were chopped down to clear the way for commerce and to provide soles for Lancashire clogs; thirty years ago the park-roving deer were rounded up and removed; thirty years ago the lawns, lately gay with marquees, awnings and fashionably dressed ladies and gentlemen, were obliterated. The Hall still stands though it now houses only dust and memories and echoes. And the twin lions surmounting either side the wide flight of steps now survey, instead of lawns alive with guests, a double railway track only six yards away, and, where the drives once wound their serpentine paths through the woods, the fungus of modern industry, huge engineering shops, flour mills, timber yards, oil refineries, automobile works, repositories for bonded merchandise, choke and foul the prospect. The river that flows at the foot of the adjoining paddocks is changed also: it now gives hospitality to ocean-going shipping from the seven seas, shipping whose sirens echo mournfully in the night: a river no longer in name even, but the Manchester Ship Canal.

A Five Year Plan thirty years ahead of the Russian. Yesterday the country seat of an aristocrat, today the rowdy seat of commerce. Revolution! and not a drop of blood spilt or a shot fired!

At this hour there were few pedestrians abroad though there was much traffic; heavy and light lorries, motor-and horse-drawn; railway engines pulling long lines of wagons in the tracks by the roadside. Great cranes lifting and lowering. A

heartening sight; surely, in such a place, he could find a job.

How familiar, companionable, the rumbling of the machinery in the first place he called on; his heart leapt in response to the din. Eyes shining, a tiny smile on his lips, he put his question to the man at the time office: ‘No we don’t want nobody.’ Harry thanked him and withdrew, hurrying towards the next. Of course, he reassured himself, of course, one couldn’t expect success at the first time of asking. He was
certain
to find a berth with persistence. Why, he’d be running home before noon, running to meet Helen full of the good news. Even at the next place, and the next, hope failed to die.

Then gloomy forebodings insinuated themselves, forebodings that soon transformed themselves into scaring haunting dread. Billy Higgs and his generation - three years, now. That such a fate might be his …

Gosh! And Helen had to be told yet.

He stared up at the huge buildings furtively, licked his lips and ran a finger round his scarf: ‘Aw, God, just let me get a job. Ah don’t care if it’s on’y half pay,’ he found comfort in this conversation: kept it up: ‘An’ if y’ can’t find me a job Ah wish y’d mek Helen see it like as though it won’t be for long. Ah mean, that if Ah don’t get a job t’ day let me get one soon…. Blimey, suppose she gets fed up wi’ me if Ah’m out o’ collar long. Suppose she gets another bloke wot’s workin’. … Gor blimey, Ah ne’er thought o’ that.’