Love on the Dole (6 page)

Who cared? He became happily conscious of the overalls under his arm. … Lathes, milling machines, engineering, 2510 and evenings, and Saturday afternoons free! FREE !

Suddenly the air was filled with the concerted blasts of factory, mill and workshop sirens. The noon respite. His eyes kindled. Listen to Marlowe’s! With rising spirits he said: ‘Dinner-time, Mr Price,’ slid over the counter and went outside.

CLATTER of clogs and shoes; chatter of many loud voices; bursts of laughter. Hundreds of girl operatives and women from the adjacent cotton mills marching home to dinner arm in arm, two, three, four and five abreast. They filled the narrow pavements and spread into the roadway.

A generation ago all would have been wearing clogs, shawls, tight bodices, ample skirts and home-knitted, black wool stockings. A few still held to the picturesque clogs and shawls of yesterday, but the majority represented modernity: cheap artificial silk stockings, cheap short-skirted frocks, cheap coats, cheap shoes, crimped hair, powder and rouge; five and a half days weekly in a spinning mill or weaving shed, a threepenny seat in the picture theatre twice a week, a ninepenny or shilling dance of a Saturday night, a Sunday afternoon parade on the erstwhile aristocratic Eccles Old Road which incloses the public park, then work again, until they married when picture theatres became luxuries and Saturday dances, Sunday parades and cheap finery ceased altogether.

Harry, gaze fixed on the pavement, was become acutely self-conscious of the incongruity of his schoolboy clothes and believed that every girl he passed must be similarly impressed. He felt a fool to be wearing such now that he was a Marlowe employee. Why hadn’t he had the foresight to slip on the overalls before he came out of the shop? He then could have walked proud and unashamed in the centre of the roadway. Still, he was always doing things like that; always upside down. And another thought was bothering him.

‘Hallo, Harry.’ A girl’s voice; belonging to her whom the bothering thought concerned. He looked up. Helen Hawkins beamed on him with her winning smile. Her shapeless coat was open revealing a short print frock faded from many washings: she was hatless and the cotton fluff adhered to her hair like a veil of blown snow.

She beamed on him: he did not like it. There was a concentrated, undivided fixity in her gaze, an expectant questioning: he felt uncomfortable. Her smile was eloquent, unique, existed for none but him. And because of what he was thinking it filled him with a creeping self-reproach, or with that conflicting emotion named being at ‘sixes and sevens’ with oneself.

Things were changed, now. Time had been, lately, when, in his moods of black despair concerning the servitude at Price and Jones’s, he had been grateful of Helen’s sympathetic ear attentive to his troubles. He felt that her acceptance of his confidences had placed him under a puzzling kind of obligation to her; a vague, tacit understanding that irked but could not be hinted at or expressed, that gave her the privilege to take a proprietary interest in his affairs. He felt uneasy. He sensed a restraining influence, a lack of freedom to associate himself with the boys. And that was impossible now that he had to work with them. Though Helen knew nothing of this, yet. It would come to her as something of a shock when he told her.

He remembered a fortnight ago, in the heat of a sudden impulse to appear impressive, having told her that, on leaving school, he was to seek work in a ‘proper’ office. Why had he said it? He never had the remotest idea of so doing. The memory of the incident returned to him vividly; he recalled his puffed-up self, proud as a pigeon, revelling in her admiration. Perhaps she would have forgotten it by this time. Oh, but what did it matter whether or no: he could change his mind if he so wished. Why should he be scared of her? This was the kind of thing that made friendship with a girl so undesirable; they were so troublesomely inquisitive.

He forced a smile: ‘Oh, hallo, Helen.’ he said, adding, unnecessarily, as they walked along: ‘Goin’ home for y’ dinner?’ She sensed a constraint in his demeanour instantly. She looked at him, questioningly, wondering, her smile fading, the light dying in her eyes. After a pause, she said: ‘I didn’t see y’ over week-end, Harry. Where were y’? Y’ weren’t in choir, either.’

He shrugged: ‘Aw, Ah stopped in house, readin’. Didn’ want t’go out.’ He could not confess that shame of his schoolboy clothes was the real cause. It occurred to him that it would be weeks, possibly, before his mother would be able to afford him a pair of long trousers for Sunday wear. That meant sitting at home over the week-ends. It would be humiliating, after wearing overalls during the week to appear in knickerbockers of a Sunday. Until now, this prospect had not occurred to him. Glum discontent stirred in his heart. Why had some such occurrence as this always to rise to spoil one’s new-found pleasure? Tomorrow’s prospect was robbed of half its savour.

‘You left school Friday, didn’t you, Harry?’

It was coming: he could sense her thoughts. He gripped the overalls tighter: ‘Aye,’ he said, moodily.

‘And the job …?’ a timid eagerness appeared in her expression.

She hadn’t forgotten! He forced a laugh: ‘Oh, Ah’ve got a job. Start at Dicky Marlowe’s in morning. Machine shop … 2510’s me number. Here’s me overalls.’

She raised her brows, incredulously: ‘Engineering? I thought you … ‘

‘Oh, Ah know. Ah know. Office,’ a grimace and a deprecatory gesture: ‘Naow. … Had enough o’ Price an’ Jones’s t’ last me a lifetime.’

They turned into North Street; halted by the open door of No. 7 where Helen lived together with the remaining dozen comprising the family. A number of very young and very dirty children played in the gutter. Women passed, occasionally, carrying basins of fried fish and chipped potatoes leaving a pungent odour of the mixed dish in their wakes; lines of washing decorated the street billowing in the fitful breeze.

She stared at the pavement. This occurrence was the handiwork of Bill Simmons and his clique. Jealousy of their influence on him pinched her. He was a cut above their kind. Besides, what a bathos, after all her fond expectations, to imagine Harry dressed in overalls instead of as she had always pictured him, clean, tidy, going to an office where gentlemen worked. Nor was it that such an aspiration was impossible; being a chorister at the parish church was guarantee that he could have had such a job; all the boys in the choir went to offices. In overalls, though, working with street-corner louts.

And she had been led to believe. … Her dream crumbled. Oh, why had he given her his confidences? Why had he permitted her to glory in that she, of all the street girls, nay, of all the girls of the neighbourhood, had been the one to whom he had unburdened himself. Didn’t he know that his friendship had drawn the teeth of that ogre, rendered it innocuous - that ogre, the squalor and discomfort of her home? The yearning sadness of a farewell stole plaintively across her heart as she recalled those sweet sessions when she stood with him in the shadowy upper reaches of the street listening to his murmured tale of woe. She felt that happiness being furtively withdrawn, stolen by sly hands which she could not resist. No longer would he feed the deep longing in her heart; no more could she escape, through him, those bleak lonelinesses which sometimes stole upon her; she murmured: ‘Vicar can get y’ job, if y’d ask.’

‘Yaah,’ he replied, impatiently: ‘Ah know… . Tart’s job. But not for me,’ staring up into the sky and adding, fervently: ‘I want proper man’s work,’ with a shrug: ‘Besides, I’ve left choir. Voice is broke.’

‘It isn’t,’ she cried, accusingly, suddenly animated; ‘You know it isn’t.’

‘Oh, yes it is. It’s broke. Ah tell y’.
Ah
know,’ obstinately, and with finality: ‘An’ Ah’m goin’ to Marlowe’s.’

Appealingly: ‘But look at fellows y’ll mix with, Harry…. Swearers like Ned Narkey, and … and …’ hotly and with impatience: ‘Oh, it’s Bill Simmons and his crowd as’ve put y’ up to this … ‘ her eyes sparkled.

He stared at her: ‘What’s it to you?’ he asked, incredulously: ‘Ah can please meself, can’t Ah?
Ah
knows what Ah’m doin’.’

The impudence; the manner of her assumption! Oh. aye.
she’d
have him go to office work! And the way she referred, disparagingly, to BUI Simmons and the rest His nostrils dilated; he glared at her: ‘Mind y’r own business,’ he said, indignantly.

She stared at him; her spirits froze. Could this really be the Harry Hardcastle around whom she had woven an ideal? ‘Oh, Harry,’ she murmured, appealingly: ‘Let’s not fall out.’

He brimmed with self-confidence: ‘What d’y’ mean, us fall out? Ha! Ah like that’

‘Oh, Harry, I never meant…’

A loud voice came from the open door at Helen’s back, her mother’s: ‘Hey, there. How much longer are y’ gonna stand there argefyin’? Dinner’s goin’ cold here.’

Harry muttered, impatiently: ‘Aw, Ah’m goin’ home for me dinner… . Girls mek me sick. S’long.’ He stamped away, moodily.

She watched him with sinking heart until he disappeared through the door of No. 17, then she turned, eyes shining, and went into the child-infested rowdiness of her home.

HIS initiation was disappointing.

Visions of being conducted to a bolted and barred room where, in hushed whispers, he would receive careful instruction concluded by a solemn adjuration to keep the knowledge a sworn secret, proved to be entirely without foundation. There was no painstaking instruction, no enlightenment of the ‘mysteries’ of the trade as had been promised in the extravagant language of the indentures. That was pure bunkum, evidently. What a fool he would have made of himself had he apprised the boys of his silly expectations.

Instead of being set to work on a lathe he found his duties consisted in running errands for the elder apprentices and the men.

There was only one whom he knew would be sympathetic; instinctively he unburdened himself to Larry Meath; though Larry’s was cold comfort.

‘You’re part of a graft, Harry,’ he said: ‘All Marlowe’s want is cheap labour; and the apprentice racket is one of their ways of getting it. Nobody’ll teach you anything simply because there’s so little to be learnt. You’ll pick up all you require by asking questions and watching others work. You see, all this machinery’s being more simplified year after year until all it wants is experienced machine feeders and watchers. Some of the new plant doesn’t even need that. Look in the brass-finishing shop when you’re that way. Ask the foreman to show you that screw-making machine. That can work twenty-four hours a day without anybody going near it. Your apprenticeship’s a swindle, Harry. The men they turn out think they’re engineers same as they do at all the other places, but they’re only machine minders. Don’t you remember the women during the war?’

‘What women?’ Harry asked, troubled by what Larry had said.

‘The women who took the places of the engineers who’d all served their time. The women picked up straightaway what Marlowe’s and the others say it takes seven years’ apprenticeship to learn,’ a wry smile: ‘Still, if you want to be what everybody calls an “engineer”, you’ve no choice but to serve your seven years. Oh, and you were lucky to be taken on as an apprentice. I hear that they’re considering refusing to bind themselves in contracting to provide seven years’ employment. There is a rumour about that there aren’t to be any more apprentices. You see, Harry, if they don’t bind themselves, as they have to do in the indentures, they can clear the shop of all surplus labour when times are bad. And things are shaping that way, now,’ a grin: ‘You’ve no need to worry, though. You’ve seven years’ employment, certain.’

Hum!

It chilled Harry, momentarily.

Only momentarily. With all its disadvantages it was infinitely a more enjoyable occupation than Price and Jones’s.

Variety here! Any of the men requiring such and such a tool gave him a brass check with their number stamped on it; he took it to the stores and exchanged it for the desired tool. Towards noon, in company with other new apprentices, he brewed tea for those men it was his duty to attend. Afterwards he ran to Sam Grundy’s back entry with their threepenny and sixpenny bets. At week-end, he learned with pleasurable surprise, the men would give him coppers for the services, extra if the bets he had taken proved profitable. Yes, despite what Larry Meath had said, this method of earning a living was far more desirable than Price and Jones’s or any other office.

As for Bill Simmons and the others, they were liars. From their talk at various times he had concluded they were in charge of machines. Nothing of the kind; errand boys, ‘shop boys’ they were, nothing more. Rather discouraging to learn that, generally, over a year elapsed before you were permitted to use even a drilling machine. Drilling machine, though. A child could be entrusted with it: all that was necessary was the depression of a lever; a device prevented the drill from boring too deep; it was foolproof. Nevertheless, he was not permitted practice on the machine. As yet he was errand boy, and a zealous one into the bargain.

But that period soon passed when, sent on errands to the stores, he hurried there and back resisting the temptation to have his attention engaged by the numberless absorbingly interesting engineering operations to be seen on all sides. From the other apprentices he learnt the circuitous routes to the stores, routes which led through the various departments.

The foundry! What a place.

Steel platforms from which you saw great muscular men dwarfed to insignificance by the vastness of everything: men the size of Ned Narkey who had charge of the gigantic crane. Fascinated he saw the cumbrous thing, driven by Ned, unseen, move slowly along its metals: leisurely, its great arm deposited an enormous ladle by the furnace. A pause; a hoarse shout; a startling glimpse of fire then a rushing, spitting river of flames that was molten metal running out of the furnace’s channel into the ladle until it brimmed. The river of fire was dammed, ceased as by magic. The crane’s limp cable tautened; slowly the ladle swung, revolved, white-hot, a vivid, staring glare that stabbed the eyes; slowly it swung, twenty tons of molten metal to the moulds.