Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

“You’ll get to know my style,” grunted Heddon. “Here have a look at this.”

With a show of indifference, he opened a drawer and tossed over a newspaper to David — a labour paper— The Weekly Worker —some years old. On one of the yellowish sheets, bearing the indefinable staleness of treasured print, an article was marked in blue pencil.

“That’s me,” Heddon said. “Go on, read it. I wrote the bloddy thing.”

While Heddon pretended not to watch him, David read the article. It was headed Courts and Courts , and it had a certain savage pungency. It contrasted the court held in Buckingham Palace with another court — Bloggs Court — which the writer knew. The wording was clumsy and brutal but the contrasts were violently effective. “Young Lady de Fallington wore a dress of white satin and a train embroidered with sequins. A string of priceless pearls adorned her patrician neck and her feathers were held in place by a band of diamanté”; and immediately below: “Old Mrs. Slaney is a charwoman. She wears no feathers but a bit of old sacking shaped like a skirt. She lives in one room in Bloggs Buildings, earns twelve shillings a week and has consumption.”

David read the article through, carried away despite himself by its earnestness and vigour. The article epitomised Heddon, sincere, fanatical, imbued with a savage class hatred.

“It’s good,” David said at length and he meant it.

Heddon smiled, touched in his weakest spot, acknowledging David as a friend. He took back the article and replaced it carefully in a drawer. He said:

“That shows what I think of them. I hate them, the whole bloddy lot. I’ve got my knife in a few of them round about here. I make them dance to my tune all right. Take your bloddy Sleescale, for instance. We’re going to have a bit of fun down there, one of these days soon.”

David looked interested.

“Ay,” Heddon said grimly, “you just watch what I’m telling you. Old Barras has got knocked out and the son thinks he’s goin’ to run the show. He’s spreading hisself on pithead baths and the usual hygienic eyewash, spending some of the money his old man bled out the men, dodging the excess profits, see, an’ the super tax, makin’ us believe a bloddy new Jerusalem is rising out of the Neptune. But you wait, just you wait, we haven’t forgotten what they done to us at the disaster. They got out of that too easy. I been waiting on the war to finish so as I could get after them. They’re goin’ to sit up and know some more about it before I’m bloddy well finished with them!” Heddon broke off suddenly, staring in front of him. For a minute he looked hard and dark and grim. Then he relit his pipe which had gone out, pulled a tray of unanswered correspondence towards him. “Start Monday, then,” he said to David, terminating the interview with a dreadful jocosity. “Go on! Don’t keep your Rolls waiting outside any longer or the footman will be handing in his bloddy notice.”

David caught the next train for Sleescale and in the train he turned over his plans deeply and seriously in his mind. The first step in the course he had mapped out for himself had been taken. It was not a thrilling step, but an obscure and very humble rebeginning. It had nothing to commend it except its necessity — not the necessity of money, but the necessity of purpose. His purpose lay clearly defined before him; he had made up his mind that there must be no half measures; it was all or nothing now.

He found Jenny in the middle of re-opening the house, taken out of herself by the novelty of the occasion, intermingling little thrills of discovery with little ejaculations of dismay.

“Look, David, I’d forgotten all about these lovely china candlesticks.” Then: “Oh, goodness! will you look at the way the cake stand has peeled and after the way the young man swore to me it was pure nickel-plated,” and “I am a house-proud little wife, amn’t I, David dear?”

David took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves and began to move furniture. Then he took bath brick and paraffin and went down on his knees and had it out with the rusty grate. He did a bit of quiet floor scrubbing, and afterwards weeded the overgrown little patch Jenny had once sweetly promised would be a garden. He helped in this way until three o’clock when they had a scratch meal. Then he had a wash, tidied himself up and went out.

It was very wonderful to be back in his own town again with the filth and misery and horror of the war behind him. He walked slowly down Lamb Street, feeling the life of Sleescale re-enfold him, seeing the black headstocks above him, above the town and the harbour and the sea. On his way towards the Terraces several of the men stopped him and shook hands with him and congratulated him on getting back safe. Their friendliness warmed David’s heart, encouraged the hope which burned there.

He went first to his mother’s and spent an hour with her. Sammy’s death had left its mark on Martha, and the knowledge of his marriage had affected her most strangely. For Martha ignored Sammy’s marriage; she blotted it completely from her consciousness. The whole town knew of Sammy’s marriage: Annie’s boy was eleven months old now and christened in the name of Samuel Fenwick. But for Martha the marriage was not; she walled herself in against it and hugged the delusion that Sammy had never belonged to anyone but her.

It was five o’clock when David left his mother and went along Inkerman to Harry Ogle’s house. Harry Ogle was the eldest of the Ogle sons, brother of Bob Ogle who lost his life in the disaster, a man of forty-five who had followed and admired Robert Fenwick in his time, a pale wiry man with a curiously husky and ineffectual voice. But though he had no voice Harry had a reputation amongst the men for “a headpiece”; he was Lodge secretary, treasurer of the medical aid and labour member of the Sleescale Town Council.

Harry Ogle was glad to see David and after they had exchanged their news in the little back kitchen David leaned forward intently in his chair.

“Harry! I’ve come to ask you to do something for me. I want you to help me to get nominated for the Council Election next month.”

Harry seldom asked questions and never showed surprise. But now he was silent for a longish time.

“The nomination is easy enough, David, but I’m feared you’d never have a chance. Murchison would be up against you in your ward. He’s been in ten years running.”

“I know! And he goes to one meeting in six.”

David’s reply seemed to amuse Harry.

“Maybe that’s what keeps him in.”

“I want to try, Harry,” David said, something of his old impetuousness breaking through. “There’s no harm in trying.”

Another silence fell.

“Well,” Harry said. “Seeing you’re so set on it… I’ll do what I can.”

David went home that night feeling, deep within himself, that he had taken the second step. He said nothing to Jenny until, ten days later, his nomination was actually secured. Then he told her.

The Council — David standing for the Council! Oh, Jenny was wildly excited, why hadn’t he told her before? — she had thought he was only kidding when he talked that night at Scottswood Road; why, it was wonderful, simply wonderful, David dear!

Delightedly, Jenny flung herself into the campaign. She went canvassing, sewed herself a beautiful “favour,” made “little suggestions”—Clarry had a boy friend in the motor line who might lend them a car, she would herself accompany him round the division in the car, or why shouldn’t the manager of the new Picturedrome be persuaded to “flash something about David on the screen”? In every window of the house she stuck a bill head, VOTE FOR FENWICK, in bright red letters. These bill heads sent Jenny into an ecstasy; she would go out and gaze upon them several times a day.