Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

He looked down at her, smiling.

“It did make you laugh,” he said. “And that’s what I wanted.”

They sauntered about the Fair Ground, companionably interested in everything they saw. The music cascaded, the cheap-jacks shouted, the lights flared, the crowds went round and round. All the people were common and hilarious and poor. Coalies from Tyneside, riveters from Shiphead, moulders and puddlers from Yarrow, hewers from Seghill and Hedlington and Edgeley. Caps on back of the head, mufflers streaming, fag behind the ear. Their women folk were with them, red-faced and happy and eating out of paper bags. When the bags were empty they blew up the bags and burst them. They had teasers too, which blew out and hit you as you passed. It was a saturnalia of the humble and the unknown and the obscure. And suddenly David said to Annie:

“This is where I belong, Annie. These are my people. I’m happy among them.”

But she would not admit it. She shook her head vehemently.

“You’re going to the top, Davey,” she declared, in her slow, straightforward way. “Everybody says it. You’re going into Parliament at the next election.”

“Who says that?”

“All the lads say it at the Neptune. Pug was telling me. They say you’re the one what’ll do things for them.”

“If I could,” he said, and took a long deep breath.

As they walked home to Tarrant Street along the front a great moon came out of the water and looked at them. The noise and glitter of the Fun Fair died away behind. And he told Annie of what he wanted to do. He was hardly conscious of her stepping steadily beside him, she said so little and listened so well, but all the aspirations of his soul were laid before her. He had no ambition for himself. None.

He wanted justice for the miner, his own people, a class long and bitterly oppressed.

“Justice and safety, Annie,” he concluded in a low voice. “Mining isn’t like any other industry. It demands Nationalisation. The lives of the men depend on it. So long as you have private enterprise looking for a big profit you’ll find the safety factor cut. Once in a while. And then the thing happens. That’s the way it was at the Neptune.”

Silence came between them as they went up Tarrant Street. With a change of tone he asked:

“Aren’t you sick of listening to all my tub-thumping?”

“No,” she said. “It isn’t tub-thumping… it’s too real for that.”

“I want you to meet Harry Nugent when he comes tomorrow,” he said. “Harry’s the man who really can be convincing. You’ll like him, Annie.”

She shook her head quickly.

“Oh no! I’d rather not meet him.”

“But why?” he asked, surprised.

“I just don’t want to,” she said firmly, and with unexpected finality.

Unaccountably, he felt hurt; her incomprehensible withdrawal, coming on top of his friendliness, his effort to take her out of herself, wounded him. He dropped the subject completely and withdrew into himself. When they entered the house, refusing her offer to get him some supper, he said good night at once, and went straight to his room.

Harry Nugent arrived next day. Nugent was fond of Whitley Bay; he swore there was no air in the world like Whitley air; whenever he could snatch a week-end he came to get a lungful of the wonderful air. He put up at the Waverley and David met him there at three o’clock.

Although it was so early in the afternoon, they had tea in the lounge without delay. Nugent was responsible; he was a great tea drinker, he drank endless cups of tea, he would make anything an excuse for a cup of tea. It didn’t suit him either, aggravating the dyspepsia from which he habitually suffered. Nugent was physically a delicate man: his bony, ungainly figure and sallow, emaciated face bespoke a constitution ill-adapted to a life of strain. He suffered greatly and often from minor, unromantic maladies — once, for instance, he had endured six months’ agony from fistula. But he never complained, never coddled himself, never gave up. He was so absurdly and humanly grateful, too, for the lesser joys of life — a cigarette, a cup of tea, a week-end at Whitley Bay or an afternoon at Kennington Oval. Nugent was above everything a human man; his smile expressed it, quietly forming on his ugly face, a smile which always seemed boyish because of the slight gap between his front teeth. He smiled now, at David, over this third cup.

“Well, I suppose I may as well go straight to the point.”

“You usually do,” David said.

Nugent lit a cigarette, and held it between his nicotine-stained fingers, tapping in the loose tobacco with a sudden seriousness.

“You did know, David, that Chris Stapleton was ill,” he said at length. “Ay, and he turns out to be worse, poor fellow, than any of us thought. He went under an operation at the Freemasons’ Hospital last week, internal trouble — you can guess what that means. I saw him yesterday. He’s unconscious and sinking fast.” He contemplated the glowing end of his cigarette. There was a long silence, then Nugent added: “There’ll be a bye-election at Sleescale next month.”

A sudden wild emotion rose in David’s breast and leaped, like a pang of fear, into his eyes. There was another silence.

Nugent gazed across at him and nodded.

“That’s right, David,” he said. “I’ve been in touch with the local executive. There’s no question as to who they want. You’ll be nominated in the usual way.”

David could not believe it. He stared back at Nugent, inarticulate, overcome. Then his eyes clouded suddenly and he could not see Nugent any more.

The first person David met on his return to Sleescale was James Ramage. That Monday morning he had come up from Whitley Bay to Tynecastle with Annie and Sammy and seen them on the train for home. Then he had hurried to Edgeley to put in a full day’s work at the Institute. It was seven o’clock in the evening when he came out of Sleescale Station and almost collided with Ramage, who was walking towards the news-stall for a late edition.

Ramage stopped dead in the middle of the passage-way and David saw from his face that he knew. On the Sunday night Stapleton had died in the Freemasons’ Hospital and there had been a significant paragraph in this morning’s Tynecastle Herald .

“Well, well,” Ramage said, very sneering, pretending to be highly amused. “So we’re goin’ to have a try for parleyment, I hear?”

With the most exasperating amiability he could command David answered:

“That’s right, Mr. Ramage!”

“Huh! And you think you’ll get in?”

“Yes, I hope so,” David agreed, maddeningly.

Ramage stopped trying to appear amused. His big red face turned redder than before. He clenched one hand and banged it vehemently into the palm of the other.

“Not if I can help it. No, by God, no, not if I can help it. We don’t want no blasted agitators to represent this borough.”

David watched Ramage’s distorted face almost with curiosity, the hatred there was so openly displayed. He had forced Ramage to supply sound meat to the hospital, fought him over his abominable slaughter-house, his insanitary tenements behind Quay Street. He had, altogether, tried to induce James Ramage to do a great deal of good. And James Ramage could have killed him for it. Very curious.

He said quietly, without rancour:

“Naturally you’ll support your own candidate.”

“You bet your life, I will,” Ramage exploded. “We’ll swamp you at the polls, we’ll wipe you out, we’ll make you the laughin’ stock of Tyneside…” He choked, seeking more violent expletives, then with a final incoherence in his throat he swung round and walked furiously away.