Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

Arthur tried to tear himself away from the window but he could not. The faces of the men held him, the face of one man in particular fascinated him. It was Pug Macer. Arthur knew Pug perfectly well; he knew Pug was an indifferent workman who kept bad time, was absent on Monday mornings, who drank. And Arthur saw that Pug knew this too. The recognition of his own unworthiness was written upon Pug’s face alongside his desire to get work, and the conflict of these two emotions made an uncertainty, a suspense that was horrible to watch. It gave Pug Macer the look of a dog grovelling for a bone.

Arthur waited, hypnotised. It came near Pug’s turn. Four of the men in front of Pug were taken on, and every man taken lessened Pug’s chances of being taken — that was reflected in Pug’s face too. Then Pug came before the bar, panting a little from the crush, and from the struggle between his eagerness and fear.

Hudspeth took one look at Pug, one short look, then he looked away. He did not nod, he did not trouble, even, to turn to Pettit, he simply looked away. Pug was not wanted. He was out. Arthur saw Pug’s lips moving, he could hear nothing, but he saw Pug’s lips moving and moving in a kind of desperate entreaty. No use. Pug was out, one of the four hundred who were out. The expression on Pug’s face, on these four hundred faces, drove Arthur frantic. He turned abruptly, wrenched himself away from the window; he wanted to keep these four hundred in work at his pit and he could not. He could not, damn it, he could not. He stared at the calendar which showed the day to be October 15th, 1926. He went up to the calendar and tore off the slip violently. His nerves demanded some outlet. He wanted the day to be over.

Beyond the gates, Pug Macer walked away from the pit yard, down Cowpen Street; he shuffled rather than walked, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground, his shoulders drooping slightly, feeling the eyes of the women on him, watching him from the doorways of the Terraces — one of the four hundred, not wanted, out.

He turned down the Scut, into Quay Street, and home.

“Where’s Annie?” he asked, on the threshold of the bare, stone-flagged room.

“Out,” his father answered from the kitchen bed. Old Macer was quite bedridden now, crippled by rheumatoid arthritis, and since he had always been an active man, his inability even to get up made him difficult and querulous. His complaint gave him constant pain in his back which made him believe he had kidney disease. He swore it was his kidneys and he scraped and saved up everything he could and spent it all on Dr. Poupart’s Kidney-pills, a proprietary nostrum manufactured in Whitechapel by a plutocrat named Lorberg at the cost of a penny farthing per box, retailed at three and six, and composed entirely of soap, bad sugar and methylene blue. The pills made old Macer’s water blue, and since the advertisement thoughtfully explained that the blueness was due to the impurities coming away, old Macer was very pleased. He felt he would be perfectly well if only he could get the impurities out of his kidneys. The trouble was that old Macer could not get enough of the pills. As the advertisement further explained the pills were expensive to make, the ingredients consisting of expensive Indian herbs gathered on the slopes of the Himalayas at the season of Karma Shalia from a recipe given to the late Dr. Poupart by an Indian sage.

Old Macer had no pills now and he looked across at Pug querulously, a little anxiously.

“What way hev ye not gan te the pit?”

“Because I haven’t,” Pug said sullenly.

“Ye man go te work, Pug, lad.”

“Oh, man I?” Pug gritted out. “I’m goin’ a bloody yacht cruise te Spain.”

Old Macer’s head began to shake.

“Ye canna stop off work on yer old fethur, Pug.”

Pug did not speak, he stood burning, helpless, sick.

“Aw hev no pills, Pug, aw’ve got te hev my pills.”

“To hell with your pills,” Pug said and he flung himself into a chair and there he sat with his greasy cap on his head and his hands in his pockets staring at the spark of life in the big grate.

Annie had been out taking back some sewing she had done for Mrs. Proctor and at the same time seeing Sammy up the road to the school. She was soon back.

She saw Pug brooding in the chair the instant she came in the door and she knew. The old familiar pang of worry stabbed at her. But she said nothing. She took off her hat and coat and began to clear the dishes from the table and to wash them.

Pug spoke first.

“I’m out, Annie,” he said.

“Well, we’ll manage, Pug,” Annie said, going on with the dishes.

But the ignominy of his dismissal was rankling deep in Pug, hurting him.

“I’m not gud enough for them,” he said, speaking with his teeth together. “Not gud enough, see! Me that can do two men’s work when I’m put to it.”

“I know, Pug,” Annie said consolingly. Her fondness for Pug made her feel his hurt. “Don’t you trouble, lad.”

“They want to see me on the dole,” Pug snarled. “Me that wants to work. The dole.”

Silence. Old Macer in the bed, following the conversation in a sweat of self-pity, glancing from one to the other with a startled eye, now broke out:

“You’ll need te write te Davey Fenwick, Annie. Ye’ll need to let him help ye now.”

“We’ll manage, father,” Annie said. She would never take money from David, never. “We always have managed.”

Annie’s idea was to get more work herself. And when she had finished her housework that morning, she went out to see what she could get. Housework was what she wanted, to go out as a daily, but housework, even plain charing, was difficult to come by. She tried at Dr. Scott’s, at Mrs. Armstrong’s. She even pocketed the last of her pride and tried with Mrs. Ramage. She was not successful. She got the promise of more sewing from Mrs. Proctor, and Mrs. Low, the wife of the New Bethel Street minister, grudgingly bespoke her to come for a day’s washing on Monday. That, at least, made sure of half-a-crown though Mrs. Low always paid with an air of dispensing charity. But try as she might Annie got no more work than that. She tried the next day and the day after with the same result. Work was at a discount in Sleescale; and Annie had nothing else to sell.

Meanwhile Pug went up to see about his dole. He did not want to go on the dole but when his rankling sense of injustice became dulled he walked up to the Labour Exchange to apply for the dole. In Sleescale among the lads the Labour Exchange was known as the Buroo. Outside the Buroo a long queue stood waiting. There was no struggling or crushing in this queue like there had been at the pit and no hurry at all; everyone waited. It was an understood thing that one had to wait to get the dole. Pug silently took his place at the end of the queue beside Len Woods and Slattery and Cha Leeming. He did not speak to any of them, nor they to him. It was raining now, not raining heavily which would have given them something to curse, but raining softly, a fine, wet rain. Pug turned up the collar of his jacket and stood. He did not think. He waited.

Five minutes later Jack Reedy came along. Jack did not immediately take up his place. He was in this respect different from the others; he walked up and down the line as though the line infuriated him. Then he went up to the head of the line, slowly buttoned up his jacket, and began to harangue the men. Jack was the brother of Tom and Pat Reedy, both killed in the disaster. Once a fine, well-set lad, Jack was now shrunken by hatred and misfortune, a thin, hollow-chested man with extreme and bitter views. There had been the disaster, first, then Jack — in a mood to fight anybody — had fought in the war and been shot through the thigh at Passchendaele. He was lame as the result of the wound. Hudspeth had just refused to take him back at the Neptune.