Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

Pug lifted his head and listened dully to what Jack was saying, though he knew beforehand what it would be.

“That’s what we was, lads, when they wanted us to fight,” Jack was saying and there was mutiny in his black, embittered voice, mutiny against life, destiny and the system which had brought him to this. “We was the nation’s f — heroes, and what are we now? Shiftless lazy scum. That’s what they call us now. Now lissen, lads, till I put it to ye plain. Who made the bloody aeroplanes and the battleships and the guns and the blasted shells? Labour! Who fired the blasted shells out the blasted guns in the blasted war? Labour! And what has labour got out of it? This what we’ve got, lads. This! The chance to stand in the blasted rain with our hands held out for charity. We was told to fight for England — our own beloved soil. Christ! we fought for it, diddent we? And we’ve f — well got it. We’re standin’ in it now. And what is it? Muck! Plain muck! But ye cannot eat muck, lads. Muck won’t keep your wife and kids.” Jack paused, pale as bone, and drew the back of his hand across his lips. He went on, his voice rising, his face contorted as with pain. “When you and me was fightin’ and workin’ during the blasted war there was millions of pounds of profits come out the pits. It’s down in black and white, lads. A hundred and forty million pounds of profits. That’s what tided the owners bye the strike. Why wassent they used to tide us bye? Now, lissen, lads—” A hand fell on Jack’s shoulder. Jack stopped dead, remained quite motionless, then slowly looked round.

“We can’t have none of that,” Roddam said. “Get back in the queue there and shut your gob.”

Roddam was the station sergeant now, fat, important and fifty.

“Let me be,” Jack said in a low, poisonous voice, his eyes glittering in his bone-white face. “I fought in the f — war, I did. I’m not used to bein’ handled by the likes of you.”

The queue was alive with interest now, much greater interest than had been displayed in Jack’s speech.

Roddam reddened violently.

“You shut your gob, Reedy, or I’ll run you to the station.”

“I’ve as much right to talk as you,” said Jack sullenly.

“Go back in the queue,” Roddam blustered, pushing Jack down the line. “Back to the end there. Go on, back you go!”

“I don’t have to go to the end,” Jack cried, resisting, jerking his head. “That’s my place there, beside Pug Macer.”

“Go back where I tell you,” Roddam ordered. “Right back to the hin’ end.” And he gave Jack a final push.

Jack turned, his chest heaving, his gaze fastened on Roddam as though he could have killed him. Then all at once his eyes fell, he seemed to gather himself up, to save himself for a future occasion. He limped quietly back to the end of the queue. A sigh went up from the watching men, a quiet sigh of disappointment. Their bodies relaxed, their attention wandered back to their own miseries. Roddam walked up and down the line officiously, rather grandly, in his big oilskin cape with the fine buckle and chain. The men stood and waited. The rain fell softly.

Sometimes it was dry when they waited for the dole. But it was a bad winter and mostly the rain fell — often it fell heavily. Once or twice it snowed. But they were always there, they had to be there, they waited. And Pug waited with the rest. Sammy did not like Pug being on the dole. As he came back from school he always went past the queue looking the other way, pretending not to see Pug, and Pug, who had his own humiliation from Sammy’s passing, never attempted to recognise him either. The matter was not raised between Pug and Sammy but Sammy felt it deeply nevertheless. And in all sorts of other ways besides. For instance, Pug couldn’t give him any cigarette cards now, and he missed the Saturday penny that Pug used to slip him on the sly. And worst of all he didn’t ever get taken to the Sleescale football matches by Pug, though the unemployed got in for threepence now — yes, that was perhaps the worst of all.

Well, in a way, hardly the worst. The food kept getting plainer and plainer at home and sometimes there wasn’t as much of it as Sammy would have liked. During the big stoppage it had been summer time and you didn’t feel half so hungry in the summer. But the winter was different. Once when Pug broke out and had a blind on his dole money there hadn’t been a bit of cake in the house the whole blessed week. And his mother made such champion cake. All that week it had been porridge and soup, and soup and porridge — his grandad had made a regular fuss. If it hadn’t been for his mother going out washing and mending they wouldn’t have had anything at all. Sammy wished that he were a little older. He would be working then, helping his mother. In spite of the depression Sammy was confident he could get a job; they always wanted boys for trappers at the Neptune.

Week after week Sammy saw Pug standing in that dole queue and pretended not to see him and the queue got longer every week. It preyed so much on Sammy that he took to running past the queue. Whenever he came near the Buroo he would discover something of immense interest at the foot of New Bethel Street, right down there at the very foot, and, with his eyes glued forwards, he would go clattering down towards it. Of course, when he got to the foot of New Bethel Street there wasn’t anything there after all.

However, on the last Friday afternoon of January, when the queue was longer and later than ever, and Sammy went clattering down to the foot of the street, something did occur at last. Tearing down New Bethel Street, and round the corner of Lamb Street, Sammy ran straight into his grandmother Martha.

Sammy got the worst of the collision; he slid on the steel toe-caps of his boots, wobbled, stumbled and fell. He wasn’t hurt, but scared to think of what he had done. Awkwardly, he picked himself up and gathered up his cap and his school books and prepared with a very red face to go on. Then he discovered that Martha was looking at him. She was Martha Fenwick, his grandmother, he knew that well. But she had never looked at him before; she had always walked by him in the street the way he walked by Pug in the queue, not seeing him; he might not have existed at all.

Yet now she stood looking at him — looking and looking, ever so oddly. Then she actually spoke. In a queer voice she said:

“Did you hurt yourself?”

“No, mam.” He shook his head confusedly.

A silence.

“What’s your name?” It was the stupidest thing to say, and her voice seemed to crack in the stupidest manner.

“Sammy Fenwick,” he answered.

She repeated it:

“Sammy Fenwick.” Her eyes devoured him, his pale face and nobby forehead, and bright blue eyes, his growing figure in the home-made, patched suit, his thin legs ending in the heavy boots. Though Sammy could not guess it, for months and months now Martha had watched him, every day she watched him as he went to school, watched him surreptitiously from behind the curtains of the side window of the house in Lamb Lane. He was growing so like her own Sammy; he was ten years old now. It was agony for Martha not to have him near her. Would nothing ever break her icy pride? Cautiously, she said:

“Do you know who I am?”

“You’re my grandma,” he said at once.

She coloured deeply, and with pleasure. Sammy had broken the ice at last, shivered the frozen covering of the old woman’s heart.

“Come here, Sammy.”

He came and she took his hand in hers. Sammy felt it awfully strange and he was inclined to be scared, but he walked with her to the house in the lane. They went in together.

“Sit down, Sammy,” Martha said. It gave her an exquisite, an unbearable pleasure to speak the name of Sammy once again.