Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

The word passed, but Jake Wicks protested, half alarmed, half ingratiating:

“You’ll have to watch out for yourself, Jack.”

“Ah, what the hell!” Jack said in that uncaring voice. “Stop home if you want. Or go way up in the hospitle wi Bert.”

Jake’s heavy face flushed, but he did not answer. It was always better not to answer Jack back.

“Come on,” Jack said to the others. “Do you want to stick here all night?”

He led the way, limping, down Cowpen Street towards the Salutation and into the Salutation. Jack did not use his hand to push the swing door of the Salutation, he walked at the door with his shoulder and went through. The others did the same.

The bar of the Salutation was full and Bert Amour was behind the bar. Bert had been behind the bar a good many years now; he seemed to grow there with his brassy face and his hair flattened and his forelock wetted and smoothly turned as though a cow had licked it back.

“Hello, Bert,” Jack said with a dreadful friendliness. “What’ll you have, lads?”

The others said what they would have and Bert filled out the drinks. Nobody paid and Bert smiled as if it hurt him.

“Fill them up, Bert,” Jack said, and Bert winced and his face got brassier than ever. But he filled them up again. It was because Bert Amour had been so many years behind the bar of the Salutation that he knew when to fill them up and smile and say nothing. The spirit trade was a queer trade and it was better for Bert to be in with Jack Reedy and his crowd, much better.

“That’s a bad business, Jack,” Bert said, attempting a conversation. “About young Bert Wicks.”

Jack pretended not to hear, but Cha Leeming leaned politely across the bar.

“What the hell do you know about it?”

Bert looked at Cha Leeming and thought it wiser not to take any notice. Cha was exactly like his father, Slogger Leeming, except that Cha had been in the war and that made Cha more up to date. Cha had won the military medal in the war and last week after the demonstration on the Snook, Cha had tied his military medal to the tail of a stray mongrel dog. The mongrel dog had run all through the town trailing the beautiful military medal in the muck and Cha had called the dog War Hero . A man should get prison for that. Cha would some day, only too true, Bert thought.

Bert reached out his hand to reclaim the bottle of whisky, but before he could do so Jack lifted the bottle off the bar and crossed over to a table in the corner. They all went over to the table. A number of men were already there but they made way at once. Jack and his crowd sat down and began talking. Bert watched them talking; wiping the top of the bar, he watched them.

They sat at the corner table talking and drinking and finishing the bottle. The longer they sat there, the more men crowded round them, listening and talking and drinking. The noise became terrific until it seemed they all spoke at once, all violently debating — Wicks’s case, Heddon’s lack of action, the cut in benefit, their hopes of the new Mines Bill. All but Jack Reedy. Jack sat at the table with his dead eyes fixed before him. He was not drunk, no amount could ever make Jack drunk, that was the worst of it. His lips were drawn in tight and narrow and he kept pressing his teeth against them as though he bit against his own bitterness. Jack’s life had shaped him into this mould of bitterness; he was all pain inside and his pained eyes looked upon a world of pain. The disaster had shaped Jack, and the war, and the peace — the degradation and misery of the dole, the pinchings and shifts and pawnings, the brutality of want, the desolation of the soul that is worse than hunger.

All this talk drove him to despair; it was all big mouth and wind. It would be the same at the meeting at eight — words and still more words, which meant nothing, did nothing, and led nowhere. A great hopelessness came over him.

And then, as he sat there, the door swung open and Harry Kinch burst into the bar. Harry was the nephew of that same Will Kinch who had rushed into the Salutation all those years before when Ramage refused him the “end of hough” for his little Alice. But there was this difference. Harry was a greater student of politics than ever Will had been. And Harry had a late Argus in his hand. He stood for a moment facing the others, then he cried:

“It’s in the paper, lads. It’s out at last.” His voice broke. “They’ve sold us… they’ve swindled us…”

Every eye was turned on Kinch.

“How, then?” Slattery said thickly. “What’s like the matter, Harry?”

Harry pushed back the hair from his brow.

“It’s in the paper… the new Bill… it’s the biggest swindle in years. They’ve gi’en us nothing, lads. Not one damned thing….” Again words failed him.

Dead silence had come upon the company. They all knew what had been promised them. Subconsciously the hopes of every man within that room had centred on the Bill. Jack Reedy moved first.

“By God,” he said. “Show us that paper.” He seized the paper and looked at it. They all bent over crowding and craning, looking at the paper where, in a double spread, the terms of their betrayal lay revealed.

“By God,” Jack said again. “So it is!”

Then Cha Leeming jumped to his feet, half-tight and furious.

“It’s too much,” he shouted, “we’ll not put up with it.”

Everybody started talking at once, an uproar. The paper was passed from hand to hand. Jack Reedy was on his feet now, cold and contained. In the midst of the chaos he saw his opportunity. His eyes were not dead now, but burning.

“Give us another whisky,” he said. “Quick.” He tossed down the whisky. He looked round the men. Then he shouted: “I’m goin’ to the Institute. Them that wants can come after us.”

An answering shout went up. They all came after him. They crowded out of the pub into the squally darkness of Cowpen Street, crowding towards the Institute with Jack slightly in the lead.

Outside the Institute more men had collected — most of the younger Neptune men who were out, all of the men who had been discharged at the beginning, and every one of them brought to a pitch of desperation by this news flashed through the Terraces, the final extinction of their hopes.

Jack raced up the steps of the Institute and stood facing the men. Above the door of the Institute an electric globe stuck out like a yellow pear on the end of a stiff branch and the light from the electric pear fell upon Jack’s unbroken face. It was almost dark in the street; the street lamps cast only a flickering pallor in little pools.

Jack stood for a minute facing the men in the darkness. The whisky in him concentrated his bitterness to a kind of venom; his whole body pulsed with that envenomed bitterness. He felt that his moment was approaching, the moment for which he had suffered, for which he had been born.

“Comrades,” he cried, “we’ve just got the news. We’ve been swindled. They’ve give us the go-bye, like Heddon did: they’ve twisted us, like they always do. And in spite of everything they promised!” He drew a panting, tortured breath, his eyes glittering towards them. “They’re not going to help us! Nobody’s goin’ to help us. Nobody! D’y hear me. Nobody! We’ve got to help ourselves. If we don’t we’ll never get out the bloody gutter where Capitalism has shoved us. Christ Almighty, can’t you see it, lads, the whole economic system’s rotten as dung. They’ve got the money, the motorcars, fine houses, carpets on the floor, an’ it’s all bled out the likes of us. We do the slavin’ and sweatin’ for them. An’ what do we get? We don’t even get food, lads, nor fire, nor proper clothes, nor boots for our kids. The minnit things go wrong we’re chucked out on our necks! Chucked on to bread and margarine, and not enough of it to feed the missus and kids! Don’t tell me it’s because there’s no money. The country’s choked with money, the banks is burstin’ with it, millions and millions of money. Don’t tell me it’s because there’s no food. They’re throwin’ fish back into the sea, burnin’ coffee and wheat, slaughterin’ pigs to let them rot, and us here goin’ half-starvin’. If that’s a proper system, lads, then God Almighty strike me dead.” Another sobbing breath. Then in a rising voice: “We didn’t see it when they had the disaster in this bloody Neptune pit and murdered a hundred men. We didn’t see it in the war when they murdered millions of men. But by Christ we see it now! We can’t stand it, lads. We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to show them, lads. We’ve got to do somethin’. We’ve got to, I tell you, we’ve got to. If we don’t we can rot in hell for all our days.” His voice rose to a shriek now, wild and mad. “I’m goin’ to do somethin’, lads, and them that wants to can come along. I’m goin’ to make a start this minnit. I’m goin’ to show them at the Neptune pit where my two brothers was done in. Now I’m goin’ to wreck the pit, lads. I’m goin’ to do a bit of payin’ back on my own. Are you comin’ with me or are you not?”