Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

Arthur’s lip trembled, his whole body trembled again as a rush of stubborn weakness flooded him.

“He won’t,” he shouted suddenly to the empty room. “He won’t!”

Towards the end of September, abruptly and extremely early in the morning, Joe Gowlan had quitted Sleescale. Though he said neither why nor where Joe had his own good reasons for going. He returned, by a discreet route, to Yarrow and set out for Platt Lane.

Trudging along the Lane on that damp autumn morning he became aware of an unusual activity at Millington’s. Above the high paling he saw a long corrugated shed in course of erection and a lorry, backed into the yard, discharging heavy equipment. Cautiously, he applied his eye to a knot hole in the fence. Holy Gee, there was a do on right enough! Two new lathes going into the machine-shop, a drilling machine, new moulds and trays, men hauling and heaving, Potterfield the foreman shouting merry hell, Irving tearing out of the drawing office with a bunch of papers in his fist. With a thoughtful air Joe straightened up and stepped into the offices.

He had to cool his heels interminably in the Inquiry Room before gaining admittance to Millington’s office but neither the delay nor the reluctant eye of Fuller the head clerk damped him. He went in firmly.

“It’s Joe Gowlan, Mr. Stanley.” He smiled — deferential yet confident. “Maybe you don’t remember me. You promised you might have an opening for me when I came back.”

Stanley, who sat in his shirt-sleeves before a littered table, raised his head and glanced at Joe. Stanley was plumper about the face and his waist line had increased, he was a trifle paler, too, his hair beginning to recede from his forehead, he had a flabby and irritable look. He frowned now: he recollected Joe at once, yet he was rather puzzled; remembrance associated Joe with dungarees and a certain amount of grime. He said perplexedly:

“Why, yes, Gowlan, of course. But are you after a job now?”

“Well, yes, sir.” Joe’s smile though still deferential was quite irresistible and despite himself Stanley smiled slightly in sympathy. “I’ve been doing pretty well, mind you, but I wanted a change and I’ve always felt I’d like to come back to you.”

“I see,” Stanley declared drily. “Unfortunately we don’t want puddlers here now. And what about the army? A stout young fellow like you ought to be at the front.”

Joe’s brightness dissolved into an expression of disconsolate regret. He had anticipated this difficulty and he had no intention ever of being at the front. Without hesitation he answered:

“They’ve rejected me twice, sir. It’s no use. It’s my knee, a cartilage or something, must have jiggered up when I was boxing.”

Stanley had no reason to believe that Joe was lying. There was a pause, then he inquired:

“What have you been doing with yourself since you were here?”

Without blinking an eyelash Joe said modestly:

“I’ve been on construction work in Sheffield. I was foreman of the job. I had thirty-odd men under me. But I’ve never right settled down since I left Millington’s. I’ve always felt you might give me an opening here like you promised.”

Another pause. Millington picked up a ruler and began to twiddle it fretfully. He was in a perfect jam of work and schedules and contracts. Suddenly an idea struck him. He welcomed it. Like most dull men in a position of responsibility he flattered himself upon what he called his ability to make quick decisions. He felt himself making a quick decision now. He looked up abruptly, rather patronising, very much on his dignity.

“We’ve rather changed things here. Did you know that?”

“No, Mr. Stanley.”

Millington inspected the ruler with a kind of fagged triumph.

“We’re making munitions,” he announced impressively. “Hand grenades, shrapnel, eighteen-pounder shells.” Fagged or not, there was good reason for Stanley’s air of triumph. For Millington’s was on the map at last. During those last years trade had languished painfully, old markets waning and new difficult to find. A good many hands had been sacked and the social club had turned slightly less social than before. For all Stanley’s hearty efforts it looked as though Millington’s might finally have to close down.

But immediately upon the outbreak of war old Mr. Clegg had wheezed his way to Stanley. Old Clegg was very asthmatic now, very old, done up and worried but, on this occasion, quite heaven inspired.

“It’s all up with us short of one thing,” Clegg put it with brutal bluntness. “There’s a war on now and we might as well try to sell our tubs and shackle-bolts in Greenland. But they’ll need munitions, tons and tons of them, more than all the arsenals in kingdom come can give them. We’ve got to chance it, Mr. Stanley, and turn over quick. If we don’t we’ll shut down in six months. For the love of God talk it over with me, Mr. Stanley?”

They talked it over, old Clegg wheezing and puffing his project into Stanley’s startled ears. Their present plant with some additions would be adequate. They had the foundry, the machine-shop, four furnaces, and one cupola, nothing, of course, which lent itself to the manufacture of the larger implements of war, but they could concentrate on the small material, shrapnel, shrapnel bullets, hand grenades, and small shells. That’s the stuff, Clegg observed with emotion, the stuff to show the profit and win the war.

That final argument, firing Stanley’s patriotism, had tipped the scale. He had adopted Clegg’s idea, realised all his resources, put in six new melting-pots and another cupola. Millington’s had begun to make munitions and, for the first time in five years, to make, simply to coin money, as though they minted sovereigns instead of shrapnel. It was ridiculously easy, the simplicity of the process took Stanley’s breath away. A Government department met his advance with a feverish acceptance, asking for half a million Mills bombs and offering £3,500 per ten thousand. Shrapnel was demanded urgently, insistently, one, two, three hundred tons a week. Already Stanley had a sheaf of contracts in hand; he was fitting eighteen-pounder shell moulds and heavy lathes; and the filling factories were clamouring, shrieking for material faster than he could turn it out.

This was the situation which caused Stanley to fix his eyes importantly on Joe. He made a brisk, decisive movement.

“It looks as though you’d turned up at the right moment, Gowlan. I’m short-handed, chiefly through enlistment, for I never stop a man who wants to go. Hughes, the foundry foreman, has just gone and I need somebody in his place. Mr. Clegg isn’t fit to deal with that himself. He’s been seedy lately; in fact I’m doing part of his work myself. But in the shop I need a foreman, I can’t be three places at once, and I’ve half a mind to try you out there. Six pounds a week and a month’s trial. What do you say to it?”

Joe’s eyes glistened, the offer was far better than he had expected; he could scarcely conceal his eagerness.

“I say, yes, Mr. Stanley,” he blurted out. “Just give me the chance to show you what I can do.”

The enthusiasm behind Joe’s words seemed to gratify Millington.

“Come along, then.” He rose. “I’ll turn you over to Clegg.”

They found Clegg in the melting-shed superintending the installation of new moulds. He looked a sick man, stooping over a stick, his grey moustache clotted with rheum. He had no recollection of Joe, but at Stanley’s request he led him into the foundry. From his previous experience one glance assured Joe of his own competence to deal with the work. There were six pots in all and the process was extremely simple: pig and lead mixed with twelve per cent. antimony for hardening, fired underneath, then into the moulds. While old Clegg rambled on Joe made pretence of attentive listening, but all the time his alert eye was darting round, taking in the forty-odd men who worked in the red glare, feeding the pots, serving the moulds, breaking up, tubbing away the cast grenades that looked like small unripe pineapples. A walk over, he kept thinking to himself, I know it backwards already.