Archibald Cronin - The Stars Look Down

“It’s a matter of handling the men,” Mr. Stanley observed. He had followed them into the shop. “To keep the output up.”

With quiet efficiency Joe said:

“You can trust me, Mr. Stanley. I’ll get down to it all right.”

Mr. Stanley nodded and walked off with Clegg.

There and then Joe set himself, in his own phrase, to get down to it. From the start he let it be seen that he was the boss. Though he had never before held a position of authority he felt himself eminently adapted to the part; he had no diffidence, no qualms, he was breezy and expansive. He threw himself into the work, was here, there, everywhere, superintending the mixing, the firing, the moulds, with a ready word of praise and a healthy line of blasphemy.

At the end of the first month the shop output indicated a distinct rise and Millington was pleased. He congratulated himself upon his own decision and called Joe to his office to compliment him personally and confirm his appointment. Joe certainly spared no pains in making himself useful. Millington never came into the shop but Joe hung on to his sleeve, pointing out something that was being done, advancing a suggestion, coming forward with a new idea, all bustle and efficiency. In Joe’s own phrase, he soaped Stanley a treat and Stanley, who was temperamentally inclined to become bothered and confused by a sudden rush of work, began to think of Joe as a real stout fellow.

Joe spent his evenings quietly. For a moment he had entertained the thought of taking up his lodgings again with the Sunleys. But only for a moment. There were many reasons why Joe did not wish to return to Scottswood Road to be mixed up with his old associations again. He had an idea that at last he was on a good thing: Millington’s was humming, money dancing in, the air full of excitement and change. On the recommendation of Sim Porterfield, the machine-shop foreman, he took a room at 4 Beech Road, Yarrow, with Mrs. Calder, a decent elderly woman, a member of Penuel, very dried and sinewy, who from her age, respectability and the shine on her linoleum, could not possibly tamper with Joe’s virtue and so upset his prospects.

As the months went on Joe concentrated more and more on the main chance. And the more he concentrated the more his eye drifted in the direction of the machine-shop and Sim Porterfield. Sim was a short silent sallow-faced man with a small black beard, a pious acrimonious wife and a passion for the game of quoits. His taciturnity gave him the reputation of “a thinker,” he was a member of the Yarrow Fabian Society, he plodded again and again with ponderous lack of understanding through the works of Karl Marx. He was not popular with the men nor with Stanley who half suspected Sim of being “a socialist.” Yet he was a kindly man, it was he who had engaged Joe on that memorable afternoon seven years before and given him his first chance at Millington’s.

Natural, then, that Joe should pal up with Sim, endure his heavy comradeship, forgo the lighter pleasures of Saturday afternoon to accompany him to the quoit ground and heave metal rings into squashy clay. More natural still that Joe should spend a lot of time studying Sim, genially figuring things out as to how Sim might be undermined. The trouble was Sim’s steadiness. He never drank more than a pint, had no time for women and never pinched so much as a one-inch nut from the shop. Joe began to think he would never manage to get Sim in wrong, until one evening, leaving the works in the gathering dusk a stranger furtively thrust some pamphlets into his hand before vanishing down Platt Lane. Joe glanced indifferently at the sticky handbills under the nearest street lamp: Comrades! Workers of the World! Down with War! Don’t let the war-mongers put a gun in your hands and send you to kill a German worker. How do they treat you when you strike for a living wage? They can’t fight this war without you. Stop it now! The German worker doesn’t want to fight any more than you. Don’t let them send you out for cannon fodder. Munition workers, down tools! British armaments are being sold to Germany by the capitalists. Down with Capitalism! Down with War! …

Joe recognised the literature and was about to throw it into the gutter when all at once a thought struck him. He folded the sheets tenderly and placed them in his pocket-book. Smiling slightly, he walked off towards his lodgings.

On the following day he was extra affable, slipped in and out of the machine-shop, lunched with the shirt-sleeved Sim in the corner of the canteen, then, suddenly serious, advanced upon the office and demanded to see Millington. He was closeted with Stanley quite a time.

At six o’clock that evening, when the hooter blared, and the men, struggling into their jackets, milled out of the machine-shop, Stanley and Clegg and Joe stood by the door. Millington’s face was ablaze with indignation. As Sim came past he thrust out an arm and stopped him.

“Porterfield, you’ve been spreading sedition in my Works.”

“What?” Sim said stupidly. Everybody turned to stare.

“Don’t deny it.” Outrage quivered in Stanley’s voice. “I know all about it. You and your damned Marx. I ought to have suspected you before.”

“I’ve done nowt, sir,” gasped Sim.

“You’re a barefaced liar,” shouted Stanley. “You’ve been seen distributing pamphlets! And what’s that in your inside pocket?” He plucked a sheaf of papers out of Sim’s open jacket. “Look, is that nowt ? Seditious poison! And in my works! You’re sacked on the spot. Call and get your money from Mr. Dobbie and don’t show your pro-German face near Millington’s again.”

“But, listen, Mr. Millington…” cried Sim wildly.

No use. Stanley’s back was turned, he was stalking off with Joe and Clegg. Sim stared stupidly at one of the pamphlets on the floor, picked it up, like a man in a dream, to read. Five minutes later as he stumbled out of the works a crowd of men were awaiting him at the gates. An angry shout went up. Somebody yelled: “Here’s the bloody pro-German! Here’s the bastard, lads. We’ll give him hell!”

They closed in on Sim.

“Let us be,” he panted, his ridiculous little beard cocked defiantly. “I tell you I ain’t done nowt.” By way of answer a steel bolt caught him on the ear. He struck out with his fists blindly. But a heavy kick caught him in the groin. He sank to his knees in a red haze of pain. “Pro-German! Dirty swine!” fading into the red dark haze. A last violent stab of pain as an iron-bound boot bashed against his ribs, Then blackness.

Three weeks later Joe called to see Sim who lay in bed, his right leg in splints, his ribs in plaster, a dazed expression imprinted on his face. “Christ Almighty, Sim,” Joe almost blubbered, “I wouldn’t have believed it. I’m all to bits over it. And to think they’ve gone and given me your job as well. O Christ, Sim, why did you do it?”

Before he went Joe thoughtfully left a clipping from the Yarrow News: British Workers’ Lesson to a Skunk . At the end of which was the line: “Mr. Joseph Gowlan now occupies the post of combined superintendent of the foundry and machine-shop at the Millington Munitions Works.” Sim read it woodenly through his narrow spectacles, then woodenly picked up the book beside his bed. But he did not really understand Marx.

After this Joe’s stock was high with Millington and his prestige at the works immense. Then came that memorable Monday morning when Stanley arrived late, rather put out by a telephone message that Clegg was laid up and would not be in to business. Joe was already in the office, ostensibly for the purpose of going over his check sheets with Stanley.

Stanley, however, seemed rushed, in one of his moods of irritability under pressure when he gave the impression of supporting enormous enterprises entirely upon his own shoulders. He fussed in with his overcoat flapping and his scarf undone and as he hung up the scarf and pulled off his gloves he called through to Fuller to send in Dobbie, the Cashier. Then, feeling in the side pocket of his overcoat he paused, and made a gesture of impatience.