The Complete Novels Of George Orwell (70 page)

THE KIKE:
Oh Je-e-e
eeze
!

CHARLIE:
Ginger, you can’t sing no more’n a perishing tomcat with the gutsache. Just you listen to me. I’ll give y’a treat.
[Singing]:-Jesxi
, lover of
my
soul–

MR TALLBOYS
[to himself]: Et ego
in Crockford… . With Bishops and Archbishops and with all the Company of Heaven….

NOSY WATSON:
D’you know how I got in the stir the first time? Narked by my own sister–yes, my own bloody sister! My sister’s a cow if ever there was one. She got married to a religious maniac–he’s so bloody religious that she’s got fifteen kids now–well, it was him put her up to narking me. But I got back on ’em,
I
can tell you. First thing, I done when I come out of the stir, I buys a hammer and goes round to my sister’s house, and smashed her piano to bloody matchwood. ‘There!’ I says, ‘that’s what you get for narking
me
! You nosing mare!’ I says.

DOROTHY:
This cold, this cold! I don’t know whether my feet are there or not.

MRS MCELLIGOT:
Bloody tea don’t warm you for long, do it? I’m fair froze myself.

MR TALLBOYS
[to himself]:
My curate days, my curate days! My fancywork bazaars and morris-dancers in aid of on the village green, my lectures to the Mothers’ Union–missionary work in Western China with fourteen magic lantern slides! My Boys’ Cricket Club, teetotallers only, my Confirmation classes–purity lecture once monthly in the Parish Hall–my Boy Scout orgies! The Wolf Cubs will deliver the Grand Howl. Household Hints for the Parish Magazine, ‘Discarded fountain-pen fillers can be used as enemas for canaries….’

CHARLIE
[singing]:
Jesu, lover
of my
soul–

GINGER:
’Ere comes the bleeding flattie! Get up off the ground, all of you. [
Daddy emerges from his overcoat
.]

THE POLICEMAN
[
shaking the sleepers on the next bench
]: Now then, wake up, wake up! Rouse up, you! Got to go home if you want to sleep. This isn’t a common lodging house. Get up, there! [
etc., etc
.]

MRS BENDIGO:
It’s that nosy young sod as wants promotion. Wouldn’t let you bloody breathe if ’e’ad ’is way.

CHARLIE
[
singing
]:

Jesu, lover of
my
soul,
Let me
to
Thy bosom fly–

THE POLICEMAN:
Now then,
you!
What you think
this
is? Baptist prayer meeting? [
To the Kike
] Up you get, and look sharp about it!

CHARLIE:
I can’t ’elp it, sergeant. It’s my toonful nature. It comes out of me natural-like.

THE POLICEMAN
[
shaking Mrs Bendigo
]: Wake up, mother, wake up!

MRS BENDIGO:
Mother?
Mother
, is it? Well, if I am a mother, thank God I ain’t got a bloody son like you! And I’ll tell you another little secret, constable. Next time I want a man’s fat ’ands feeling round the back of my neck, I won’t ask
you
to do it. I’ll ’ave someone with a bit more sex-appeal.

THE POLICEMAN:
Now then, now then! No call to get abusive, you know. We got our orders to carry out. [
Exit majestically
.]

SNOUTER
[
sotto voce
]: — off, you — son of a —!

CHARLIE
[
singing
]:

While the gathering waters roll,
While the tempest still is ’igh!

Sung bass in the choir my last two years in Dartmoor, I did.

MRS BENDIGO:
I’ll bloody mother ’im! [
Shouting after the policeman
]’I! Why don’t you get after them bloody cat burglars ‘stead of coming nosing round a respectable married woman?

GINGER:
Kip down, blokes. ’E’s jacked. [
Daddy retires within his coat
.]

NOSY WATSON:
Wassit like in Dartmoor now? D’they give you jam now?

MRS WAYNE:
Of course, you can see as they couldn’t reely allow people to sleep in the streets—I mean, it wouldn’t be quite nice–and then you’ve got to remember as it’d be encouraging of all the people as haven’t got homes of their own–the kind of riff-raff, if you take my meaning….

MR TALLBOYS
[
to himself
]: Happy days, happy days! Outings with the Girl Guides in Epping Forest–hired brake and sleek roan horses, and I on the box in my grey flannel suit, speckled straw hat, and discreet layman’s necktie. Buns and ginger pop under the green elms. Twenty Girl Guides pious yet susceptible frisking in the breast-high bracken, and I a happy curate sporting among them,
in loco parentis
pinching the girls’ backsides….

MRS MCELLIGOT:
Well, you may talk about kippin’ down, but begod dere won’t be much sleep for my poor ole bloody bones tonight. I can’t skipper it now de way me and Michael used to.

CHARLIE:
Not jam. Gets cheese, though, twice a week.

THE KIKE:
Oh Jeez! I can’t stand it no longer. I going down to the M.A.B.

[
Dorothy stands up, and then, her knees having stiffened with the cold, almost falls
.]

GINGER:
Only send you to the bleeding Labour Home. What you say we all go up to Covent Garden tomorrow morning? Bum a few pears if we get there early enough.

CHARLIE:
I’ve ’ad my perishing bellyful of Dartmoor, b’lieve me. Forty on us went through ’ell for getting off with the ole women down on the allotments. Ole trots seventy years old they was–spud-grabbers. Didn’t we cop it just! Bread and water, chained to the wall–perishing near murdered us.

MRS BENDIGO:
No fear! Not while my bloody husband’s there. One black eye in a week’s enough for me, thank you.

MR TALLBOYS
[
chanting, reminiscently
]: As for our harps, we hanged them up, upon the willow trees of Babylon!…

MRS MCELLIGOT:
Hold up, kiddie! Stamp your feet an’ get de blood back into ’m. I’ll take y’a walk up to Paul’s in a coupla minutes.

DEAFIE [
singing
]: With my willy willy-

[
Big Ben strikes eleven
.]

SNOUTER:
Six more — hours! Cripes!

[
An hour passes. Big Ben stops striking. The mist thins and the cold increases. A grubby-faced moon is seen sneaking among the clouds of the southern sky. A dozen hardened old men remain on the benches, and still contrive to sleep, doubled up and hidden in their greatcoats. Occasionally they groan in their sleep. The others set out in all directions, intending to walk all night and so keep their blood flowing, but nearly all of them have drifted back to the Square by midnight. A new policeman comes on duty. He strolls through the Square at intervals of half an hour, scrutinizing the faces of the sleepers but letting them alone when he has made sure that they are only asleep and not dead. Round each bench revolves a knot of people who take it in turns to sit down and are driven to their feet by the cold after a few minutes. Ginger and Charlie fill two drums at the fountains and set out in the desperate hope of boiling some tea over the navvies’ clinker fire in Chandos Street; but a policeman is warming himself at the fire, and orders them away. The Kike suddenly vanishes, probably to beg a bed at the M.A.B. Towards one o’clock a rumour goes round that a lady is distributing hot coffee, ham sandwiches, and packets of cigarettes under Charing Cross Bridge; there is a rush to the spot, but the rumour turns out to be unfounded. As the Square fills again the ceaseless changing of places upon the benches quickens until it is a game of musical chairs. Sitting down, with one’s hands under one’s armpits, it is possible to get into a kind of sleep, or doze, for two or three minutes on end. In this state, enormous ages seem to pass. One sinks into a complex, troubling dreams which leave one conscious of one’s surroundings and of the bitter cold. The night is growing clearer and colder every minute. There is a chorus of varying sound–groans, curses, bursts of laughter, and singing, and through them all the uncontrollable chattering of teeth
.]

MR TALLBOYS
[
chanting
]: I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint!…

MRS MCELLIGOT:
Ellen an’ me bin wanderin’ round de City dis two hours. Begod it’s like a bloody tomb wid dem great lamps glarin’ down on you an’ not a soul stirren’ excep’ de flatties strollin’ two an’ two.

SNOUTER:
Five past — one and I ain’t ’ad a bite since dinner! Course it ’ad to ’appen to us on a — night like This!

MR TALLBOYS:
A drinking night I should have called it. But every man to his taste. [
Chanting
]’My strength is dried like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my gums!’…

CHARLIE:
Say, what you think? Nosy and me done a smash jest now. Nosy sees a tobacconist’s show-case full of them fancy boxes of Gold Flake, and ’e says, ‘By cripes I’m going to ‘ave some of them fags if they give me a perishing stretch for it!“e says. So ‘e wraps ‘is scarf round ‘is‘and, and we waits till there’s a perishing great van passing as’ll drown the noise, and then Nosy lets fly–biff! We nipped a dozen packets of fags, and then I bet you didn’t see our a—s for dust. And when we gets round the corner and opens them, there wasn’t no perishing fags inside! Perishing dummy boxes. I ‘ad to laugh.

DOROTHY:
My knees are giving way. I can’t stand up much longer.

MRS BENDIGO:
Oh, the sod, the sod! To turn a woman out of doors on a night like bloody this! You wait’ll I get ‘im drunk o’ Saturday night and ’e can’t ‘it back. I’ll mash ’im to bloody shin of beef, I will. ’E’ll look like two pennorth of pieces after I’ve swiped ’im with the bloody flat-iron.

MRS MCELLIGOT:
Here, make room’n let de kid sit down. Press up agen ole Daddy, dear. Put his arm round you. He’s chatty, but he’ll keep you warm.

GINGER
[
double marking time
]: Stamp your feet on the ground–only bleeding thing to do. Strike up a song, someone, and less all stamp our bleeding feet in time to it.

DADDY
[
waking and emerging
]: Wassat? [
Still half asleep, he lets his head fall back, with mouth open and Adam’s apple protruding from his withered throat like the blade of a tomahawk
.]

MRS BENDIGO:
There’s women what if they’d stood what
I’ve
stood, they’d ave put spirits of salts in ’is cup of bloody tea.

MR TALLBOYS
[
beating an imaginary drum and singing
]: Onward, heathen so-oldiers—

MRS WAYNE:
Well, reely now! If any of us’d ever of thought, in the dear old days when we used to sit round our own Silkstone coal fire, with the kettle on the hob and a nice dish of toasted crumpets from the baker’s over the way…. [
The chattering of her teeth silences her
.]

CHARLIE:
No perishing church trap now, matie. I’ll give y’a bit of smut–something as we can perishing dance to. You listen t’me.

MRS MCELLIGOT:
Don’t you get talkin’ about crumpets, Missis. Me bloody belly’s rubbin’ agen me backbone already.

[
Charlie draws himself up, clears his throat, and in an enormous voice roars out a song entitled ‘Rollicking Bill the Sailor’. A laugh that is partly a shudder bursts from the people on the bench. They sing the song through again, with increasing volume of noise, stamping and clapping in time. Those sitting down, packed elbow to elbow, sway grotesquely from side to side, working their
feet as though stamping on the pedals of a harmonium. Even Mrs Wayne joins in after a moment, laughing in spite of herself. They are all laughing, though with chattering teeth. Mr Tallboys marches up and down behind his vast swag belly, pretending to carry a banner or crozier in front of him. The night is now quite clear, and an icy wind comes shuddering at intervals through the Square. The stamping and clapping rise to a kind of frenzy as the people feel the deadly cold penetrate to their bones. Then the policeman is seen wandering into the Square from the eastern end, and the singing ceases abruptly
.]

CHARLIE:
There! You can’t say as a bit of music don’t warm you up.

MRS BENDIGO:
This bloody wind! And I ain’t even got any drawers on, the bastard kicked me out in such a ’urry.

MRS MCELLIGOT:
Well, glory be to Jesus, ’twon’t be long before dat dere church in de Gray’s Inn Road opens up for de winter. Dey gives you a roof over your head of a night, ’t any rate.

THE POLICEMAN:
Now then, now
then!
D’you think this is the time of night to begin singing like a blooming bear garden? I shall have to send you back to your homes if you can’t keep quiet.

SNOUTER
[
sotto voce
]: You — son of a —!

GINGER:
Yes–they lets you kip on the bleeding stone floor with three newspaper posters ’stead of blankets. Might as well be in the Square and ‘ave done with it. God, I wish I was in the bleeding spike.

MRS MCELLIGOT:
Still, you gets a cup of Horlicks an’ two slices. I bin glad to kip dere often enough.

MRTALLBOYS
[
chanting
]: I was glad when they said unto me, We will go into the house of the Lord!…

DOROTHY
[
starting up
]: Oh, this cold, this cold! I don’t know whether it’s worse when you’re sitting down or when you’re standing up. Oh, how can you all stand it? Surely you don’t have to do this every night of your lives?

MRS WAYNE:
You mustn’t think, dearie, as there isn’t
some
of us wasn’t brought up respectable.