The Stars Look Down (2 page)

Martha drew down her dark brows at him.

“You’re lucky to be getting it.” And she began to slice the loaf.

They all watched her, fascinated; even Hughie looked up from cobbling a patch on his old football boots, and it took a lot to take Hughie’s mind off football. Hughie was mad on football, centre forward—at seventeen, mind you—of the
local Sleescale team when not hand-putting in the Paradise section of the Neptune. Hughie did not answer Sam. Hughie never had much to say, silent, even more silent than his silent father. But Hughie looked at the loaf.

“Pardon
me
, mother,” Sammy jumped up and took the plate. “Whatever in the world wor I thinkin’ ov te forget my manners. Allow me, said the Duke, in his magnificent uniform ov the Tyneside Hussars.” He offered the plate to his father.

Robert took a slice. He looked at it, then at Martha.

“Did this come from the Guardians? If it did I’m not wantin’ it.”

She looked back at him.

He said in a defeated voice:

“I’m asking you if this bread came from the Guardians?”

She still looked at him, still thinking of his madness in flinging their savings into the strike. She said:

“No.”

Sammy stepped in with loud cheerfulness.

“What in all the world does it matter, wor all goin’ te eat it, I suspect.” He met his father’s eyes with the same hardy cheerfulness. “Ye needna look that way, dad. All gud things come te an end. And aw’m not bleedin’ well sorry. Aw want te be workin’. Not sittin’ about handless like, waitin’ for mother te fetch in wor bait.” He turned to Davey: “Here, count, have a doormat—do. Don’t hesitate. Believe me, they’ll only be chucked out.”

Martha snatched back the plate from his hand.

“Aw don’t like that kind of fun, Sammy. You oughtna te mock good food.”

She frowned upon him heavily. But she gave him the biggest slice. And serving Hughie next, she kept the smallest to herself.

Ten o’clock. David took up his cap, slipped out, and sauntered along the unevenly sunk pavement of Inkerman Row. All the miners’ rows in Sleescale were named after the glorious victories of the Crimea. The top row, David’s row, was Inkerman; the next Alma; the one below Sebastopol; and
the lowest of all, Joe’s row, was Balaclava. David was on his way to Joe’s house now, to see “if Joe was comin’ out.”

The wind had fallen, the sun broke through unexpectedly. Though dazzled, not quite used to it, the brilliant profusion of sunshine was beautiful to David. In winter, when he was working, often he did not see real sunlight for days on end. Dark in the morning when he went down; dark at night when he came up.

But to-day, though cold, was bright, flooding his being with a strange brightness, reminding him oddly of those rare occasions when his father took him fishing up the Wansbeck. Away from darkness and pit dirt, green hazel woods, a ripple of clean water—

“Look, dad, look!” as a clump of early primroses yielded themselves to his excited eye.

He turned the corner of Balaclava Row.

Like the other rows, Balaclava stretched for a bad five hundred yards—a reach of grimed stone houses sooty black in colour, but daubed and seamed with clumsy veins of white where mortar had been added to fill the larger and more recent cracks. The square chimneys, broken and uneven, looked drunken; the long line of roofs undulated from subsidences, like a wavy sea; the yards were palinged with decayed railway sleepers, broken stubs and rusty corrugated iron, backed by heaps of slag and pit-waste. Each yard had its closet and each closet had its pail. An iron pail. The closets stood like sentry-boxes, between the rows, and at the end of the rows was a huddle of home-made outhouses, built on lumpy ground beside a span of naked rail tracks. Neptune No. 17 stood up near the middle, with the hummocky drab of the Snook behind. The Snook was all waste land, cracked and puddled and seamed with the old Neptune workings that went back one hundred years. The old Scupperhole yawned in the Snook. All of it had to do with pits. The far flat background was all pit chimneys, pit heaps, pit-head gear, pit everything. A string of washing flapping its vivid blues and scarlets against the dreary pattern of dirt caught the eye like an affront. That string of washing gave to the picture a grim, perverted beauty.

David knew it all and he did not like it much. He liked it less now. Over the long line of dreary back-to-back dwellings there hung an air of apathy and defeat. Some colliers—Slogger Leeming, Keeker Howe, Bob Ogle and a few others that made up the gambling school in ordinary
times—squatted upon their hunkers against the wall. They were not schoolin’ now, they had no coppers for schoolin’, they were just crookin’ their houghs. They squatted in silence. Bob Ogle, marrow in the Paradise foreshift, stroking the narrow head of his whippet bitch, nodded to Davey. Slogger Leeming said:

“How, then, Davey?”

David said:

“How, again, Slogger?”

The others looked at him curiously, identifying him with Robert, his father, who had brought them out. They saw a pale-faced boy dressed in a shoddy suit he had out-grown, a cotton muffler and heavy pit clogs because his boots were in pawn, with hair that needed cutting, thin wrists and work-big hands.

He felt their scrutiny upon him, and sustained it calmly as, with his chin thrust well out, he walked towards Number 19, which was Joe’s house. Above the doorway of No. 19 was a notice irregularly painted:
Agent Flyaway Cycles. Undertaking. Boards kept.
David went in.

Joe and his dad, Charley Gowlan, were at breakfast: a china bowl was on the wooden table full of cold pot pie, a big brown teapot stood beside it, a tin of condensed milk punched open, and a raggedly hacked loaf. The clutter of the table was unbelievable; the whole house—two rooms joined by a perpendicular ladder—was cluttered. Dirt, disorder, food in plenty, a roaring fire, clothes flung everywhere, dishes unwashed, the smell of living, beer, grease, sweat, a dirty blousy comfort.

“Hulloh, lad, how are ye this mornin’?” Charley Gowlan, with his night-shirt tucked into his trousers, his galluses hanging loose over his fat stomach, his bare feet in carpet slippers, shoved a big bit of meat into his big mouth. He waved the knife in his big red fist and nodded agreeably to David. Charley was always agreeable: never anything but friendly, ay, a matey beggor, Big Charley Gowlan, the check-weigher at the Neptune. Well in with the men; well in with Barras. Willing to turn his hand to anything, from housekeeping—since his wife was dead these three years—back to rabbit dodging or salmon poaching up the Coquet.

David sat down and watched Joe and Charley eat. They ate with infinite relish: Joe’s young jaws champed methodically, Charley smacked his fat lips as he knifed out the rich jellied gravy from the pot pie. David couldn’t help himself;
his teeth watered painfully, a thin trickle of saliva ran into his mouth. Suddenly, when they were nearly done, Charley paused, as at an afterthought, in his knifing at the bowl.

“Would ye like te scrape the pot, lad?”

David shook his head: something in him made him refuse. He smiled.

“I’ve had my breakfast.”

“Ah, weel. If ye’ve had yor bait.” Charley’s small eyes twinkled slyly in his big red face. He finished the dish. “An’ how does yor feyther take it now we’re like to be beat?”

“I don’t know.”

Charley licked his knife and sighed contentedly.

“A heap o’ trouble it’s been. Aw diddent want it. Heddon diddent want it. There’s none ov us wanted it. Meykin’ trouble ower backskins and a happenny ton raise. Aw said from the start it was no gud.”

David looked at Charley. Charley was the men’s check-weigher, a lodge official, and well in with Heddon the Union agent from Tynecastle. Charlie knew it wasn’t just the backskins, nor the halfpenny rise. He said thoughtfully:

“There’s a lot of water in Scupper Flats.”

“Watter!” Charley smiled: a broad omniscient smile. His work never took him inbye; he checked his tubs upon the surface as they came screeching to the bank. He could afford to be omniscient. “The Paradise always was a wet beggor. Watter’s been there mony a day. An’ Scupper Flats is like to be no worse than the rest o’t. Yor feyther’s not feared ov a drop watter, is he?”

Conscious of Charley’s slow grin, David sat hard upon his indignation. He said indifferently:

“He’s worked in it twenty-five years, he oughtn’t to be feared of it.”

“That’s reet, that’s reet, aw know all aboot it. Stick up for yor dad. If you doan’t then God knows who will. Aw think none the worse ov ye for it. Yor a canny lad.” He belched wind loudly, scliffed over to his seat by the fire, yawned, stretched himself and began to fill his blackened clay.

Joe and David went out.

“He don’t have to go in the Paradise!” Joe remarked irreverently the moment the door had banged. “The old beggor, it would do him a power of good to stand in the wet places like I have to.”

“It isn’t only the wet, Joe,” David persisted. “You know what my dad says.”

“I know, I know! I’m sick of hearin’ it an’ so are the rest of the lads, Davey. Yor dad has got notions about Scupper Flats. He thinks he knows the whole shoot!”

David said warmly:

“He knows a lot, let me tell you. He didn’t start it for fun.”

Joe said:

“Naw! But some of the lads did. They was sick of workin’ in water and thought it was fun for to stop. Now they’ve had that much bloddy fun they’d give their navels for to start in again, ay, even if the Flats were roofed with water.”

“Well! Let them start in again.”

Joe said sourly:

“They’re goin’ to start, bet your bloddy life, you wait till the meetin’ at three. But don’t get up on your hind legs. I’m as sick of it as you are. I’m sick of the whole bloddy pit anyhow. I’m goin’ to slip my hook first chance I get. I’m not goin’ to be stuck in this sheugh all my days. I want to get some brass and see a bit of life.”

David remained silent, troubled and indignant, feeling that life was going all against him. He wanted to get out of the Neptune too—but not Joe’s way. He remembered that occasion when Joe had run away before and been brought back, blubbering, by Roddam, the police sergeant, to be soundly leathered by his father.

They walked on without speaking, Joe swaggering a little, throwing his weight about, his hands in his pockets. He was a finely built lad, two years older than David, with square shoulders, a straight back, thick curly black hair and small alert brown eyes. Joe was extremely good-looking in a physical way. And Joe knew it. His glance was full of self-assurance, the very tilt of his cap dashing, conceited, aggressive. Presently he resumed:

“Ye’ve got to have money if you want to have sport. And will you ever make money in the pit? Not on your bloddy soul. Not big money, you won’t. Well, I want to have sport. And I want big money. I’m goin’ places. You’re lucky, you are. You’re goin’ to Tynecassel, maybe. Your dad wants you to go to college, that’s another of his notions, like. But I’ve got to look out for myself. And I’m goin’ to look out for myself. See! That’s how to do it. Get there first or somebody’ll get there afore ye.” He suddenly shut off his bluster and slapped David heartily upon the back. He smiled at him, a genial, affable smile. When Joe chose, none could be more genial, more affable—a geniality which warmed the heart,
an affability which radiated from Joe’s handsome brown eyes and revealed him as a prince of good fellows.

“Come on, now, to the boat, Davey, we’ll set a shoreline, then we’ll row out and see what we can pick up.”

By this time they had passed down Quay Street and reached the shore. They dropped over the sea wall on to the hard sand below. A high range of dunes matted with coarse grass and salt-stung rushes lay behind them. David liked the dunes. On barfe-Saturdays in the summer, when they had come outbye from the Neptune and his dad had gone with the marrows in his set to split up at the Salutation, David would be amongst the rushes, all alone, listening to the sound of the lark, dropping his book to search for the tiny roaring speck against the bright blue sky. He felt that he would like to lie down there now. His head was giddy again, the thick slice of new bread which he had eaten so ravenously lay like lead in his stomach. But Joe was already at the breakwater.

They climbed the breakwater and reached the harbour. There, in the slack scummy water, some lads from the Terraces were fishing for coal. With an old pail, knocked full of holes, fixed to a pole, they were dredging for lumps which had fallen off the barges in working times. Deprived of the fortnightly allowance from the pit, they were scraping in the mud for fuel which would otherwise have been forgotten. Joe looked at them with secret contempt. He paused, his legs planted wide apart, hands still bulging in his trouser pockets. He despised them. His cellar was full of good coal pinched off the pit head, he had pinched it himself, the best in the heap. His belly was full of food, good food, Charley, his dad, had looked after that. There was only one way to do it. Take things, go for them, get them, not stand shivering and half-starved, scratching about in the feeble hope that something would take a soft-hearted jump and come tumbling in your bucket.

“How do, Joe, lad,” Ned Softley, the weak-witted trapper in the Paradise, called out, propitiating. His long nose was red, his undersized skimpy frame shuddered spasmodically from cold. He laughed vaguely. “Got a fag, Joe, hinny? Aw’m dyin’ for a smoke.”

“Curse it, Ned, lad…” Joe’s sympathy was instant and magnificent. “If this isn’t my last!” He pulled a fag from behind his ear, considered it sadly, and lit it with the friendliest regret. But once Ned’s back was turned, Joe grinned. Naturally
Joe had a full packet of Woodbines in his pocket. But was Joe going to let Ned know that? Not on your life! Still grinning he turned to David when a shout made him swing round again.

It was Ned’s shout, a loud protesting wail. He had filled his sack, or near enough, after three hours’ work in the biting wind and had made to shoulder it for home. But Jake Wicks was there before him. Jake, a burly lout of seventeen, had been waiting calmly to appropriate Ned’s coal. He picked up the sack and with a pugnacious stare at the others coolly sauntered down the harbour.