The Stars Look Down (65 page)

Heddon dissolved in bitter laughter over the report of David’s repartees. Peering over the paper’s edge:

“Did ye really say that to the ucker, David?”

“Nothing like so good, Tom!”

“I’d have liked to see that Ramage’s face when ye told him his bloddy slaughter-house wasn’t fit to
kill
pigs in!”

David’s inveterate modesty helped him all the more with Tom Heddon. If he had displayed the first signs of swelled head he would have killed himself stone dead with Heddon. But he did not, which made Tom cut out the choicest columns from the Tynecastle
Argue
and forward them to his old friend Harry Nugent with a significant blue pencil scrawl.

Jenny knew nothing of all this. And Jenny was not patient, construing David’s absorption into neglect and being maddened by that supposed neglect. Jenny was so mad she had an excellent excuse for finding vicarious consolation in Murchison’s invalid port. By the spring of 1919 Jenny was drinking regularly again. And about this time, an event of considerable psychological importance occurred.

On Sunday the 5th of May old Charley Gowlan died. Charley had been ill for six months with Bright’s disease and finally, despite repeated tappings of his shiny, swollen abdomen, Charley went to God. It was a grim paradox that Charley, who had never cared for water much, should be water-logged at the end. But paradox or no, Charley did die, in mean, neglected circumstances. And two days later Joe arrived in Sleescale.

Joe’s coming to Sleescale fell nothing short of a sensation. He came on the morning of that Tuesday in a glittering Sunbeam motor-car, a new twenty-five green Sunbeam
driven by a man in dark green uniform. Immediately Joe stepped out of the car at his old home in Alma Terrace the car was surrounded by a gaping crowd. Harry Ogle, Jake Wicks, the new checkweigher, and a few of the Neptune overmen were at the house—it was almost time for the funeral—and although rumours of Joe’s prosperity had reached the Terraces they were frankly dazzled by the change in Joe. Indeed, Frank Walmsley, who had once been his chargeman, straightaway addressed his as sir. Joe was discreetly but handsomely dressed, he wore spats, his cuff links were of dull gold and his watch-chain of fine platinum. He was shaved and manicured and polished. He shone with a bluff and enterprising opulence.

Harry shifted his feet awkwardly before Joe’s opulence, struggling with the memory of that young Joe who had been hand-putter in the Paradise.

“I’m glad you’ve come like, Joe, we clubbed together, a few of us officials, to get the money like, we diddent want your dad to have a guardian’s funeral.”

“Good God, Harry,” Joe blew up dramatically. “Are you talking about the workhouse? D’you mean to say it was as bad as that?”

His eye swept round the low, dirty kitchen where he had once licked pot pie from the blade of his knife, and fell upon the wretched black coffin where the dropsical corpse of his father lay.

“My God,” he raved, “why didn’t somebody tell me? Why didn’t you write to me? You all
know
me, where I am, and
what
I am. Is this a Christian country or what is it? You ought to be damned well ashamed of yourselves, letting the poor old man conk out in this way. Too much trouble I suppose to even
’phone
me at my works…”

He was equally affected at the funeral. At the graveside he broke down and blubbered into a big silk handkerchief. Everyone agreed it did him the greatest credit. And he drove straight from the cemetery to Pickings in Lamb Street and ordered a magnificent headstone.

“Send the bill to me, Tom,” he declared eloquently. “Expense is no object!” Later, Tom did send the bill: he sent the bill a great many times.

After the funeral Joe made a short sentimental tour of the town, evincing all the successful man’s emotion at visiting his old haunts. He impressed Harry Ogle with the need for getting him a photograph of the house in Alma Terrace. Joe
wanted a photograph, a big enlarged photograph; he must have a photograph of the humble home where he was born. Let Harry get Blair the photographer to do it and send the bill and the photograph to Joe!

Towards the end of the day, about six o’clock, Joe dropped in to see his old friend David. The news of Joe’s visit to Sleescale had preceded him, and Jenny, besides informing David, had prepared lavishly and excitedly for Joe.

But Joe declined Jenny’s hospitality point blank; he had a dinner engagement at the Central, Tynecastle. Jenny flinched; but she persevered. Then Joe took one calm and competent look at Jenny, up and down, like that, and Jenny saw that it was no go now—no go at all. The gladness went right out of her eye, the coquettishness vanished and she sat silent—quivering and envious.

Yet she was all ears, and, hanging on every word of Joe’s account of himself, she could not help comparing the two men and what they had achieved: the glittering success of Joe, and the dismal failure of David.

Joe spoke very openly—there was always a magnificent frankness about Joe. It was clear he had regarded the end of the war as premature—it hadn’t been such a bad old war after all. Yet things were looking great even now. Pulling out his gold cigarette case Joe lit up, breathed a Turkish aroma down his nostrils, then, leaning forward, tapped David confidentially on the knee.

“You knew we’d bought out Millington at the foundry—Jim Mawson and me. God, I’m sorry for poor Stanley. He’s living down at Bournemouth for good now, him and the wife, he couldn’t get out Platt Lane quick enough. A nice chap, mind you, but no stability at all. He’s a wreck, they tell me, a nervous wreck. Oh well, maybe it was the best thing that could happen to him, us taking the works off his hands; he got a price too, oh yes, he got a price.” Joe paused, inhaled cigarette smoke and smiled guilelessly at David. His bragging had acquired subtlety now, he covered it with a bland indifference. “You knew we’d got the order for the new Neptune equipment? What? Yes, sure enough, we turned over again the minute the war went west. While all the mugs sat on their dumps of whizz-bang castings and wondered what was happenin’ we got back to tools and shackle bolts and roofing-bars and haulage. You see,” Joe became more confidential, more expansive than ever, “while the war was on it was all production at the collieries; not a red one
of them had time to recondition their plant, even supposin’ they could get the equipment—an’ they couldn’t. Now Jim and me figured it out they’d be yellin’ for stuff when peace came on, and there wouldn’t be nobody to answer the yell, except maybe the early birds like Jim and me.” Joe sighed gently. “Well, that’s how we got the Neptune order. Ah-ha, fifty thousands pounds of stuff we’ll sell them at the Neptune before the year’s out.”

The tremendous, the almost fabulous sum, fifty thousand pounds, resounded in the small room filled with pinchbeck furniture and the smoke of Joe’s Turkish cigarette and almost burst poor Jenny’s eardrums. To think that Joe was handling such colossal business! She shrank down into her seat, consumed with envy.

Joe saw the effect he was creating, the famished stare in Jenny’s eyes, the cold hostility in David’s, and it all went a little to his head. With patronising fluency he ran on.

“Mind you, although we’re busy at the works—Mawson and Gowlan I ought to say, it’s a good name, don’t you think?—Excuse me, I can’t help being a bit struck on the firm. Well, as I was sayin’, Jim and me has all sorts of side lines. Take this, for instance. You’ve heard of the Disposals Board. No?” Joe shook his head regretfully. “Well, you surely ought to have heard of that. You might have made a bit of money if you’d heard of that, although, mind you, there’s got to be capital behind you to do anything. You see the Government, more power to them, has bought and ordered and commandeered a whole pack of things they don’t need now, everything from gum elastic boots to a fleet of merchant ships. An’ seein’ the Government don’t need these things naturally the Government wants to be rid of them!” Joe, loyal subject of the Crown, lolled back in his chair, permitting himself a gentle grin at his manner of helping the Government, in his own small way, to be rid of them. “You see that little car of mine outside?”

“Oh yes, Joe,” Jenny gulped. “It’s a beauty.”

“Not so bad, not so bad,” Joe admitted. “Just a month old. You might like to know how it happened.” He paused, his small brown eyes glistening. “Six weeks ago Jim and myself went up to look at some Government stuff beyond Morpeth. In a timber plantation we come across a couple of traction engines what they’d used to drive the saw-mills and forgot about in their hurry. The engines were standing there among the rotten timber logs, covered with rust and nettles
up to their fly-wheels. To look at them, ordinary like, the engines was junk, but to look at them prop’ly they was goers, good as new and worth a couple of thousand apiece.” Joe paused blandly. “Well, Jim and me submitted a junk price and got away with it. We had the engines drove down to Tynecastle under their own power, cleaned and painted and sold handsome. We split even on the profit—and the little bus outside”—Joe waved his hand to the window—“is the result!”

Silence. Then, wrenched from Jenny’s pale lips, a gasp of unwilling admiration. That wonderful,
wonderful
car shining outside there: bought and paid for and
made
by a single stroke of business. Such cleverness! Oh, it was too much, too much for her to endure.

Joe left it at that. Joe knew when he had put it over all right. He switched his eye towards the cheap blue enamel clock on the mantelpiece and with an exclamation he corroborated the time upon his thin gold watch. He jumped up. “Good God! It’s time I was on my way. I’ll be late for Jim if I don’t look out. Sorry to have to leave so soon, but I’m due at the Central seven o’clock!”

He shook hands and made for the door, voluble and genial, laughing and talking, full of gusto, good-nature and himself! The door banged, the car purred, he was off!

David looked at Jenny with that faint ironic smile upon his lips:

“That was Joe,” he said.

Jenny gazed back at him wickedly.

“I know it was Joe,” she flared sullenly. “What are you talking about?”

“Oh, nothing, Jenny. But now that he’s gone it’s just struck me that he still owes me three pounds!”

A perfect demon of temper rose in Jenny’s breast, urged and goaded by envy and the knowledge that Joe had so positively finished with her for good. Her lip curled.

“Three pounds,” she sneered. “That’s what Joe would fling to a waiter. He’s worth a fortune, Joe is, he could buy and sell you a thousand times. He’s a man, Joe is. He can do things, get out and make some money. Why don’t you take a lesson from him? Look at his car, and his clothes, and his jewellery and the cigarettes he smokes. Look at him, I tell you, and think shame of yourself.” Her voice rose to a scream. “Joe’s the sort of man who would give his wife a good time, take her to restaurants and dances and places,
he’d give her society and refinement and that. Take a look at him, I say, and then look at yourself. You’re not fit to lick Joe’s boots, you aren’t. You’re not a man at all. You’re a washout, that’s what you are, that’s what Joe’s thinkin’ about you now. As he’s driving away in his lovely big car, Joe’s lying back and laughing at you. He’s laughing himself silly at you. Washout, he’s saying, washout, washout, washout!”

Her voice shrilled and cracked, there was a spume of mucus on her lips and hatred in her eyes.

He stood with clenched hands facing her. With a great effort he controlled himself, realising that the only way to get her out of the paroxysm was to leave her alone. He turned. He went out of the room and into the kitchen.

Jenny remained in the parlour, her breath coming in quick hot gasps. She stifled an impulse to follow David into the kitchen and have it out with him; she saved the taunts and all the wounding insults that still lay on her tongue. She knew a better way than that. She swallowed dryly. The scent of the expensive cigarette smoke still lingering in the air maddened her beyond endurance. She rushed from the room, put on her hat and went out.

It was late when she came home. Nearly eleven o’clock. But David had not gone to bed. He sat by the deal table in the kitchen immersed in a first copy of the new Coal Industry Commission Act which had just come into law. As she came into the kitchen he raised his eyes. She stood in the doorway, hat slightly atilt, eyes glassy, cheeks shot with tiny threads of blood. She was hopelessly drunk.

“Hello,” she sneered. “Still busy makin’ money?” Her words were all slurred together, but the expression on her face was unmistakable. He jumped up in horror: he had never seen her drunk before.

“Lemme alone,” she struck at him and nearly fell. “I don’t wan’ you playin’ ’bout me. Keep y’r han’s ’way. You don’t deserve nothin’ like that!”

His soul sickened within him.

“Jenny!” he implored.

“Shenny!” she mimicked, making a drunken face at him. She wavered towards him, placed her arms drunkenly akimbo. “Y’re a fine fellow, makin’ me waste th’ bes’ of my life here. I had plenty o’ fun in th’ war when y’were ’way. I wan’a have plen’y fun
now
!”

“Please, Jenny,” he begged her, frozen with pain. “You’d better lie down.”

“I won’ lie down!” she cackled. “I won’ lie down f’r you…”

Watching her, he thought suddenly of the child she had borne him, and the pain of her present degradation became unsupportable.

“For God’s sake, Jenny, pull yourself together. Even if I don’t mean anything to you now, think of our child, think of Robert. I haven’t talked about it. I don’t want to hurt you. But doesn’t his memory mean anything at all?”

She burst out laughing, she laughed and laughed drunkenly, until the saliva drooled from her mouth.

“I’ve been meanin’ to tell you ’bout that,” she jeered. “Meanin’ for long time.
Our
chil’. Y’ flatter yourself, m’lord. How d’you know he was yours?”

Uncomprehending, he looked at her with disgust upon his face. It maddened her.

“You fool,” she shrieked suddenly. “It was Joe’s!”

He understood. He went dead white. He caught her fiercely by the shoulder and pinned her against the lintel of the door.