The Stars Look Down

by A. J. Cronin

  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.

  “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, the
n, 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.

  “Damn it all,” turning to Joe, “I’ve forgotten my counterfoils.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Take the car like a good chap and run up to Hilltop for them. Ask Laura, Mrs. Millington I mean, or ask one of the maids for the long envelope I left in the breakfast-room—on the table, I think, or perhaps it was in the hall. Go on, quick, now, before Dodds gets away.”

  Joe hastened to comply. He went out of the office and into the yard where Millington’s car stood drawn up with the engine still running. He explained the matter to Dodds and in a minute they were on their way to Hilltop.

  The morning was cold and fine with a crisp exhilaration in the air. Joe sat beside Dodds in the front seat and the wind of the car’s passage whipped a fine colour into his cheek. He had a swelling sensation of his own fitness, of his rising importance in the world. When the car reached Hilltop, about two miles from the works, and ran into the semicircular drive of Millington’s house, a large modem villa with an outlook towards the golf-course, he jumped out, ran up the front steps and pressed the bell.

  A neat maid let him in. He smiled in a brotherly fashion to the maid—Joe never neglected anybody.

  “I’m from the works,” he announced, “to see Mrs. Millington.”

  The maid showed him into the lounge where he stood up by a fine coal fire and waited carefully. Though the chairs were deep and looked easy to sit in, Joe felt that it would be safer for him to stand. He liked the lounge, it was comfortable and different, there was a single picture on one of the walls and no more. But it was, reflected Joe, a classy bit of work. And he had enough knowledge to understand that the furniture was antique.

  Then Laura entered. She descended the stairs slowly looking cool and trim in a dove-grey dress with white cuffs and collar. With an air of complete detachment, she gave him a rapid, impersonal glance and said:

  “Yes?”

  In spite of his assurance Joe felt intimidated. He stammered:

  “I came for some papers. Mr. Millington left them on the breakfast table.”

  “Oh yes.” She stood half-looking at him with a kind of curiosity and he blushed to the roots of his hair, not knowing what to do, conscious that he was being scrutinised, weighed up and judged. Although he cursed his unusual embarrassment, it stood him in good stead, for suddenly she smiled faintly, the smile of a bored woman responding to a momentary whim.

  “Haven’t I seen you before somewhere?” she asked.

  “I had the pleasure of dancing with you once, Mrs. Millington,” he gabbled. “At the social.”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “I do remember now.”

  He gave a deferential laugh; he was recovering himself.

  “I haven’t forgotten, at any rate, Mrs. Millington. That was something I couldn’t forget.”

  She continued considering him with a certain interest. He really looked extraordinarily handsome standing there in his neat blue suit with that fine colour in his cheeks, his strong white teeth showing in a smile, his curly hair and dark brown eyes.

  “Stanley spoke about you
the other day,” she said reflectively. “You’re doing well.” A pause. “You’re the one the young lady jilted.” She smiled her cool faintly amused smile. “Or was it the other way round?”

  He looked down hurriedly, feeling that she saw through him and was making fun of him.

  “It’s finished with, anyhow,” he blurted out.

  She did not answer for a minute.

  “Well, I’ll get you the papers.” She moved towards the door but on the way out she paused in her impersonal way. “Would you like a drink?”

  “I don’t usually touch it,” he answered. “Not in the morning. I want to get on, you see.”

  As if she had not heard she took the decanter which stood on the top of the walnut cocktail cabinet and mixed him a whisky and soda. Then she went out of the room.

  He was sipping the whisky and soda when she returned. She handed him the papers, remarking:

  “So you want to get on?”

  “Well, naturally, Mrs. Millington,” he answered with eager deference.

  There was a silence while she stared in a bored fashion into the fire. He watched her dumbly. She was not beautiful. She had a very pale face with faint blue shadows under her eyes and the whites of her eyes were not clear. She had ordinary black hair. Her figure was not remarkable. It was quite a good figure but it was not remarkable. Her ankles were not slim and her hips were inclined to be full. But she was extremely smart, not smart in the ordinary sense, but impeccably smart. Her dress was in remarkable taste, her hair and hands beautifully kept. In that same dumb admiration Joe grasped that Laura was a fastidious woman, he could not help thinking how wonderful her underwear must be.

  But he had finished his whisky now and could make no further pretext for delay. He put his glass down upon the mantelpiece and said:

  “Well, I must get back to the works.”

  She did not speak. She looked up from the fire and once again she smiled her cool, faintly ironic smile, held out a cool, firm hand. He shook hands, terribly deferential and polite—his own hands were well kept too—and the next minute he was out of the house.