by A. J. Cronin
“You’ll get to know my style,” grunted Heddon. “Here have a look at this.”
With a show of indifference, he opened a drawer and tossed over a newspaper to David—a labour paper—The Weekly Worker—some years old. On one of the yellowish sheets, bearing the indefinable staleness of treasured print, an article was marked in blue pencil.
“That’s me,” Heddon said. “Go on, read it. I wrote the bloddy thing.”
While Heddon pretended not to watch him, David read the article. It was headed Courts and Courts, and it had a certain savage pungency. It contrasted the court held in Buckingham Palace with another court—Bloggs Court—which the writer knew. The wording was clumsy and brutal but the contrasts were violently effective. “Young Lady de Fallington wore a dress of white satin and a train embroidered with sequins. A string of priceless pearls adorned her patrician neck and her feathers were held in place by a band of diamanté”; and immediately below: “Old Mrs. Slaney is a charwoman. She wears no feathers but a bit of old sacking shaped like a skirt. She lives in one room in Bloggs Buildings, earns twelve shillings a week and has consumption.”
David read the article through, carried away despite himself by its earnestness and vigour. The article epitomised Heddon, sincere, fanatical, imbued with a savage class hatred.
“It’s good,” David said at length and he meant it.
Heddon smiled, touched in his weakest spot, acknowledging David as a friend. He took back the article and replaced it carefully in a drawer. He said:
“That shows what I think of them. I hate them, the whole bloddy lot. I’ve got my knife in a few of them round about here. I make them dance to my tune all right. Take your bloddy Sleescale, for instance. We’re going to have a bit of fun down there, one of these days soon.”
David looked interested.
“Ay,” Heddon said grimly, “you just watch what I’m telling you. Old Barras has got knocked out and the son thinks he’s goin’ to run the show. He’s spreading hisself on pithead baths and the usual hygienic eyewash, spending some of the money his old man bled out the men, dodging the excess profits, see, an’ the super tax, makin’ us believe a bloddy new Jerusalem is rising out of the Neptune. But you wait, just you wait, we haven’t forgotten what they done to us at the disaster. They got out of that too easy. I been waiting on the war to finish so as I could get after them. They’re goin’ to sit up and know some more about it before I’m bloddy well finished with them!” Heddon broke off suddenly, staring in front of him. For a minute he looked hard and dark and grim. Then he relit his pipe which had gone out, pulled a tray of unanswered correspondence towards him. “Start Monday, then,” he said to David, terminating the interview with a dreadful jocosity. “Go on! Don’t keep your Rolls waiting outside any longer or the footman will be handing in his bloddy notice.”
David caught the next train for Sleescale and in the train he turned over his plans deeply and seriously in his mind. The first step in the course he had mapped out for himself had been taken. It was not a thrilling step, but an obscure and very humble rebeginning. It had nothing to commend it except its necessity—not the necessity of money, but the necessity of purpose. His purpose lay clearly defined before him; he had made up his mind that there must be no half measures; it was all or nothing now.
He found Jenny in the middle of re-opening the house, taken out of herself by the novelty of the occasion, intermingling little thrills of discovery with little ejaculations of dismay.
“Look, David, I’d forgotten all about these lovely china candlesticks.” Then: “Oh, goodness! will you look at the way the cake stand has peeled and after the way the young man swore to me it was pure nickel-plated,” and “I am a house-proud little wife, amn’t I, David dear?”
David took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves and began to move furniture. Then he took bath brick and paraffin and went down on his knees and had it out with the rusty grate. He did a bit of quiet floor scrubbing, and afterwards weeded the overgrown little patch Jenny had once sweetly promised would be a garden. He helped in this way until three o’clock when they had a scratch meal. Then he had a wash, tidied himself up and went out.
It was very wonderful to be back in his own town again with the filth and misery and horror of the war behind him. He walked slowly down Lamb Street, feeling the life of Sleescale re-enfold him, seeing the black headstocks above him, above the town and the harbour and the sea. On his way towards the Terraces several of the men stopped him and shook hands with him and congratulated him on getting back safe. Their friendliness warmed David’s heart, encouraged the hope which burned there.
He went first to his mother’s and spent an hour with her. Sammy’s death had left its mark on Martha, and the knowledge of his marriage had affected her most strangely. For Martha ignored Sammy’s marriage; she blotted it completely from her consciousness. The whole town knew of Sammy’s marriage: Annie’s boy was eleven months old now and christened in the name of Samuel Fenwick. But for Martha the marriage was not; she walled herself in against it and hugged the delusion that Sammy had never belonged to anyone but her.
It was five o’clock when David left his mother and went along Inkerman to Harry Ogle’s house. Harry Ogle was the eldest of the Ogle sons, brother of Bob Ogle who lost his life in the disaster, a man of forty-five who had followed and admired Robert Fenwick in his time, a pale wiry man with a curiously husky and ineffectual voice. But though he had no voice Harry had a reputation amongst the men for “a headpiece”; he was Lodge secretary, treasurer of the medical aid and labour member of the Sleescale Town Council.
Harry Ogle was glad to see David and after they had exchanged their news in the little back kitchen David leaned forward intently in his chair.
“Harry! I’ve come to ask you to do something for me. I want you to help me to get nominated for the Council Election next month.”
Harry seldom asked questions and never showed surprise. But now he was silent for a longish time.
“The nomination is easy enough, David, but I’m feared you’d never have a chance. Murchison would be up against you in your ward. He’s been in ten years running.”
“I know! And he goes to one meeting in six.”
David’s reply seemed to amuse Harry.
“Maybe that’s what keeps him in.”
“I want to try, Harry,” David said, something of his old impetuousness breaking through. “There’s no harm in trying.”
Another silence fell.
“Well,” Harry said. “Seeing you’re so set on it… I’ll do what I can.”
David went home that night feeling, deep within himself, that he had taken the second step. He said nothing to Jenny until, ten days later, his nomination was actually secured. Then he told her.
The Council—David standing for the Council! Oh, Jenny was wildly excited, why hadn’t he told her before?—she had thought he was only kidding when he talked that night at Scottswood Road; why, it was wonderful, simply wonderful, David dear!
Delightedly, Jenny flung herself into the campaign. She went canvassing, sewed herself a beautiful “favour,” made “little suggestions”—Clarry had a boy friend in the motor line who might lend them a car, she would herself accompany him round the division in the car, or why shouldn’t the manager of the new Picturedrome be persuaded to “flash something about David on the screen”? In every window of the house she stuck a bill head, VOTE FOR FENWICK, in bright red letters. These bill heads sent Jenny into an ecstasy; she would go out and gaze upon them several times a day.
“Why, David, you’re going to be famous at last!” she declared airily; and she did not understand why this remark made David close his lips unhappily and turn away.
Naturally, she took it for granted that David would get “in,” she visualised in advance little tea parties with the wives of his fellow councillors, she saw herself calling upon Mrs. Ramage at the big new Ramage house on the top of Sluice Dene, she felt vaguely that something would come out of a
ll this for their real advancement. There was no money in the Town Council, really, but it might lead to something, she reasoned brightly. She did not understand. She was physically incapable of understanding the motive behind David’s action.
The day of the election arrived. David, in his heart, was dubious of his prospects. His name was a good name in Sleescale, his father had died in the pit, his brother had died in the war and he himself had served at the front for three years. There was a useful romantic flavour—which he despised—in his returning from the war to stand for the Council. But he was untried and inexperienced, and Murchison had a way of extending credit in his shop about election time, a habit of slipping a box of scented soap or a tin of sardines into the baskets of his customers, which was not good for Murchison’s opponent. On the afternoon of that Saturday, as he walked up the town, David met Annie coming down from New Bethel Street School where the polling was taking place. Annie stopped.
“I’ve just been up voting for you,” she said quite simply. “I made sure I’d get finished up in time.”
A real glow came over David at the way Annie said it, at the thought that she had troubled to go up and vote for him.
“Thanks, Annie.”
They stood opposite each other in silence. Annie never had much to say, no confidences, no rapturous certainty in his success, but he could feel her good wishes coming out towards him. He felt suddenly that he had a great deal to say to her. He wanted to console her about Sammy; to ask about her boy; he had an uncontrollable impulse to speak to her about Robert. But the noisy, crowded street deterred him. Instead, he said:
“I’ll never get in.”
“Well,” she said with her faint smile. “You might and you mightn’t, Davey. And there’s nothing like having a shot at it.” Then, nodding in her own style, she went back home to see to her baby.
It struck David after his meeting with Annie how wisely and encouragingly she had summed up his chances. When the results were declared he had beaten Murchison by a bare forty-seven votes. But he was in.
Jenny, a little dashed at the slenderness of the margin, was nevertheless enchanted that David should be elected.
“Didn’t I tell you!” She began to look forward to the first meeting of the new Council with as much sprightliness as if she were the new member herself.
David had hardly the same gaiety. David, with access to minutes and records and agenda, had been inquiring into the petty turmoil of local politics, discovering the usual brew of social, religious and personal interests, the ubiquitous policy of “you do this for me and I’ll do that for you.” Ramage, of course, was the dominant factor. Ramage had run the Council for the last four years. From the start David saw clearly that Ramage was the man he would be up against.
On the evening of November 2nd the new Council met: Ramage in the chair. The others were Harry Ogle, David, the Rev. Enoch Low of Bethel Street Chapel, Strother, head master of the school, Bates the draper, Connolly of the Gas Company and Rutter the clerk. At the start an exchange of bluff greetings took place in the ante-room between Ramage, Bates and Connolly; there was loud laughter and back slapping and jovial small-talk, while the Rev. Low, just out of earshot of the lewder jokes, was deferential to Connolly and obsequious to Ramage. No one took any notice of David and Harry Ogle. But as they moved into the council chamber Ramage gave David one cold look.
“I’m sorry our old friend Murchison isn’t with us,” he remarked in his loud blustering voice. “It don’t seem proper like with a stranger here.”
“Don’t worry, lad,” Harry whispered to David, “you’ll soon get used to his line of gab.”
They sat down and Rutter began to read the minutes of the last meeting of the old Council. He read quickly in a dry, sing-song, uninterested voice, then almost without stopping and in the same voice he announced:
“The first business is the passing of the meat and clothing contracts. I suppose, gentlemen, you wish to regard them as passed.”
“That’s right,” yawned Ramage. He sat back in his chair at the head of the table, his big red face directed towards the ceiling, his hands belted round his enormous paunch.
“Ay, they’re passed,” Bates agreed, twiddling his thumbs and staring hard at the table.
“Passed, gentlemen,” said Rutter and he reached for the minute book.
David interposed quietly.
“Just a minute, please!”
There was a silence, a very odd silence.
“I haven’t seen these contracts,” David remarked in a perfectly calm and reasonable voice.
“You don’t have to see them,” Ramage sneered. “They’re passed by a majority.”
“Oh!” exclaimed David in a tone of surprise. “I wasn’t aware that we had voted.”
Rutter the clerk had turned solemn and uncomfortable, examining the nib of his pen, as if it had made a most surprising blot. He realised that David was looking at him and he had at last to meet that inquiring eye.
“May I see the contracts?” David asked. He knew all about the contracts; he wished merely to delay the entry in the minute book. These contracts were a long-standing scandal in Sleescale. The clothing contract was not important: it related to the supplying of uniforms to the sanitary inspector, health visitor and sundry local officials, and though Bates the draper took a scandalous profit on the transaction the amount involved was not material. But the meat contract was different. The meat contract, which gave Ramage the contract to supply all meat for the local hospital, was an iniquity in the face of God and man. The prices charged were for the best meat: Ramage supplied shin, neck and buff.
David took the meat contract from Rutter’s nervous fingers. David examined the meat contract: the amount was large, the total came to £300. Deliberately he protracted his examination of the blue-grey document, holding up the meeting, feeling their eyes upon him.
“Is this a competitive contract?” he inquired at length.
Unable to hold himself in any longer Ramage leaned forward across the table, his red face malignant with indignation and rage.
“I’ve had that contract for over fifteen years. Have ye any objections?”
David looked across at Ramage: it had come, the first moment, the first test. He felt composed, master of himself. He said coolly:
“I imagine there are a number of people who object.”
“The hell you do!” Ramage flared.
“Mr. Ramage, Mr. Ramage,” bleated the Rev. Low sympathetically. In and out of the Council Low always toadied to Ramage, his pet parishioner, the man who had laid the foundation-stone of the Bethel Street Chapel, the golden calf amongst his thin-fleeced flock. And now he turned to David, peevishly reproving.
“You are new here, Mr.—er—Fenwick. You are a little over-zealous perhaps. You forget that these contracts are advertised for.”
David answered:
“One quarter of an inch stuffed away in the local paper. An advertisement that nobody ever sees.”
“Why should they see it?” Ramage bawled from the end of the table. “And why the hell should you go shovin’ in your neck? The contract’s been mine for fifteen year now. And nobody’s never said a blasted word.”
“Except the people who eat your rotten meat,” David said in a level voice.
There was a dead silence. Harry Ogle darted an alarmed glance at David. Rutter the clerk was pale with fright. Ramage, bloated with fury, thumped his big fist on the table.
“That’s slander,” he shouted. “There’s a law against that sort of thing. Bates, Rutter, you’re all witnesses—he’s slandered me!”
Rutter lifted his meek face protestingly. The Rev. Low prepared to bleat. But Ramage bawled again:
“He’s got to take it back, he’s got to bloody well take it back.”
Rutter said:
“I must ask you to withdraw, Mr. Fenwick.”
A strange ardour suffused David. Without removing his eyes from Ramage’s face he felt in his inside pocket and p
ulled out a packet of papers. He said:
“I need not withdraw if I can prove my statement. I have taken the trouble to collect my evidence. I have here signed statements from fifteen patients in the Cottage Hospital, from the three nurses and from the matron herself. These are the people who eat your meat, Mr. Ramage, and in the words of the matron it isn’t fit for a dog. Let me read them to you, gentlemen. Mr. Ramage may regard them in the light of testimonials.”
In a mortal stillness David read out the testimonials to Ramage’s meat. Tough, full of gristle and sometimes tainted: these were the recommendations of the meat. Jane Lowry, one of the ward maids in the hospital, testified that she had suffered severe colic after eating a piece of rank mutton. Nurse Gibbings at the hospital had contracted an internal parasite which could only have come from polluted meat.
The air was petrified when David finished. As he folded his papers calmly, he could see Harry Ogle beside him, his face working with a grim delight, Ramage opposite, apoplectic with hate and fury.
“It’s a pack of lies,” Ramage stuttered at last. “The meat I supply is prime.”
Ogle spoke up for the first time.
“Then God help prime meat,” he growled.
The Rev. Low raised a pearly, propitiating hand. He bleated:
“Perhaps some bad pieces, once in a while; we can never be sure.”
Harry Ogle muttered:
“Fifteen years it’s been going on—that’s your blessed once in a while.”
Connolly thrust his hands in his pockets impatiently.
“What a song about nothing! Take a vote.” He knew the way to settle the thing for good and all. He repeated loudly: “Vote on it.”
“They’ll beat you, David,” said Harry Ogle in a feverish undertone. Bates, Connolly, Ramage and Low always hung together in their mutual self-interests.
David turned to the Rev. Low.
“I appeal to you as a minister of the gospel. Do you want these sick people in the hospital to go on eating inferior meat?”
The Rev. Low flushed weakly and a look of obstinacy came in his face.
