The Stars Look Down

by A. J. Cronin

  “Wits! he exclaimed. “You haven’t any!”

  “That’s the spirit,” she said enthusiastically. “I knew you wouldn’t misunderstand me.”

  He stood with his hands in his pockets and his back to the fire watching her.

  “I’m going to have my supper. Cocoa and biscuits. Will you have some?”

  “I will,” she agreed. “Do you make the cocoa in the frying-pan?”

  “All square,” he admitted; and went into the kitchen.

  While he was in the kitchen she heard him coughing and when he came back she said:

  “What’s that cough?”

  “Smoker’s cough. Plus a little German gas.”

  “You ought to have it seen to.”

  “I thought you said you were a surgeon.”

  They had cocoa and biscuits. They talked and they argued. She told him of her work, of the operating theatre, the women who came under her knife. In a sense he envied her; this real outlet, a tangible succouring of suffering humanity.

  But here she smiled:

  “I’m no humanitarian. It’s all technique. Applied mathematics. Cold and deliberate.” She added: “All the same it has made me human.”

  “That’s a debatable point,” he said. And they went at it again. Then they talked of his coming speech. She was interested and excited. He outlined his scheme on which she violently disagreed. It was all very pleasant and like old times.

  Ten o’clock came. And she rose to go.

  “You must come and see me,” she said. “I make much better cocoa than you.”

  “I will,” he said. “But you don’t.”

  In her walk back to Chelsea, Hilda reflected with an inward glow that the evening had been a success. It had taken a strong effort of will on her part to make the visit. She had been afraid, knowing that it was a visit liable to be misunderstood. But David had not misunderstood. He was much too wise, altogether too sensible. Hilda was pleased. Hilda was a fine surgeon. But she was not very strong on psychology.

  On the night of his speech she bought a late paper eagerly. It was noticed, and noticed favourably. The morning papers were more favourable still. The Daily Herald gave it a column and a half, even The Times referred in gracious terms to the sincere and moving eloquence of the new member for Sleescale.

  Hilda was delighted. She thought, I will, I must ring him up. Before Hilda went into the wards she rang up David and congratulated him warmly. She came away from the telephone satisfied. Perhaps she had been a little too glowing. But the speech had been wonderful. And naturally, it was the speech which concerned her!

  ELEVEN

  Arthur stood at the window of the office of the Neptune, staring out at the men who filled the pit yard, reminded painfully of the lock-out he had experienced in 1921, the first of a series of industrial disputes into which he had been dragged, all leading towards and culminating in the General Strike of 1926. He passed his hand across his brow, anxious to forget the whole senseless conflict. Sufficient that it was over, the strike broken and the men back, filling the pit yard, pressing forward, pressing and pressing towards the timekeeper’s shed. They did not ask for work. They clamoured for work. It was written upon their silent faces. Work! Work! At any price! To look upon these silent faces was to see how glorious had been the victory for the mine owners. The men were not beaten, they were crushed; in their eyes was the panic fear of a winter of starvation. Any conditions, any terms, but work, work at any price! They pressed forward, elbowing and struggling towards the timekeeper’s shed where Hudspeth stood with old Pettit, behind the bar, checking and entering the sheet.

  Arthur’s eyes remained bound to the scene. As each man came forward Hudspeth scrutinised him, weighed him up, looked at Pettit and nodded. If he nodded it was all right, the man got work and the man took his check and walked past the bar like a soul admitted into heaven past the judgment seat. The look upon the silent faces of the men who were admitted was strange: a sudden lightening, a great spasm of relief, of thanksgiving almost unbelievable at being readmitted to the black underworld of the Paradise. But not all the men were admitted, oh no, there was not work for all the men. With a six-hour shift there would have been work for all the men, but there had been a glorious victory for the forces of Law and Order, directed by an exultant, pro-Strike Cabinet, and backed by the British people, so the shift was an eight-hour shift. Never mind, though, never mind, don’t bother about that now, any terms, any conditions, only give us work, for God’s sake work!

  Arthur tried to tear himself away from the window but he could not. The faces of the men held him, the face of one man in particular fascinated him. It was Pug Macer. Arthur knew Pug perfectly well; he knew Pug was an indifferent workman who kept bad time, was absent on Monday mornings, who drank. And Arthur saw that Pug knew this too. The recognition of his own unworthiness was written upon Pug’s face alongside his desire to get work, and the conflict of these two emotions made an uncertainty, a suspense that was horrible to watch. It gave Pug Macer the look of a dog grovelling for a bone.

  Arthur waited, hypnotised. It came near Pug’s turn. Four of the men in front of Pug were taken on, and every man taken lessened Pug’s chances of being taken—that was reflected in Pug’s face too. Then Pug came before the bar, panting a little from the crush, and from the struggle between his eagerness and fear.

  Hudspeth took one look at Pug, one short look, then he looked away. He did not nod, he did not trouble, even, to turn to Pettit, he simply looked away. Pug was not wanted. He was out. Arthur saw Pug’s lips moving, he could hear nothing, but he saw Pug’s lips moving and moving in a kind of desperate entreaty. No use. Pug was out, one of the four hundred who were out. The expression on Pug’s face, on these four hundred faces, drove Arthur frantic. He turned abruptly, wrenched himself away from the window; he wanted to keep these four hundred in work at his pit and he could not. He could not, damn it, he could not. He stared at the calendar which showed the day to be October 15th, 1926. He went up to the calendar and tore off the slip violently. His nerves demanded some outlet. He wanted the day to be over.

  Beyond the gates, Pug Macer walked away from the pit yard, down Cowpen Street; he shuffled rather than walked, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground, his shoulders drooping slightly, feeling the eyes of the women on him, watching him from the doorways of the Terraces—one of the four hundred, not wanted, out.

  He turned down the Scut, into Quay Street, and home.

  “Where’s Annie?” he asked, on the threshold of the bare, stone-flagged room.

  “Out,” his father answered from the kitchen bed. Old Macer was quite bedridden now, crippled by rheumatoid arthritis, and since he had always been an active man, his inability even to get up made him difficult and querulous. His complaint gave him constant pain in his back which made him believe he had kidney disease. He swore it was his kidneys and he scraped and saved up everything he could and spent it all on Dr. Poupart’s Kidney-pills, a proprietary nostrum manufactured in Whitechapel by a plutocrat named Lorberg at the cost of a penny farthing per box, retailed at three and six, and composed entirely of soap, bad sugar and methylene blue. The pills made old Macer’s water blue, and since the advertisement thoughtfully explained that the blueness was due to the impurities coming away, old Macer was very pleased. He felt he would be perfectly well if only he could get the impurities out of his kidneys. The trouble was that old Macer could not get enough of the pills. As the advertisement further explained the pills were expensive to make, the ingredients consisting of expensive Indian herbs gathered on the slopes of the Himalayas at the season of Karma Shalia from a recipe given to the late Dr. Poupart by an Indian sage.

  Old Macer had no pills now and he looked across at Pug querulously, a little anxiously.

  “What way hev ye not gan te the pit?”

  “Because I haven’t,” Pug said sullenly.

  “Ye man go te work, Pug, lad.”

  “Oh, man I?” Pug gritted out. “
I’m goin’ a bloody yacht cruise te Spain.”

  Old Macer’s head began to shake.

  “Ye canna stop off work on yer old fethur, Pug.”

  Pug did not speak, he stood burning, helpless, sick.

  “Aw hev no pills, Pug, aw’ve got te hev my pills.”

  “To hell with your pills,” Pug said and he flung himself into a chair and there he sat with his greasy cap on his head and his hands in his pockets staring at the spark of life in the big grate.

  Annie had been out taking back some sewing she had done for Mrs. Proctor and at the same time seeing Sammy up the road to the school. She was soon back.

  She saw Pug brooding in the chair the instant she came in the door and she knew. The old familiar pang of worry stabbed at her. But she said nothing. She took off her hat and coat and began to clear the dishes from the table and to wash them.

  Pug spoke first.

  “I’m out, Annie,” he said.

  “Well, we’ll manage, Pug,” Annie said, going on with the dishes.

  But the ignominy of his dismissal was rankling deep in Pug, hurting him.

  “I’m not gud enough for them,” he said, speaking with his teeth together. “Not gud enough, see! Me that can do two men’s work when I’m put to it.”

  “I know, Pug,” Annie said consolingly. Her fondness for Pug made her feel his hurt. “Don’t you trouble, lad.”

  “They want to see me on the dole,” Pug snarled. “Me that wants to work. The dole.”

  Silence. Old Macer in the bed, following the conversation in a sweat of self-pity, glancing from one to the other with a startled eye, now broke out:

  “You’ll need te write te Davey Fenwick, Annie. Ye’ll need to let him help ye now.”

  “We’ll manage, father,” Annie said. She would never take money from David, never. “We always have managed.”

  Annie’s idea was to get more work herself. And when she had finished her housework that morning, she went out to see what she could get. Housework was what she wanted, to go out as a daily, but housework, even plain charing, was difficult to come by. She tried at Dr. Scott’s, at Mrs. Armstrong’s. She even pocketed the last of her pride and tried with Mrs. Ramage. She was not successful. She got the promise of more sewing from Mrs. Proctor, and Mrs. Low, the wife of the New Bethel Street minister, grudgingly bespoke her to come for a day’s washing on Monday. That, at least, made sure of half-a-crown though Mrs. Low always paid with an air of dispensing charity. But try as she might Annie got no more work than that. She tried the next day and the day after with the same result. Work was at a discount in Sleescale; and Annie had nothing else to sell.

  Meanwhile Pug went up to see about his dole. He did not want to go on the dole but when his rankling sense of injustice became dulled he walked up to the Labour Exchange to apply for the dole. In Sleescale among the lads the Labour Exchange was known as the Buroo. Outside the Buroo a long queue stood waiting. There was no struggling or crushing in this queue like there had been at the pit and no hurry at all; everyone waited. It was an understood thing that one had to wait to get the dole. Pug silently took his place at the end of the queue beside Len Woods and Slattery and Cha Leeming. He did not speak to any of them, nor they to him. It was raining now, not raining heavily which would have given them something to curse, but raining softly, a fine, wet rain. Pug turned up the collar of his jacket and stood. He did not think. He waited.

  Five minutes later Jack Reedy came along. Jack did not immediately take up his place. He was in this respect different from the others; he walked up and down the line as though the line infuriated him. Then he went up to the head of the line, slowly buttoned up his jacket, and began to harangue the men. Jack was the brother of Tom and Pat Reedy, both killed in the disaster. Once a fine, well-set lad, Jack was now shrunken by hatred and misfortune, a thin, hollow-chested man with extreme and bitter views. There had been the disaster, first, then Jack—in a mood to fight anybody—had fought in the war and been shot through the thigh at Passchendaele. He was lame as the result of the wound. Hudspeth had just refused to take him back at the Neptune.

  Pug lifted his head and listened dully to what Jack was saying, though he knew beforehand what it would be.

  “That’s what we was, lads, when they wanted us to fight,” Jack was saying and there was mutiny in his black, embittered voice, mutiny against life, destiny and the system which had brought him to this. “We was the nation’s f—heroes, and what are we now? Shiftless lazy scum. That’s what they call us now. Now lissen, lads, till I put it to ye plain. Who made the bloody aeroplanes and the battleships and the guns and the blasted shells? Labour! Who fired the blasted shells out the blasted guns in the blasted war? Labour! And what has labour got out of it? This what we’ve got, lads. This! The chance to stand in the blasted rain with our hands held out for charity. We was told to fight for England—our own beloved soil. Christ! we fought for it, diddent we? And we’ve f—well got it. We’re standin’ in it now. And what is it? Muck! Plain muck! But ye cannot eat muck, lads. Muck won’t keep your wife and kids.” Jack paused, pale as bone, and drew the back of his hand across his lips. He went on, his voice rising, his face contorted as with pain. “When you and me was fightin’ and workin’ during the blasted war there was millions of pounds of profits come out the pits. It’s down in black and white, lads. A hundred and forty million pounds of profits. That’s what tided the owners bye the strike. Why wassent they used to tide us bye? Now, lissen, lads—” A hand fell on Jack’s shoulder. Jack stopped dead, remained quite motionless, then slowly looked round.

  “We can’t have none of that,” Roddam said. “Get back in the queue there and shut your gob.”

  Roddam was the station sergeant now, fat, important and fifty.

  “Let me be,” Jack said in a low, poisonous voice, his eyes glittering in his bone-white face. “I fought in the f—war, I did. I’m not used to bein’ handled by the likes of you.”

  The queue was alive with interest now, much greater interest than had been displayed in Jack’s speech.

  Roddam reddened violently.

  “You shut your gob, Reedy, or I’ll run you to the station.”

  “I’ve as much right to talk as you,” said Jack sullenly.

  “Go back in the queue,” Roddam blustered, pushing Jack down the line. “Back to the end there. Go on, back you go!”

  “I don’t have to go to the end,” Jack cried, resisting, jerking his head. “That’s my place there, beside Pug Macer.”

  “Go back where I tell you,” Roddam ordered. “Right back to the hin’ end.” And he gave Jack a final push.

  Jack turned, his chest heaving, his gaze fastened on Roddam as though he could have killed him. Then all at once his eyes fell, he seemed to gather himself up, to save himself for a future occasion. He limped quietly back to the end of the queue. A sigh went up from the watching men, a quiet sigh of disappointment. Their bodies relaxed, their attention wandered back to their own miseries. Roddam walked up and down the line officiously, rather grandly, in his big oilskin cape with the fine buckle and chain. The men stood and waited. The rain fell softly.

  Sometimes it was dry when they waited for the dole. But it was a bad winter and mostly the rain fell—often it fell heavily. Once or twice it snowed. But they were always there, they had to be there, they waited. And Pug waited with the rest. Sammy did not like Pug being on the dole. As he came back from school he always went past the queue looking the other way, pretending not to see Pug, and Pug, who had his own humiliation from Sammy’s passing, never attempted to recognise him either. The matter was not raised between Pug and Sammy but Sammy felt it deeply nevertheless. And in all sorts of other ways besides. For instance, Pug couldn’t give him any cigarette cards now, and he missed the Saturday penny that Pug used to slip him on the sly. And worst of all he didn’t ever get taken to the Sleescale football matches by Pug, though the unemployed got in for threepence now—yes, that was perhaps the worst of all.

&nbs
p; Well, in a way, hardly the worst. The food kept getting plainer and plainer at home and sometimes there wasn’t as much of it as Sammy would have liked. During the big stoppage it had been summer time and you didn’t feel half so hungry in the summer. But the winter was different. Once when Pug broke out and had a blind on his dole money there hadn’t been a bit of cake in the house the whole blessed week. And his mother made such champion cake. All that week it had been porridge and soup, and soup and porridge—his grandad had made a regular fuss. If it hadn’t been for his mother going out washing and mending they wouldn’t have had anything at all. Sammy wished that he were a little older. He would be working then, helping his mother. In spite of the depression Sammy was confident he could get a job; they always wanted boys for trappers at the Neptune.

  Week after week Sammy saw Pug standing in that dole queue and pretended not to see him and the queue got longer every week. It preyed so much on Sammy that he took to running past the queue. Whenever he came near the Buroo he would discover something of immense interest at the foot of New Bethel Street, right down there at the very foot, and, with his eyes glued forwards, he would go clattering down towards it. Of course, when he got to the foot of New Bethel Street there wasn’t anything there after all.

  However, on the last Friday afternoon of January, when the queue was longer and later than ever, and Sammy went clattering down to the foot of the street, something did occur at last. Tearing down New Bethel Street, and round the corner of Lamb Street, Sammy ran straight into his grandmother Martha.

  Sammy got the worst of the collision; he slid on the steel toe-caps of his boots, wobbled, stumbled and fell. He wasn’t hurt, but scared to think of what he had done. Awkwardly, he picked himself up and gathered up his cap and his school books and prepared with a very red face to go on. Then he discovered that Martha was looking at him. She was Martha Fenwick, his grandmother, he knew that well. But she had never looked at him before; she had always walked by him in the street the way he walked by Pug in the queue, not seeing him; he might not have existed at all.