How Beautiful Are Thy Feet

by Alan Marshall

He smiled bitterly. Purely physical. Very significant these thoughts. Your mind does not hover round her faults. No. It is her body you love. Well, what of it? I love her. Drop your seeking the whys and wherefores. Face the facts. You love her, damn you.

  He suddenly saw the succession of days ahead of him a long line of square, empty cells.

  ‘Two and four,’ he spoke into the receiver. ‘Is that the best you can do? All right. I will let you know the result later.’

  He heard the girl’s voice, its tone slightly changed, ‘It’s cash, you know.’

  ‘I realise that.’

  He hung up and turning, asked, ‘Are you very busy this morning, Miss Trueman?’

  She stopped typing. ‘Not very. Why?’

  ‘I would like some references typed out in a minute. The foremen have been asking me to write them out some.’

  ‘They are not leaving, are they?’

  ‘No, but they all seem to be getting the wind up. They really can’t afford to be out of work, so I am letting those who ask me have their references now. It will give them time to look around.’

  ‘Hand them over when you are ready.’

  ‘I won’t be long.’

  He began writing. ‘To whom it may concern. The bearer, Mr William Clarkson, has been in our employ for a period of ten years. During that time …’

  He stopped writing and looked thoughtfully before him. Clarkson: ‘It’s tragic, Mr McCormack. It is. It’s tragic.’ And so it is, thought the accountant. By God it is!

  Clarkson had rested his cracked hands on the bench. ‘It came as a shock to me, Mr McCormack. You see, I didn’t expect anything like this. I thought the firm was sound. You know that employees’ bank we had two years ago where you left ten bob of your wages back each week? It saved you banking it, and that. Well, I never ever drew mine out. I’ve got fifty quid due to me. The wife and I … You see, it was sort of safe, and that. It was the same as if it was in the bank, like.’

  He had said, ‘Don’t worry, Clarkson. It will be all right.’ He had said, ‘I’ll get it for you, Clarkson.’ He had said, ‘You will be paid, all right.’

  He turned to Miss Trueman. ‘When you are making out the wages on Friday, include an extra twenty pounds and charge it to “Employees’ Bank”. There is an account for it in the private ledger. Do the same next week, too.’

  ‘Have we enough money in the bank this week to meet it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What will I say if Mr Fulsham questions the size of the cheque.’

  ‘I will get the cheque signed before you fill it in.’

  ‘Good-o.’

  He returned to the reference. He wrote three and handed them to Miss Trueman for typing.

  ‘I will sign them as accountant,’ he said.

  When they were complete he put them in envelopes and took them into the factory.

  Mrs Bourke smiled at him as he passed. ‘How is your little boy?’ he asked.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘He is up, now.’

  Davis detained him after thanking him for the reference.

  ‘Coughlan came up to me in a terrible state. It made me feel a bit of a bastard. I bought a lot of leather off him last week. Now he has been hearing things. He thinks we are going out quick. I told him there was nothing in it. What should I have said?’

  ‘It is awkward,’ said the accountant. ‘It seems to be common knowledge. Personally, I think we should tell men like Coughlan, who have stuck to us. You could rely on him to keep his mouth shut. However, Fulsham says not to, so there you are.’

  ‘But everyone knows. Coughlan said that he heard that there was to be a meeting of creditors tomorrow.’

  ‘That is not true.’

  ‘No. I told him.’

  ‘There will be a meeting of shareholders first.’

  ‘Yes. That’s right.’

  ‘Look. If I were you I would ring up Coughlan and tell him to come down and see you. Tell him you will see me and do your best to get him something on account. Be frank with him and tell him to keep his mouth shut. I don’t like this bloody lying and evasion.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  The accountant turned to go.

  ‘How about taking a ticket in “Tatts” with me?’ asked Davis.

  ‘Right,’ said the accountant.

  24

  Each day the accountant waited impatiently for the mail, hoping for large cheques. Miss Trueman shared his impatience. They tossed aside the envelopes with the penny stamps, as these were mostly invoices, and were never sealed. They disregarded those bearing the names of firms from whom they expected letters requesting payment of overdue accounts. They crumpled the circulars and dropped them into the waste-paper basket. It was a process of elimination.

  Finally, their search narrowed to a small but promising heap; they began opening them.

  They were generally disappointed. Customers, outside of their own shops from whom remittances were regular, were in as precarious a position as themselves.

  Clynes sometimes walked in silently and watched them.

  ‘Any money this morning? How are we off for the wages?’

  They treated him like the invoices, the demanding letters.

  He peered across their shoulders hoping to catch a glimpse of revealing letters. Later he would skirmish for confirmation and further details.

  ‘I hear Gerald and Sons have written about their bill. Was it met?’ Or if prevented by the accountant from reading some apparently important communication he would dispense with subterfuge: ‘What was in that note from Coughlans?’

  The accountant was always non-committal and evasive, seeing behind him the listening ears of Correll and the foremen.

  Deliveries were beginning to worry Correll.

  ‘They are holding back on us, brother. They’ve got the wind up.’

  He was often on the phone.

  ‘About those shanks. I ordered them a week ago. You have never let us down like this before.’

  The responsibility of seeing that the factory was not held up for supplies made him nervous and irritable.

  ‘I should have ordered that paste weeks ago. God Almighty! Anyway, what can I do? It’s not my fault. Blast them!’

  And there was the fear of being out of work. At first both Clynes and Correll were optimistic. They began writing letters to managers of boot factories asking for interviews, and both were troubled because of the possibility of two interviews clashing.

  ‘There will be some letters arriving for me during the next few days,’ Correll had said to the accountant. And Clynes: ‘I am expecting a letter any day now.’

  But no letters arrived.

  They stopped writing them and became hopeless and inactive. No one spoke of the crash. Then a fresh rumour that it would be in a few days and a feverish burst of panicky writing with no result.

  Clynes became defiant and truculent, Correll querulous.

  Clynes: ‘They won’t keep me down.’ And Correll: ‘How long do you think we will last now? I’m planting a lot of vegetables. My tomatoes are coming on nicely. I’ve got to live. What do you think about it? I’m a shareholder, and I know nothing.’

  Sour food had suddenly filled his mouth. ‘Beer seems to play up with me these days,’ he had explained apologetically.

  The accountant was standing before his table looking down moodily at an open ledger. Clynes entered. He stood in doubt, then spoke to the accountant. ‘Do you think I should ring up about that job? I expected a letter yesterday but it didn’t come.’

  ‘I think it would be a good idea,’ answered the accountant.

  ‘Do you think I would be losing anything by ringing?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well! They should come to me: not me to them. They think of you then.’

  ‘You will never get anywhere if you don’t swallow your pride sometimes.’

  ‘It’s not pride. It’s sense.’

  The accountant did not reply.

  ‘What will I do?�
�� persisted Clynes plaintively.

  ‘Ring up.’

  He rang. The accountant turned the leaves of his ledger. ‘Well?’ he said, when Clynes had hung up.

  ‘Nothing doing.’ He stood looking at the floor. ‘Jesus!’ he said hopelessly.

  ‘You should make a systematic canvas of all the boot factories listed in the ‘phone book,’ suggested the accountant.

  ‘I have been doing that.’

  ‘Surely it has had some result.’

  ‘One firm has offered me a job after we go out if I can guarantee to bring along our best machinists with me. Good machinists are hard to get. Everybody is after them.’

  ‘Well, why not approach the girls?’

  ‘I have,’ he replied disgustedly. ‘But Davis is after them, too.’ He became resentful. ‘What’s Davis think he’s doing, interfering with other people’s business? He’s always thinking about someone else and never about himself. The girls like him. He is getting sweet with other factories by telling them he will get them girls. Then he goes to the girls and they think he’s a good fellow.’ He gestured, uncomprehending. ‘Why do they take notice of Davis. Can you see why?’

  ‘I suppose they feel he is out for them and not for himself.’

  ‘Some of them have promised to come with me, but the trouble is I have to keep putting them off as the output drops, and I don’t know where they go.’

  A carrier entered bearing a tin of paste.

  ‘Right,’ said Clynes. ‘I’ll take that. I’ve been expecting that.’ He reached out for the tin.

  ‘Hold on,’ said the carrier stepping back. ‘I’ve gotta get cash for this. I wanta be paid first.’

  Clynes turned to the accountant in a sudden rage. ‘How long has this been going on? What do they want cash for? It’s an insult.’

  The accountant rose quickly. He turned on Clynes with quiet menace and said in a hard voice, ‘I will attend to this, thank you.’ He smiled at the carrier. ‘It is all right, Bill. I have a cheque for you.’

  The carrier grinned and handed the paste to the manager. Clynes took it angrily and strode into the factory, muttering.

  The girls’ lavatory is a sanctuary. It has a cloistral dimness and a quietness that is not dependent on the absence of sound. It shuts one off from the eyes of the forewoman and grants a breathing space to aching bodies.

  You can talk in the lavatory. You can relax and spill your grievances for the sympathetic consideration of the girl in the next cubicle. You can laugh at the writings on the wall and add new ones. You can snatch a quick draw, and forget that you are ten pair behind, and have broken three needles in the last half hour.

  It is an oasis in a desert of work.

  The girls collect in the lavatory before the start-work bell rings after lunch. They talk. They laugh (‘Gawd! Read this.’) They are happy. They cannot see the machines and the long benches, or the forewoman pacing up and down the narrow divisions. The strain of ‘keeping sweet’ is gone. Thus they are gayer than at other times. They are more friendly and communicative.

  The lavatory is the extremity of the backward swing of the pendulum. One works and one is suddenly freed from work. Fear sits with you in the factory: Freedom accompanies you to the lavatory. So its brightness is a more than ordinary brightness, its happiness an exaggerated happiness.

  ‘I’m first,’ said Leila laughing and pushing past Sadie.

  The cubicles were occupied.

  ‘Hurry up, Mabel,’ said Leila, looking in to one.

  ‘I won’t be long,’ said Mabel.

  ‘Hurry, then. The bell will go in a minute.’

  Mabel walked out. ‘Where’s your compact, Leila,’ she asked. ‘I’ve run out of powder. I feel half naked.’

  ‘Behind my coat in the corner,’ replied Leila, pointing.

  ‘You’re getting a spare tyre round your waist, Mabel,’ said Sadie.

  ‘I am not,’ Mabel was indignant.

  ‘Yes you are. You’re going into folds. You want to cut out eating potatoes.’

  ‘Sadie,’ called a girl from the end cubicle.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are you going down to Rollow’s with Clynes when the place goes bung?’

  ‘I don’t know. I told him I’d think about it.’

  ‘I told him I’d go. You’ve got to keep sweet.’

  ‘Don’t be a mug,’ called Gladys from before the cracked mirror, suspending operations with a lipstick. ‘Mr Davis can get you two pounds seven and six at Broad’s. How much did Clynes say you would get at Rollow’s?’

  ‘Two pounds four,’ said the girl in the cubicle.

  ‘There you are,’ said Gladys.

  ‘Broad’s is not much of a place to work for,’ said the girl. ‘They have a man over the machine room there. They say he swears terrible — uses swears about your body and that. I’d sooner work at Rollow’s even if it is less money.’

  ‘You’d have Rollow putting the hard word on you before you were there a week, Phyllis.’ Sadie combed her hair as she spoke.

  Phyllis came out of the cubicle. ‘Would he? I’d like to see him try it. I’d fix him.’

  ‘You might get a job there like Miss Claws has here,’ suggested Mabel, joining them.

  ‘Yes. What’s the strength of her? What else does she do to hold her job besides walking about?’

  ‘She’s the Big Boy’s good sort,’ said Gladys, surveying her completed lips.

  ‘Is that it?’ replied Phyllis. ‘I ought to put it on Rollow.’

  ‘Rollow got married on Saturday,’ said Mabel. ‘He married that girl Beveridge. She used to work in the office here. You’ll do no good with him now.’

  ‘She knew her ecka,’ remarked Sadie.

  ‘Mr McCormack was shook on her,’ said Gladys.

  ‘What is the strength of that guy?’ asked Phyllis.

  ‘He is all right,’ said Sadie. ‘He told me to ask for more money the next job I go for. He said they can’t get machinists.’

  ‘Ask him when we are going bung, Sadie,’ said Phyllis. ‘I don’t know what to do. Whether to go to Rollow’s or Broad’s. I’ve promised Clynes, that’s the trouble. If I knew when we were going bung I’d know what to do.’

  ‘How would you?’ asked Sadie.

  ‘If we go on for a month more, I could get a job at Flynn’s slipper factory. Edith works there. She told me about it.

  ‘Go where you can get the most money,’ advised Sadie.

  ‘I’m going where you’re going, Sadie,’ said Leila.

  ‘So am I,’ said Mabel.

  ‘Damn Clynes,’ said Gladys.

  ‘I’m going to Broad’s, then,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘Now we know,’ said Sadie.

  ‘There is the bell,’ exclaimed Gladys.

  The expression on the girls’ faces changed. The flesh tightened. The thoughts that occupied their minds shot from them at the bell’s clanging. They were only conscious of the bell’s obligations. They became quick with movement. They hurried through the door, their smiles gone.

  Mabel waited for Sadie. She whispered quickly, ‘I found out last night that Les is married.’ She caught her breath and looked away.

  Sadie looked thoughtfully at the wall. She suddenly took Mabel’s arm. ‘Well, bugger him anyway.’

  They went into the factory and were swept apart by a flood of sound.

  25

  ’I was at a party last night,’ said Miss Trueman, ‘and we played kissing games.’

  ‘I thought that type was extinct,’ said the accountant.

  ‘Oh, no! People still play them at some places. I think they’re frightful. But I always find it interesting to kiss the boys of your girl friends in games like that. You know what your girl friends have been experiencing then. You can always tell what they are like. One of my friends — her name is Ruth — goes with a boy called Ralph. I’d love to kiss him. I mean, I would and I wouldn’t. It would give me a better idea of Ruth. I would have a man’s idea of her then. Bill
y Truhan kissed me once — he is engaged to a girl called Janet — a wet, frothy sort of kiss, and afterwards I always looked at Janet differently.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ said the accountant, putting down his pen. ‘It would almost make you think less of Janet.’

  ‘It did.’

  ‘What is this Billy like?’

  ‘He talks too much. If he didn’t talk, you would think he was clever.’

  ‘Something like me, that chap,’ said the accountant, grinning.

  Miss Trueman laughed. ‘He is not like you. He always runs things down. You praise things up. He is never enthusiastic over things.’

  ‘The trouble with enthusiasm is that it always makes you feel such a fool next morning.’

  ‘I don’t think so. That Mr Coughlan that comes in here — he is enthusiastic. Look how he sells things.’

  ‘That’s right. He sells too much. How much do we owe him?’

  ‘I’ll see.’ She opened a ledger and flipped the leaves with a wet finger.

  ‘The creditor’s ledger is interesting now,’ she remarked. ‘All the amounts owing to different people … ! And they are not going to get paid. It makes you think a lot. Some you are sorry for and some you’re not.’

  The pages stopped turning. She bent over the account. ‘Three hundred and ten pounds,’ she said.

  ‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed the accountant. ‘We must have shot it up this month. Have we got into them … ! I’ll say …’

  ‘And Mr Coughlan is still nice to us. Isn’t it amazing?’

  ‘We are paying him cash, now.’ He bit his penholder. ‘I feel as if I owe all that money personally. I feel like a criminal sometimes. It’s right, too. The reputation of the firm is our reputation. If we ever wanted credit personally from these people they would probably refuse us.’

  ‘Do you blame them?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We will never be able to work in Collingwood again.’

  ‘I don’t know that I want to.’

  ‘I would sooner work in the city, anyway,’ said Miss Trueman. ‘Nothing ever happens here.’

  The phone rang. The accountant answered it. He waited for the girl who replied to his ‘Hullo’ to switch him through to another office.

  ‘The lawyer’s,’ he said, twisting his head to address Miss Trueman. ‘It will be about Bentley.’