Ginger was waiting for him by the ‘Elephant and Castle’; and they were very pleased to meet each other. “It don’t half make you feel down and out,” said Ginger, “when you’re walking along on your own, and you see everybody else hurrying, else doing a spot of work. But then it don’t feel bad when your mate turns up. I reckon one paired-up two is worth more’n a hundred single ones.”
“I wonder,” said Corky.
“It’s what it does to you, just being with someone else,” said Ginger. “Why, I’ve seen times when I’ve been minding the house of an evening, and I’ve been scared and windy of going upstairs in the dark for something. Then I’ve taken one of the kids up with me, little Edgar, about two year old, and do you know what, I’ve not been the least bit frightened if he’s been with me—a kid that couldn’t knock a fly off a custard! What d’you think about that?”
“I get the general idea,” said Corky. “Only I’m not sure it wouldn’t have been better if there had been no Edgar there, and you had had to get used to going up on your own.”
“Oh, ho, you’ve got to remember,” answered Ginger loftily, “that I’m talking of many moons back, when I was little more than a nipper myself. Why, if it came to it today, I’d spend a night alone in the Chamber of Horrors.”
“I reckon that’s where you’ll have to spend it, if we don’t get some work today. What’re the plans? Where do you reckon ’ud be a likely district to attack?”
“Well, Corky, me boy, what I suggest is a nice little cup of tea for a start, and two-three rounds of dripping toast. Something to get the old brainbox going, see. And while we’re getting filled-up, so to speak, we could make our plans and write them on paper. What say?”
“Sounds all right,” Corky was a bit doubtful, “—but it don’t seem just the right start for job hunting. And for meself, the hardest part is carrying plans out—not writing ’em down.”
“Leave it to your old Uncle Ginger. Have I ever let you down yet, Corky? Never. Now there’s a little caff down this street here; follow me and all will be well.”
Ginger was certainly full of ideas over the tea. Corky, who felt his own imagination to be nimble and rich enough, could scarce make the pace.
“Suppose we go out now and find two jobs—where’s it going to get us? I mean if they’re not just the right kind. You’ve got to be dead careful, Corky, else you’ll find yourself tied to a job with no future.”
“Blind alley jobs, eh?”
“Blind alley! I reckon there ain’t even an alley to some of ’em! I’d call ’em doormat jobs. You don’t go inside, you finish where you started. Now such a thing ain’t going to be much use to the likes of me an’ you, leaders of struggling man. Listen, Corky, it’s always been a secret ambition of mine to become a master of industry. Carnegie, Ford, Rockefeller, Nuffield, those are names that have controlled hundrds of thousands of lives. But it’s my firm belief that Albert J. Gormer, that’s my full monniker, will hold in the palm of his mitt—millions! Yes, where these had their thousands. But we’ve got to start in the right way, Corky. We’ve got to anticipate events, see—know developments before they’ve developed. And we’ve to outshine all competitors by the quality of our work. Ever hear this little piece, er, let me see how it starts, oh yes: ‘If a man grow a better potato, build a better house, sell a better article, even make a better collar stud or child’s sucking-dummy than his neighbour—the world will tramp a beaten track to his door.’”
“What, for collar studs? or soothers?”
“Pcha, that’s a figure of speech, Corky. I’m not sure them’s the exact words, but they come to me that way. You get my meaning? That’s all that matters. No quibbling. Now look here, Corky, what we’ve got to have in mind is—start out on our own. You’ll never make anything working for others. You’ve got to be your own boss. Suppose we start in a little way and then build the business up——”
“But what business?”
“The business we go into! We’ve got to give it all we’ve got. Listen, take that fellow behind the counter. I’ll lower my voice. Look at his mug. See how he scowls. Watch him look daggers at anyone who offers to buy anything. Now I reckon his face alone knocks this business down by fifty per cent every hour of the day. Men like that have no right to——He’s looking, I wonder has he second hearing? I’ll change the subject. But you can see what I mean; suppose we two were behind the bar, service with a smile and a joke. Why, there’d be long queues outside. I’d paint it all bright, bright red and yellow, and big chromium letters a foot long: “COME IN. EAT AND DRINK IN JOY AND HAPPINESS AT GINGER’S.”
“What about calling it CORKY’S?”
“There you go again. I just said ‘Ginger’s’ because it sounds better to my way of thinking.”
“That’s why I said ‘Corky’s’—because that sounds better to my way.”
“But we’re not going into the catering business. It’s worked out. They all are. Steel, transport, building, engineering, all the cream’s gone. You hear them talking about electricity, and radio, and aircraft—but all them are washed out by this. We’ve just got to nose into something new. Blaze the trail on something as yet undiscovered.”
“Such as?”
“A bike that goes without pedalling or petrol!”
“What does it run on?”
“Electricity.”
“You’d have to have a battery then?”
“No battery.”
“A dynamo?”
“No dynamo.”
“Then what?”
“The electricity out of your own body! Everybody knows that everyone has electricity in his body.”
“They’ve gas!”
“Electricity too. All you need is an invention to tap it—to bring it out. Then all you’d have to do is stick a couple of plugs in your ears or somewhere, positive and negative, then switch on, and off you’d go. They could run cars the same way. Buses even. You wouldn’t have to pay.”
“It’s going to be heavy on the bus driver, ain’t it—finding all the juice for a load of passengers?”
“Oh, I expect we could make it that every passenger had to find his or her own current. There’d be lots of wires hanging down like on a permanent hair-waving gadget. What you looking glum about?”
“Sorry, Ginger, but I don’t seem able to work up the same confidence as you’ve got in the scheme.”
“Don’t think that’s the only idea I’ve got. Why, I can’t keep up with them. A Change-your-name business——”
“What’s that?”
“For these people with names like Stank, Sniggleweed, Barge-bottom, Flue, Nagger, Tigg, and so on. Say there was a bloke by the name of Marmaduke Slopps: you could bet his life had been a misery, from baptism right on. No girl would ever marry him—what, have her name become Missis Slopps? Not likely. Right, for the small fee of ten-and-six you dig him a monniker out such as Owen Maltravers, or Desmond Tremayne. And if it’s a woman called Lizzie Mugg you call her Gail Blossom and charge fifteen bob, and fill the forms to have it changed legal like. Oh, Corky, I could go on for hours. There was one idea came to me the night before last: Garage-on-the-spot. You know they charge up to a pound a week for a garage, don’t you? Well, we could turn out fabric garages, just like tents, that you carry about in the luggage box, fit them over the car at night, switch on the small battery lamps at the front and back and you can put up anywhere at anytime. Then there’s moles——”
“Moles?”
“Sure, moles. Look how they could be brought into service in excavation work——”
“What, moles on peoples’ faces?”
“Naw, you coot. I mean moles in fields. Insect-eating mammals that fill in their spare time burrowing holes. Now say you were building a channel tunnel, or even one under the Thames, an’ you got a couple of thousand trained moles—mind you, I said trained—working on the night shift for you. Why, just think the amount of earth they could shift!”
“Suppose the trade union woul
dn’t admit ’em?”
“Cut out the sarky stuff, Corky! Moles is Nature’s solution to the shortage of navvies.”
“You was putting up a case against using pit ponies—now you want to employ moles.”
“Clouds, that’s another thing,” Ginger ignored Corky’s remark. “Take a big black bulgy cloud: you won’t tell me that brains haven’t been made that couldn’t invent methods of shoving clouds along the sky, keeping ’em away from the outings and picnic parties, and cracking them open over fields of thirsty corn?”
“What I can’t understand is how all these ideas should just have come to you?”
“They couldn’t understand two thousand years back why that guy Archimedes was chasing round Trafalgar Square, Athens, in his birthday suit, could they? Millions of men had had millions of baths in tubs—how was it the idea came to him?”
“What idea?”
“The idea that came: if a fat man puts too much water in his bath it comes over the top in relation to the size of his bay window. ... Moving pavements, that’s another thing. Take a bustling crowded street like Oxford Street, you could have them moving on the caterpillar system, but going at greyhound speed; or one side of the road moving East, the other West. They just move on rollers like tanks, people stand on them and are taken wherever they want.”
“You need capital,”—it was Corky who sounded tired.
“Admitted. I’ve a bit in the Post Office savings. Not that I’m saying nine shillings and sixpence will go far. But it’s a start. I mean we wouldn’t want to set off in a big way at once. A mighty oak tree starts life as a little acorn.”
“Yay, but it don’t keep talking about being a big tree. It gets going as an acorn.”
“I suppose that means we’ve got to get cracking for jobs. Blimey, Corky, look in your teacup. This bloke ought to use a strainer——”
“There’s your fortune!” spoke a voice from the side.
The boys looked. An old gypsy woman, she’d stacks of artificial flowers on the seat beside her, was gazing in Corky’s cup.
“Turn it upside down, spin it round three times——”
Corky did so. Then the woman held her brown hand out for it.
“You’re going to have a change of work,” she began, eyeing the pattern of the tiny jumbled tea-leaves. “There’s a misfortune coming to you—but you’re not to worry. That’s in a three—three days or months. You’ll get through it. Don’t worry. There’s bread in your cup——”
“He ain’t had any bread,” remarked Ginger.
“I say there’s bread coming to him——”
“What! No jam?”
“Bread means food, son. He ain’t going to starve. There’s a long journey. You must do it. Face it. Never turn back.”
“Is it across water?” asked Corky.
“Yes, my boy. But not wide water. You’ll look on a great sea, but you’ll not cross it. That’s all.”
Corky gazed into his cup. He was very excited at the woman’s words.
Ginger broke in: “What about me? Tell me mine, will you?”
“Yours is on your lips.”
“On my lips? How do you mean?”
“You should take more care when you drink tea. Don’t swill it down, you’ve swallowed most of the leaves, and left a few on your lips. Good luck, boys.” She collected her bright flowers, lit a cigarette, and left the teashop.
“Did you hear that, Ginger? A journey. I’ve got to go on a journey.” Corky’s voice was husky, his face hot and flushed. “And misfortune, too. But I’ve got to face up to it. I’m not a jibber. I’ll go to the ends of the earth——”
“What for?”
“To meet my fate.”
“Don’t be daft. You don’t go meeting your fate—it meets you. Why, don’t tell me you believe all that old gab of the gypsy?”
“Perhaps I don’t——”
“Good. I knew you’d more sense——”
“An’ perhaps I do.” Corky shoved back his chair. Staggered to his feet, a quiet suggestion of drama about the way he stretched to his full height, eyes set mysteriously on the window—unseeing of the three pale, raw sausages, two short, one long, on the show plate; and the four tatty bath buns stuck humbly beside the morose Dundee cake—he saw only the world outside. He braced himself up, and went out to the street.
“Blimey, that’s done it, I expect I’ll have to follow,” muttered Ginger, making to the door.
“Hy! What bloomin’ game, eh?” bawled the man behind the counter. “Tryna’ get off without paying? Come back here, let’s be seeing your money.”
“Sorry, guv’, forgot myself for the minute.” Ginger took a shilling from his pocket.
“Y’ud four teas, an’ six of bread and drip, that’ll be another tuppence. What’s that you’re saying?”
“I was asking myself how I liked my eggs boiled,” said Ginger, hurrying after Corky.
“Saucy beggar,” said the man. But that was what Ginger had been asking himself—the loser was always asked that at shove-ha’penny.
20 Setting Out
“I’m going to wipe the dust of city streets
from my feet!’
“HY, there!” called Ginger after the resolute moving Corky. “Where d’you reckon you’re off to?”
But Corky pressed on, lifted and carried forward by some inner vision.
“Look here, mate,” said Ginger again, “I’ve just about had enough of this caper. Just ‘cos you’re near Lambeth don’t mean you’ve gotta do the Lambeth Walk. Come on, Corky, spit it out. What’s on your mind? Let’s be hearing.”
Corky stopped abruptly. “We’ve been talking too much, Now’s the time for action.”
“‘England expects every man to do his duty’!”
“Cut out the fun, Ginger. Listen: we’ve gotta break new ground. Make tracks.” He put a hand on his chest. “I’ve got a something in here wants to burst free. No kiddin’, Ginger, I can feel it this very instant. It’s a yearning—a wild longing——”
“‘The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts,”’ Ginger quoted. “No, I ain’t being funny, Corky. I understand you. I was the same way one morning last Spring. I told my Mum about it and she made me have three tablespoonsful of sulphur and treacle. What’s more, it cured me!”
“I’m going to wipe the dust of city streets from my feet,” went on Corky. He looked Ginger square in the face. “No beating about the bush—are you with me or not?”
Ginger gave back the serious gaze; “You didn’t let me down, mate, and I hope I never let you down. I’m with you—the coldest day in winter.”
“Right. Shake on it, Ginger. Let’s follow the wanderlust.”
“Lead on, Macnabb.”
The two boys made a good pace for a few hundred yards, and spoke not a word. Ginger then felt it was time he knew more about what was on the programme: “Any particular place in mind, Corky?”
There was a pause, then Corky said, “It’ll come to me, Ginger. I’ve got the feeling, and I always know when I’ve got that, the idea will follow. It’ll work itself out, just you see——”
“Cup of char be any use?” ventured Ginger.
“You are a one for the old tea, ain’t you? Worse than a blinking maiden aunt, you are.”
“Look before you leap, that’s me.”
“More like ‘sit before you leap, and have a drink of tea at the same time.’ Sh, sh, sh, a minute—it’s coming—the idea’s coming.” Again they walked in quiet. Suddenly Corky stopped dead; then pointed a quivering finger——
“I’ve got it!”
“Fish? You want some fish?” asked Ginger, espying a whacking conger eel hooked up outside the fishmonger’s Corky was pointing at.
Corky shook his head.
“Naw, but what does fish bring to mind?”
“Chips!” Ginger replied at once.
“Ass! Smell anything? Get a whiff of anything?”
“Sure.”
“What?”
“It’s on the turn.”
“The sea! the sea! the mighty ocean!” Corky’s voice rose in excitement: “What about it, Ginger, let’s run away to sea.”
“The gypsy said you’d only look on a great sea——”
“Then look I must!”
“Margate?”
“Gaaa! you don’t half bring high thoughts down to the ground! Now open those flappers of yours, Ginger, forget yourself for a minute, an’ listen to me.”
“Proceed.”
“Fish, Ginger, what a wonderful life it would be out at sea catching ’em. Let’s go away to sea on fishing trawlers——”
“What do you know about trawlers?”
“Well, Uncle Dave once told me about him going to sea. He reckons you get a stack of dough for a three weeks’ stretch, especially if there’s a good haul. It’s all shared out between the crew.”
“But where do we go, Corky? How do we get on?”
“Uncle Dave went out the North Sea from Grimsby. What say, Ginger—shall we make for there?”
“Ain’t there a place nearer? I mean where we could slip home at weekends.”
“Not from the North Sea. For that we’ve got to go North—an’ it’s there the big catches are made.”
“Suppose they don’t want any?”
“They’re sure to want some. An’ if they’re full up I’ve heard of other places. Let’s see, Hull, that’s another place, and Fleet-wood over the North-West side.”
“Let’s go over the North-West side, Corky. I just happen to have a sneaking fancy for the West. It always sounds a bit more sort of prosperous somehow.”
“It’s a go, Ginger. And you’ll never regret it—you’ll never look back, I guarantee that.”
“Don’t use that word ‘guarantee’, Corky. It sounds like you’re selling me a watch. How much money have you got?”
“Don’t know for sure, I’ll count it: five an’ ninepence. Mind you, I’ve still got the wages I drew off old Crater, but I wouldn’t touch them. They’re away in an envelope.”
Pony Boy Page 13
