CHARLIE [singing]:
Jesu, lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly–
THE POLICEMAN: Now then, you! What you think this is? Baptist prayer meeting? [To the Kike] Up you get, and look sharp about it!
CHARLIE: I can’t ’elp it, sergeant. It’s my toonful nature. It comes out of me natural-like.
THE POLICEMAN [shaking Mrs Bendigo]: Wake up, mother, wake up!
MRS BENDIGO: Mother? Mother, is it? Well, if I am a mother, thank God I ain’t got a bloody son like you! And I’ll tell you another little secret, constable. Next time I want a man’s fat ’ands feeling round the back of my neck, I won’t ask you to do it. I’ll ’ave someone with a bit more sex-appeal.
THE POLICEMAN: Now then, now then! No call to get abusive, you know. We got our orders to carry out. [Exit majestically.]
SNOUTER [sotto voce]: — off, you — son of a —!
CHARLIE [singing]:
While the gathering waters roll,
While the tempest still is ’igh!
Sung bass in the choir my last two years in Dartmoor, I did.
MRS BENDIGO: I’ll bloody mother ’im! [Shouting after the policeman] ’I! Why don’t you get after them bloody cat burglars ‘stead of coming nosing round a respectable married woman?
GINGER: Kip down, blokes. ’E’s jacked. [Daddy retires within his coat.]
NOSY WATSON: Wassit like in Dartmoor now? D’they give you jam now?
MRS WAYNE: Of course, you can see as they couldn’t reely allow people to sleep in the streets–I mean, it wouldn’t be quite nice–and then you’ve got to remember as it’d be encouraging of all the people as haven’t got homes of their own–the kind of riff-raff, if you take my meaning…
MR TALLBOYS [to himself]: Happy days, happy days! Outings with the Girl Guides in Epping Forest–hired brake and sleek roan horses, and I on the box in my grey flannel suit, speckled straw hat, and discreet layman’s necktie. Buns and ginger pop under the green elms. Twenty Girl Guides pious yet susceptible frisking in the breast-high bracken, and I a happy curate sporting among them, in loco parentis pinching the girls’ backsides…
MRS MCELLIGOT: Well, you may talk about kippin’ down, but begod dere won’t be much sleep for my poor ole bloody bones tonight. I can’t skipper it now de way me and Michael used to.
CHARLIE: Not jam. Gets cheese, though, twice a week.
THE KIKE: Oh Jeez! I can’t stand it no longer. I going down to the M.A.B.
[Dorothy stands up, and then, her knees having stiffened with the cold, almost falls.]
GINGER: Only send you to the bleeding Labour Home. What you say we all go up to Covent Garden tomorrow morning? Bum a few pears if we get there early enough.
CHARLIE: I’ve ’ad my perishing bellyful of Dartmoor, b’lieve me. Forty on us went through ’ell for getting off with the ole women down on the allotments. Ole trots seventy years old they was–spud-grabbers. Didn’t we cop it just! Bread and water, chained to the wall–perishing near murdered us.
MRS BENDIGO: No fear! Not while my bloody husband’s there. One black eye in a week’s enough for me, thank you.
MR TALLBOYS [chanting, reminiscently]: As for our harps, we hanged them up, upon the willow trees of Babylon!…
MRS MCELLIGOT: Hold up, kiddie! Stamp your feet an’ get de blood back into ’m. I’ll take y’a walk up to Paul’s in a coupla minutes.
DEAFIE [singing]: With my willy willy–
[Big Ben strikes eleven.]
SNOUTER: Six more — hours! Cripes!
[An hour passes. Big Ben stops striking. The mist thins and the cold increases. A grubby-faced moon is seen sneaking among the clouds of the southern sky. A dozen hardened old men remain on the benches, and still contrive to sleep, doubled up and hidden in their greatcoats. Occasionally they groan in their sleep. The others set out in all directions, intending to walk all night and so keep their blood flowing, but nearly all of them have drifted back to the Square by midnight. A new policeman comes on duty. He strolls through the Square at intervals of half an hour, scrutinizing the faces of the sleepers but letting them alone when he has made sure that they are only asleep and not dead. Round each bench revolves a knot of people who take it in turns to sit down and are driven to their feet by the cold after a few minutes. Ginger and Charlie fill two drums at the fountains and set out in the desperate hope of boiling some tea over the navvies’ clinker fire in Chandos Street; but a policeman is warming himself at the fire, and orders them away. The Kike suddenly vanishes, probably to beg a bed at the M.A.B. Towards one o’clock a rumour goes round that a lady is distributing hot coffee, ham sandwiches, and packets of cigarettes under Charing Cross Bridge; there is a rush to the spot, but the rumour turns out to be unfounded. As the Square fills again the ceaseless changing of places upon the benches quickens until it is a game of musical chairs. Sitting down, with one’s hands under one’s armpits, it is possible to get into a kind of sleep, or doze, for two or three minutes on end. In this state, enormous ages seem to pass. One sinks into a complex, troubling dreams which leave one conscious of one’s surroundings and of the bitter cold. The night is growing clearer and colder every minute. There is a chorus of varying sound–groans, curses, bursts of laughter, and singing, and through them all the uncontrollable chattering of teeth.]
MR TALLBOYS [chanting]: I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint!…
MRS MCELLIGOT: Ellen an’ me bin wanderin’ round de City dis two hours. Begod it’s like a bloody tomb wid dem great lamps glarin’ down on you an’ not a soul stirren’ excep’ de flatties strollin’ two an’ two.
SNOUTER: Five past — one and I ain’t ’ad a bite since dinner! Course it ’ad to ’appen to us on a — night like this!
MR TALLBOYS: A drinking night I should have called it. But every man to his taste. [Chanting] ‘My strength is dried like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my gums!’…
CHARLIE: Say, what you think? Nosy and me done a smash jest now. Nosy sees a tobacconist’s show-case full of them fancy boxes of Gold Flake, and ’e says, ‘By cripes I’m going to ’ave some of them fags if they give me a perishing stretch for it!’ ’e says. So ’e wraps ’is scarf round ’is ’and, and we waits till there’s a perishing great van passing as’ll drown the noise, and then Nosy lets fly–biff! We nipped a dozen packets of fags, and then I bet you didn’t see our a—s for dust. And when we gets round the corner and opens them, there wasn’t no perishing fags inside! Perishing dummy boxes. I ’ad to laugh.
DOROTHY: My knees are giving way. I can’t stand up much longer.
MRS BENDIGO: Oh, the sod, the sod! To turn a woman out of doors on a night like bloody this! You wait’ll I get ’im drunk o’ Saturday night and ’e can’t ’it back. I’ll mash ’im to bloody shin of beef, I will. ’E’ll look like two pennorth of pieces after I’ve swiped ’im with the bloody flat-iron.
MRS MCELLIGOT: Here, make room’n let de kid sit down. Press up agen ole Daddy, dear. Put his arm round you. He’s chatty, but he’ll keep you warm.
GINGER [double marking time]: Stamp your feet on the ground–only bleeding thing to do. Strike up a song, someone, and less all stamp our bleeding feet in time to it.
DADDY [waking and emerging]: Wassat? [Still half asleep, he lets his head fall back, with mouth open and Adam’s apple protruding from his withered throat like the blade of a tomahawk.]
MRS BENDIGO: There’s women what if they’d stood what I’ve stood, they’d ave put spirits of salts in ’is cup of bloody tea.
MR TALLBOYS [beating an imaginary drum and singing]: Onward, heathen so-oldiers–
MRS WAYNE: Well, reely now! If any of us’d ever of thought, in the dear old days when we used to sit round our own Silkstone coal fire, with the kettle on the hob and a nice dish of toasted crumpets from the baker’s over the way…[The chattering of her teeth silences her.]
CHARLIE: No perishing church trap now, matie. I’ll give y’a bit of smut–something as we ca
n perishing dance to. You listen t’me.
MRS MCELLIGOT: Don’t you get talkin’ about crumpets, Missis. Me bloody belly’s rubbin’ agen me backbone already.
[Charlie draws himself up, clears his throat, and in an enormous voice roars out a song entitled ‘Rollicking Bill the Sailor’. A laugh that is partly a shudder bursts from the people on the bench. They sing the song through again, with increasing volume of noise, stamping and clapping in time. Those sitting down, packed elbow to elbow, sway grotesquely from side to side, working their feet as though stamping on the pedals of a harmonium. Even Mrs Wayne joins in after a moment, laughing in spite of herself. They are all laughing, though with chattering teeth. Mr Tallboys marches up and down behind his vast swag belly, pretending to carry a banner or crozier in front of him. The night is now quite clear, and an icy wind comes shuddering at intervals through the Square. The stamping and clapping rise to a kind of frenzy as the people feel the deadly cold penetrate to their bones. Then the policeman is seen wandering into the Square from the eastern end, and the singing ceases abruptly.]
CHARLIE: There! You can’t say as a bit of music don’t warm you up.
MRS BENDIGO: This bloody wind! And I ain’t even got any drawers on, the bastard kicked me out in such a ’urry.
MRS MCELLIGOT: Well, glory be to Jesus, ’twon’t be long before dat dere church in de Gray’s Inn Road opens up for de winter. Dey gives you a roof over your head of a night, ’t any rate.
THE POLICEMAN: Now then, now then! D’you think this is the time of night to begin singing like a blooming bear garden? I shall have to send you back to your homes if you can’t keep quiet.
SNOUTER [sotto voce]: You — son of a —!
GINGER: Yes–they lets you kip on the bleeding stone floor with three newspaper posters ’stead of blankets. Might as well be in the Square and ’ave done with it. God, I wish I was in the bleeding spike.
MRS MCELLIGOT: Still, you gets a cup of Horlicks an’ two slices. I bin glad to kip dere often enough.
MR TALLBOYS [chanting]: I was glad when they said unto me, We will go into the house of the Lord!…
DOROTHY [starting up]: Oh, this cold, this cold! I don’t know whether it’s worse when you’re sitting down or when you’re standing up. Oh, how can you all stand it? Surely you don’t have to do this every night of your lives?
MRS WAYNE: You mustn’t think, dearie, as there isn’t some of us wasn’t brought up respectable.
CHARLIE [singing]: Cheer up, cully, you’ll soon be dead! Brrh! Perishing Jesus! Ain’t my fish-hooks blue! [Double marks time and beats his arms against his sides.]
DOROTHY: Oh, but how can you stand it? How can you go on like this, night after night, year after year? It’s not possible that people can live so! It’s so absurd that one wouldn’t believe it if one didn’t know it was true. It’s impossible!
SNOUTER: — possible if you ask me.
MR TALLBOYS [stage curate-wise]: With God, all things are possible.
[Dorothy sinks back on to the bench, her knees still being unsteady.]
CHARLIE: Well, it’s jest on ’ar-parse one. Either we got to get moving, or else make a pyramid on that perishing bench. Unless we want to perishing turn up our toes. ’Oo’s for a little constitootional up to the Tower of London?
MRS MCELLIGOT: ’Twon’t be me dat’ll walk another step tonight. Me bloody legs’ve given out on me.
GINGER: What-o for the pyramid! This is a bit too bleeding nine-day-old for me. Less scrum into that bench–beg pardon, Ma!
DADDY [sleepily]: Wassa game? Can’t a man get a bit of kip but what you must come worriting ’im and shaking of ’im?
CHARLIE: That’s the stuff! Shove in! Shift yourself, Daddy, and make room for my little sit-me-down. Get one atop of each other. That’s right. Never mind the chats. Jam all together like pilchards in a perishing tin.
MRS WAYNE: Here! I didn’t ask you to sit on my lap, young man!
GINGER: Sit on mine, then, mother–’sall the same. What-o! First bit of stuff I’ve ’ad my arm round since Easter.
[They pile themselves in a monstrous shapeless clot, men and women clinging indiscriminately together, like a bunch of toads at spawning time. There is a writhing movement as the heap settles down, and a sour stench of clothes diffuses itself. Only Mr Tallboys remains marching up and down.]
MR TALLBOYS [declaiming]: O ye nights and days, ye light and darkness, ye lightnings and clouds, curse ye the Lord!
[Deafie, someone having sat on his diaphragm, utters a strange, unreproducible sound.]
MRS BENDIGO: Get off my bad leg, can’t you? What you think I am? Bloody drawing-room sofa?
CHARLIE: Don’t ole Daddy stink when you get up agen ’im?
GINGER: Bleeding Bank ’oliday for the chats this’ll be.
DOROTHY: Oh, God, God!
MR TALLBOYS [halting]: Why call on God, you puling deathbed penitent? Stick to your guns and call on the Devil as I do. Hail to thee, Lucifer, Prince of the Air! [Singing to the tune of ‘Holy, holy holy’]: Incubi and Succubi, falling down before Thee!…
MRS BENDIGO: Oh, shut up, you blarsphemous old sod! ’E’s too bloody fat to feel the cold, that’s what’s wrong with ’im.
CHARLIE: Nice soft be’ind you got, Ma. Keep an eye out for the perishing flattie, Ginger.
MR TALLBOYS: Malecidite, omnia opera! The Black Mass! Why not? Once a priest always a priest. Hand me a chunk of toke and I will work the miracle. Sulphur candles, Lord’s Prayer backwards, crucifix upside down. [To Dorothy] If we had a black he-goat you would come in useful.
[The animal heat of the piled bodies had already made itself felt. A drowsiness is descending upon everyone.]
MRS WAYNE: You mustn’t think as I’m accustomed to sitting on a gentleman’s knee, you know…
MRS MCELLIGOT [drowsily]: It took my sacraments reg’lar till de bloody priest wouldn’t give me absolution along o’ my Michael. De ole get, de ole getsie!…
MR TALLBOYS [striking an attitude]: Per aquam sacratam quam nunc spargo, signumque crucis quod nunc facio…
GINGER: ’Oo’s got a fill of ’ard-up? I’ve smoked by last bleeding fag-end.
MR TALLBOYS [as at the altar]: Dearly beloved brethren we are gathered together in the sight of God for the solemnization of unholy blasphemy. He has afflicted us with dirt and cold, with hunger and solitude, with the pox and the itch, with the headlouse and the crablouse. Our food is damp crusts and slimy meat-scraps handed out in packets from hotel doorways. Our pleasure is stewed tea and sawdust cakes bolted in reeking cellars, bar-rinsing sand spittle of common ale, the embrace of toothless hags. Our destiny is the pauper’s grave, twenty-feet deep in deal coffins, the kip-house of underground. It is very meet, right and our bounden duty at all times and in all places to curse Him and revile Him. Therefore with Demons and Archdemons [etc., etc., etc.].
MRS MCELLIGOT [drowsily]: By holy Jesus, I’m half asleep right now, only some b—’s lyin’ across my legs and crushin’ ’em.
MR TALLBOYS: Amen. Evil from us deliver, but temptation into not us lead [etc., etc., etc.].
[As he reaches the first word of the prayer he tears the consecrated bread across. The blood runs out of it. There is a rolling sound, as of thunder, and the landscape changes. Dorothy’s feet are very cold. Monstrous winged shapes of Demons and Archdemons are dimly visible, moving to and fro. Something, beak or claw, closes upon Dorothy’s shoulder, reminding her that her feet and hands are aching with cold.]
THE POLICEMAN [shaking Dorothy by the shoulder]: Wake up, now, wake up, wake up! Haven’t you got an overcoat? You’re as white as death. Don’t you know better than to let yourself sprawl about in the cold like that?
[Dorothy finds that she is stiff with cold. The sky is now quite clear, with gritty little stars twinkling like electric lamps enormously remote. The pyramid has unrolled itself.]
MRS MCELLIGOT: De poor kid, she ain’t used to roughin’ it de way us others are.
GINGER [beating his
arms]: Brr! Woo! ’Taters in the bleeding mould!
MRS WAYNE: She’s a lady born and bred.
THE POLICEMAN: Is that so?–See here, Miss, you best come down to the M.A.B. with me. They’ll give you a bed all right. Anyone can see with half an eye as you’re a cut above these others here.
MRS BENDIGO: Thank you, constable, thank you! ’Ear that, girls? ‘A cut above us,’ ’e says. Nice, ain’t it? [To the policeman] Proper bloody Ascot swell yourself, ain’t you?
DOROTHY: No, no! Leave me, I’d rather stay here.
THE POLICEMAN: Well, please yourself. You looked real bad just now. I’ll be along later and take a look at you. [Moves off doubtfully.]
CHARLIE: Wait’ll the perisher’s round the corner and then pile up agen. Only perishing way we’ll keep warm.
MRS MCELLIGOT: Come on, kid. Get underneath an’ let’m warm you.
SNOUTER: Ten minutes to — two. Can’t last for ever, I s’pose.
MR TALLBOYS [chanting]: I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: My heart also in the midst of my body is like unto melting wax!…
[Once more the people pile themselves on the bench. But the temperature is now not many degrees above freezing-point, and the wind is blowing more cuttingly. The people wriggle their wind-nipped faces into the heap like sucking pigs struggling for their mother’s teats. One’s interludes of sleep shrink to a few seconds, and one’s dreams grow more monstrous, troubling, and undreamlike. There are times when the nine people are talking almost normally, times when they can even laugh at their situation, and times when they press themselves together in a kind of frenzy, with deep groans of pain. Mr Tallboys suddenly becomes exhausted and his monologue degenerates into a stream of nonsense. He drops his vast bulk on top of the others, almost suffocating them. The heap rolls apart. Some remain on the bench, some slide to the ground and collapse against the parapet or against the others’ knees. The policeman enters the Square and orders those on the ground to their feet. They get up, and collapse again the moment he is gone. There is no sound from the ten people save of snores that are partly groans. Their heads nod like those of joined porcelain Chinamen as they fall asleep and reawake as rhythmically as the ticking of a clock. Three strikes somewhere. A voice yells like a trumpet from the eastern end of the Square: ‘Boys! Up you get! The noospapers is come!’]
The Complete Novels Page 55
