‘Corn beef and carrots,’ murmured the wharfie ecstatically.
‘A lot of good that will do you,’ sniffed the woman with the broken nose, looking at me. ‘The quicker you are operated on the better.’
I decided to stay.
‘You hang on to ya guts,’ warned the wharfie.
‘Tch! Tch!’ said the thin woman with spectacles.
‘No operations for me,’ said the wharfie. ‘All I want’s medicine. Now, say the doctor in there says to me: “You’ll have to knock off work.” Say he said that. What’d I do? I’d go to work just the same. I can’t knock off work just because a doctor says to. What’d the missus live on? An’ say he said I gotta drink pineapple juice an’ that. How’d I get hold of pineapple juice when I’m stowin’ wool. No. What I want is a powder or somethin’.’
The electric bell above the clinic door rang. We all moved expectantly. A man on the end of the front seat sprang forward.
‘They’re racing,’ said the wharfie.
The bell rang again. The next in turn left his seat. We slid along the smooth forms, the end ones filling the vacancies left by those who had come before them. As the front seat emptied, those behind stepped around the end of the form and took their place in the van.
We were all strangely silent. We sat and watched the door, our hearts beating, the illnesses within us sinking to a temporary coma while we waited our turn.
The wharfie and I answered a double ring. Behind the door four doctors sat at a table questioning those that had come in before us. They listened expressionlessly to the replies. The patients leant towards the doctors and spoke earnestly, with sad faces, of the pains and ills from which they suffered. Every now and then the doctors recorded one of their remarks on a yellow card. Mostly they disregarded symptoms which to them were unimportant but which had filled the patient with foreboding.
The wharfie and I stood very still, very quietly. We were awed by the immensity of illness in the abstract. The combined pains of all those who had passed through this room weighed heavily upon us and silenced us like a hand on our mouths.
Later, after a glance at our cards, one of the doctors ordered us to wait against the wall for examination by another doctor who had left the room.
We stood beside an open doorway through which we could see five men seated before small tables. An old man whose face had the simplicity of a child occupied the chair confronting the doorway.
‘What’s going on in here?’ the wharfie asked him in a whisper.
‘We’re having a test meal,’ replied the old man. ‘After you eat it they know what’s wrong with you. Next day, I mean, they will.’
‘Fancy that!’ whispered the wharfie.
A nurse approached the old man, carrying a rubber tube about a yard in length. A small, pointed, metal strainer was attached to one end. She held it suspended above the old man’s head like a magpie about to feed a worm to its young.
‘Open your mouth and say “ah”,’ she said. ‘You are to swallow this tube, leaving about three inches of it projecting from your mouth.’
The old man threw back his head and, with eyes closed, opened his mouth and began a dutiful series of ‘ahs’.
The nurse lowered her hand. The glittering metal end swung to and fro across the cavity of his open mouth then dropped swiftly from sight.
The old man’s ‘ah’ was a gentle and uninspiring sound, but as the metal plummet crossed his gullet it swelled into a prolonged ‘a-a-a-a-a-h’ of desperate panic. He heaved beneath the extended tube like a trout being played by an angler.
‘Here. Take it yourself,’ said the nurse. ‘Swallow it slowly.’
The wharfie’s feelings burst into words: ‘It’s murder,’ he said.
The old man, with convulsive gasps and jerking head movements, slowly swallowed the tube. Tears forced themselves from beneath his clenched eyelids and trickled slowly down his cheeks.
Suddenly his eyes opened. The hand holding the tube froze into stillness. His neck stiffened. He gazed tensely at the ceiling then rolled his eyes in the direction of the wharfie with an anguished appeal stamping them.
‘I got a helluva pain in me heart,’ he mumbled urgently. ‘The tube’s tangled round me heart. S’elp me God, it is. I can feel it. It’s stranglin’ it. S’help me God. . . .’
The wharfie crouched and reached both arms towards him as if about to grapple with a creature attacking the old man.
The old man suddenly sprang to his feet. He jumped into the air like an excited schoolboy then stood gazing fixedly at the floor, deadly still, the red rubber tube dangling from his mouth like a piece of unswallowed spaghetti. He listened as if for a hail from a distant friend.
A wet smile changed his expression. He sat down with a certain satisfaction and breathed a sigh of relief.
‘By God! It stopped all right,’ he said to the wharfie. ‘Just like that.’ He flicked his finger and thumb. ‘If I hadn’t jumped and started it, I’d never have got it going.’
‘Whatta you know about that,’ whispered the wharfie.
We were called to the table.
‘We’re for it,’ I said.
‘What is your trouble?’ asked the doctor, addressing the wharfie.
‘Well, it’s like this. I can’t eat nothin’ but what I want to spew it up again. I’ve always got pains in me guts and I get headaches. Hell! I get headaches. After a few beers I feel sick as a dog. All I want is a bit of powder. Nothing expensive like. You know . . .’
Ten minutes later we passed through the door.
‘It’s going to be the end of me,’ growled the wharfie. ‘We’ll never be any good after that.’
‘But we’re no good now,’ I said.
‘We’ll never be much good whatever we do,’ sighed the wharfie. ‘It’s a cow.’
‘How did you get on?’ called the asthmatical youth who was sitting on the front bench.
‘We’re both to have a test meal tomorrow morning,’ announced the wharfie sepulchrally.
‘Well! Well!’ said the fat man.
‘It’s goodbye to my guts,’ said the wharfie.
‘Tch! Tch!’ said the thin woman with spectacles.
An Encounter
This place will do, I thought. I passed through that part of the shop devoted to the selling of tobacco. A woman of thirty or so sat behind the counter. She was reading a newspaper. She did not look up.
I pushed open the swinging glass doors and entered the saloon.
The barber, a soap-encrusted razor in his hand, looked up from the man he was shaving.
‘Hullo, my friend,’ he said, with great friendliness. ‘And how are you?’
‘Fine,’ I replied. I glanced at his face quickly, but not recognising him looked round for a place to sit down.
The room was very small. There was hardly room for the two barber’s chairs. They were placed close to the mirrors.
Shelves each side of the mirrors were full of cardboard boxes labelled ‘The Merry Widow’.
In a small recess were four chairs. One of them was occupied by a man with large, heavy boots upon his feet. His trousers were spattered with yellow clay. His patched galatea shirt was open at the throat. He leant forward with his elbows on his knees and stroked the week’s growth of bristle on his chin.
Lounging in the barber’s chair not in use was a youth with sleek, black hair. He wore riding trousers. They were stained with oil. His black shirt was also stained with oil.
The three remaining chairs did not offer seating accommodation. On one was a ragged black overcoat. One arm, grey from soil, drooped to the floor. There was an old leather kitbag bound with string on another. A felt hat encircled with a narrow leather band rested on it. There was a worn hole in the crown of the hat just at the junction of the dint. The remaining chair contained an overcoat. Someone had sat on it. It was pressed flat on the chair. It was an old coat. I sat down.
‘And how is the green Amilcar going now?’ asked the barber, still with
great friendliness.
I once had a green Amilcar.
I looked at him with interest. ‘Oh! I sold that.’
He noticed my expression. ‘I’ll bet you don’t know me.’
‘I can’t remember you.’
‘Remember Freddy Stevens?’
‘Yes, quite well.’
‘He worked for me in that shop in Little Collins Street. I shaved you there, often.’
‘Why, of course you did! How’s things?’
‘Good.’ He sprayed a mist of water on the face of the man in the chair.
‘Got a car now?’
‘A sort of one. Yes.’
‘Well, I’ve got a Pontiac; but you can’t tell a man by his car. You know old Parker—well, he drove past here the other day in an old Dodge.’
The labourer sitting on the chair next to me leaned across. ‘My father came out from Ireland forty years ago on a sailing ship. Parker’s old man was on board. He started making taffy on a stick.’
‘You can go down to his factory any day,’ continued the barber. ‘There’s a garage down there with barred windows full of Packards.’
‘He has two Rolls-Royces,’ said the sleek youth.
I leant over to the labourer. ‘What were you saying about your old man?’
‘He knew Parker’s father. He had nothing when he started.’
‘I think you must mean Parker himself,’ I said. ‘He must be over seventy.’
‘Well, him, then,’ said the labourer.
A man thrust his head through the doorway.
‘Four,’ he said, holding up four fingers.
The barber took four packages from a ‘Merry Widow’ box and handed them to him.
‘I worked for him once,’ said the labourer. ‘His son—’
‘He’s got well over the million,’ said the barber.
‘Sons or pounds?’ I asked.
They all laughed. The barber leaned back with his eyes closed. ‘I’ll bet he has,’ he said.
He jerked the towel from the neck of the man he had shaved.
The man rose heavily. He looked at me.
‘Your coat?’ I asked, rising. ‘Sorry.’
He took the coat I’d been sitting on. He smiled. He felt in the pocket for matches.
‘Want a light?’ said the barber. ‘Here you are.’ He gave him a folder of matches.
‘Thanks. So long.’
The sleek youth took his place in the chair.
‘It’s wrong that old Parker should have so much money.’ He looked at me. He held a towel poised above the youth in the chair. ‘Look at you and me. How much sun do we see?’
‘Not much,’ I said.
He raised himself and thrust his meagre chest forward. ‘Look at me. I should be out in the sun. You should be out in the sun.’
The labourer, with his heavy, weather-worn and calloused hands resting on his knees, said nothing.
‘It’s men like Parker who make wars,’ said the barber. ‘Now, I’ve got nothing against the Italians, but I bet there’s a lot like him over there:’
‘Italy’s full of Italians,’ said the labourer, looking sadly at the floor. ‘No, it’s America I was thinking of,’ he suddenly added.
‘We’ll all be in it,’ said the barber. ‘They want to kill some of the working men off. We’re getting too intelligent for them.’
‘Well, take the Bible,’ said the labourer, almost apologetically. ‘A lot of what it said is coming true. I don’t hold—’
The barber stopped lathering. He turned his head and, looking to us, said with great deliberation: ‘You know what I think of the Bible? I think it’s all hooey.’
‘So do I,’ defended the labourer hastily.
‘Now, who wrote the Bible?’ said the barber, looking at me.
‘Now I’ll ask you one,’ I replied.
‘It was wrote hundreds of years ago,’ he went on. ‘The chaps who wrote it: who are they? Just like me and you.’
He nodded his head to give emphasis to this last pronouncement.
‘Now, say I wrote a book like the Bible.’ He flourished the razor ostentatiously. The sleek youth sat in a strained stillness while the blade swept down his cheek.
‘I’d have to call it something like The Holy Bible. Say I called it “The Holy Temple”, or something. I could say in it there’s going to be a world war. Well, in a thousand years, when they read it and they were having a world war, they would think I was marvellous. That’s how they do it, you see. It’s all hooey.’
‘We should have a thirty-hour week,’ said the labourer after a pause.
‘That’s what I reckon,’ said the barber.
‘Even a forty-hour week would be better,’ said the labourer. ‘No one should have to work on Saturday. It should be kept for recreation.’
‘Now, you and I,’ said the barber to me, ‘we never see the sun and that affects our kids.’
‘Two,’ said a man at the door.
The barber again opened the ‘Merry Widow’ box.
‘What chance have children got?’ he continued.
‘Thanks,’ said the man, taking the two packets.
‘They haven’t got a hope from the start,’ said the barber.
‘Here’s your zac,’ said the man.
‘Conditions will always be like that till the workers gain control,’ I said.
The barber stopped spraying powder on to the face of the sleek youth.
‘Are you one of them there Communists?’
‘Why not?’
‘Look, I’ll admit it. Fm ignorant. I’m not for or against it. But I’d like to learn. Neck shave, sir? Thank you. Two chaps came in here once, and they said, like you, “Do you believe in Communism?” and I said, “I know nothing about it,” and they both went off the deep end. I wouldn’t shave them. I said, “You can go to hell.” They said I’d get mine when the revolution came. Well, that puts a bloke off. What’s the strength of this Communism?’
He stopped shaving and placed one hand firmly on the arm of the chair. The hand with the razor rested on his hip. His feet were firm on the floor.
‘Now, what’s the strength of it?’
‘Well, I suppose its main object is to see that everybody gets a share of all the things that make life worth while. Only the rich get them now,’ I replied.
‘Does that mean we’ve got to divide up our money? That’s what these coves said. Now, say you had a thousand pounds,’ he said to the labourer.
The latter immediately sat a little more erect as if, having been given an important part in some drama, he felt he could not do it justice without a change of attitude.
‘And you had a thousand pounds,’ he pointed the razor at me, ‘and I had a thousand pounds. And say you,’ he addressed the labourer again, ‘gambled yours away on horses and women, and I boozed mine away, would you,’ he looked at me, ‘have to divide your thousand quid with us?’
‘Good Lord, no!’
‘Now, that’s what I wanted to know. I don’t believe in condemning anything,’ he continued, placing four ‘Merry Widow’ packages into the outstretched hand of a fat man that had appeared in the doorway, ‘without first of all—one shilling thank you—without first of all getting the low-down on how the scheme works. I believe in giving a helping hand to my fellow-men,’ he said, replacing the ‘Merry Widow’ box, ‘but don’t believe in accepting anything till you get the strength of it. Now I know.’
A thin urchin with a prematurely aged face pattered in on bare feet. His body was held on a slant to counterbalance the immense bundle of Heralds he carried. His front teeth were decayed stumps.
‘’Eral’, mister?’
‘Run out, son. Run out. Next, please.’
Crossing the Road
Two little girls and a dog were waiting to cross the road. Annie was eight years old. She was thin with a sharp, bird-like face. Her movements were quick and peremptory. She wore a thin cotton frock and a pink woollen jumper much too large for her. The slee
ves of the jumper were tucked up.
The younger sister still had the plump curves of babyhood. She had soft fair hair that rioted above her round face like a rebellious little cloud of gold.
There was not much of the dog yet he carried himself with the air of a very large and important dog. He had long hair which, though once black, was now a dirty grey colour, especially where it clothed his back legs in matted bunches. His bright black eyes beamed from beneath thatches of wild hair and his stump of a tail wagged continuously from amid his tangled cloak. His soft and tranquil panting revealed a tongue curved into a pink petal by the two sharp teeth upon which it rested. He watched Annie’s face as if awaiting a sign to commence a mission of importance.
She had grasped the hem of her sister’s frock and, held tautly thus, it projected from the little girl’s back in a triangle of cloth the sides of which converged into the apex of her clenched hand.
Cars sped past them, heavy lorries that shook the road. Trams packed with people shot sparks from the overhead gear as they roared by.
‘You mustn’t go till I say now, Maisie,’ said Annie. ‘Be ready now and run when I say to.’
She moved forward releasing the strain on the little girl’s dress. The little girl plunged forward but Annie hauled her back with a sharp cry of admonishment.
‘Stop still till I say,’ she yelled above the din of a passing tram.
‘Oo-oo!’ exclaimed the little girl with a snuggling movement of excitement. ‘I nearly went, didn’t I?’
Annie watched for the traffic with quick, side-to-side movements of the head. A gap in the flow of cars emptied the road in front of them.
‘Come on,’ she cried, and, still clutching the little girl’s dress, she stepped from the kerb and set off for the other side.
The dog sprang forward and took the lead. He trotted ahead in a jerking, three-legged gait, one hind leg lifted, quite unnecessarily, from contact with the road.
The little girl half ran in a crouching position as if to ward off something falling upon her. Her parted lips revealed her excitement. She ran at the side of her sister, her frock twisted tightly around her from the grip of the older girl.
The Complete Stories of Alan Marshall Page 7
