The Dyehouse

Home > Other > The Dyehouse > Page 9
The Dyehouse Page 9

by Mena Calthorpe


  ‘I’m not going over it again,’ Renshaw said. ‘I don’t want to go into the whys and wherefores of it. The plain fact is, I want a man with enough initiative to act when he knows an instruction is wrong.’

  ‘You wanted me out of the lab,’ Hughie said. ‘You worked it. And now the vats. You’ve got Sims on the best work. I’ve given my life to this company. I need some consideration.’

  ‘You want a rest,’ Renshaw said. ‘You’ve lost your grip of things. The work in the lab has picked up since you’ve been out, Hughie, and the cold fact is that Sims is making a better job of the nylon and the special cloth. The proof of the pudding’s in the eating.’

  ‘It’s not that way,’ Hughie said.

  He leaned over suddenly and grabbed Renshaw by the tie.

  ‘You worked it. Everything I did was always wrong. Even when you did the thing yourself it was my fault.’

  Larcombe was on his feet. He looked alarmed.

  ‘We want no violence, Hughie,’ he said. ‘Mr Renshaw has charge and he’s in a position to judge these things.’

  ‘You know you worked it,’ Hughie shouted. ‘You wanted to be the only one in the place with the know-how. Collins and Sims! It’ll be a long time before they’re trained up. And not too much of the real knowledge will be passed on to them. I know a thing or two, Renshaw—I’m not all that dumb. I sank my bloody all into this place. I let it suck me dry, and I asked little enough in return. Just to go on doing the things I love doing, the things I really know about.’

  ‘All right, Hughie,’ Larcombe said. ‘Break it up. The decision’s been made. We can’t unmake a decision every time it upsets someone in the place.’

  Renshaw was smiling. Hughie watched the smile. It spread until it almost reached his eyes. The last word had been said, and it was the skids. The writing was on the wall.

  He straightened up suddenly. Renshaw was not expecting it. He was still smiling when Hughie hit him. He fell forward, grunting.

  ‘Get up,’ Hughie said. He pulled Renshaw by the collar, but he didn’t stir. He was breathing heavily.

  ‘You’ve knocked him out,’ Larcombe said incredulously. ‘He’s out like a light.’

  Hughie went quickly to the bookshelf. He gathered up his books. Larcombe was moving about uncertainly, undoing Renshaw’s tie. Hughie got his books together. His mind was still clear; he took in every detail of the untidy office. He had known it for thirty-five years, and he would probably never see it again.

  When he got to the door he looked back. Larcombe was still fussing over Renshaw. The Dyers’ Instructions were piled on the table. The sample bottles of dyes were stacked in a neat heap. He would think of it thus.

  All the way down the Parade the feeling of aloofness was with him. But when he turned the corner the thought of Alice came to him. It was too early to be home. He would go to the pub. He was not a drinking man, but tonight he felt the need of it. A good strong whisky and then another.

  He could hear Stella the barmaid chatting in the ladies’ parlour, and the laughter of the women. He took out a cigarette, tapped it on the packet and lit it.

  ‘Finished early?’ Tom Harris asked. Hughie picked up the whisky. He felt it trickling down his throat. He felt warm and confident.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  Tomorrow he would talk about it to Tom. Tomorrow everyone on the Parade would be talking about it.

  ‘Drink up,’ he said to Tom.

  It was getting late. Suddenly Hughie heard the hooter. The long, melancholy sound that had governed his life for so many years.

  ‘Have to go,’ he said to Tom. ‘Wife waiting tea.’

  He went out quickly. He was not anxious to meet any of the boys tonight. He must talk it over first with Alice. His steps flagged as he turned the corner of Ring Street.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  ‘He jobbed him,’ Larcombe said in reply to Cuthbert’s question. ‘Right there in the office. Laid him out cold.’

  ‘Might have had cause,’ Cuthbert suggested.

  Larcombe moved uneasily.

  There could be cause, but he was not the man to want to investigate it. All he wanted was to get Renshaw back on his feet; to have him gathering up the Dyehouse reins, relieving him of pressure that he found almost insupportable.

  ‘There’s a man for every job,’ Larcombe said, ‘and Renshaw’s the man for the Dyehouse. There’s a few tough characters on deck out there.’

  Cuthbert looked up from his papers. His glance was cold and probing.

  ‘Would you call Hughie a tough character? He’s never been in trouble in thirty-odd years. I tell you frankly, I don’t like the taste of this.’

  ‘He was truculent,’ Larcombe said. ‘Excited. Waving his arms about and shouting. He came in looking for fight.’

  Cuthbert squinted along a line. He was adding figures and listening to Larcombe at the same time. He was a cold man. He loved and understood figures and what they stood for. He liked juggling with them. Estimating, calculating. People were figures. 69, Smith; 57, Jones; 84, Armstrong. He liked to use the numbers, to move them about like pieces on a chessboard. On a desk was a replica of the Macdonaldtown set-up. Cuthbert followed the movements of the numbers as they shifted from place to place. 69, Smith—four hours on the press, two on the mangle. 57, Jones—four hours on the mangle, two on the hydro. He moved the pieces on the chessboard.

  He told himself that he was a just man. Hard, but just. No, not really hard. He thought of himself as firm, just, incorruptible. From this lofty altitude he interpreted the awards, and came to grips with the provisions covering employees’ sickpay. He was not the man to favour friend or foe.

  These were the rules; these the regulations; and these were the principles he lived by.

  His universe was sparse, but ordered.

  Hughie had been too long with the firm to be dismissed summarily. Even Miss Merton, writing up the Employees’ Daily Attendance Record Sheet and the Staff Attendance Sheet, felt the need for guidance.

  Renshaw had said angrily, ‘Let it go. I’ll speak to Cuthbert about it.’

  But in the end it was Larcombe who approached Cuthbert. The news was second-hand anyway. Cuthbert had heard it hours before via the grapevine.

  Larcombe, sitting on the edge of Cuthbert’s desk, felt uneasy and self-conscious. He felt that he should have handled the matter better, straightened it out before Hughie actually hit Renshaw. He felt that Cuthbert was judging him to be weak and a fool. But he continued to talk, making explanations and swinging his leg.

  ‘There’s a chair,’ Cuthbert said shortly. It offended his sense of rightness that Larcombe should sit on the desk. Larcombe took the chair and sat down, suddenly quiet.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.

  ‘Well,’ Cuthbert said. ‘He’s a Staff man. There’s his pay. There’s extra money to be considered. How do you think he’ll go for a new job?’

  ‘No trouble,’ Larcombe said. ‘He’s a pretty good man.’

  ‘Thought he was through,’ Cuthbert said. ‘Washed up.’

  ‘Oh!’ Larcombe was tired of it. ‘I can’t have a chap that goes about clocking people, and anyway I might lose Renshaw.’

  Cuthbert looked up.

  ‘Don’t like that fellow,’ he said suddenly. ‘Couldn’t lay straight in bed.’

  Larcombe watched him steadily. Cuthbert was not the man to like, or dislike, people.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Off the record,’ he said, ‘I’ve felt like taking a poke at him myself, many a time.’

  He patted Larcombe on the shoulder, and steered him towards the door.

  When Larcombe was gone he sat down. He glanced at the clock. He had wasted almost an hour with him. He began working steadily.

  But he didn’t settle down as he should have done. He had known Hughie for over twenty years himself. Not intimately; but then, how few men he knew intimately.

  He was a quiet little man, this Hughie, puddling about
with dyes and bottles, working contentedly for thirty-odd years in the damp laboratory. He remembered a winter’s day when he had gone unexpectedly to Macdonaldtown. He had been appalled at the wet, cold atmosphere in which Hughie worked. He had thought, fleetingly, that something could be done to improve it. He would have something done. But the time passed and nothing came of it.

  There was trouble in Shipping. Andrews came in. He had Advance Copies, Bill Copies, Costed Copies in his hand. He was talking about pillages, and waving Pink Goods Inwards about. He had Transfer Memos and Green Goods Outwards pinned together. Cuthbert put Hughie out of his mind. The mess had been building up in Shipping for some time.

  He took up his pencil. Andrews was flapping about like a chook.

  ‘No need for all this,’ Cuthbert said. ‘Give me the shipment numbers.’

  He pencilled them neatly on his pad. He leant across to Miss Tombs. ‘Get me Wilson and Turton on the line.’

  Two ships had bonded and Shipping had slipped up on the Licence.

  Andrews left the office. The telephone rang.

  ‘You better come over,’ Cuthbert said. He glanced at his watch. ‘And get Turton down to the Customs House, quick-smart.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The room was bright, the cupboards newly painted, the china gay. The curtains were gingham in large red and white squares. There was a pottery bowl of paper roses and imitation fern leaves on top of the refrigerator.

  Alice moved from the stove and closed the door, so that the smell of cooking food would not enter the little sitting-room. Hughie liked to sit in there after tea, reading the paper and gazing into the coal fire.

  ‘Better get washed up,’ Alice said.

  Hughie walked out of the kitchen to the bathroom at the end of the verandah. Alice had laid out a clean shirt, underwear and socks. He put them on, still feeling the drink warm in him.

  When he was dressed he came in and stood at the table with his hands on the back of the chair. His eyes were bright from the whisky and he felt warm. But when he spoke his voice was low.

  Alice, ladling gravy over the meat, looked up.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ Hughie said.

  Now the quietness left him, and something of the savagery that he had felt when he hit Renshaw revived.

  ‘I got the sack, Alice. I punched Renshaw. Knocked him out.’

  She placed the spoon carefully on the table and turned down the gas.

  When she looked up Hughie was still hanging onto the chair, looking into space.

  ‘You hit him, Hughie?’ She took in a deep breath and expelled it slowly.

  He sat down suddenly and Alice put her hands on his head, rubbing her fingers through his damp, thinning hair.

  ‘Well, that could be something,’ she said softly. ‘Man hits boss, gets out, makes fortune. We’ve been in a rut a long time, Hughie.’

  She moved to the stove.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s celebrate! Thirty-five years is too long to be in any job. Maybe it’s the beginning of something.’

  She rummaged in the refrigerator and brought out a bottle of beer. Pouring the beer into two long glasses, she held them up to the light and smiled.

  ‘Mr Hughie Marshall, the eminent consultant to Must-Take Dyes, began his career as wood and water carrier at Macdonaldtown Dyehouse. Mr Marshall attributes his success to the fact that he unexpectedly severed his ties with Macdonaldtown by laying out the manager with one deft blow. Interviewed by Mr Darcy Dyson the prominent boxer…’

  The lines left Hughie’s face, and he began to smile.

  ‘I was worried for you, Alice,’ he said.

  But as the days went by, Hughie lapsed more and more into morose silence. For a while, neighbours dropped in to talk about the scene in Renshaw’s office. But the subject was soon exhausted, and Hughie was forgotten.

  ‘There are other jobs,’ Alice said. ‘Just look at those columns and columns of ads. People wanting men for all kinds of jobs. When our holiday’s over, why don’t you make a break for something new?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ Hughie said. ‘We’ll see. We’ll keep on watching the papers.’

  Sometimes the very job would crop up, but carrying the stipulation ‘aged between 25 and 35 years’. Highly qualified men to 40 years would be considered.

  ‘I’d go after that job,’ Alice said one day, as Hughie sat staring into space with the paper on his knees. ‘You don’t look nearly fifty, Hughie.’

  She brushed his hair back with her fingers. It was sparse, but dark. Dressed in his best navy blue, with a red-and-white striped tie, he was presentable enough.

  He took the paper and walked down Ring Street. He felt hopeful and confident. Perhaps he would show Renshaw after all.

  ‘You fill in this form,’ the girl said. She was pleasant and friendly. She placed a little heap of forms on a table.

  He picked up a pen and began to write.

  Name. (In block letters.)

  Age? Hughie hesitated. There could be complications. Insurance. Superannuation. Finally he wrote in the correct figure.

  Address.

  Qualifications? Thirty-five years in the steam of Macdonaldtown. University of Macdonaldtown.

  State particularly pass in physics, maths, chemistry. Physics? They didn’t teach it at Macdonaldtown Public. No time for physics. Maths? Well, he could add and do decimals, and work in grammes, and manage fractions.

  Chemistry?

  He looked down at the blots and smudges he was making on the paper. The girl came over to him, smiling. A young man opened the door, picked up a form and began filling it in. He wrote quickly and with purpose. He had good passes in physics, maths and chemistry. Hughie stood looking at the incomplete form that he had in his hand.

  An inner door opened and a middle-aged man called, ‘Send in the next applicant, please.’

  The girl looked at Hughie.

  ‘Did you finish filling in your form? No matter, Mr Wiseman’s ready to see you now.’

  Hughie pulled out his wallet. It had the reference that Cuthbert had written out for him. ‘Leaves of his own accord. It is with regret…’ Ah, well, Staff people are never sacked. Not like the rank-and-filers. He leaves of his own accord. Hughie’s throat tightened.

  ‘Very interesting,’ Mr Wiseman said. ‘Practical man. Good experience too. Fact is, we’re looking for a qualified man. Textiles aren’t what they were. Synthetics invading the place. Pity you didn’t qualify. Big future for the right man. Could do with a good vat hand. That be in your line at all?’

  Hughie folded up the reference and put it back in his pocket.

  ‘Sorry,’ Mr Wiseman said. ‘Wish we could accommodate you. You might handle the job at that, but I get my instructions as well.’

  He shook hands with Hughie. Well, it was only the beginning.

  ‘There’s no need for you to worry,’ Alice said when Hughie came in looking dejected. ‘You’ve been out next to no time. Scarcely long enough for a holiday. And remember, you won’t get a break for a full year once you start again.’

  And once, feeling very adventurous, she said, ‘Why don’t you start something new? You could do a job as a process worker in an engineering place, or even sell things. That’s clean and it seems easy.’

  She was trying to whip him out of his apathy.

  ‘I can’t sell things,’ Hughie said. ‘And I can’t do repetition work. I got a job. I’m a dyer. And that’s what I’ll be when I start work again.’

  From time to time news trickled through from the Dyehouse. Renshaw was back. Larcombe had told him off. Larcombe had told him to watch his step. The cotton was faulty. Collins wasn’t taking to the lab. Oliver Henery had sooled the Unions onto Renshaw over the loads that the girls were humping about. Renshaw was going to catch up with Oliver when the time was ripe. Barney Monahan’s missus was having a baby.

  Alice, tired of trying to jerk Hughie out of his dark mood, began searching round for ways of helping him. She fo
und a copy of the telephone directory and turned to the pink pages.

  She began listing all the textile companies and dyehouses. She met Mr Mayers secretly (Hughie would not have liked it) and worked out a list of the smaller dyehouses.

  ‘The writing seems to be on the wall with the big places,’ Mayers said. ‘But these little places would jump at a bloke like Hughie. I sounded Weatherstone out. He’s got a little place out Sans Souci way. He’s thinking of putting in a few vats. He’d take him like a shot, but it could be a matter of six months.’

  ‘It’s not urgent,’ Alice said. ‘I suppose we’re better off than most. We own the house—lock, stock and barrel. But Hughie worries me. He just sits there looking into space, pretending to read, but usually just sitting. I’m beginning to worry. He seems sort of sick.’

  ‘Bit of a jolt,’ Mayers said. ‘Only job he’s ever had. I’m against it myself, starting in on a job and never leaving it. They get you by the tit.’

  The days slipped by for Hughie.

  Each morning he was out with the paper under his arm, in quest of the job for a dyer.

  ‘Still out?’ Tom Waters’ inquiring eye was raised above the fence railing. ‘If you’d be interested, I hear that Dobbey wants a hand on his baker’s cart. I might be able to put in a word.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Hughie said. ‘I’m keeping an appointment for a job as a dyer.’

  ‘Ah, well—if I can help…’

  ‘Thanks. Thanks a lot.’

  ‘Nothing turned up in the dyeing line, Mr Marshall?’ It was Mrs Marsden from the corner of the street. Her face was mean and spiteful. A stuck-up lot, that Hughie and his missus. It did them good to get it now and again.

  ‘Nothing turned up yet, Mrs Marsden. Perhaps tomorrow.’ In the Botanic Gardens he would sit and watch the trees, and think about the colour of the leaves. He could take that tawny yellow one, mix colour and match it. Or that russety-brown one, tumbling slowly to the ground. He would try that. He picked up the leaf. The colour was reflected back to him. It would not be so easy. He would try. The leaf fluttered to the ground. It was late autumn now; the rich summer flowers were spent, the spring bulbs had not pushed up through the ground, the poppies had not yet budded. A few autumn roses still clung to the bushes. The slender, leafless limbs of the deciduous trees cut across the sky. Bark brown. The leaves drifted down.

 

‹ Prev