Tell him he's a -- from me.'
SNOUTER:'Ere, what about our -- tea? Go on, Kikie, you're a young 'un; shut that -- noise and take the drums. Don't you pay nothing. Worm it out of the old tart. Snivel. Do the doleful.
MR TALLBOYS [chanting]: O all ye children of men, curse ye the Lord, curse Him and vilify Him for ever!
CHARLIE: What, is Smithy crooked too?
MRS BENDIGO: I tell you what, girls, I tell you what gets me down, and that's to think of my bloody husband snoring under four blankets and me freezing in this bloody Square. That's what I can't stomach. The unnatural sod!
GINGER [singing]: There they go-in their joy-Don't take that there drum with the cold sausage in it, Kikie.
NOSY WATSON: Crooked? Crooked? Why, a corkscrew 'ud look like a bloody bradawl beside of him! There isn't one of them double--sons of whores in the Flying Squad but 'ud sell his grandmother to the knackers for two pound ten and then sit on her gravestone eating potato crisps. The geeing, narking toe rag!
CHARLIE: Perishing tough. 'Ow many convictions you got?
GINGER [singing]:
There they go-in their joy-
'Appy girl-lucky boy-
NOSY WATSON: Fourteen. You don't stand no chance with that lot against you.
MRS WAYNE: What, don't he keep you, then?
MRS BENDIGO: No, I'm married to this one, sod 'im!
CHARLIE: I got perishing nine myself.
MR TALLBOYS [chanting]: O Ananias, Azarias and Misael, curse ye the Lord, curse Him and vilify Him for ever!
GINGER [singing]:
There they go-in their joy-
'Appy girl-lucky boy-
But 'ere am I-I-I-
Broken-'a-a-aarted!
God, I ain't 'ad a dig in the grave for three days. 'Ow long since you washed your face, Snouter?
MRS MCELLIGOT: Oh dear, oh dear! If dat boy don't come soon wid de tea me insides'll dry up like a bloody kippered herring.
CHARLIE: You can't sing, none of you. Ought to 'ear Snouter and me 'long towards Christmas time when we pipe up 'Good King Wenceslas' outside the boozers. 'Ymns, too. Blokes in the bar weep their perishing eyes out to 'ear us. 'Member when we tapped twice at the same 'ouse by mistake, Snouter? Old tart fair tore the innards out of us.
MR TALLBOYS [marching up and down behind an imaginary drum and singing]:
All things vile and damnable,
All creatures great and small-
[Big Ben strikes half past ten.]
SNOUTER [mimicking the clock]: Ding dong, ding dong! Six and a -- half hours of it! Cripes!
GINGER: Kikie and me knocked off four of them safety-razor blades in Woolworth's 's afternoon. I'll 'ave a dig in the bleeding fountains tomorrow if I can bum a bit of soap.
DEAFIE: When I was a stooard in the P. & O., we used to meet them black Indians two days out at sea, in them there great canoes as they call catamarans, catching sea-turtles the size of dinner tables.
MRS WAYNE: Did yoo used to be a clergyman, then, sir?
MR TALLBOYS [halting]: After the order of Melchizedec. There is no question of 'used to be', Madam. Once a priest always a priest. Hoc est corpus hocus-pocus. Even though unfrocked-un-Crocked, we call it-and dog-collar publicly torn off by the bishop of the diocese.
GINGER [singing]: There they go-in their joy-Thank Christ! 'Ere comes Kikie. Now for the consultation-free!
MRS BENDIGO: Not before it's bloody needed.
CHARLIE: 'OW come they give you the sack, mate? Usual story? Choirgirls in the family way?
MRS MCELLIGOT: You've took your time, ain't you, young man? But come on, let's have a sup of it before me tongue falls out o' me bloody mouth.
MRS BENDIGO: Shove up, Daddy! You're sitting on my packet of bloody sugar.
MR TALLBOYS: Girls is a euphemism. Only the usual flannel-bloomered hunters of the unmarried clergy. Church hens-altar-dressers and brass-polishers-spinsters growing bony and desperate. There is a demon that enters into them at thirty-five.
THE KIKE: The old bitch wouldn't give me the hot water. Had to tap a toff in the street and pay a penny for it.
SNOUTER: -- likely story! Bin swigging it on the way more likely.
DADDY [emerging from his overcoat]: Drum o' tea, eh? I could sup a drum o' tea. [Belches slightly.]
CHARLIE: When their bubs get like perishing razor stops? I know.
NOSY WATSON: Tea-bloody catlap. Better'n that cocoa in the stir, though. Lend's your cup, matie.
GINGER: Jest wait'll I knock a 'ole in this tin of milk. Shy us a money or your life, someone.
MRS BENDIGO: Easy with that bloody sugar!'Oo paid for it, I sh'd like to know?
MR TALLBOYS: When their bubs get like razor stops. I thank thee for that humour. Pippin's Weekly made quite a feature of the case. 'Missing Canon's Sub Rosa Romance. Intimate Revelations.' And also an Open Letter in John
Bull: 'To a Skunk in Shepherd's Clothing'. A pity-I was marked out for preferment. [To Dorothy] Gaiters in the family, if you understand me. You would not think, would you, that the time has been when this unworthy backside dented the plush cushions of a cathedral stall?
CHARLIE:'Ere comes Florry. Thought she'd be along soon as we got the tea going. Got a nose like a perishing vulture for tea, that girl 'as.
SNOUTER: Ay, always on the tap. [Singing]
Tap, tap, tappety tap,
I'm a perfec' devil at that-
MRS MCELLIGOT: De poor kid, she ain't got no sense. Why don't she go up to Piccadilly Circus where she'd get her five bob reg'lar? She won't do herself no good bummin' round de Square wid a set of miserable ole Tobies.
DOROTHY: Is that milk all right?
GINGER: All right? [Applies his mouth to one of the holes in the tin and blows. A sticky greyish stream dribbles from the other.]
CHARLIE: What luck, Florry?'Ow 'bout that perishing toff as I see you get off with just now?
DOROTHY: It's got 'Not fit for babies' on it.
MRS BENDIGO: Well, you ain't a bloody baby, are you? You can drop your Buckingham Palace manners, 'ere, dearie.
FLORRY: Stood me a coffee and a fag-mingy bastard! That tea you got there, Ginger? You always was my favourite, Ginger dear.
MRS WAYNE: There's jest thirteen of us.
MR TALLBOYS: As we are not going to have any dinner you need not disturb yourself.
GINGER: What-o, ladies and gents! Tea is served. Cups forward, please!
THE KIKE: Oh Jeez! You ain't filled my bloody cup half full!
MRS MCELLIGOT: Well, here's luck to us all, an' a better bloody kip tomorrow.
I'd ha' took shelter in one o' dem dere churches meself, only de b--s won't
let you in if so be as dey t'ink you got de chats on you. [Drinks.] MRS WAYNE: Well, I can't say as this is exactly the way as I've been accustomed to drinking a cup of tea-but still- [Drinks.]
CHARLIE: Perishing good cup of tea. [Drinks.]
DEAFIE: And there was flocks of them there green parakeets in the coco-nut palms, too. [Drinks.]
MR TALLBOYS:
What potions have I drunk of siren tears,
Distilled from limbecs foul as Hell within!
[Drinks.]
SNOUTER: Last we'll get till five in the -- morning. [Drinks.]
[Florry produces a broken shop-made cigarette from her stocking, and cadges a match. The men, except Daddy, Deafie, and Mr Tallboys, roll cigarettes from picked-up fag-ends. The red ends glow through the misty twilight, like a crooked constellation, as the smokers sprawl on the bench, the ground, or the slope of the parapet.]
MRS WAYNE: Well, there now! A nice cup of tea do seem to warm you up, don't it, now? Not but what I don't feel it a bit different, as you might say, not having no nice clean table-cloth like I've been accustomed to, and the beautiful china tea service as our mother used to have; and always, of course, the very best tea as money could buy-real Pekoe Points at two and nine a pound....
GINGER [singing]:
There they go-in their joy-
'Appy girl-lucky boy-
MR TALLBOYS [singing, to the tune of'Deutschland, Deutschland uber alies']: Keep the aspidistra flying-
CHARLIE: 'OW long you two kids been in Smoke?
SNOUTER: I'm going to give them boozers such a doing tomorrow as they won't know if theyr'e on their 'eads or their --'eels. I'll 'ave my 'alf dollar if I 'ave to 'old them upside down and -- shake 'em.
GINGER: Three days. We come down from York-skippering 'alf the way. God, wasn't it jest about bleeding nine carat gold, too!
FLORRY: Got any more tea there, Ginger dear? Well, so long, folks. See you all at Wilkins's tomorrow morning.
MRS BENDIGO: Thieving little tart! Swallers 'er tea and then jacks off without so much as a thank you. Can't waste a bloody moment.
MRS MCELLIGOT: Cold? Ay, I b'lieve you. Skipperin' in de long grass wid no blanket an' de bloody dew fit to drown you, an' den can't get your bloody fire going' in de mornin', an' got to tap de milkman 'fore you can make yourself a drum o' tea. I've had some'v it when me and Michael was on de toby.
MRS BENDIGO: Even go with blackies and Chinamen she will, the dirty little cow.
DOROTHY: How much does she get each time?
SNOUTER: Tanner.
DOROTHY: Sixpence?
CHARLIE: Bet your life. Do it for a perishing fag along towards morning.
MRS MCELLIGOT: I never took less'n a shilling, never.
GINGER: Kikie and me skippered in a boneyard one night. Woke up in the morning and found I was lying on a bleeding gravestone.
THE KIKE: She ain't half got the crabs on her, too.
MRS MCELLIGOT: Michael an' me skippered in a pigsty once. We was just a-creepin' in, when, 'Holy Mary!' says Michael, 'dere's a pig in here!''Pig be --!' I says, 'he'll keep us warm anyway.' So in we goes, an' dere was an old sow lay on her side snorin' like a traction engine. I creeps up agen her an' puts me arms round her, an' begod she kept me warm all night. I've skippered worse.
DEAFIE [singing]: With my willy willy-
CHARLIE: Don't ole Deafie keep it up? Sets up a kind of a 'umming inside of 'im, 'e says.
DADDY: When I was a boy we didn't live on this 'ere bread and marg and tea and suchlike trash. Good solid tommy we 'ad in them days. Beef stoo. Black pudden. Bacon dumpling. Pig's 'ead. Fed like a fighting-cock on a tanner a day. And now fifty year I've 'ad of it on the toby. Spud-grabbing, pea-picking, lambing, turnip-topping-everythink. And sleeping in wet straw and not once in a year you don't fill your guts right full. Well-! [Retires within his coat.]
MRS MCELLIGOT: But he was real bold, Michael was. He'd go in anywhere. Many's de time we've broke into an empty house an' kipped in de best bed. 'Other people got homes,' he'd say. 'Why shouln't we have'm too!'
GINGER [singing]: But I'm dancing with tears-in my eyes-
MR TALLBOYS [to himself]: Absumet haeres Caecuba dignior! To think that there were twenty-one bottles of Clos St Jacques 1911 in my cellar still, that night when the baby was born and I left for London on the milk train!...
MRS WAYNE: And as for the wreaths we 'as sent us when our mother died-well, you wouldn't believe!'Uge, they was....
MRS BENDIGO: If I'ad my time over again I'd marry for bloody money.
GINGER [singing]:
But I'm dancing with tears-in my eyes-
'Cos the girl-in my arms-isn't you-o-ou!
NOSY WATSON: Some of you lot think you got a bloody lot to howl about, don't you? What about a poor sod like me? You wasn't narked into the stir when you was eighteen year old, was you?
THE KIKE: Oh Je-e-eeeze!
CHARLIE: Ginger, you can't sing no more'n a perishing tomcat with the gutsache. Just you listen to me. I'll give y'a treat. [Singing]:-Jesxi, lover of my soul-
MR TALLBOYS [to himself]: Et ego in Crockford... . With Bishops and Archbishops and with all the Company of Heaven....
NOSY WATSON: D'you know how I got in the stir the first time? Narked by my own sister-yes, my own bloody sister! My sister's a cow if ever there was one. She got married to a religious maniac-he's so bloody religious that she's got fifteen kids now-well, it was him put her up to narking me. But I got back on 'em, I can tell you. First thing, I done when I come out of the stir, I buys a hammer and goes round to my sister's house, and smashed her piano to bloody matchwood. 'There!' I says, 'that's what you get for narking me! You nosing mare!' I says.
DOROTHY: This cold, this cold! I don't know whether my feet are there or not.
MRS MCELLIGOT: Bloody tea don't warm you for long, do it? I'm fair froze myself.
MR TALLBOYS [to himself]: My curate days, my curate days! My fancywork bazaars and morris-dancers in aid of on the village green, my lectures to the Mothers' Union-missionary work in Western China with fourteen magic lantern slides! My Boys' Cricket Club, teetotallers only, my Confirmation classes-purity lecture once monthly in the Parish Hall-my Boy Scout orgies! The Wolf Cubs will deliver the Grand Howl. Household Hints for the Parish Magazine, 'Discarded fountain-pen fillers can be used as enemas for canaries....'
CHARLIE [singing]: Jesu, lover of my soul-
GINGER: 'Ere comes the bleeding flattie! Get up off the ground, all of you. [Daddy emerges from his overcoat.]
THE POLICEMAN [shaking the sleepers on the next bench]: Now then, wake up, wake up! Rouse up, you! Got to go home if you want to sleep. This isn't a common lodging house. Get up, there! [etc., etc.]
MRS BENDIGO: It's that nosy young sod as wants promotion. Wouldn't let you bloody breathe if 'e'ad 'is way.
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 wi
th 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.]
The Complete Novels of George Orwell Page 53
