Part 42

She was not depressed. In a few weeks, she might be miserable--she knew that too; she seemed to know everything to-night--but now, at this moment, she might have just had good news instead of very bad. Unlike her husband, who appeared to be only half the man he usually was, a listless lump, she felt twice her customary self. The footlights had blazed out, the curtain had shot up, and she had responded at once to the call of the drama. But there was more in it than that. She was no longer playing and pretending in the background. The situation, leaving him crushed, challenged her, and there was something exhilarating in accepting the challenge. Everything was suddenly real and exciting. Plans by the score, some of them born of old idle day-dreams, were stirring in her mind, and now while he listened, sometimes shaking his head, sometimes looking at her hopefully, they came tumbling out. “Of course, we’ll give this place up as soon as we can--we ought to get a decent premium too--look what we’ve spent on the decoration--and then I’m sure mother would take the children for a few months....”

IV

Yes, Mr. Smeeth was going home. It never occurred to him to go and hear what was left of the concert. He had done with Brahms & Co. for a long time, perhaps for ever. As he waited for his tram, he remembered that tune again--Ta _tum_ ta ta _tum_ tum--and now it seemed like something that was going on a long, long way off, like a birthday party in Australia. He said good-bye to that tune. As the tram went lumbering and groaning up the City Road, he said good-bye to many things.

He was feeling rather queer. He had missed his usual evening meal and was empty; that double whisky had had its effect; there was undoubtedly a pain somewhere in his side; and then of course there was the shock of the bad news. He had for years moved gingerly, apprehensively, through a world in which the worst might happen at any moment. The worst had happened. He could have said to himself, with satisfaction, “What did I tell you?” Perhaps there ought not to have been any shock. But it was not so simple as that. He had never expected to be hurled out of his job in this fashion. He had always seen danger coming from many quarters, but nevertheless this blow had arrived from quite an unexpected quarter. The more he thought about it, the angrier he grew. His anger was not directed against Mr. Dersingham, not even against Golspie, but against the whole world, the very nature of things.

You go on for years and years building up a position for yourself until at last you have a place of your own, a little world of your own, in which the figures do what you tell them to do, the books reveal their secrets, the fellows at the bank say “Good morning, Mr. Smeeth,” and everything is snug and sensible. Then a chap turns up from nowhere, looks at a trade directory and happens to choose your firm, wanders in to Angel Pavement, and then, in less than six months’ time, without your having any hand or say in it, he blows you clean out of it all, without even knowing or caring a thing about it. You are quietly finishing off for the day, and then suddenly--bang! What was the good of trams going up and down the City Road and conductors taking fares and nobody smoking inside or spitting on top under penalty of a fine? What was the good of having a City Road at all and lighting it with street lamps and opening shops and sending policemen to walk up and down it; what was the good of paying rates and taxes and shaving yourself and seeing that you had a clean collar and going round to doctors and dentists and reading the newspapers and voting, if this is what could happen any minute? My God!--what was the good of it all?

This blanched middle-aged man, sitting in a corner of the moving tram, an unlighted pipe trembling beneath his grey moustache, the wrinkles on his face deeper than ever, peered through his glasses now at the familiar panorama of the North London roads and saw not a glimmer of it. His gaze was really fixed on the crazy structure of things, and of that he could make neither head nor tail. He was shaking a little, not with fear, but with indignation. For years there had been a great shadow haunting and terrifying him, for he had seen all the little lighted things of his life menaced by it. Now the lights had gone, blown out; he sat in the shadow itself; the tram was crawling through it; the Stoke Newington Road was in it; and all his fear had been used up before by that shadow, when he had been a man who had something precious to lose. Now he had lost it. In a week or two, he would have to start again, and at a time when even the boys were lining up in their hundreds for a chance of a mere beginning at ten shillings a week. It wasn’t good enough. That was the phrase he used, the first that sprang into his mind, and he repeated it over and over again with tremendous emphasis. “Not good enough,” he said as he left the tram. “Not good enough,” as he made his way to Chaucer Road, “not good enough.”

It was only too evident, he told himself grimly, that they were not expecting him back so soon at 17, Chaucer Road. Everything seemed to be in full swing there. You might have thought somebody had just been left a fortune. He heard a great noise coming from the front room, and he saw a light in the dining-room. He chose the dining-room, and found George there, tinkering about with the wireless set.

“Who’s in there?” asked Mr. Smeeth.

“The Mitty crowd,” said George, with a tiny grin. “I came in here out of the way. I’ve had enough of that lot. Mitty owes me a quid, too. He’s no good.” He looked curiously at his father. “Anything up, Dad?”

“You got anything to do yet, George?”

“Not yet. I thought I was on to something to-day, but it was no go. I’m going round to see a chap to-morrow morning, big garage up at Stamford Hill. Why? Anything wrong?”

“Yes. I look like being out of a job within the next fortnight, and you know what that means.”

It was not the tragedy to George that it was to his father, not merely because George was much younger, but also because his whole outlook was different, for he lived in a newer world in which jobs came and went and nobody troubled to spend years consolidating a position. Nevertheless, the youth had sufficient imagination to realise what this meant to his father. “I’m sorry about that, Dad--by gosh, I am! Rotten luck, isn’t it? How’d it happen? They’d never sack you, would they? Has the firm gone broke?”

“That’s it. Try and get something as soon as you can, George. You know how we’ll be fixed.”

“Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll get something soon, something good, too. Edna’s not earning anything now, either, is she? She’d better make another start, too, hadn’t she?”

“I’ll attend to that. We’ll all have to make another start now, if you ask me,” said Mr. Smeeth grimly. They looked at one another, with approval on both sides, in silence for a moment. They could hear sounds of merriment from the other room. “Seem to be enjoying themselves in there,” said Mr. Smeeth, his temper rising.

George came nearer. “Dad, boot ’em out. I would if it was my house. I told mother so, too----”

“Taking something on yourself, boy, aren’t you, these days?”

“Well, I did. I can’t stand that lot. That’s why I came in here.”

Mr. Smeeth nodded. “That’s just what I’m going to do, George. I want some peace and quietness to-night, and I’m going to have it.” He walked out, and his son followed him.

The front room was just as it had been the first time the Mitty family visited them. There were only five people in it, Mitty and his wife and daughter, Mrs. Smeeth and Edna, but it seemed quite crowded and as thick, hot, and smelly, as if people had been eating, drinking and smoking in it for weeks. It made Mr. Smeeth feel very angry and disgusted.

Mrs. Smeeth stared at him, and looked uneasy. “Hello, Dad,” she cried. “I didn’t expect you back so soon.”

“So it seems.”

“Didn’t you go to the concert?”

Fred Mitty, very flushed, was about to help himself from a bottle that stood, with other bottles, glasses, and some cake and biscuits, on a little table in the centre of the room. He was leaning forward, but straightened himself when he saw Mr. Smeeth standing there. “Thought you was having some classical music to-night, Pa,” he roared. “Gave it a miss, eh?”

Mr. Smeeth advanced into the room, breathing hard. He looked at Mitty. “I’ve been working hard,” he said pointedly, “and I want some peace and quietness now. So I’ll say Good-night.”

“What d’you mean, Dad?” cried Mrs. Smeeth.

But the irrepressible Fred could not resist this. “Well, night-night, Pa,” he yelled, “if you’re going to bed. Don’t let me keep you.” He looked round with a grin, asking for applause, and got it from the two girls, who giggled. Then he made a move towards the bottle again.

“I’m not going to bed, just yet,” said Mr. Smeeth, his voice trembling. “But you’re going home. That’s what I meant.”

“Here, half a minute, Dad.” Mrs. Smeeth’s voice rose in indignation. “What a way to talk!”

“I should think so indeed,” cried Mrs. Mitty, sitting up sharply.

“For the more we are too-gether,” Fred sang, as his hand closed round the whisky bottle, “the merrier we will bee-yer.”

The fuse had been burning briskly for some time, and now its travelling spark reached the explosive. Mr. Smeeth blew up. “Get out!” he screamed at Mitty. “Get out of here! Go on! Get out!”

“That’s the stuff,” shouted George from the doorway.

But that scream was not enough for such an explosion of wrath. Two seconds later, Mr. Smeeth had flung down the little table and sent whisky and port and dirty glasses and cake and biscuits and oranges flying about the room. All was roaring chaos, with Fred Mitty shouting, the two wives screaming, Dot Mitty shrieking with laughter, Edna bursting into tears, George charging forward, and Mr. Smeeth standing in the middle, bellowing and stamping among the ruins. All the others jumped up and there was a pushing and jostling and Mr. Smeeth lost his eyeglasses and had no hope of finding them in the scrimmage. Nothing could be plainly heard in the din, and now, for Mr. Smeeth, robbed of his glasses, nothing could be plainly seen. His wife seemed to be shaking his arm and shrieking at him; Mrs. Mitty seemed to have hurled herself at Fred, to prevent further violence; and George appeared to be taking a hand in all the proceedings. But in another minute, he was alone in the room, and all the others seemed to be talking at the top of their voices outside. Feeling shaky, he made a step or two towards a chair, and trod on some glass. His own eyeglasses were still on the floor somewhere, and no doubt somebody had trodden on them. He collapsed into the chair, and in a dazed fashion removed a strange soggy substance from his left bootsole. It was what had once been a very generous slice of sandwich cake. Then a piece of broken glass, a jagged fragment of tumbler, cut his hand. He felt ill. It would not have been very difficult for him to have been sick on the spot. The sound of the voices outside did not abate for several minutes, but he stayed where he was. They could argue it out between them, could say and do what they liked; he didn’t care.

The door had been left open, and he heard the Mitty family go, and then he heard George say something to Mrs. Smeeth and Edna. The three of them went into the dining-room and closed the door behind them, but the sound of their voices, raised in heated discussion, came to him in his armchair. He had groped about a little with the hand that was not cut, but all he had found were two biscuits and these he had eaten in that mechanical fashion in which biscuits are nearly always eaten. The voices were lower now and suggested that their owners were no longer merely shouting at one another, but were really talking. More minutes passed, and then he heard Edna go upstairs to bed. Then, after a short interval, during which he listened intently, shakily, to every sound, his wife came into the room. She did not burst in, as he had expected her to do; she came in quietly and shut the door after her. But this did not necessarily mean that there would not be a storm, and he braced himself to meet it.

There was no storm, however. Mrs. Smeeth’s first fury had passed, though she was still very agitated. “If it hadn’t been for George, I was going to say something to you, Herbert, you wouldn’t forget for a long, long time. But he says you’re very upset about your work.”

“I am,” said Mr. Smeeth in a very low voice.

“He says you’re going to lose your job. Is that right?”

“That’s right, Edie. It’s all up with Twigg and Dersingham. In a week or two I’ll be finding myself without a job.”

“You’re sure this time, Dad? I mean--it’s not one of your false alarms, is it?”

“I wish it was. No, there’s no false alarm about it this time.”

“Mind you,” cried Mrs. Smeeth hastily, shakily, “that’s no reason why you should have gone and behaved like this. My word, if anybody’d told me you’d have gone and done a thing like that--you of all men--my word, I’d have told _them_ something! Smashing the place up, too! Look at this room! Look at yourself! But I suppose if you were upset, you weren’t responsible. Here, Dad, are you sure, really sure, about your job? You’re not--you’re not trying to frighten me again, are you?”

“No, of course I’m not.”

“I can’t believe it. Here, what happened?”

He tried to tell her what had happened, and at least succeeded in convincing her that he was entirely serious. “And if you think I’m going to get another job as good as that, or a job worth having at all, in a hurry, you’re mistaken, Edie. I know what it is, with office jobs; and it’ll have to be an office job because that’s what I’ve always done. I’m nearly fifty, and I look it. I dare say I look older----”

“That you don’t, Dad.”

“Well, that’s your opinion, but you won’t be employing me. I know what it is.” And there came back to him suddenly, poignantly, the memory of that tiny scene outside the office door, several months ago, when he had said to that anxious man, the last in the line of applicants, “Good luck!” and had received the ghost of a smile. “There are four of us here. George is out of work, though he might get something soon. He’s a good lad, really. There’s Edna. She’s earning nothing now.”

“She will be before this time next week,” said Mrs. Smeeth quickly. “I’ll see to that.”

“She might be, and then again, she might not. And in a week or two I’ll be among the unemployed. And we’ve got about forty odd pounds saved up, that’s what we’ve got, all told, unless you count this furniture.”

“I can work,” cried Mrs. Smeeth fiercely. “You needn’t think there’ll be me to keep in idleness. I’ll get something. I’ll go out charring first.”

“But I don’t want you to go out charring,” Mr. Smeeth told her, almost shouting. “I didn’t marry you and I haven’t worked all this time, never missing a minute if I could help it, and we didn’t save and plan to get this home together, so you could go out charring. My God, it’s not good enough. When I think of the way I’ve worked and planned and gone without things to get us a decent position----!” His voice dropped.

“We’ll manage somehow.” And having said this, Mrs. Smeeth, the gay and confident partner, suddenly and astonishingly burst into tears.

“Manage? We’ll have to manage,” Mr. Smeeth had begun, grimly. Then he changed his tone. “Here, Edie. That’s all right, that’s all right. Now then, now then. I’m sorry I lost my temper too----”

“It was my fault,” she sobbed. “Yes, it is. I deserved it. I know I’ve spent too much money. Yes, I have.”

“Oh, never mind. You weren’t to know the firm was going broke like that. I didn’t know myself. Never more surprised in my life. Here, Edie. Now then, now then.” He was standing beside her now.

“Oh dear,” she gasped, a few minutes later, trying to wipe her eyes. She was both laughing and crying now. “Oh, dear, dear, dear, dear!”

He looked at her solemnly.

“Oh dear, dear, you do look a sight, Dad. I don’t know who looks the worst, you or this room. I never saw such a sketch, though I expect I’m bad enough, goodness knows!”

“I’ve dropped my eyeglasses, that’s all that’s wrong with me,” Mr. Smeeth announced, not without dignity.

“I can see that, Dad, I can see that,” she told him, dabbing at her face. “Here, I’ll look for them. You sit down. But, mind you, if they’re broken, don’t blame me. It wasn’t me that started throwing things about to-night, was it? Here they are.”

“Broken?”

“Yes, somebody made no mistake when they trod on them. You’ll have to wear your old ones for a day or two, that’s all. I’ll go and get them for you, and then you can help me to clear this mess up.”

“All right, Edie.” Mr. Smeeth hesitated. “Is there anything to eat in the house? I’m getting hungry now.”

“Didn’t you have anything? Haven’t you had anything at all to-night? You silly man, why didn’t you say so? I’ll go and get you something now. You go and get your glasses, you know where they are--in the drawer upstairs. If you can’t see them, you can feel for them. Yes, in the top drawer. And I’ll get you something to eat while you’re finding them. Oh dear, what a life! Still, it’s the only one we’ve got, I suppose, so we’d better make what we can out of it.”

She bustled out and Mr. Smeeth followed her. He was very shortsighted, almost helpless without his glasses, and after he had stumbled upstairs to their bedroom he spent some time groping about for the old pair. Annoyed by the dim shapelessness of everything, he told himself that he ought to have been wearing his glasses before he started on such a search. Then he saw the irony of it and was quite entertained for a few moments, during which he felt for the first time for a long while a curiously reassuring detachment from things, and when he found the old glasses and put them on, he seemed, for one brief interval, to be staring at another and smaller world, and it was a world that could play all manner of tricks with Herbert Norman Smeeth but could never capture, swallow, and digest the whole of him. The newly-born ironist then returned downstairs, to eat his supper.

_Epilogue_

Mr. Golspie, pottering about in his cabin, would not have known she was moving off if he had not suddenly seen a blue funnel go wandering across the open porthole. He could feel no motion, but then she was not moving under her own steam, but was being taken out of the docks by tugs. Mr. Golspie put his head into the next cabin, where his daughter was still fussing about with her things. “We’re off,” he said, grinning at her. Lena showed no sign of excitement. You might have thought she had been travelling to the River Plate all her life.

“Coming out?” said her father.

“Not yet. Are we really going? There doesn’t seem to be any excitement.”

“There isn’t. If that’s what you want, we ought to have gone on a liner, and then you’d have had palaver enough--kissing and crying and cheering and God knows what. These boats do it quietly.”

“Well, I’m disappointed. But I’ll come out when there’s something to see and I’ve put these things away. I’m rather tired of staring at these silly docks, though. Tell me when anything happens.”

He nodded, grinned again at her, then withdrew, and went out on to the main deck, where several of the other passengers were standing. There were only a dozen passengers all told, for this was primarily a cargo boat. One of these fellow travellers caught Mr. Golspie’s eye, nodded, and then came nearer. They had exchanged a few remarks already, each having recognised in the other an old hand and a kindred spirit. They knew even now that the moment the steward was at liberty to dispense his liquors, they would be having a drink together, the first of many, many drinks. This other man, Sugden, was a tallish fellow with a long bony face and a vast shaven upper lip, a Lancashire man who travelled for some chemical firm. He had one of those hard, flat, Lancashire voices that give every statement they make a lugubrious and disillusioned air.

“Moving,” that voice announced now, to Mr. Golspie.

“Moving,” said Mr. Golspie.

They stood together, two solid middle-aged men, and together they watched the long line of masts and funnels in the Royal Albert Dock go sliding away. They were still in London, and no great distance from the buses and trams, the teashops and the pubs, yet all that London seemed to have disappeared long ago. Here was another city with streets and squares of dark water, a city of wharves and sheds, masts and funnels and cranes, barges, tugs, and lighters. Wherever you looked there appeared to be nothing but these things, though in the far distance a haze of smoke, hanging above the multitudinous chimney-pots of Poplar and Bow, suggested that the other London, the brick and paving-stone London, was still there. It was not a bad morning for the time of year. Now and then the sunlight struggled through and set the water glittering or brought out ghostly rainbow hues on the darker oilier patches.

“This is where they bring all the meat,” said Sugden. “This, and Liverpool. If you blocked this place up for a week or two, a lot o’ people would find themselves without their Sunday dinners. Not me, though. Give me English meat, when I can get it. And when I’m at home, I insist on having it. Get enough o’ the other sort when I’m away.”

“You’ve been on these boats before, haven’t you?”

“I have. I’ve been on this very ship twice before. They know me here. You ask ’em.”

“Food all right?”

“Suits me,” replied Sugden. “Should suit you, too. Good quality and plenty of it. Nothing fancy, y’know--not like these liners, with their chefs and what not--but plenty o’ good solid stuff. That’s what I like.”

Apparently it was what Mr. Golspie liked too. He produced a cigar case, and the two men lit up and through a fragrant dribble of smoke regarded the moving docks with half-closed eyes and a vague air of patronage.

“This port of London’s a bit of an eye-opener to me,” Mr. Golspie remarked.

“Ever been all round it? Tremendous--oh tremendous! There’s the West India Docks further up here, and then the Surrey Commercial on the other side. You never saw such a place. It’s a hard day’s work looking round the Surrey Commercial. Chap tried to show me once, but I gave it up. And then you’ve got the London Docks further up still. And Tilbury, of course. If you go out on one of the regular liners and mail boats, you get on down at Tilbury. I’ve done that once or twice, but this suits me better. When I’m aboard a ship, I like to travel quietly. I don’t like all this floating hotel, song-and-dance, fancy-dress ball business. What d’you say?”

“Haven’t been on one of those big ships for donkeys’ years,” Mr. Golspie confessed. “I’ve never been out to South America before, as a matter of fact. I’ve been to the States, in my time, and I’ve been to Central America, but not to south. But an old pal of mine’s out there--Montevideo’s his headquarters--and he’s put up a good proposition, so I’m going to see what it looks like.”

“Plenty o’ money there, plenty. Only place where there is now, there and the States. I shouldn’t like to live there though. Wouldn’t suit me.”

“And where do you live when you’re at home?”

“St. Helens. That’s where my firm is, and that’s where I live. Been there all my life. D’you know it?”

“Saw it once from the train,” Mr. Golspie replied. “Bit ugly, isn’t it?”

Mr. Sugden was not surprised. Obviously he had heard this before. “Yes, it’s a bit ugly, if you’re not used to it. But I’m a bit ugly myself. And if it comes to that, you’re no beauty.” And he roared with laughter.