The Complete Novels Of George Orwell (69 page)

MR TALLBOYS
[chanting] :
O all ye works of the Lord–

DEAFIE
[singing]: With
my willy willy–

CHARLIE: ’Oo was it copped you, Nosy?

THE KIKE:Oh Je-e-e-eeze!

MRS BENDIGO:Shove up, shove up! Seems to me some folks think they’ve took a mortgage on this bloody seat.

MR TALLBOYS
[chanting]:
O all ye works of the Lord, curse ye the Lord, curse Him and vilify Him for ever!

MRS MCELLIGOT:
What I always says is, it’s always us poor bloody Catholics dat’s down in de bloody dumps.

NOSY WATSON:
Smithy. Flying Squad–flying sod! Give us the plans of the house and everything, and then had a van full of coppers waiting and nipped the lot of us. I wrote it up in the Black Maria:

‘Detective Smith knows how to gee;
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 über 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?