The Stars Look Down (81 page)

Back in the office he looked at the clock. Almost six o’clock. He took his hat and went out. He walked out of the empty pit yard and along Cowpen Street. He ought, of course, to go to the hospital to inquire about young Wicks, but he decided to put it off until later. It was very typical, this procrastination. As he walked up the Avenue he heard a loud sound of voices come from the Miners’ Institute. The voices came distantly, they seemed to him futile and remote. He knew there could be no trouble, it was too silly to think of trouble at a time like this.

But Arthur was wrong. Fact, once in a while, does violence to logic. And the events of the evening of December 14th do not necessarily discredit Arthur’s judgment. They merely took place.

The meeting at the Institute was held at six. It was short. Heddon saw to it that the meeting was short. Heddon’s policy was quite clear; he wanted no trouble, no trouble at all. The sadly depleted funds of the Union would not stand trouble. His policy was to intimidate Arthur, leave Arthur uncertain and worrying for twenty-four hours, then come down on the following day to drive a hard bargain with Arthur. Reinstatement for Bert Wicks and compensation and a something extra thrown in to make good measure. But above all Heddon’s policy was to get home, change his socks which were damp because his feet sweated badly, sit down to his tea in dry socks and slippers and then get into a chair by the fireside with his pipe. Heddon was not so young as he had been, his ambitions were dead, the hatreds of his youth merely smouldering. His policy was still vigorous enough, but it was governed less by Heddon’s head and more by Heddon’s feet.

He rushed the proceedings at the meeting, snubbed Jake Wicks, endorsed Harry Ogle’s briefly expressed views, then hurried out to catch the 6.45 for Tynecastle.

On the steps of the Institute he paused, rather taken aback by the size of the crowd outside. Hell, he thought, what’s taken them like, down here! There were perhaps as many as five hundred men, standing there, hanging about, waiting and talking amongst themselves. They were mostly men who were on the dole.

Confronted by this gathering Heddon felt an obligation to address it. He put his hands in his pockets, thrust forward his head and declared briefly:

“Listen, lads. We’ve just held a meeting to discuss the case that happened to-day. We can’t allow any member of our Union to be victimised. I’ll not stand for an unjust dismissal.
But in the meantime we’ve adjourned on a point of order. I’ll be here again to-morrow for further negotiations. That’s all, lads.” With his usual abrupt gesture, Heddon went down the steps and towards the station.

The men cheered Tom Heddon as he walked up Freehold Street. Heddon represented the hope of these men, a vague and faintly illusory hope they were well aware, but still a hope. He represented tobacco, beer, a good bed, warm clothing and work. That was partly why they cheered him. But it was not a loud cheer and in it there could be detected a flatness, a basic note of dissatisfaction and unrest.

When Jake Wicks came out of the Institute five minutes after Heddon had gone it was apparent that he, too, was far from satisfied. He came down the steps slowly, wearing an injured look, and he was at once surrounded by the waiting men who wanted to know more about it. Everybody wanted to know, and in particular Jack Reedy and Jack’s crowd wanted to know. Jack’s crowd was part of the waiting men and yet it was not, it was perhaps a little different. They were mostly youngish men and they did not talk much, but they all had cigarettes. Their faces were curiously alike, each had a kind of hardness as though the owner of the face did not care any more. Jack’s face was exactly like that as if at one time he had cared but now did not care any more. The lines of Jack’s face all sloped downwards and the lines were twisted and set. The face was sucked in about the cheeks and temples and was very pale except for a yellow stain of nicotine at the corner of the upper lip. But the setness of the face was its most remarkable quality; the face was so set you saw at once it could not smile. You had the queer impression that if Jack’s face tried to smile it would break.

“What happened?” Jack demanded, shouldering forward.

Jake Wicks looked at Jack Reedy and Wood and Slattery and Cha Leeming who stood close to him.

“Just imagine!” he snorted. “He’s gone an’ bitched up everything.” In a heated voice he told them what had happened at the meeting.

“Did he say nowt about benefit?” Harry Kinch called out from the edge of the crowd.

“B—all,” answered Jake.

There was a bitter silence amongst the men. The dole had been reduced at the beginning of the month and transitional benefit cut.

Jack stared at Wicks with his set face; there was something formidable in that impassive face. He asked, in his hard, offensive tone:

“What about him bringing out the men?”

“That’s the last thing he’s after,” Jake frothed with indignation. “He’s lost his nerve. He won’t do nothing.”

“He won’t do nothing?” Jack echoed almost into himself. “Well, we’ve got to do something.”

“We ought to have another demonstration,” Wood said.

“A demonstration!” Jack said bitterly, and that finished the demonstration. There had been one demonstration already that week, a demonstration of the unemployed, a procession to the Snook with the red flag and mounted police and speeches. It had been nice, the police riding along companionably, and everything had passed off splendidly with nobody a bit the worse. Oh, Jack’s thoughts were bitter, bitter. That sort of thing was no use. It was
no use
. He wanted, he must have action, his whole being craved action.

On the pretext of young Wick’s dismissal Jack had hoped wildly that Heddon would declare a strike. A strike was mass action and mass action was the only way. A few men out, a few hundreds out, meant nothing, but every man out meant something: it meant the bust up of the Neptune, it meant showing them, it meant action, action. But there was to be no strike after all.

Jack’s forehead was knitted as if in pain. He seemed like some dumb creature working out the incomprehensible. He muttered:

“The meetin’ you had wassent no good. We got to have another meeting. We got to do something. For Christ’s sake give us a fag.”

A cigarette was offered at once by Wood. The cigarette came with the other cigarettes from an automatic machine that Wood could
work
. A match shielded by one cupped hand was offered by Slattery. Jack merely inclined his bone-pale head and inhaled deeply. Then he looked at the men round about and raised his voice.

“Lissen, lads,” he said. “A mass meeting at eight. D’ye understand? Pass the word. Eight o’clock mass meeting.”

The word passed, but Jake Wicks protested, half alarmed, half ingratiating:

“You’ll have to watch out for yourself, Jack.”

“Ah, what the hell!” Jack said in that uncaring voice.
“Stop home if you want. Or go way up in the hospitle wi Bert.”

Jake’s heavy face flushed, but he did not answer. It was always better not to answer Jack back.

“Come on,” Jack said to the others. “Do you want to stick here all night?”

He led the way, limping, down Cowpen Street towards the Salutation and into the Salutation. Jack did not use his hand to push the swing door of the Salutation, he walked at the door with his shoulder and went through. The others did the same.

The bar of the Salutation was full and Bert Amour was behind the bar. Bert had been behind the bar a good many years now; he seemed to grow there with his brassy face and his hair flattened and his forelock wetted and smoothly turned as though a cow had licked it back.

“Hello, Bert,” Jack said with a dreadful friendliness. “What’ll you have, lads?”

The others said what they would have and Bert filled out the drinks. Nobody paid and Bert smiled as if it hurt him.

“Fill them up, Bert,” Jack said, and Bert winced and his face got brassier than ever. But he filled them up again. It was because Bert Amour had been so many years behind the bar of the Salutation that he knew when to fill them up and smile and say nothing. The spirit trade was a queer trade and it was better for Bert to be in with Jack Reedy and his crowd, much better.

“That’s a bad business, Jack,” Bert said, attempting a conversation. “About young Bert Wicks.”

Jack pretended not to hear, but Cha Leeming leaned politely across the bar.

“What the hell do you know about it?”

Bert looked at Cha Leeming and thought it wiser not to take any notice. Cha was exactly like his father, Slogger Leeming, except that Cha had been in the war and that made Cha more up to date. Cha had won the military medal in the war and last week after the demonstration on the Snook, Cha had tied his military medal to the tail of a stray mongrel dog. The mongrel dog had run all through the town trailing the beautiful military medal in the muck and Cha had called the dog
War Hero
. A man should get prison for that. Cha would some day, only too true, Bert thought.

Bert reached out his hand to reclaim the bottle of whisky,
but before he could do so Jack lifted the bottle off the bar and crossed over to a table in the corner. They all went over to the table. A number of men were already there but they made way at once. Jack and his crowd sat down and began talking. Bert watched them talking; wiping the top of the bar, he watched them.

They sat at the corner table talking and drinking and finishing the bottle. The longer they sat there, the more men crowded round them, listening and talking and drinking. The noise became terrific until it seemed they all spoke at once, all violently debating—Wicks’s case, Heddon’s lack of action, the cut in benefit, their hopes of the new Mines Bill. All but Jack Reedy. Jack sat at the table with his dead eyes fixed before him. He was not drunk, no amount could ever make Jack drunk, that was the worst of it. His lips were drawn in tight and narrow and he kept pressing his teeth against them as though he bit against his own bitterness. Jack’s life had shaped him into this mould of bitterness; he was all pain inside and his pained eyes looked upon a world of pain. The disaster had shaped Jack, and the war, and the peace—the degradation and misery of the dole, the pinchings and shifts and pawnings, the brutality of want, the desolation of the soul that is worse than hunger.

All this talk drove him to despair; it was all big mouth and wind. It would be the same at the meeting at eight—words and still more words, which meant nothing, did nothing, and led nowhere. A great hopelessness came over him.

And then, as he sat there, the door swung open and Harry Kinch burst into the bar. Harry was the nephew of that same Will Kinch who had rushed into the Salutation all those years before when Ramage refused him the “end of hough” for his little Alice. But there was this difference. Harry was a greater student of politics than ever Will had been. And Harry had a late
Argus
in his hand. He stood for a moment facing the others, then he cried:

“It’s in the paper, lads. It’s out at last.” His voice broke. “They’ve sold us… they’ve swindled us…”

Every eye was turned on Kinch.

“How, then?” Slattery said thickly. “What’s like the matter, Harry?”

Harry pushed back the hair from his brow.

“It’s in the paper… the new Bill… it’s the biggest
swindle in years. They’ve gi’en us nothing, lads. Not one damned thing….” Again words failed him.

Dead silence had come upon the company. They all knew what had been promised them. Subconsciously the hopes of every man within that room had centred on the Bill. Jack Reedy moved first.

“By God,” he said. “Show us that paper.” He seized the paper and looked at it. They all bent over crowding and craning, looking at the paper where, in a double spread, the terms of their betrayal lay revealed.

“By God,” Jack said again. “So it is!”

Then Cha Leeming jumped to his feet, half-tight and furious.

“It’s too much,” he shouted, “we’ll not put up with it.”

Everybody started talking at once, an uproar. The paper was passed from hand to hand. Jack Reedy was on his feet now, cold and contained. In the midst of the chaos he saw his opportunity. His eyes were not dead now, but burning.

“Give us another whisky,” he said. “Quick.” He tossed down the whisky. He looked round the men. Then he shouted: “I’m goin’ to the Institute. Them that wants can come after us.”

An answering shout went up. They all came after him. They crowded out of the pub into the squally darkness of Cowpen Street, crowding towards the Institute with Jack slightly in the lead.

Outside the Institute more men had collected—most of the younger Neptune men who were out, all of the men who had been discharged at the beginning, and every one of them brought to a pitch of desperation by this news flashed through the Terraces, the final extinction of their hopes.

Jack raced up the steps of the Institute and stood facing the men. Above the door of the Institute an electric globe stuck out like a yellow pear on the end of a stiff branch and the light from the electric pear fell upon Jack’s unbroken face. It was almost dark in the street; the street lamps cast only a flickering pallor in little pools.

Jack stood for a minute facing the men in the darkness. The whisky in him concentrated his bitterness to a kind of venom; his whole body pulsed with that envenomed bitterness. He felt that his moment was approaching, the moment for which he had suffered, for which he had been born.

“Comrades,” he cried, “we’ve just got the news. We’ve
been swindled. They’ve give us the go-bye, like Heddon did: they’ve twisted us, like they always do. And in spite of everything they promised!” He drew a panting, tortured breath, his eyes glittering towards them. “They’re not going to help us! Nobody’s goin’ to help us. Nobody! D’y hear me. Nobody! We’ve got to help ourselves. If we don’t we’ll never get out the bloody gutter where Capitalism has shoved us. Christ Almighty, can’t you see it, lads, the whole economic system’s rotten as dung. They’ve got the money, the motorcars, fine houses, carpets on the floor, an’ it’s all bled out the likes of us. We do the slavin’ and sweatin’ for them. An’ what do we get? We don’t even get food, lads, nor fire, nor proper clothes, nor boots for our kids. The minnit things go wrong we’re chucked out on our necks! Chucked on to bread and margarine, and not enough of it to feed the missus and kids! Don’t tell me it’s because there’s no money. The country’s choked with money, the banks is burstin’ with it, millions and millions of money. Don’t tell me it’s because there’s no food. They’re throwin’ fish back into the sea, burnin’ coffee and wheat, slaughterin’ pigs to let them rot, and us here goin’ half-starvin’. If that’s a proper system, lads, then God Almighty strike me dead.” Another sobbing breath. Then in a rising voice: “We didn’t see it when they had the disaster in this bloody Neptune pit and murdered a hundred men. We didn’t see it in the war when they murdered millions of men. But by Christ we see it now! We can’t stand it, lads. We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to show them, lads. We’ve got to do somethin’. We’ve got to, I tell you, we’ve got to. If we don’t we can rot in hell for all our days.” His voice rose to a shriek now, wild and mad. “I’m goin’ to do somethin’, lads, and them that wants to can come along. I’m goin’ to make a start this minnit. I’m goin’ to show them at the Neptune pit where my two brothers was done in. Now I’m goin’ to wreck the pit, lads. I’m goin’ to do a bit of payin’ back on my own. Are you comin’ with me or are you not?”