The Wooden Shepherdess (30 page)

That night as Baldwin stumbled upstairs in Number Ten he caught his toe in a carpet and nearly came a cropper.

The tycoon mask looked tired and sensitive, even a little helpless. So this was at last the Masses against the Rest—with those “Masses,” in England, outnumbered as well as outbrained! He need have no fears that the Strike could succeed: for even its Leaders were pulling their punches, scared stiff lest those Boys on the Left began making history over
their
heads. He thanked the God Above Who had chosen a time so auspicious for things to come to the crunch.

But crunches were means at the best, not ends: what victory had to lead to was lasting industrial peace, with the Unions back at their proper constitutional job and Parlia-ment back at theirs. This called for patience and tolerance—endless finesse: yet provocative chaps like Churchill seemed all agog for excuses to call out the troops, and intent on rubbing fresh salt in the “Enemy's” wounds.... It was hard to put up with Winston's concept of British working-men as the “Enemy,” Winston's ghoulish delight in a crunch for a crunch's sake....

Though he got into bed and presently slept, only two hours later he woke. He had side-tracked Winston (the ablest lieutenant he'd got) into what seemed a harmless job just running a news-sheet, his
British Gazette
: yet even with Davidson censoring everything Winston wrote, was the job quite harmless enough? Parliament hardly seemed to think so! He hadn't sufficiently bargained for Winston's incredible taste for bombast, a total lack of the Common Touch which could lose us the people's support even now....

Baldwin soon fell asleep again, being deadly tired; but it wasn't a very refreshing sleep. He dreamed he was balanced on top of a toy-cupboard filled with dolls; and one turned into a tiger.

Next morning as Jeremy turned on his bath-tap he might have been scalded to death when nothing but steam jetted out. In a very few seconds steam filled the room, and he couldn't get near enough even to turn it off. No wonder the Office Keeper was begging the Board to send those Naval Stokers back to the Nore, for they'd whacked up his poor old boilers to something like thirty-five knots!

But other Naval Stokers (as Jeremy knew) were better employed, stoking the London powerhouse furnaces. Strikers had tried to counter this move by cutting the power supplies to the docks; but only to find there were submarines inside the docks already, able to generate ample electric power to keep the cold-storage working and even most of the cranes.... Oh yes, the Navy was really quite good at these “brilliant naval improvisations” so carefully hammered-out years in advance!

Strange (thought Jeremy later, with half his mind on a bunch of routine signals from Simonstown) just how easy it seemed to put the national clock back—with even derelict windmills and watermills once more grinding local corn, their machinery mended a year ago.

To the public of course the General Strike had come as a bolt from the blue, but all Departments of State had their own Emergency Plans: all last year endless interdepart-mental “Supply and Transport” meetings had taken place, which Jeremy had to attend on Their Lordships' behalf. The Chairman remarked at one that half the population of Britain still lived within fifty miles of the sea, so shouldn't the moribund coastal trade be given a shot in the arm? Discreet Board of Trade inquiries to owners of laid-up craft had shown which needed the least repair, so now there were tiny barnacled ketches and sailing-barges and brigs unloading coal and food in forgotten silted-up harbors with grassgrown quays—just as they'd done in Jeremy's childhood. Home Office plans seemed bent on reviving an even remoter past: they'd divided the country in ten independent autonomous regions, each one able if need-be to function alone since each had its sovereign “Commissioner” served by his local high-powered experts—like back to the days of the Heptarchy!

As for the Strike itself (he initialed, unread, some Office Memorandum or other and shoved it into his out-tray) response had been well-nigh total, with fewer blacklegs remaining at work than the Planners had ever allowed for. But far more amateur volunteers had enrolled than anyone dared to hope, and these had taken control out of Government hands as completely as out of the strikers'. Oxford and Cambridge were almost deserted: their young men were grinding the guts out of lorries and buses and even locomotives, or working the skin off their backs unloading ships in the docks. Private aircraft had offered themselves, racing-car drivers and even galloping horsemen raring to act as messenger-boys and carry important papers. London's distributing-center for milk was a mushroom miniature city complete with telephones, water and light: he had seen it grow overnight from the grass of Hyde Park, and by Tuesday's dawn there'd been row upon row of lorries drawn up, all placarded
Foodstuffs
. Below his window, Horseguards Parade was become the largest car-park in Europe—a seething mass of volunteer vehicles manned by skylarking amateur drivers. Just as Augustine had said about Prohibition releasing the frontiersman buttoned in every American business-suit, so had the Strike resurrected the small boy dormant under each clerkly bowler and boardroom top-hat; and now they were playing at being engine-drivers, playing at being bobbies—playing at all those wonderful he-man lives which they'd daydreamed about in Purley and Surbiton (just then the telephone rang, but the call was for somebody else). This was no nation grimly enduring a crisis, but one unexpectedly let out of school and enjoying a lovely romp—which just went to show what a crass mistake it is to suppose that the grown-up has any less need of play than the child! He probably needs even more; and the fact that he mostly gets less is the likeliest reason he's often so much more badly behaved.

“Skylarking”: that was the secret of all this boundless goodhumor infecting even the strikers, who went in for plenty of stone throwing, plenty of lovely breaking of glass—but with almost nobody ever hurt. Busmen who emptied double-deck buses before they gleefully overturned them just for the hell of it: skylarking railwaymen greasing the rails, and laughing their heads off to see trains skid to a halt....

Then the telephone rang again; and the caller this time was Augustine. “Skylarking”: this was the word which a scornful Augustine used too, having driven straight up from the mining valleys of Wales. He was nearly white-hot with rage. What did these irresponsible skylarkers think they were up to, forgetting the miners the whole thing was really about? To people like these this was just a game, but the issue was life-and-death to the miners.

Jeremy murmured the name of Baldwin, that downy old bird; and something about defending the Constitution....

“Bugger a Constitution which can't even give the miners a living wage! And Baldwin deserves to be shot for distracting everyone's minds from the crucial point.”

“But have some sense: what good can even the miners get in the end from just pouring subsidies down those big black holes? And it's not really Baldwin's fault: MacDonald himself began the rot—
he
got the Frenchies out of the Ruhr, and started the Germans digging again. Churchill has only finished the job by putting the pound back on gold at the pre-war rate and pricing British export coal right out of the market.”

“That's all politicians ever do is to make things worse!”

“From top to bottom the Industry needs re-thinking; but that's the Industry's job, not Baldwin's. The Miners' Leaders and Owners ought to be putting their heads together instead of fighting: I'd think those Miners' Leaders the stupidest men on earth if it wasn't for even stupider Owners.”

This angered the partisan angry Augustine even more, for he'd just been driving one of those “stupid” leaders from Wales to Eccleston Square and looked on the man as a hero. “What do
you
know of their leaders, stuck to your ivory office-stool?”

Indeed Augustine and Jeremy might have quarreled in earnest had Jeremy not pretended the Head of his Branch had come in the room so he had to hang up.

Augustine's gibe about Jeremy's ivory office-stool was not so wide of the mark: there were plenty of places where “skylarking” wasn't a word you could use about either side. There were more than a million miners—as many men worked underground in the murky bowels of England as worked on the farms above them tending her smiling face: no other industry used one quarter as many men, and the miners' mood was to tighten their belts and fight to the death rather than see their wages cut. Or take a city like Coventry: here at least they could hardly “forget the miners,” with pits on their very doorstep.

Not that Coventry workers were much better off than the miners were: for in engineering a man might be out of work for two or three years on end, and the average worker was likely to find himself jobless for half of his working life. Now Germany couldn't pay her Reparations in gold and had started to pay them in kind: German castings were being used for building Coventry cars while Coventry molders rotted away on the dole.

So far the Strike had been aimed at disrupting the nation's daily more than her industrial life: Amalgamated Engineering Union members hadn't been called out yet. Coventry engineering workers were under no obligation to join in this selfless strike in support of the miners, and thus it was no very easy decision their Union Meeting had come to on Wednesday night to walk out on Thursday morning without even waiting for orders from Eccleston Square. The way they saw it, so long as even a group of Unions fought alone defeat must follow defeat. “United, we stand....” But the Coventry A.E.U. were weak. They were smarting still from a three-months' lock-out: membership since had dwindled, for members who'd drifted back to work on the bosses' terms couldn't pay their fines and had let their membership lapse. Moreover the unemployed man had little incentive to join, for to him the Union seemed so busy protecting members in jobs that it left the unemployed to the Commies.

Thus the General Strike found less than a third of Coventry workers Union Members at all. However the tool-room men were most of them ardent members, and these were keyworkers without whom production was bound to come to a halt: it was only the Morris Works in Far Gosport Street (which employed no Union labor whatever) that managed to carry on; and in spite of the Union's numerical weakness the other car and bicycle factories all had to close—apart from apprentices doing the maintenance chores. The Transport Workers of course were out already, and somewhere like this no skylarking amateur driver would dare to show his face: so the city was left entirely without any buses or trams. For once, the streets were empty even of horse-drawn drays: so the children could play on the streets in safety—and made the most of their chance.

The leaders' orders were “Keep your hands in your pockets and shut your mouths”: which meant that for most there was nothing to do but stand about. Few of them bothered to go to Pool Meadow to hear their leaders orate: most of them much preferred the Market, where Albert Smith (that famous eccentric jester-philosopher) stood on his tub and kept them enthralled for hours. Albert had once been certified sane by the loony-bin doctor who let him out: if you heckled, he waved his “Sane Certificate” in your face and demanded yours—which set the crowd in a roar. All the same, keeping your hands in your pockets and saying nought was a weary business with work for once to be had for the asking: tension mounted, and rumors began to fly. There was only the
British Worker
to read, with the printers out; and the news it carried was sparse. We knew we were winning of course, but it seemed a long time to wait: why wasn't there something to
do
, apart from playing football and booing at blackleg trains?

Having no buses to come to school by, half the Coventry teachers were kept at home: so even the Slaughterhouse children came out on strike. Picnics were better than sitting idle in teacherless schools, and day after day the Yard was emptied entirely of walkable children—except for Brian.

Then Norah had an idea. All previous efforts to tame the little savage had failed; but if he were somehow persuaded to come on a picnic with them, mightn't it do the trick?

None of the others much liked her idea, all dungy and bloody the way he was: his hair was clotted and matted—he stank, and the rags he stood up in could almost have stood up without him. But Norah had “said,” and her word was Law: so Tuesday morning early Norah had lain in wait for him just arriving. She wheedled and coaxed him, and finally wouldn't let him escape till he promised to come with them “just this once”; but his promise was given under duress, so she kept him unobtrusively under guard till the party was ready to start.

It was then she caught sight of little Syl. Now that his mother must walk on foot to her pupils Nellie was out all day; and there was her chubby three-year-old, playing around alone by the tap. It seemed such a shame, so Syl must come too, even if somebody had to carry him part of the way.

The current craze was fishing for tiddlers, armed with jampots and home-made nets (the foot of an old lisle stocking sewn to a loop of wire with its ends stuck into a cane). The day had started warm; but May was early—too early, some of them thought, for anywhere further than Swanswell. Norah, however, insisted on Quinton Pool in spite of the longer trudge and the risk of possible rain: for with Brian to be converted this had to be a success, they must choose the best place they knew.

On their way down the Quinton Road they passed a brace of policemen. As loyal strikers they put out their tongues; but neither policeman appeared to notice, so once they were well beyond them they turned and jeered—then panicked, and started to run.... But how lovely it was to be out of the desolate crowded town in the blessed peace of the country! Arrived at the Pool at last, those without nets or patience for fishing pelted the moorhens—and might have kept at it all morning if only the moorhens had patience to wait and be hit instead of scuttling into the reeds. Then they started racing each other, the notion being to charge full-tilt downhill to the very edge of the water without slipping in (which sooner or later everyone did). After that, since their feet were already so wet that they couldn't get wetter, the boys rolled shorts to the groin and the girls tucked thin cotton frocks into thick serge all-the-year knickers and those whose clothes were simply cut down from their elders bundled them up as best they could: then boots and all they waded knee-deep in the duckweed, disturbing the fishers and trying to get to the kingcups. Mean-while Norah fussed like a hen with its chick over Brian, determined to see he enjoyed his outing; but Brian had nothing to fish with and no desire to fish, nor could he abide getting wet, nor had the faintest liking for wildflowers.... Thus, in the end, there was nothing to do but leave him alone to his own devices. She warned him about the bog, then watched him crawl through a hedge to talk to a lonely sheep—doubtless undressing it mentally.