Authors: Walter Greenwood
Men, red in front, black behind and trailing long shadows after them; men with leathern aprons, bare, sinewy arms and coloured goggles shading their eyes, ran about in obedience to shouted instructions: chains creaked on strain, unseen mechanism ‘clank-clanked’, then, as with calculated deliberation, the glowing cauldron tipped forward as though held, jug-wise, by an invisible giant’s hand. Harry held his breath as the metal brimmed the lip to fall, splashing off a teeming fountain of heavy, quick-dying sparks like a Catherine wheel, before the metal ran to earth forcing off hissing plumes of burning rainbow-coloured gases through the mould vents.
A magnificent, inspiring sight; made you feel proud of being identified with the great Marlowe organization.
The forge, too, where, amongst others, old Pa Scodger worked. Mr Scodger was a blacksmith. A blacksmith, though! Ha! A diminutive, harassed fellow with a bald head and a huge moustache. He worked in the tiny smithy adjoining the forge, and, out of working hours, sometimes afforded amusement to the boys of North Street by the differences that occurred between him and his termagant wife. As though he hadn’t enough dinning in his ears where he worked.
The forge! Impossible to stand still here. Rows and rows of drop hammers, small and large; ten ton to over a hundred. Great blocks of steel lifted by eccentric pulleys shaped like an egg, motivated by electricity and compressed air; blocks of steel crashing upon the white-hot forgings with a shattering
bump.
Earth shook, trembled beneath your feet. If you stood within yards of the largest hammers you actually were lifted off your feet A most peculiar sensation; a tickling of the stomach, a giddiness. Outside the works’ walls even, three hundred yards away, the reverberations of the enormous things could still be felt
As for the riveting shop. Bedlam.
The din here was insufferable. On the walls were the furnaces, each a little smaller than a kitchen oven, one every four yards or so; a fire-clay-lined box without a front. They were fed by two pipes, one gas, the other compressed air: the air roared, centrifugally, driving the gas in fierce orange-coloured spirals, making white-hot the rivets lying within. The operatives were adept as jugglers. A pair of long-handled pincers shot into the furnace; out came a white-hot rivet, plump into the rivet hole; then a steel bar was rammed on to the rivet head to hold it secure whilst the riveter, with a revolver-like pneumatic riveter, jammed it home, pressed the trigger, and: ‘tat-tat-tat-tat-tat’. Such a row. As though a million boys were running stakes along iron railings, simultaneously. Every man stone deaf after a six months’ spell of work here. Phew! But they
were
men.
And such as would take advantage of a greenhorn’s inexperience and credulity in playing him tricks. Such as when Billy Higgs, one of the senior apprentices whose behests it was Harry’s duty to obey, sent him to the stores for the ‘long stand’. Harry went, unsuspectingly, made his request, wondering on the shape and use of the instrument. The storekeeper answered, solemnly: ‘Long stand? Oh, aye, just stand there,’ and went on with his work. Minutes elapsed: Harry watched the traffic of boys coming with brass checks and going with tools. Jack Lindsay, a thickset boy with a ready grin and a fondness of striking pugilistic attitudes for no reason at all, came up whistling: ‘ ‘Allo, ‘Any.’ he said, ‘What y’ standin’ there for?’ Harry told him. Jack shook his head and said, sympathetically: ‘They mek y’ wait for that summat awful.’ He went off chuckling. Soon Harry began to blush and to wonder why all the apprentices who now came up looked at him as though he was some odd animal: they grinned or laughed, nudged each other and winked. Bill Simmons, blue-eyed, over-grown, with an unruly mop of hair and a chronic habit of prefixing almost every noun he used with the idiomatic term for copulation, laughed and said to his companion, Sam Hardie, an undersized, bow-legged, low browed boy with long, strong, ape-like arms: ‘Did y’ ever, Sam. They ain’t gev him the - stand yet!’
With a sickly grin Harry asked him the meaning of the joke. Sam, grinning, advised him to ask the storekeeper. Blushing, Harry turned to the busy man who bad forgotten all about him: ‘Hey,’ he protested, mildly indignant: ‘Hey, what about that there long stand?’
The man looked up: ‘What! Ain’t you gone
yet?’
he asked, raising his brows,
‘I come here for long stand an’ you told me … ‘
‘Well, y’ bin standin’ there hafe an hour. … Ain’t that long enough?’
Truth dawned; red in the face Harry licked his lips, turned on his heel and slunk away. ‘You might ha’ told me,’ he said, reproachfully, to Bill Simmons and the others. Bill sniggered: ‘Wait till
you
see some gawp doin’ the same. See whether you tell him.’
A more humiliating experience awaited him. His desire had been, on walking home, to have oil and dirt smeared on his face as evidence of the nature of his work. Vanity demanded it: it was imperative. And for two nights now, on arrival home, the first thing he had done was to glance into the mirror there to see a most disappointing reflection. Instead of a really oily face such as most of the boys and nearly all the men managed to acquire his skin was pale. He resolved on artificial methods. Unfortunately, whilst daubing grease on his face during the noonday respite behind what he had thought to be the privacy of a milling machine, Tom Hare, a steel-spectacled sly-eyed, foul-mouthed, untidy boy with stoop shoulders, bulging forehead and decayed teeth, surprised him.
Jeering he summoned the other apprentices.
Harry’s hate of Tom, lively at all times - he was a disgusting fellow who thought nothing of exposing himself in front of the boys, was obsessed with matters sexual, laid grasping hands on girls, and, sniggering, told tales of the filthy behaviour of his parents in whose bedroom he slept, there being a very large family and the usual inadequate accommodation - Harry’s hatred of him increased.
The boys congregated in front of him, chortling. Someone asked what should be done with him, asked in such a way that suggested there being only one answer.
Harry retreated, slowly, panting, eyes staring. He guessed what was to follow: leave me be …’ he cried, casting wild glances about for a weapon. There was nothing to hand. Tom Hare shouted: ‘Tek his trousis down,’ and giggled.
‘You leave me be. … ‘ His voice rose shrill: he pointed a quivering, threatening finger at Tom: ‘I’ll blind you, Tom Hare.’
They all laughed and closed in on him. Sam Hardie’s ape-like arms encompassed him. In a moment he was on his back, struggling impotently, and bawling hysterically. His cries were drowned in the roar of laughter that rose when rough hands tore at his trousers and exposed his nakedness. He screamed, struggled frantically. Somebody ran up with a pot of red paint, a brush and grease; anonymous hands daubed it on him whenever exposed.
Then, laughing, they released him. Harry, sobbing, covered his oily painted nakedness, drew on his overalls and retired to the lavatories to wipe away as much of the mess as he could. He felt that never again could he look any of the apprentices in the face. What would they think of his girlish screaming? of his patched undershirt and ragged shirt lap? Then there was the knickerbockers! They now would know that he wore the abominable things underneath his overall. He shrank, inwardly. What an altogether humiliating episode.
He snivelled, blew his nose on a corner of the oil and paint daubed newspaper he was using. He still was catching his breath in sobs. This to happen when he wished to identify himself with the boys! His impulse was to steal away, run off and never return. He felt abysmally lonely and miserable. He remembered Helen: instantly he yearned for her soothing company. But even she he had alienated: ‘Aw, girls mek me sick!’ What a fool he had made of himself in his vain impatience.
‘Eh, ‘Any. … A’ y’ there?’ a shouted interrogation. Jack Lindsay.
‘Aye,’ Harry muttered, sniffing.
‘Aach, what’re y’ shrikeing for, man. Come on. Come out’v it.’ He kicked the privy door: ‘Open door and let’s in.’ Reluctantly, Harry slipped the catch. Jack entered, grinning, lit the fag end of a cigarette and offered Harry a puff. Grateful, Harry accepted; he translated the gesture as symbolic of comradeship.
‘Ah wasn’t shrikein’ because Ah was feared,’ he mumbled in an attempt to excuse his tears and screams: ‘It ‘urt.’
Jack made a grimace, leant against the wood partition, crossed his legs and said: They’ll leave y’ alone, now. Y’ll be one ‘v us. Y’ve all got t’ g’ through it when y’ first come. … Hey! Save us a draw: that’s th’ on’y tab end Ah’ve got’
Harry’s spirits revived: ‘Y’ll be one of us!’ The phrase warmed him. Suddenly, his apprenticeship assumed an aspect of maturity. He felt profoundly grateful to Jack. He passed the cigarette-end back to him: ‘Ah’ll gie y’ packet o’ week-end. Jack.’
The deep note of the siren. Countershafts began to revolve. Beneath his feet he felt the reverberations of the drop hammers: his ears caught the distant muffled ‘tat-tat-tat-tat-tat’ of the pneumatic riveters.
‘Aw,’ said Jack, deprecatingly: ‘Ah don’t want y’ cigs. … Come on, let’s get out o’ here.’ He led the way, Harry, with an uncertain access of self-confidence and with a sheepish grin on his face following.
TEN bob a week: ten bob every Saturday! ‘Seven and a tanner more’n Price paid me!’ A stimulating experience.
Ah, and Saturday. Saturday, free! The day had a peculiar atmosphere; an air all its own. It pervaded everywhere, communicated itself to everybody.
The birth of noon blazoned forth by fanfares, as it were, blaring dissonances on all the mill and factory sirens: an exuberant tumult of sound that shouted: ‘Work’s done until Monday! Hurrah!’ At Price and Jones’s he would have had a nine-hour stretch ahead of him. Phew! And Blimey!
Noon.
The great exodus from Marlowe’s began. Twelve thousand boys and men surging through the gates, a black, agitated river of humanity breaking into a hundred tiny streamlets and scurrying off in all directions. Lines of empty stationary tramcars and fleets of charabancs; corporation buses, push and motor bikes: mad rushes, pushings, shovings, cursing, jangling of tram bell, honkings of motor horns: ‘Gerrout of it, y’ dreamy-eyed sod, y’ … ‘ changings of gears, rattlings of tramcar wheels, clouds of pungent exhaust: ‘What a bloody stink …’ ragged boys calling the midday sporting newspaper: ‘One o’clock. … One o’clock edition,’ football and racing talk. Everybody all smiles on account of wages in pockets and because they wouldn’t see any more machinery until Monday morning.
There’d be a flutter on the two-thirty, football match this afternoon, the public house tonight and a long morning in bed tomorrow with the missis. No sirens; no alarm clocks; no Blind Joe to rouse one with his eight-foot pole tipped with a bunch of wires. Luxury! All smiles and good nature.
Harry, among the twelve thousand, dirty faced and jingling his money, swaggered home, walking with the rest of the street-corner boys. This Saturday feeling was intoxicating. He was happy, contented, oh, and the future! A delightful closed book full of promise whose very mystery enhanced its charm. It justified, fully, his choice of occupation. There was something indefinable about Marlowe’s, something great and glorious, something imminent, but, as yet, just out of reach. Optimism told him to rest content, assured him that joys undreamt of were in store. And who can question optimism? It seduces. Anticipation filled him with unwonted buoyancy, with sensations of reckless abandon.
Affluence entered his life. This day, Saturday, became one to live for. When at Price and Jones’s earning a half-crown a week his personal share of the money amounted to a solitary penny. His mother now gave him a shilling. Added to this were the coppers he received of the men for services rendered, brewing their tea, taking their bets to Sam Grundy’s back entry and fetching home the winnings.
The winnings!
Who ever could forget yesterday? Yesterday, the occasion of Billy Higgs’ winning five pounds odd as a consequence of a shilling wager, a ‘double’. Yesterday Harry had fetched Billy the
winnings. This morning Billy had given him a half-crown!
Phew! As he handed the money over to Billy, Harry had gazed upon him awed, watching him, with forced nonchalance, stuff the money into his pockets under the cynosure of envious eyes. What a moment for Billy: how everybody crowded round to offer congratulations, pushing Harry aside as though
he
had not taken the bet, as though
he
hadn’t drawn the winnings, as though part of the transaction’s glory wasn’t
his.
Even Billy admitted it: ‘You’ve fetched me luck, son,’ he had said. Harry swelled with pride and importance, and, for a moment, visualized himself as a kind of infallible luck charm with queues and queues of men ranged in front of him begging, imploring him to take their bets thereby to exert his magical influence upon them. Of course, it was silly.
Ah, wait until he was as old as Billy Higgs; wait until
he
was twenty years of age and winning over five pounds for a shilling.
Though he wasn’t complaining now. The half-crown which Billy had given him was in his pockets, plus the other half-crown he had earned for brewing tea and what not Then there was the shilling he would receive of his mother. Six shillings! More than twice as much as Price gave him for a week’s work. There was not sufficient air to breathe.
Hanky Park shed its dreariness; its grimy stuffy houses took on cheerful aspects; the acrid, pervasive stench of the rubber proofing works became imperceptible. Over all was an air of well-being for the day was Saturday. Pay day.