“I can’t.” And as he said it his inside revolted. He vomited over Warder Collins’s boots.
Warder Collins went livid. He thought Arthur had tried to vomit back the skilly over his boots. He forgot the technique of his sadism. Without any hesitation he hit Arthur a violent blow in the face.
Arthur turned bone white. He stared at Warder Collins with tormented eyes.
“You can’t do that,” he said, breathing painfully. “I’ll report you for striking me.”
“You will?” Warder Collins drew back his sneering lip as far as it would go. “Report that at the same time then.” He swung his fist hard and knocked Arthur down.
Arthur struck the concrete floor of the cell and lay still. He moaned weakly and at that sound Warder Collins, thinking of his son in the trenches, smiled grimly. He wiped his soiled boots on Arthur’s tunic, then, with his thin lip still drawn back, he walked out of the cell. The key sounded.
THIRTEEN
On the day that Arthur lay senseless in the puddle of skilly on the cement floor of his cell, Joe sat very sensibly before some oysters in the Central Hotel, Tynecastle. Amongst other things, Joe had recently discovered oysters. They were amazing, oysters were, amazing in every way, especially amazing in the number a man could eat. Joe could manage a dozen and a half quite easily when he was in the mood, and he was usually in the mood. And, by God, they were good — with a dash of Tabasco and a squeeze of lemon. The big fat ones were the best.
Even though certain food-stuffs, meat for instance and chicken, were rather more restricted, the people who knew their way about could always get oysters in season at the Central. For that matter Joe could get pretty well anything at the Central. He dropped in so often he was a known man there now, they all ran after him, and the head waiter, old Sue — his name was really Suchard but Joe had the hail-fellow-well-met habit of abbreviation — ran faster than any. “Why don’t you buy yourself some Crocker and Dicksons?” Joe had blandly suggested to old Sue some months before. “Ah, don’t look so frightened, I know you don’t speculate — a family man and all that, eh, Sue? — but this is different, you ought to buy yourself a hundred just for fun.” A week later Sue had been waiting for Joe at the entrance to the Grill Room, fawning with gratitude, almost genuflecting, showing him to the best table in the room. “Ah, that’s all right, Sue, don’t bother to say it. H’much d’you knock out of it? Sixty pounds. Keep you in cigars for a bit, eh, Sue? Ha, ha! That’s right, just you look after me, y’understand, and I’ll look after you.”
Money! — thought Joe, pronging the last oyster and letting it slide skilfully down his gullet — it certainly delivered the goods. While the waiter removed the pearly litter and brought his steak he surveyed the Grill Room genially. The Grill Room of the Central was a perfect health resort these days; even on Sundays it was bung full, the place where all the successful men gathered, the business men who were up to the elbow in the pie. Joe knew most of them, Bingham and Howard, both on the Munitions Council, Snagg the lawyer, Ingram, of Ingram Toogood the brewers, Wainwright the big noise on the Tynecastle Exchange, and Pennington, whose specialty was synthetic jam. Joe had deliberately set out to make contacts; the people with money, anyone who might be useful to him. Personal liking meant nothing, he cultivated only those who could advance him; but he was so hearty in his manner, such an excellent mixer that he passed, everywhere, as the best of good fellows.
Two men at the window caught his eye. He nodded and they waved to him in recognition. Joe smiled with a secret gratification. A clever pair, Bostock and Stokes — yes, they’d both cut their eye teeth all right. Bostock was boots, just in a small way of business before the war began, with a little hand-me-down factory in East Town. But in these last eighteen months Bostock had reached himself a handful of army contracts. It wasn’t the contracts, of course, though they were good enough. It was the boots. There wasn’t an inch of leather in Bostock’s boots. Not one bleeding inch. Bostock had let it out to Joe the other night at the County when Bostock was just the littlest bit screwed. It was some kind of bark Bostock put in his boots and the bark was guaranteed not to last. But what was the odds, Bostock had tearfully confided, the boots lasted out most of the poor devils that wore them. Pity! “O Gord, Sho, washn’t it a pity?” Bostock had blubbered suddenly into his cham in a passion of patriotic grief.
Stokes’s line was tailoring. In the last few months he had bought all the property over his shop and could now refer casually to “his factory.” He was the biggest patriot in the whole Crockerstown district; he was always talking of “the national necessity,” he made all his women work unpaid overtime, cribbed down their dinner hour, drove them often till 8 p.m. on Sundays. Even so, most of his work was “given out” to the surrounding tenements. He paid 7d. per pair of breeches, and 1s. 6d. the complete uniform. Khaki shirts he gave out at 2s. a dozen less 2¾d. a reel for the cotton. Soldiers’ trousers he farmed out to be finished at 1d. a pair, body belts at 8d. a dozen, needles and cotton provided by the women. And the profit? — Joe moistened his lips, hungrily. Take these body belts for instance: Joe knew for a fact that they were being bought from Stokes by somebody “higher up” at 18s. a dozen. And the total cost to Stokes was 2s. 10d.! God, it was marvellous. True enough, some socialist swine had worked it out that Stokes paid on an average 1d. an hour to his tenement out-workers and had raised the question of sweated labour in the Council. Bah! thought Joe. Sweated labour be damned! These women fought to get the work, didn’t they? There were plenty of them too — just take a look at the draggled mob that made up the margarine queues, for instance! And besides, wasn’t there a war on?
Joe’s experience was that there was nothing like a war for helping a man to throw his weight about. At least Joe put it down to the war. At Millington’s he had thrown his weight about to some tune, they were all scared of him now, Morgan, Irvine, even that old stickler Dobbie. Joe smiled. He lay back in his chair and carefully peeled the band off a light Havana cigar. Stokes and Bostock might smoke their cigars with the band on, the blinking profiteers, but he knew one better than that. Joe’s smile became dreamy. But suddenly he sat up, alert and welcoming, at the sight of Jim Mawson approaching. He had been expecting Mawson, who always took his Sunday dinner at home, to drop in about two.
Jim edged along quietly through the crowded room and sat down at Joe’s table. His heavy, hooded eyes lifted towards Joe who nodded silently in return: the greeting of two men who knew their way about. A pause while Mawson surveyed the restaurant with boredom.
“Whisky, Jim?” asked Joe at length.
Jim shook his head and yawned. Another pause. “How’s things upbye?”
“Not so dusty.” Joe pulled a slip from his waistcoat pocket in leisurely fashion. “Output last week was 200 tons shrapnel, 10,000 Mills grenades, 1,000 whizz bangs, you know, stick bombs, and 1,500 eighteen-pounders.”
“Christ,” said Jim, reaching without emotion for a toothpick out of the little glass dish, “you’ll finish the bloody war all by your bloody little self, Joe, if you’re not careful.”
Joe grinned cautiously. “Don’t you fret, Jim. Some of these shells wouldn’t finish a coco-nut. God, I never saw so many blow-hole castings as we got last week. It’s that last pig you delivered, Jim. Shocking. Half of them come out like Gruyère cheeses. Duds. We had to clay up the holes and slash on two coats of paint.”