than give one.
He had been brought up in Ireland, served two years
in the war, and then worked in a metal polish factory,
where he had lost his job two years earlier. He was
horribly ashamed of being a tramp, but he had picked up
all a tramp's ways. He browsed the pavements
unceasingly, never missing a cigarette end, or even an
empty cigarette packet, as he used the tissue paper for
rolling cigarettes. On our way into Edbury he saw a
newspaper parcel on the pavement, pounced on it, and
found that it contained two mutton sandwiches, rather
frayed at the edges; these he insisted on my sharing. He
never passed an automatic machine without giving a tug
at the handle, for he said that sometimes they are out of
order and will eject pennies if you tug at them. He had
no stomach for crime, however. When we were in the
outskirts of Romton, Paddy noticed a bottle of milk on a
doorstep, evidently left there by mistake. He stopped,
eyeing the bottle hungrily.
"Christ!" he said, "dere's good food goin' to waste.
Somebody could knock dat bottle off, eh? Knock it off
easy."
I saw that he was thinking of "knocking it off" himself.
He looked up and down the street; it was a quiet
residential street and there was nobody in sight. Paddy's
sickly, chap-fallen face yearned over the milk. Then he
turned away, saying gloomily:
"Best leave it. It don't do a man no good to steal.
Tank God, I ain't never stolen nothin' yet."
It was funk, bred of hunger, that kept him virtuous.
With only two or three sound meals in his belly, he would
have found courage to steal the milk.
He had two subjects of conversation, the shame and
come-down of being a tramp, and the best way of getting
a free meal. As we drifted through the streets he would
keep up a monologue in this style, in a whimpering, self-
pitying Irish voice:
"It's hell bein' on de road, eh? It breaks yer heart goin'
into dem bloody spikes. But what's a man to do else, eh?
I ain't had a good meat meal for about two months, an'
me boots is getting bad, an'-Christ! How'd it be if we was
to try for a cup o' tay at one o' dem convents on de way
to Edbury? Most times dey're good for a cup o' tay. Ah,
what'd a man do widout religion, eh? I've took cups o' tay
from de convents, an' de Baptists, an' de Church of
England, an' all sorts. I'm a Catholic meself. Dat's to say,
I ain't been to confession for. about seventeen year, but
still I got me religious feelin's, y'understand. An' dem
convents is always good for a cup o' tay . . ." etc. etc. He
would keep this up all day, almost without stopping.
His ignorance was limitless and appalling. He once
asked me, for instance, whether Napoleon lived before
Jesus Christ or after. Another time, when I was looking
into a bookshop window, he grew very perturbed because
one of the books was called Of the
Imitation of Christ. He
took this for blasphemy. "What de hell do dey want to go
imitatin' of
Him for?" he demanded angrily. He could
read, but he had a kind of loathing for books. On our
way from Romton to Edbury I went into a public library,
and, though Paddy did not want to read, I suggested that
he should come in and rest his
legs. But he preferred to wait on the pavement. "No," he
said, "de sight of all dat bloody print makes me sick."
Like most tramps, he was passionately mean about
matches. He had a box of matches when I met him, but I
never saw him strike one, and he used to lecture me for
extravagance when I struck mine. His method was to
cadge a light from strangers, sometimes going without a
smoke for half an hour rather than strike a match.
Self-pity was the clue to his character. The thought of
his bad luck never seemed to leave him for an instant. He
would break long silences to exclaim, apropos of nothing,
"It's hell when yer clo'es begin to go up de spout, eh?" or
"Dat tay in de spike ain't tay, it's piss," as though there
was nothing else in the world to think about. And he had a
low, worm-like envy of anyone who was better off-not of
the rich, for they were beyond his social horizon, but of
men in work. He pined for work as an artist pines to be
famous. If he saw an old man working he would say
bitterly, "Look at dat old keepin' able-bodied men out o'
work"; or if it was a boy, "It's dem young devils what's
takin' de bread out of our mouths." And all foreigners to
him were "dem bloody dagoes"-for, according to his
theory, foreigners were responsible for unemployment.
He looked at women with a mixture of longing and
hatred. Young, pretty women were too much above him to
enter into his ideas, but his mouth watered at prostitutes.
A couple of scarlet-lipped old creatures would go past;
Paddy's face would flush pale pink, and he would turn and
stare hungrily after the women. "Tarts!" he would
murmur, like a boy at a sweetshop window. He told me
once that he had not had to do with a woman for two
years-since he had lost his job, that is-and he had
forgotten that one could aim higherthan prostitutes.
He had the regular character of a tramp-abject, envious,
a jackal's character.
Nevertheless, he was a good fellow, generous by nature
and capable of sharing his last crust with a friend;
indeed he did literally share his last crust with me
more than once. He was probably capable of work too, if
he had been well fed for a few months. But two years of
bread and margarine had lowered his standards hopelessly.
He had lived on this filthy imitation of food till his own
mind and body were compounded of inferior stuff. It was
malnutrition and not any native vice that had destroyed
his manhood.
XXIX
ON the way to Edbury I told Paddy that I had a friend
from whom I could be sure of getting money, and
suggested going straight into London rather than face