“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?”