The Complete Works. George Orwell
us. ’Member when we tapped twice at the same ’ouse by mistake, Snouter? Old tart fair tore the innards out of us.”
Mr. Tallboys (marching up and down behind an imaginary drum and singing):
“All things vile and damnable,
All creatures great and small——”
(Big Ben strikes half-past ten.)
Snouter (mimicking the clock): “Ding dong, ding dong! Six and a —— half hours of it! Cripes!”
Ginger: “Kikie and me knocked off four of them safety-razor blades in Woolworths’s afternoon. I’ll ’ave a dig in the bleeding fountains to-morrow if I can bum a bit of soap.”
Deafie: “When I was a stooard in the P. and O., we used to meet them black Indians two days out at sea, in them there great canoes as they call catamarans, catching sea-turtles the size of dinner tables.”
Mrs. Wayne: “Did you used to be a clergyman, then, sir?”
Mr. Tallboys (halting): “After the order of Melchizedec. There is no question of ’used to be,’ Madam. Once a priest always a priest. Hoc est corpus hocus pocus. Even though unfrocked—un-Crocked, we call it—and dog-collar publicly torn off by the bishop of the diocese.”
Ginger (singing): “ ‘There they go—in their joy——’ Thank Christ! ’Ere comes Kikie. Now for the consultation-free!”
Mrs. Bendigo: “Not before it’s bloody needed.”
Charlie: “ ’Ow come they give you the sack, mate? Usual story? Choirgirls in the family way?”
Mrs. McElligot: “You’ve took your time, ain’t you, young man? But come on, let’s have a sup of it before me tongue falls out o’ me bloody mouth.”
Mrs. Bendigo: “Shove up, Daddy! You’re sitting on my packet of bloody sugar.”
Mr. Tallboys: “Girls is a euphemism. Only the usual flannel-bloomered hunters of the unmarried clergy. Church hens—altar-dressers and brass-polishers—spinsters growing bony and desperate. There is a demon that enters into them at thirty-five.”
The Kike: “The old bitch wouldn’t give me the hot water. Had to tap a toff in the street and pay a penny for it.”
Snouter: “—— likely story! Bin swigging it on the way more likely.”
Daddy (emerging from his overcoat): “Drum o’ tea, eh? I could sup a drum o’ tea.” (Belches slightly.)
Charlie: “When their bubs get like perishing razor strops? I know.”
Nosy Watson: “Tea—bloody catlap. Better’n that cocoa in the stir, though. Lend’s your cup, matie.”
Ginger: “Jest wait’ll I knock a ’ole in this tin of milk. Shy us a money or your life, someone.”
Mrs. Bendigo: “Easy with that bloody sugar! ’Oo paid for it, I sh’d like to know?”
Mr. Tallboys: “When their bubs get like razor strops. I thank thee for that humour. Pippin’s Weekly made quite a feature of the case. ‘Missing Canon’s Sub Rosa Romance. Intimate Revelations.’ And also an Open Letter in John Bull: ‘To a Skunk in Shepherd’s Clothing.’ A pity—I was marked out for preferment. (To Dorothy) Gaiters in the family, if you understand me. You would not think, would you, that the time has been when this unworthy backside dented the plush cushions of a cathedral stall?”
Charlie: “ ’Ere comes Florry. Thought she’d be along soon as we got the tea going. Got a nose like a perishing vulture for tea, that girl ’as.”
Snouter: “Ay, always on the tap. (Singing):
‘Tap, tap, tappety tap,
I’m a perfec’ devil at that——’ ”
Mrs. McElligot: “De poor kid, she ain’t got no sense. Why don’t she go up to Piccadilly Circus where she’d get her five bob reg’lar? She won’t do herself no good bummin’ round de Square wid a set of miserable ole Tobies.”
Dorothy: “Is that milk all right?”
Ginger: “All right?” (Applies his mouth to one of the holes in the tin and blows. A sticky greyish stream dribbles from the other.)
Charlie: “What luck, Florry? ’Ow ’bout that perishing toff as I see you get off with just now?”
Dorothy: “It’s got ‘Not fit for babies’ on it.”
Mrs. Bendigo: “Well, you ain’t a bloody baby, are you? You can drop your Buckingham Palace manners, ’ere, dearie.”
Florry: “Stood me a coffee and a fag—mingy bastard! That tea you got there, Ginger? You always was my favourite, Ginger dear.”
Mrs. Wayne: “There’s jest thirteen of us.”
Mr. Tallboys: “As we are not going to have any dinner you need not disturb yourself.”
Ginger: “What-o, ladies and gents! Tea is served. Cups forward, please!”
The Kike: “Oh Jeez! You ain’t filled my bloody cup half full!”
Mrs. McElligot: “Well, here’s luck to us all, an’ a better bloody kip to-morrow. I’d ha’ took shelter in one o’ dem dere churches meself, only de b ——s won’t let you in if so be as dey t’ink you got de chats on you.” (Drinks.)
Mrs. Wayne: “Well, I can’t say as this is exactly the way as I’ve been accustomed to drinking a cup of tea—but still——” (Drinks.)
Charlie: “Perishing good cup of tea.” (Drinks.)
Deafie: “And there was flocks of them there green parakeets in the coco-nut palms, too.” (Drinks.)
Mr. Tallboys:
“What potions have I drunk of siren tears,
Distilled from limbecs foul as Hell within!”
(Drinks.)
Snouter: “Last we’ll get till five in the —— morning.” (Drinks.)
(Florry produces a broken shop-made cigarette from her stocking, and cadges a match. The men, except Daddy, Deafie and Mr. Tallboys, roll cigarettes from picked-up fag-ends. The red ends glow through the misty twilight, like a crooked constellation, as the smokers sprawl on the bench, the ground or the slope of the parapet.)
Mrs. Wayne: “Well, there now! A nice cup of tea do seem to warm you up, don’t it, now? Not but what I don’t feel it a bit different, as you might say, not having no nice clean table-cloth like I’ve been accustomed to, and the beautiful china tea service as our mother used to have; and always, of course, the very best tea as money could buy—real Pekoe Points at two and nine a pound. . . .”
Ginger (singing):
“There they go—in their joy—
’Appy girl—lucky boy——”
Mr. Tallboys (singing, to the tune of “Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles”): “Keep the aspidistra flying——”
Charlie: “ ’Ow long you two kids been in Smoke?”
Snouter: “I’m going to give them boozers such a doing to-morrow as they won’t know if they’re on their ’eads or their —— ’eels. I’ll ’ave my ’alf dollar if I ’ave to ’old them upside down and —— shake ’em.”
Ginger: “Three days. We come down from York—skippering ’alf the way. God, wasn’t it jest about bleeding nine carat gold, too!”
Florry: “Got any more tea there, Ginger dear? Well, so long, folks. See you all at Wilkins’s to-morrow morning.”
Mrs. Bendigo: “Thieving little tart! Swallers ’er tea and then jacks off without so