George Orwell - Down and Out in Paris and London Страница 31

clattered down the stairs with a yell, many agreeing to

come back for another free tea next week.

   The scene had interested me. It was so different from

the ordinary demeanour of tramps-from the abject worm-

like gratitude with which they normally accept charity.

The explanation, of course, was that we outnumbered the

congregation and so were not afraid of them. A man

receiving charity practically always hates his benefactor-it

is a fixed characteristic of human nature; and, when he has

fifty or a hundred others to back him, he will show it.

   In the evening, after the free tea, Paddy unexpectedly

earned another eighteenpence at "glimming." It was

exactly enough for another night's lodging, and we put it

aside and went hungry till nine the next evening. Bozo,

who might have given us some food, was away all day.

The pavements were wet, and he had gone to the Elephant

and Castle, where he knew of a pitch under shelter.

Luckily I still had some tobacco, so that the day might

have been worse.

 At half-past eight Paddy took me to the Embankment,

where a clergyman was known to distribute meal tickets

once a week. Under Charing Cross Bridge fifty men were

waiting, mirrored in the shivering puddles. Some of them

were truly appalling specimens-they were Embankment

sleepers, and the Embankment dredges up worse types

than the spike. One of them, I

remember, was dressed in an overcoat without buttons,

laced up with rope, a pair of ragged trousers, and boots

exposing his toes-not a rag else. He was bearded like a

fakir, and he had managed to streak his chest and

shoulders with some horrible black filth resembling train

oil. What one could see of his face under the dirt and hair

was bleached white as paper by some malignant disease. I

heard him speak, and he had a goodish accent, as of a

clerk or shopwalker.

   Presently the clergyman appeared and the men ranged

themselves in a queue in the order in which they had

arrived. The clergyman was a nice, chubby, youngish

man, and, curiously enough, very like Charlie, my friend

in Paris. He was shy and embarrassed, and did not speak

except for a brief good evening; he simply hurried down

the line of men, thrusting a ticket upon each, and not

waiting to be thanked. The consequence was that, for

once, there was genuine gratitude, and everyone said that

the clergyman was a good feller. Someone (in his hearing,

I believe) called out: "Well,

he'll never be a-----bishop!"-

this, of course, intended as a warm compliment.

   The tickets were worth sixpence each, and were

directed to an eating-house not far away. When we got

there we found that the proprietor, knowing that the

tramps could not go elsewhere, was cheating by only

giving four pennyworth of food for each ticket. Paddy and

I pooled our tickets, and received food which we could

have got for sevenpence or eightpence at most coffee-

shops. The clergyman had distributed well over a pound in

tickets, so that the proprietor was evidently swindling the

tramps to the tune of seven shillings or more a week. This

kind of victimisation is a regular part of a tramp's life, and

it will go on as long as people continue to give meal tickets

instead of money.

   Paddy and I went back to the lodging-house and, still

hungry, loafed in the kitchen, making the warmth of the

fire a substitute for food. At half-past ten Bozo arrived,

tired out and haggard, for his mangled leg made walking

an agony. He had not earned a penny at screening, all the

pitches under shelter being taken, and for several hours he

had begged outright, with one eye on the policemen. He

had amassed eightpence -a penny short of his kip. It was

long past the hour for paying, and he had only managed to

slip indoors when the deputy was not looking; at any

moment he might be caught and turned out, to sleep on the

Embankment. Bozo took the things out of his pockets and

looked them over, debating what to sell. He decided on his

razor, took it round the kitchen, and in a few minutes he

had sold it for threepence-enough to pay his kip, buy a

basin of tea, and leave a halfpenny over.

   Bozo got his basin of tea and sat down by the fire to

dry his clothes. As he drank the tea I saw that he was

laughing to himself, as though at some good joke.

Surprised, I asked him what he had to laugh at.

   "It's bloody funny!" he said. "It's funny enough for

Punch

. What do you think I been and done?"

   "What?"

   "Sold my razor without having a shave first: Of all

the fools!"

   He had not eaten since the morning, had walked several

miles with a twisted leg, his clothes were drenched, and he

had a halfpenny between himself and starvation. With all

this, he could laugh over the loss of his razor. One could

not help admiring him.

                           XXXIV

THE next morning, our money being at an end, Paddy and

I set out for the spike. We went southward by the Old

Kent Road, making for Cromley; we could not go to a

London spike, for Paddy had been in one recently and did

not care to risk going again. It was a sixteen-mile walk

over asphalt, blistering to the heels, and we were acutely

hungry. Paddy browsed the pavement, laying up a store of

cigarette ends against his time in the spike. In the end his

perseverance was rewarded, for he picked up a penny. We

bought a large piece of stale bread, and devoured it as we

walked.

   When we got to Cromley, it was too early to go the

spike, and we walked several miles farther, to a plantation

beside a meadow, where one could sit down. It was a

regular caravanserai of tramps-one could tell it by the

worn grass and the sodden newspaper and rusty cans that

they had left behind. Other tramps were arriving by ones

and twos. It was jolly autumn weather. Near by, a deep

bed of tansies was growing; it seems to me that even now

I can smell the sharp reek of those tansies, warring with

the reek of tramps. In the meadow two carthorse colts, raw

sienna colour with white manes and tails, were nibbling at

a gate. We sprawled about on the ground, sweaty and ex-

hausted. Someone managed to find dry sticks and get a

fire going, and we all had milkless tea out of a tin "drum"

which was passed round.

   Some of the tramps began telling stories. One of them,

Bill, was an interesting type, a genuine sturdy beggar of

the old breed, strong as Hercules and a frank foe of work.

He boasted that with his great strength he

could get a navvying job any time he liked, but as soon as

he drew his first week's wages he went on a terrific drunk

and was sacked. Between whiles he "mooched," chiefly

from shopkeepers. He talked like this:

   "I ain't goin' far in ---Kent. Kent's a tight county,

Kent is. There's too many bin' moochin' about 'ere. The

---bakers get so as they'll throw

their bread away sooner'n give it you. Now Oxford, that's

the place for moochin', Oxford is. When I was in Oxford I

mooched bread, and I mooched bacon, and I mooched

beef, and every night I mooched tanners for my kip off of

the students. The last night I was twopence short of my

kip, so I goes up to a parson and mooches 'im for

threepence. He give me threepence, and the next moment

he turns round and gives me in charge for beggin'. 'You

bin beggin',' the copper says. 'No I ain't,' I says, 'I was

askin' the gentlemen the time,' I says. The copper starts

feelin' inside my coat, and he pulls out a pound of meat

and two loaves of bread. 'Well, what's all this, then?' he

says. 'You better come 'long to the station,' he says. The

beak give me seven days. I don't mooch from no more

---parsons. But Christ! what do I

care for a lay-up of seven days?" etc. etc.

   It seemed that his whole life was this-a round of

mooching, drunks and lay-ups. He laughed as he talked of

it, taking it all for a tremendous joke. He looked as though

he made a poor thing out of begging, for he wore only a

corduroy suit, scarf and capno socks or linen. Still, he was

fat and jolly, and he even smelt of beer, a most unusual

smell in a tramp nowadays.

   Two of the tramps had been in Cromley spike recently,

and they told a ghost story connected with it. Years

earlier, they said, there had been a suicide there.

A tramp had managed to smuggle a razor into his cell, and

there cut his throat. In the morning, when the Tramp

Major came round, the body was jammed against the door,

and to open it they had to break the dead man's arm. In

revenge for this, the dead man haunted his cell, and

anyone who slept there was certain to die within the year;

there were copious instances, of course. If a cell door

stuck when you tried to open it, you should avoid that cell

like the plague, for it was the haunted one.

   Two tramps, ex-sailors, told another grisly story. A

man (they swore they had known him) had planned to

stow away on a boat bound for Chile. It was laden with

manufactured goods packed in big wooden crates, and

with the help of a docker the stowaway had managed to

hide himself in one of these. But the docker had made a

mistake about the order in which the crates were to be

loaded. The crane gripped the stowaway, swung him aloft,

and deposited him-at the very bottom of the hold, beneath

hundreds of crates. No one discovered what had happened

until the end of the voyage, when they found the

stowaway rotting, dead of suffocation.

   Another tramp told the story of Gilderoy, the Scottish

robber. Gilderoy was the man who was condemned to be

hanged, escaped, captured the judge who had sentenced

him, and (splendid fellow!) hanged him. The tramps liked

the story, of course, but the interesting thing was to see

that they had got it all wrong. Their version was that

Gilderoy escaped to America, whereas in reality he was

recaptured and put to death. The story had been amended,

no doubt deliberately; just as children amend the stories of

Samson and Robin Hood, giving them happy endings

which are quite imaginary.

   This set the tramps talking about history, and a very

old man declared that the "one bite law" was a survival

from days when the nobles hunted men instead of deer.

Some of the others laughed at him, but he had the idea

firm in his head. He had heard, too, of the Corn Laws,

and the

jus primae noctis (he believed it had really

existed); also of the Great Rebellion, which he thought

was a rebellion of poor against rich-perhaps he had got it

mixed up with the peasant rebellions. I doubt whether

the old man could read, and certainly he was not

repeating newspaper articles. His scraps of history had

been passed from generation to generation of tramps,

perhaps for centuries in some cases. It was oral tradition

lingering on, like a faint echo from the Middle Ages.

   Paddy and I went to the spike at six in the evening,

getting out at ten in the morning. It was much like

Romton and Edbury, and we saw nothing of the ghost.

Among the casuals were two young men named William

and Fred, ex-fishermen from Norfolk, a lively pair and

fond of singing. They had a song called "Unhappy Bella"

that is worth writing down. I heard them sing it half a

dozen times during the next two days, and I managed to

get it by heart, except a line or two which I have guessed.

It ran:

     Bella was young and Bella was fair With