Charlie: “Not jam. Gets cheese, though, twice a week.”
The Kike: “Oh Jeez! I can’t stand it no longer. I going down to the M.A.B.”
(Dorothy stands up, and then, her knees having stiffened with the cold, almost falls.)
Ginger: “Only send you to the bleeding Labour Home. What you say we all go up to Covent Garden tomorrow morning? Bum a few pears if we get there early enough.”
Charlie: “I’ve ’ad my perishing bellyful of Dartmoor, b’lieve me. Forty on us went through ’ell for getting off with the ole women down on the allotments. Ole trots seventy years old they was—spud-grabbers. Didn’t we cop it just! Bread and water, chained to the wall—perishing near murdered us.”
Mrs. Bendigo: “No fear! Not while my bloody husband’s there. One black eye in a week’s enough for me, thank you.”
Mr. Tallboys (chanting, reminiscently): “As for our harps, we hanged them up, upon the willow trees of Babylon! . . .”
Mrs. McElligot: “Hold up, kiddie! Stamp your feet an’ get de blood back into ’m. I’ll take y’a walk up to Paul’s in a coupla minutes.”
Deafie (singing): “With my willy willy——”
(Big Ben strikes eleven.)
Snouter: “Six more —— hours! Cripes!”
(An hour passes. Big Ben stops striking. The mist thins and the cold increases. A grubby-faced moon is seen sneaking among the clouds of the southern sky. A dozen hardened old men remain on the benches, and still contrive to sleep, doubled up and hidden in their greatcoats. Occasionally they groan in their sleep. The others set out in all directions, intending to walk all night and so keep their blood flowing, but nearly all of them have drifted back to the Square by midnight. A new policeman comes on duty. He strolls through the Square at intervals of half an hour, scrutinising the faces of the sleepers but letting them alone when he has made sure that they are only asleep and not dead. Round each bench revolves a knot of people who take it in turns to sit down and are driven to their feet by the cold after a few minutes. Ginger and Charlie fill two drums at the fountains and set out in the desperate hope of boiling some tea over the navvies’ clinker fire in Chandos Street; but a policeman is warming himself at the fire, and orders them away. The Kike suddenly vanishes, probably to beg a bed at the M.A.B. Towards one o’clock a rumour goes round that a lady is distributing hot coffee, ham sandwiches and packets of cigarettes under Charing Cross Bridge; there is a rush to the spot, but the rumour turns out to be unfounded. As the Square fills again the ceaseless changing of places upon the benches quickens until it is like a game of musical chairs. Sitting down, with one’s hands under one’s armpits, it is possible to get into a kind of sleep, or doze, for two or three minutes on end. In this state, enormous ages seem to pass. One sinks into complex, troubling dreams which leave one conscious of one’s surroundings and of the bitter cold. The night is growing clearer and colder every minute. There is a chorus of varying sound—groans, curses, bursts of laughter and singing, and through them all the uncontrollable chattering of teeth.)
Mr. Tallboys (chanting): “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint! . . .”
Mrs. McElligot: “Ellen an’ me bin wanderin’ round de City dis two hours. Begod it’s like a bloody tomb wid dem great lamps glarin’ down on you an’ not a soul stirrin’ excep’ de flatties strollin’ two an’ two.”
Snouter: “Five past —— one and I ain’t ’ad a bite since dinner! Course it ’ad to ’appen to us on a —— night like this!”
Mr. Tallboys: “A drinking night I should have called it. But every man to his taste. (Chanting) ‘My strength is dried like a potsherd, and my tongue cleaveth to my gums!’ . . .”
Charlie: “Say, what you think? Nosy and me done a smash jest now. Nosy sees a tobacconist’s show-case full of them fancy boxes of Gold Flake, and ’e says, ‘By cripes I’m going to ’ave some of them fags if they give me a perishing stretch for it!’ ’e says. So ’e wraps ’is scarf round ’is ’and, and we waits till there’s a perishing great van passing as’ll drown the noise, and then Nosy lets fly—biff! We nipped a dozen packets of fags, and then I bet you didn’t see our a —— s for dust. And when we gets round the corner and opens them, there wasn’t no perishing fags inside! Perishing dummy boxes. I ’ad to laugh.”
Dorothy: “My knees are giving way. I can’t stand up much longer.”
Mrs. Bendigo: “Oh, the sod, the sod! To turn a woman out of doors on a night like bloody this! You wait’ll I get ’im drunk o’ Saturday night and ’e can’t ’it back. I’ll mash ’im to bloody shin of beef, I will. ’E’ll look like two pennorth of pieces after I’ve swiped ’im with the bloody flat-iron.”
Mrs. McElligot: “Here, make room’n let de kid sit down. Press up agen ole Daddy, dear. Put his arm round you. He’s chatty, but he’ll keep you warm.”
Ginger (double marking time): “Stamp your feet on the ground—only bleeding thing to do. Strike up a song, someone, and less all stamp our bleeding feet in time to it.”
Daddy (waking and emerging): “Wassat?” (Still half asleep, he lets his head fall back, with mouth open and Adam’s apple protruding from his withered throat like the blade of a tomahawk.)
Mrs. Bendigo: “There’s women what if they’d stood what I’ve stood, they’d ’ave put spirits of salts in ’is cup of bloody tea.”
Mr. Tallboys (beating an imaginary drum and singing): “Onward, heathen so-oldiers——”
Mrs. Wayne: “Well, reely now! If any of us’d ever of thought, in the dear old days when we used to sit round our own Silkstone coal fire, with the kettle on the hob and a nice dish of toasted crumpets from the baker’s over the way . . .” (The chattering of her teeth silences her.)
Charlie: “No perishing church trap now, matie. I’ll give y’a bit of smut—something as we can perishing dance to. You listen t’me.”
Mrs. McElligot: “Don’t you get talkin’ about crumpets, Missis. Me bloody belly’s rubbing ’agen me backbone already.”
(Charlie draws himself up, clears his throat, and in an enormous voice roars out a song entitled “Rollicking Bill the Sailor.” A laugh that is partly a shudder bursts from the people on the bench. They sing the song through again, with increasing volume of noise, stamping and clapping in time. Those sitting down, packed elbow to elbow, sway grotesquely from side to side, working their feet as though stamping on the pedals of a harmonium. Even Mrs. Wayne joins in after a moment, laughing in spite of herself. They are all laughing, though with chattering teeth. Mr. Tallboys marches up and down behind his vast swag belly, pretending to carry a banner or crozier in front of him. The night is now quite clear, and an icy wind comes shuddering at intervals through the Square. The stamping and clapping rise to a kind of frenzy as the people feel the deadly cold penetrate to their bones. Then the policeman is seen wandering into the Square from the eastern end, and the singing ceases abruptly.)
Charlie: “There! You can’t say as a bit of music don’t warm you up.”
Mrs. Bendigo: “This bloody wind! And I ain’t even got any drawers on, the bastard kicked me out in such a ’urry.”
Mrs. McElligot: “Well, glory be to Jesus, ’twon’t be long before dat dere church in de Gray’s Inn Road opens up for de winter. Dey gives you a roof over your head of a night, ’t any rate.”
The policeman: “Now then, now then! D’you think this is the time of night to begin singing like a blooming bear garden? I shall have to send you back to your homes if you can’t keep quiet.”
Snouter (sotto voce): “You —— son of a ——!”
Ginger: “Yes—they lets you kip on the bleeding stone floor with three newspaper