WILLING SPIRIT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 22, 27 January 1936, Page 15

WILLING SPIRIT.

: (By ESTHER McCRACKEN.)

(SHORT STORY.)

A door slammed and footsteps sounded along the flags of the passage. Inside the room the woman seated by the fire looked up and listened; the child in her arms wailed peevishly, then settled off to sleep again. Suddenly the door opened and a man's head peered around: "Jo not back yet?" he asked in a voice tliat was thick with fog from the district in which he lived. The woman shook her head and replied in a toneless voice: "He can't be long now." She spoke in a manner which suggested that she cared not whether he returned or not, which was far from the ease. The only reasons for her existence were Jo and the curious little bundle in her arms. The woman rose to her feet. "Come in and wait for him if you like." She moved across to a wooden box beside the window and tenderly laid the sleeping child in it. The man closed tne ffoor behind him and took up _a stand in front of the fireplace, looking about him idly and scarcely taking in the, to him, familiar objects. He was indifferent to the miserable bareness of the room, it resembled so many others in the neighbourhood—his own among them. The floor was bare except for a small, worn piece of linoleum which lay in front of the hearth. A bed stood in one cornef, a single blanket covering the pillow and odd "pieces" that served for bedclothes. The rest of the furniture consisted of a table and two chairs—one of wood and the other an old wicker chair with arms, or the remains of arms. A clean curtain hung in the window as it did in so many others, a sign of respectability that gave a false impression of prosperity from the outside, and which was one of the very last things to go. " ° The walls were stained witlj. damp and, despite careful patching, the paper was peeling off in places. The man raised his eyes to the ceiling where an ominous bulge showed. * • • • "I hear this block of buildings is to go," he said; "they're pulling them down under this slum clearance scheme and putting up grand little new houses on the hill there for the people they're turning out." He nodded towards the window. The woman looked out. A brick wall six feet away, standing a foot higher than the window, inside it impossible to see anything but the chimneys opposite, but she knew the place he meant. From the room at the top of the building it was possible— when the fog wasn't too thick—to catch a glimpse of green, and once or twice she and Jo had taken a tram to the foot and then walked across it in their courting days. She turned away from the window. "They may he putting them up, but who's going to live in them 1" she asked. "Not the likes of us; it's all we can do to keep one room going, never mind a house." The man shooß his head slowly, then, after a short pause, he said: "They say the rents up there'll be pretty reasonable." "I dare say, but if we could afford the rent we haven't the stuff for more than one room, it all went months ago. From up there it means a bus fare to look for work —they don't seem to think of that." "You're about right," replied the man morosely. ♦ The street door banged and once more steps sounded along the flagged passage. "This'll be Jo," she jerked her head towards the door and moved across to the cupboard. • • • a The door burst open and a little man stood in the opening; he was smiling, and there was a wild look in his eye. He seemed out of breath and as he shut the door behind him his eyes sought his wife. "Emma," he said, "I've got a job!" There was a deadly silence. "D'you hear? I've got a job," he repeated. Emma, who had taken a teapot out of the cupboard, slowly closed the door and turned to face him. "Oh Jo," she said, her voice trembling, "you're not being funny, you mean it don't ydu—don't you?" "Why of course I do. Here, sit down and pull yourself together." He thrust her into a chair. The man by the fire seized Jo by the hand. "Jo, you lucky blighter—what happened, how did you hear of it, where is it?" "When do you start?" this from his wife, who was at last coming to realise that she wasn't dreaming. It was months since she'd even dreamed this particular dream. Once upon a time she had looked at Jo hopefully every time he came in, but that had long passed. To be out of work had come to be the accepted state and only such words as "Means Test" and "Public Assistance" had any real significance. "I can hardly believe it myself yet. I was standing at the corner when Bill Piggott came along. "He stopped beside me. D'you want a job, Jo?' he says. 'Oh, no,' I says. 'I'm that busy I don't know how to fit everything in.' " 'Ellingsworth's wanting a man,' he says. 'If you're quick, mebbe you'll get it.' "'You're not kidding?' I asks, just as you did Emma. 'I'm not like to kid you about that sort of thing,' he says, and before he'd finished speaking I was halfway down the street. 'Ask for Tom Briggs,' he shoute after me. "When I got to Ellingsworth's I asked for Tom Briggs and —well—I got the job." Jo laiughed. "It was as easy as that after all these months. Of course, it's not much of a job, but you never know what it might lead to; it's just working the lever for one of the machines at the moment. I start tomorrow." The man standing by the fire moved over to the door. "Some folks are born lucky," he said without bitterness. "Well. I'll be going. When you're a World's Worker with your nose to the grindstone again to-morow, Jo, think of me—a gentleman of leisure having a walk round the park." He stuck his cap at a jaunty angle on the back of his head. "I'll be in to-morrow night to see how you got on and to have a talk about all the things you're in no fit state to talk about to-night. Good-night—and good luck." Jo opened the door for him. "Right you are, Jack. I'm so excited now that I wouldn't know what you were talking about; I'll be more used to it to-morrow. Good-bye." He shut the door and leant against it for a moment.

1 "Oh, Emma." Jo's voice rang as she hadn't heard it for months. He was a man again, no longer feeling himself a nonentity, a person with nothing to do and nowhere to go, but a living, f working individual, a supporter of his family once more. "Just think of it. Buzzers, clocking- | in and clocking-out and pay days again. Have I a pair of overalls left fit to 1 wear?" ■ ' He rushed to the cupboard and started [ pulling things from the shelf. Emma ; got up from her chair and went to his help. "Of course you have," she said. "It's . about all you have got, but I kept . them." She was smiling with her eyes as she pulled the overalls out and thrust them at him. "Here, take them, the | kettle's boiling." She took up the teapot again, and , putting a teaspoonful of tea from a tin ' on the table, filled it up from the now | hissing kettle. There was a stir in the box by the hearth; she put the teapot on the table. "Help yourself," sfic said, "I must feed the child." She picked the baby out of his box. • • • • It .was a flno day for a change. . . . Emma moved the baby's box into the small patch of sunlight on the floor; it would be gone soon, better make the most of it. She hummed to herself as she went about her work. Soon now they'd be able to get a pram for him, then she'd be able to put him oulside. Then she walked over to the window and, looking out, she saw far beyond the brick wall to an earthly paradise where she and Jo lived in—a daring stretch of imagination this—a little house with a bit of garden. The houses they were building on the hill would have a bit of garden . . .. * • » '* » She turned away from the window and shook herself, her thoughts were running away with her. They would have to stay where they were for a while, at any rate, until they'd managed to save a bit of money. She began to think of a meal for Jo. A working man would need more than tea and bread. She wondered if sausages would be possible, and decided that they would; when she told them in the shop that Jo was working they wouldn't mind a bit of "tick." A clock in the distance struck three. She would just slip along and get tliem now. The street door shut as she moved across the room to the baby's box, and footsteps came slowly along the passage. She picked him up and had just turned toward the door, when it opened and Jo came in. She stared at him in amazement. "You're back early," she said. Then something in his attitude frightened her; she felt herself going cold, and as he still stood there by the door looking half dazed, she said: "So they didn't start you after all?" The baby in her arms cried out, and she realised that she was clutching him desperately. She put him back into his box, where he moved restlessly, and then turned to Jo again. "What is it Jo —what's happened?" "I started all right—oh, Emma." He sank into the chair by the table and buried his face in his hands. • Emma stood where she was, not knowing the cause of his misery she felt powerless to help. She only knew, with a dreadful certainty, that all her day-dreaming had been wasted, and the pram and the little house were as far away as ever they had been. Presently Jo raised his head. "I can't understand it," he almost whispered. "I don't rightly know yet what happened. They told me I'd fainted— I've never fainted before . . 'not fit" the foreman said, and when I was in the nurse's room I heard the doctor say something to her about 'under-nour-ished,' or I thought I did." "I don't know what you're talking about, Jo. Start at the beginning and tell me what happened." "I'm sorry, Emma —I'm still feeling a bit muzzy. .. . Well, I started work at half-past eight. They were a decent lot —the men, I mean, and I thought to myself that I was going to like being there. "I managed the work all right—at least I thought I did; I remember thinking the lever was getting a bit heavier . . . that was just about a quarter to . 12, just before we knocked off. "The next thing I knew I, was lying on a couch in the nurse's i"oom. I'd fainted, at least they said I had, and I suppose I must have, for I don't remember how I got there." * * » » There was silence for a moment. "I'm sorry, Emma," he said. "I'm a failure. 1.. ." She interrupted him. « "It's not your fault," she said dully, "the doctor was right. You haven't had a decent meal—not what you'd call 'decent'—for months." "Just think of it," he laughed hysterically. "I can't even pull a lever backwards and forwards for half a day. A lot of use it'll be looking for work after this." He buried his face in his hands again. The baby woke up and started to cry. Emma picked him out of his box and stood with him at the window, staring unseeingly at the brick wall opposite.