I'm All Right Jack (7 page)

“Of course, my dear fellow. Why scratch about racking your brains trying to make the workers’ lot more smooth? Why not be one of the chaps that reaps the benefit? You could still go on living here and be richer than most of your friends for years.”

“That certainly sounds sensible,” said Dolly. “Have you any firms you could recommend?”

“The essential thing,” explained Bertram, “is to get into a go-ahead firm where the management are all giving themselves ulcers trying to make the place more efficient and telling the men it means a bigger wage-packet. You’ll be the one that gets it. And consider this, Stanley: You’ll be important. Both the big political parties will depend on your vote and consider it their moral duty to protect you. You’ve got a rosy future, my boy.”

“Would any of your firms fill the bill?” asked Stanley.

“Yes, I should think Missiles Limited would be a good
bet for you, if you want a good firm near here, but you must do it off your own bat. Don’t mention my name to anyone; just turn up.”

“Well, thank you very much. I really must think about it.”

“Not a bit. You must seize your opportunities, and if you don’t mind getting your hands dirty, there’s a big future for you as a worker. Give it a try, Stanley. But as I say, don’t say your Uncle’s on the Board, or you’ll only disturb the industrial peace.”

“All right. I’ll not mention it to anyone.”

“Good. You can’t be too careful about your relatives. Look how they chucked you from the Foreign Office. Keep me dark.”

“Well, that’s all fixed,” said Dolly. “Now Mildred’s likely to be back shortly, Bertie, so I suppose you’ll want to be going. Don’t leave it so long before you call again.”

“Right, Mother. And don’t forget, Stanley, you’ll be all right with Missiles. You’d only do better on building sites, but that means hard work and a long trek each day on a motor bike. Always remember, it’s the shareholder and the unskilled man who have the best of it; they’re both in short supply.”

After Uncle Bertram had left, Stanley thought over his advice. The more he thought of it the more logical it seemed, and after receiving a rejection letter from Bumper’s he went again to see the man at the Appointments Board.

“I’m sorry you don’t appear to have had an awful lot of success so far,” said the Appointments man. “But we may have to face it, Mr Windrush: it may just possibly perhaps be that you may not be perhaps
quite
the
management
type. It does happen like that with some people, you know.”

“You may be right,” said Stanley thankfully. “As a matter of fact I’m rather relieved to hear it. I’m going to try a rather different approach. But thank you very much for all your help. It’s been most civil of you, and I might
have been quite out of place in that exacting sort of life.”

“Not at all, Mr Windrush,” said the Appointments man, wincing a little. “That’s what we’re here for.”

He put two letters of complaint from the personnel managers of Spindley’s and Bumper Bars into Stanley’s file.

“It’s been an experience meeting you,” he said.

I
T MUST
not be supposed that Stanley Windrush was an idle shirker. On the contrary, the Ideal Of Service had been very firmly dinned into him at school, and he had always been consciously dedicated to it.

Unfortunately, schools like Stanley’s proceed on the assumption that their products, imbued with such an ideal of service, will equally develop a superior degree of reliability and competence. Alive to the facts of present-day life, these schools now teach a great deal of science, but this was not the case in Stanley’s day. A mild spell of reading English Literature at Oxford after the war had set the wrong seal on an already futile process. Stanley was the last true dim gentleman.

While cleverer contemporaries of his at Oxford were now becoming, understandably, the angry young men of literature and the theatre, or were joining the queues at emigration offices, Stanley—who had never felt the sting of ability frustrated—looked cheerfully round for some occupation to fit his vast incompetence. The flamelike ideal of serving the community still burned in the dim hollows of his mind.

Sensibly following the convenient principle of going where there was a crying need, Stanley looked round for an efficient-sounding industry within reasonable travelling distance of Eaton Square. He had seen the place called
MISSILES LTD
several times from the train, only a few minutes
out of Victoria, and about eleven o’clock one morning, having decided to give them a trial, he called at his local Labour Exchange. This he found in rather a dull street five minutes away from his aunts’ house. A number of actresses were coming out of the women’s section, fiscally fortified for another week of chancy auditions.

Inside, the man first thought he had come about a passport, but Stanley disabused him.

“No, it was for a job,” he said. “Employment,” he added in an explanatory tone.

“Yes,” said the man. “Sit down, but you more than likely want the place in Tavistock Square. They deal with all the higher appointments there. People with professional qualifications.”

“Oh, but that’s very far from what I want,” said Stanley. “I’ve been having shots at that sort of thing, but I’ve taken advice and I’ve been told I’d be far better off as an Ordinary Worker.”

“I don’t quite understand you,” said the man. “For instance, you say Ordinary Worker. What do you mean by that? The ministry publishes a complete book of classified occupations, hundreds of pages. Every time there’s a new edition you get a funny article on it, so-called, in the papers. And you’ve probably seen What’s My Line on the television. Well, there you are. There are thousands of different sorts of what you call Ordinary Workers.”

“Yes, well, when I say Ordinary Worker,” explained Stanley, “I mean I’d like to try an ordinary unskilled job at Missiles Limited. A friend of my Great-Aunt’s tells me that’s just the sort of firm, you know—all teed up to give the chaps working there a big encouraging wage packet. It’d take too long to explain why I want to go there particularly, but I do. I imagine this simplifies things for you?”

“We don’t want things
simplified
like that, thank you,” said the man a little huffily. “Our job is to help people find the employment most suitable for them and their employers, and often enough it’s not an easy job. What are your
qualifications
, and what was your last job?”

“I was at the Foreign Office,” said Stanley. “I suppose my real qualification was I knew some Japanese.”

“Ah,” said the man, seizing on this. “Now, vacancies in
interpreting.
Let me see.” He began pulling at a card index in a metal cabinet beside his desk. “We’re on the right track now,” he said, smiling for the first time, with
something
to get his teeth into.

“I’m sorry to have to say this,” said Stanley, fairly firmly, “but I’m afraid you aren’t. I don’t at all feel like interpreting. I just want an unskilled job at Missiles Limited. If they’ve got any vacancies, that is.”

The man stopped rummaging in his index, and shut the cabinet. He took a deep breath and surveyed Stanley in a pent-up sort of silence.

“You don’t want to avail yourself of our facilities, then?” he asked.

“But don’t you see, I
do
,”
explained Stanley. “I’ve seen it in the newspapers. All jobs like this between eighteen and sixty-five have to go through the Ministry of Labour. So can you tell me if there are any jobs at Missiles?”

The man opened another cabinet and looked reluctantly through it.

Finally he said: “Yes, there are,” very reluctantly, but then he shut the cabinet again to make another attempt.

“Be reasonable,” he urged. “A man with your
education
.”

“But that’s just it,” said Stanley. “I’m not really educated at all, you see, so the only thing I could do would be to be a schoolmaster, and I’d hate that.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the man, seizing the opening. “I think it would be a help if I gave you the address of the Education Office.”

“Oh come now,” protested Stanley. “It’d be worse than old Shaky Lacey we had at school. Can you imagine me with a class of boys?”

“I’m not the imaginative type,” said the man. “Now, the address is Number
25
…”

“No,” said Stanley, “it’s just not me.”

The man switched to another line of argument.

“Now why don’t you think it over properly for a bit,” he suggested. “Go on National Assistance for a while if you can’t make out. They’re only too willing to help. Then you can decide what you really do want to do,” he added in a tone of strained kindness, for all the world like any father but Stanley’s.

“But I do know what I do want to do,” said Stanley. “I’d like very much to be a sort of gentleman farmer, but I haven’t any money, so failing that I really want at the moment to be an unskilled industrial worker. At Missiles Limited,” he added.

The man passed a handkerchief over his brow.

“I’m here to help you,” he said dully. “But if you won’t let me, you won’t. All right,” he went on, defeated, “let me start at the beginning. Your name again?”

“This is not at all what an employment exchange is for,” he grumbled, as he began to take Stanley’s particulars. “I see my duty to the community quite differently. Insurance number? People come here with one idea in their heads, they want to do so-and-so. Our job’s to talk them out of that. Get them
properly
suited. But if you won’t accept help …”

“But I’m very grateful,” said Stanley. “Thank you
for your help.”

“Card?” said the man. He took it. One of Dolly’s dogs had savaged one corner of it slightly. “Take proper care of this card.” He still seemed very frustrated.

“I certainly shall,” said Stanley. “And I shall do nothing with it until told what to do with it.”

“I’ll tell you what to do with it right now,” said the man, a glint of satisfaction in his eye. “Take it to the counter there, or any Post Office, and buy the last three weeks’ stamps, or you’ll get had up.”

But when Stanley had gone he telephoned Missiles Limited and said in the persuasive tone of habit: “I’m sending you one unskilled. Windrush. Very keen. Strongly recommended.”

Missiles Limited had heard it before and awaited Stanley without visible excitement.

Stanley drank some curious coffee at Victoria Station and having given them time to settle down to the day’s work, he made his way to the factory to inquire.

“Vacancies?” said the man in the time-clock office at the main gate. “Yer, course there are. You seen the notice up. Watsher trade? Electrical fitter? Coppersmith?”

“Oh no,” said Stanley. “Nothing skilled.”

The man took him by the shoulder and laid a long pointing arm within an inch of his head. He squinted along it for the space of a breath and then said: “Up that main avenue, go straight the way through and you come to a road junction.”

“Yes, I see, a ro——”

“You go
left
‚”
interrupted the man. “And on your left’s the inquiries. Mr ’Aywood.”

Stanley went in and knocked at a hatch. There was no immediate response and he sat down on a bench. He had hardly done so when the hatch opened and Mr Haywood looked out.

“Yes?”

“I came to see about a job,” said Stanley, coming to the hatch.

“You probably want the main block,” Mr Haywood leaned out and pointing through the window began: “Follow this road and bear right at the bottom….”

“Excuse me,” said Stanley. “The man at the gate said come here. Isn’t that right?”

“Ah, but for managing staff you want the main block,” said Mr Haywood. “Follow this road down …”

“But I don’t want a job in management,” said Stanley. “I just want a vacancy.”

“What sort of vacancy?”

“Oh, just the sort of vacancy I could fill. I’m not a fitter or a coppersmith or anything. I’d thought of starting as unskilled and working my way up to semi-skilled. You see, a relative of mine advised me to do this.”

“Oh, I get you. He recommended you should get a bit
of proper experience before you go in for the management? That’s a point.”

“Oh no, that wasn’t his idea at all,” said Stanley.

“Well, never mind what his idea was,” said Mr Haywood. “I
have
got work to do, you know.
Y
our
idea is an
un
skilled vacancy, I take it. How long for? We’ve got nothing temporary.”

“Oh, definitely permanent,” said Stanley. “You see, this person said …”

“Half a minute, half a minute,” said Mr Haywood. “You fill in this application while I look up. Want any help, ask.”

The form was very simple, requiring for the most part answers of ‘No’ to questions like ‘Have you any convictions by a Civil or Criminal Court?’

“Excuse me,” said Stanley.

“Yes?”

“It says, ‘Schools attended’ but it doesn’t mention universities.”

Mr Haywood took a breath.

“We don’t pay much attention to that,” he said in a nearly even tone. “The geezers here don’t seem to have got around to it somehow.”

How much more sensible, Stanley thought, an interview like this, the two parties leaning for a few minutes on the sill of a hatch, and no nonsense about a third-class degree and in English of all things.

“You got a driving licence?” asked Mr Haywood.

“I had one in the army once.”

“Well, there’s a job in Stores and Packing. Hundred and eighty-nine shillings basic. You a union member? You got to be. Get your card from GEEUPWOA at the branch in Clyde Street.”

“What’s that?”

“General Engineering and Electrical United Projectile Workers and Operatives Alliance. When you’ve said it once you’ll call it GEEUPWOA or the General. Start tomorrow? Well, you’ll want your Insurance card in here during the week. Your shop steward’s Mr Kite.
Short-arsed
bloke with glasses.”

“Well, thank you very much,” said Stanley. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Don’t come and see me, for Christ’s sake,” said Mr Haywood. “After you clock in eight-fifteen go to S Block and report to Mr Morris. He’ll take both your cards.”

At first the people at the General Projectile’s branch were suspicious of Stanley and asked if he were from a newspaper, but they accepted his assurances and nodded at his chit from Mr Haywood. They gave him another chit to be taken to Mr Kite.

“You want two signatures from members,” they said.

His great-aunts were not very keen on the union.

“I think the whole thing’s a thorough disgrace,” said Great-Aunt Mildred. “Why anyone with any backbone should have to pay protection money like that.”

“Oh it’s only eightpence a week and anyway the
management
won’t have you unless you join.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” said Dolly. “You really mustn’t get mixed up in anything violent.”

“I expect you’re thinking about that film about the New York docks. It didn’t seem like that at all to me. They seem very civil little men at the Branch. Took themselves a bit seriously, I suppose, but I suppose they have to hold the job down.”

At five past eight the following morning, the only occasion during his employment at Missiles Limited when he arrived before time, Stanley came into the main gate of the factory. The place was almost deserted; a few men were leaning on bicycles inside, chatting and smoking.

He found a time card with his name on among the W’s, and pulled the handle onto it. ‘
0806
’ appeared obliquely in faint purple ink.

Stanley was beginning to make his way keenly towards S Block, the shirtsleeves of his mind already rolled up, when a cry arrested him.

“Don’t go in yet, mate,” called one of the men with bikes. “Cor blimey, I dunno.”

“You clocked, inchoo?” said the man’s companion. “Well, all right then. Stop and watch the fun.”

“The fun?”

“The clocking. Gissa light. Ta.”

The entrance yard, until now only patchily inhabited, was quickly becoming more animated. More and more of the workers, pushing their bikes, walked in, clocked and made their way to the cycle sheds. As the minutes ticked by, arrivals became more frequent and feverish and the clocks tinged away nineteen to the dozen. By eight-fourteen the business was reaching a crescendo.

The hooter up on one of the main shops clicked crisply and broke into a rising moan. The clocks tripped and began to register eight-fifteen.

“You watch now, cock,” bawled the man leaning on the bike. “’Ullo, ’ere we are.”

The men yet to clock in came plunging forward with their bicycles in a hobbling run.

“They got the full minute,” said the man. “And then the clock’ll stamp eight-sixteen.”

Final frantic outbursts of tinging from the clocks marked the desperate efforts of the stragglers to catch them in the last seconds before they tripped. Triumphantly beaming faces came away panting from the row of clocks, one or two of the men showing their successful time stamps to their fellows, but then an outburst of cursing arose from the people still at the clocking handles. A row of sad folk looked at their cards with expressions of stupefaction and bitterness. A few derisive cheers went up from the watchers, together with seemingly irrelevant cries of “Stay with it, Charlie” and “Git in there.”