DEAFIE [singing]: With my willy willy, with my willy willy–
MRS BENDIGO: Well, I told the bastard what I thought of ’im, anyway. ‘Call yourself a man?’ I says. ‘I’ve seen things like you kep’ in a bottle at the ’orspital,’ I says…
MR TALLBOYS [to himself]: Happy days, happy days! Roast beef and bobbing villagers, and the peace of God that passeth all understanding! Sunday mornings in my oaken stall, cool flower scent and frou-frou of surplices mingling in the sweet corpse-laden air! Summer evenings when the late sun slanted through my study window–I pensive, boozed with tea, in fragrant wreaths of Cavendish, thumbing drowsily some half-calf volume–Poetical Works of William Shenstone, Esq., Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, J. Lempriere, D.D., professor of immoral theology…
GINGER: Come on, ’oo’s for that drum of riddleme-ree? We got the milk and we got the tea. Question is, ’oo’s got any bleeding sugar?
DOROTHY: This cold, this cold! It seems to go right through you! Surely it won’t be like this all night?
MRS BENDIGO: Oh, cheese it! I ’ate these snivelling tarts.
CHARLIE: Ain’t it going to be a proper perisher, too? Look at the perishing river mist creeping up that there column. Freeze the fish-hooks off of ole Nelson before morning.
MRS WAYNE: Of course, at the time that I’m speaking of we still had our little tobacco and sweetstuff business on the corner, you’ll understand…
THE KIKE: Oh Je-e-e-eeze! Lend’s that overcoat of yours, Ginger. I’m bloody freezing!
SNOUTER: — double-crossing bastard! P’raps I won’t bash ’is navel in when I get a ’old of ’im!
CHARLIE: Fortunes o’ war, boy, fortunes o’ war. Perishing Square tonight–rumpsteak and kip on feathers tomorrow. What else d’you expect on perishing Thursday?
MRS BENDIGO: Shove up, Daddy, shove up! Think I want your lousy old ’ed on my shoulder–me a married woman?
MR TALLBOYS [to himself]: For preaching, chanting, and intoning I was unrivalled. My ‘Lift up your Hearts’ was renowned throughout the diocese. All styles I could do you, High Church, Low Church, Broad Church and No Church. Throaty Anglo-Cat Warblings, straight from the shoulder muscular Anglican, or the adenoidal Low Church whine in which still lurk the Houyhnhnm-notes of neighing chapel elders…
DEAFIE [singing]: With my willy willy–
GINGER: Take your ’ands off that bleeding overcoat, Kikie. You don’t get no clo’es of mine while you got the chats on you.
CHARLIE [singing]:
As pants the ’art for cooling streams,
When ’eated in the chase–
MRS MCELLIGOT [in her sleep]: Was ’at you, Michael dear?
MRS BENDIGO: It’s my belief as the sneaking bastard ’ad another wife living when ’e married me.
MR TALLBOYS [from the roof of his mouth, stage curate-wise, reminiscently]: If any of you know cause of just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in holy matrimony…
THE KIKE: A pal! A bloody pal! And won’t lend his bloody overcoat!
MRS WAYNE: Well, now as you’ve mentioned it, I must admit as I never was one to refuse a nice cup of tea. I know that when our poor dear mother was alive, pot after pot we used to…
NOSY WATSON [to himself, angrily]: Sod!…Gee’d into it and then a stretch all round…Never even done the bloody job…Sod!
DEAFIE [singing]: With my willy willy–
MRS MCELLIGOT [half asleep]: Dear Michael…He was real loving, Michael was. Tender an’ true…Never looked at another man since dat evenin’ when I met’m outside Kronk’s slaughter-house an’ he gimme de two pound o’ sausage as he’d bummed off de International Stores for his own supper…
MRS BENDIGO: Well, I suppose we’ll get that bloody tea this time tomorrow.
MR TALLBOYS [chanting, reminiscently]: By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Zion!…
DOROTHY: Oh, this cold, this cold!
SNOUTER: Well, I don’t do no more — starries this side of Christmas. I’ll ’ave my kip tomorrow if I ’ave to cut it out of their bowels.
NOSY WATSON: Detective, is he? Smith of the Flying Squad! Flying Judas more likely! All they can bloody do–copping the old offenders what no beak won’t give a fair chance.
GINGER: Well, I’m off for the fiddlede-dee. ’Oo’s got a couple of clods for the water?
MRS MCELLIGOT [waking]: Oh dear, oh dear! If my back ain’t fair broke! Oh holy Jesus, if dis bench don’t catch you across de kidneys! An’ dere was me dreamin’ I was warm in kip wid a nice cup a’ tea an’ two o’ buttered toast waitin’ by me bedside. Well, dere goes me last wink o’ sleep till I gets into Lambeth public lib’ry tomorrow.
DADDY [his head emerging from within his overcoat like a tortoise’s from within its shell]: Wassat you said, boy? Paying money for water! How long’ve you bin on the road, you ignorant young scut? Money for bloody water? Bum it, boy, bum it! Don’t buy what you can bum and don’t bum what you can steal. That’s my word–fifty year on the road, man and boy. [Retires within his coat.]
MR TALLBOYS [chanting]: O all ye works of the Lord–
DEAFIE [singing]: With my willy willy–
CHARLIE: ’Oo was it copped you, Nosy?
THE KIKE: Oh Je-e-e-eeze!
MRS BENDIGO: Shove up, shove up! Seems to me some folks think they’ve took a mortgage on this bloody seat.
MR TALLBOYS [chanting]: O all ye works of the Lord, curse ye the Lord, curse Him and vilify Him for ever!
MRS MCELLIGOT: What I always says is, it’s always us poor bloody Catholics dat’s down in de bloody dumps.
NOSY WATSON: Smithy. Flying Squad–flying sod! Give us the plans of the house and everything, and then had a van full of coppers waiting and nipped the lot of us. I wrote it up in the Black
Maria:
‘Detective Smith knows how to gee;
Tell him he’s a — from me.’
SNOUTER: ’Ere, what about our — tea? Go on, Kikie, you’re a young ’un; shut that — noise and take the drums. Don’t you pay nothing. Worm it out of the old tart. Snivel. Do the doleful.
MR TALLBOYS [chanting]: O all ye children of men, curse ye the Lord, curse Him and vilify Him for ever!
CHARLIE: What, is Smithy crooked too?
MRS BENDIGO: I tell you what, girls, I tell you what gets me down, and that’s to think of my bloody husband snoring under four blankets and me freezing in this bloody Square. That’s what I can’t stomach. The unnatural sod!
GINGER [singing]: There they go–in their joy–Don’t take that there drum with the cold sausage in it, Kikie.
NOSY WATSON: Crooked? Crooked? Why, a corkscrew ’ud look like a bloody bradawl beside of him! There isn’t one of them double — sons of whores in the Flying Squad but ’ud sell his grandmother to the knackers for two pound ten and then sit on her gravestone eating potato crisps. The geeing, narking toe rag!
CHARLIE: Perishing tough. ’Ow many convictions you got?
GINGER [singing]:
There they go–in their joy–
’Appy girl–lucky boy–
NOSY WATSON: Fourteen. You don’t stand no chance with that lot against you.
MRS WAYNE: What, don’t he keep you, then?
MRS BENDIGO: No, I’m married to this one, sod ’im!
CHARLIE: I got perishing nine myself.
MR TALLBOYS [chanting]: O Ananias, Azarias and Misael, curse ye the Lord, curse Him and vilify Him for ever!
GINGER [singing]:
There they go–in their joy–
’Appy girl–lucky boy–
But ’ere am I-I-I–
Broken–’a-a-aarted!
God, I ain’t ’ad a dig in the grave for three days. ’Ow long since you washed your face, Snouter?
MRS MCELLIGOT: Oh dear, oh dear! If dat boy don’t come soon wid de tea me insides’ll dry up like a bloody kippered herring.
CHARLIE: You can’t sing, none of you. Ought to ’ear Snouter and me ’long towards Christmas time when we pipe up ‘Good King Wenceslas’ outside the boozers. ’Ymns, too. Blokes in the bar weep their perishing eyes out to ’ear 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 Woolworth’s ’s afternoon. I’ll ’ave a dig in the bleeding fountains tomorrow if I can bum a bit of soap.
DEAFIE: When I was a stooard in the P. & 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 yoo 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
