CHARLIE: When their bubs get like perishing razor stops? I know.
NOSY WATSON: Tea–bloody catlap. Better’n that cocoa in the stir, though. Lend’s your cup, matie.
GINGER: Jest wait’ll I knock a ’ole in this tin of milk. Shy us a money or your life, someone.
MRS BENDIGO: Easy with that bloody sugar! ’Oo paid for it, I sh’d like to know?
MR TALLBOYS: When their bubs get like razor stops. I thank thee for that humour. Pippin’s Weekly made quite a feature of the case. ‘Missing Canon’s Sub Rosa Romance. Intimate Revelations.’ And also an Open Letter in John Bull: ‘To a Skunk in Shepherd’s Clothing’. A pity–I was marked out for preferment. [To Dorothy] Gaiters in the family, if you understand me. You would not think, would you, that the time has been when this unworthy backside dented the plush cushions of a cathedral stall?
CHARLIE: ’Ere comes Florry. Thought she’d be along soon as we got the tea going. Got a nose like a perishing vulture for tea, that girl ’as.
SNOUTER: Ay, always on the tap. [Singing]
Tap, tap, tappety tap,
I’m a perfec’ devil at that–
MRS MCELLIGOT: De poor kid, she ain’t got no sense. Why don’t she go up to Piccadilly Circus where she’d get her five bob reg’lar? She won’t do herself no good bummin’ round de Square wid a set of miserable ole Tobies.
DOROTHY: Is that milk all right?
GINGER: All right? [Applies his mouth to one of the holes in the tin and blows. A sticky greyish stream dribbles from the other.]
CHARLIE: What luck, Florry? ’Ow ’bout that perishing toff as I see you get off with just now?
DOROTHY: It’s got ‘Not fit for babies’ on it.
MRS BENDIGO: Well, you ain’t a bloody baby, are you? You can drop your Buckingham Palace manners, ’ere, dearie.
FLORRY: Stood me a coffee and a fag–mingy bastard! That tea you got there, Ginger? You always was my favourite, Ginger dear.
MRS WAYNE: There’s jest thirteen of us.
MR TALLBOYS: As we are not going to have any dinner you need not disturb yourself.
GINGER: What–o, ladies and gents! Tea is served. Cups forward, please!
THE KIKE: Oh Jeez! You ain’t filled my bloody cup half full!
MRS MCELLIGOT: Well, here’s luck to us all, an’ a better bloody kip tomorrow. I’d ha’ took shelter in one o’ dem dere churches meself, only de b—s won’t let you in if so be as dey t’ink you got de chats on you. [Drinks.]
MRS WAYNE: Well, I can’t say as this is exactly the way as I’ve been accustomed to drinking a cup of tea–but still–[Drinks.]
CHARLIE: Perishing good cup of tea. [Drinks.]
DEAFIE: And there was flocks of them there green parakeets in the coco-nut palms, too. [Drinks.]
MR TALLBOYS:
What potions have I drunk of siren tears,
Distilled from limbecs foul as Hell within!
[Drinks.]
SNOUTER: Last we’ll get till five in the — morning. [Drinks.]
[Florry produces a broken shop-made cigarette from her stocking, and cadges a match. The men, except Daddy, Deafie, and Mr Tallboys, roll cigarettes from picked-up fag-ends. The red ends glow through the misty twilight, like a crooked constellation, as the smokers sprawl on the bench, the ground, or the slope of the parapet.]
MRS WAYNE: Well, there now! A nice cup of tea do seem to warm you up, don’t it, now? Not but what I don’t feel it a bit different, as you might say, not having no nice clean table-cloth like I’ve been accustomed to, and the beautiful china tea service as our mother used to have; and always, of course, the very best tea as money could buy–real Pekoe Points at two and nine a pound…
GINGER [singing]:
There they go–in their joy–
’Appy girl–lucky boy–
MR TALLBOYS [singing, to the tune of ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles’]: Keep the aspidistra flying–
CHARLIE: ’Ow long you two kids been in Smoke?
SNOUTER: I’m going to give them boozers such a doing tomorrow as they won’t know if theyr’e on their ’eads or their — ’eels. I’ll ’ave my ’alf dollar if I ’ave to ’old them upside down and — shake ’em.
GINGER: Three days. We come down from York–skippering ’alf the way. God, wasn’t it jest about bleeding nine carat gold, too!
FLORRY: Got any more tea there, Ginger dear? Well, so long, folks. See you all at Wilkins’s tomorrow morning.
MRS BENDIGO: Thieving little tart! Swallers ’er tea and then jacks off without so much as a thank you. Can’t waste a bloody moment.
MRS MCELLIGOT: Cold? Ay, I b’lieve you. Skipperin’ in de long grass wid no blanket an’ de bloody dew fit to drown you, an’ den can’t get your bloody fire going’ in de mornin’, an’ got to tap de milkman ‘fore you can make yourself a drum o’ tea. I’ve had some’v it when me and Michael was on de toby.
MRS BENDIGO: Even go with blackies and Chinamen she will, the dirty little cow.
DOROTHY: How much does she get each time?
SNOUTER: Tanner.
DOROTHY: Sixpence?
CHARLIE: Bet your life. Do it for a perishing fag along towards morning.
MRS MCELLIGOT: I never took less’n a shilling, never.
GINGER: Kikie and me skippered in a boneyard one night. Woke up in the morning and found I was lying on a bleeding gravestone.
THE KIKE: She ain’t half got the crabs on her, too.
MRS MCELLIGOT: Michael an’ me skippered in a pigsty once. We was just a–creepin’ in, when, ‘Holy Mary!’ says Michael, ‘dere’s a pig in here!’ ‘Pig be —!’ I says, ‘he’ll keep us warm anyway.’ So in we goes, an’ dere was an old sow lay on her side snorin’ like a traction engine. I creeps up agen her an’ puts me arms round her, an’ begod she kept me warm all night. I’ve skippered worse.
DEAFIE [singing]: With my willy willy–
CHARLIE: Don’t ole Deafie keep it up? Sets up a kind of a ’umming inside of ’im, ’e says.
DADDY: When I was a boy we didn’t live on this ’ere bread and marg and tea and suchlike trash. Good solid tommy we ’ad in them days. Beef stoo. Black pudden. Bacon dumpling. Pig’s ’ead. Fed like a fighting-cock on a tanner a day. And now fifty year I’ve ’ad of it on the toby. Spud-grabbing, pea-picking, lambing, turnip-topping–everythink. And sleeping in wet straw and not once in a year you don’t fill your guts right full. Well–! [Retires within his coat.]
MRS MCELLIGOT: But he was real bold, Michael was. He’d go in anywhere. Many’s de time we’ve broke into an empty house an’ kipped in de best bed. ‘Other people got homes,’ he’d say. ‘Why shouln’t we have’m too!’
GINGER [singing]: But I’m dancing with tears–in my eyes–
MR TALLBOYS [to himself]: Absumet haeres Caecuba dignior! To think that there were twenty-one bottles of Clos St Jacques 1911 in my cellar still, that night when the baby was born and I left for London on the milk train!…
MRS WAYNE: And as for the wreaths we ’as sent us when our mother died–well, you wouldn’t believe! ’Uge, they was…
MRS BENDIGO: If I ’ad my time over again I’d marry for bloody money.
GINGER [singing]:
But I’m dancing with tears–in my eyes–
’Cos the girl–in my arms–isn’t you-o-ou!
NOSY WATSON: Some of you lot think you got a bloody lot to howl about, don’t you? What about a poor sod like me? You wasn’t narked into the stir when you was eighteen year old, was you?
THE KIKE: Oh Je-e-eeeze!
CHARLIE: Ginger, you can’t sing no more’n a perishing tomcat with the guts-ache. Just you listen to me. I’ll give y’a treat. [Singing]: Jesu, lover of my soul–
MR TALLBOYS [to himself]: Et ego in Crockford…With Bishops and Archbishops and with all the Company of Heaven…
NOSY WATSON: D’you know how I got in the stir the first time? Narked by my own sister–yes, my own bloody sister! My sister’s a cow if ever there was one. She got married to a religious maniac–he’s so bloody religious that she’s got fifteen kids now–well, it was him put her up to narking me. But I got back on ’em, I can tell you. First thing, I done when I come out of the stir, I buys a hammer and goes round to my sister’s house, and smashed her piano to bloody matchwood. ‘There!’ I says, ‘that’s what you get for narking me! You nosing mare!’ I says.
DOROTHY: This cold, this cold! I don’t know whether my feet are there or not.
MRS MCELLIGOT: Bloody tea don’t warm you for long, do it? I’m fair froze myself.
MR TALLBOYS [to himself]: My curate days, my curate days! My fancywork bazaars and morris-dancers in aid of on the village green, my lectures to the Mothers’ Union–missionary work in Western China with fourteen magic lantern slides! My Boys’ Cricket Club, teetotallers only, my Confirmation classes–purity lecture once monthly in the Parish Hall–my Boy Scout orgies! The Wolf Cubs will deliver the Grand Howl. Household Hints for the Parish Magazine, ‘Discarded fountain-pen fillers can be used as enemas for canaries…’
CHARLIE [singing]: Jesu, lover of my soul–
GINGER: ’Ere comes the bleeding flattie! Get up off the ground, all of you. [Daddy emerges from his overcoat.]
THE POLICEMAN [shaking the sleepers on the next bench]: Now then, wake up, wake up! Rouse up, you! Got to go home if you want to sleep. This isn’t a common lodging house. Get up, there! [etc., etc.]
MRS BENDIGO: It’s that nosy young sod as wants promotion. Wouldn’t let you bloody breathe if ’e ’ad ’is way.
CHARLIE [singing]:
Jesu, lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly–
THE POLICEMAN: Now then, you! What you think this is? Baptist prayer meeting? [To the Kike] Up you get, and look sharp about it!
CHARLIE: I can’t ’elp it, sergeant.
