The Good Companions

Yet this afternoon it is not thinking about the wool trade.

Something very queer is happening in that narrow thoroughfare to the west of the town. It is called Manchester Road because it actually leads you to that city, though in order to get there you will have to climb to the windy roof of England and spend an hour or two with the curlews. What is so queer about it now is that the road itself cannot be seen at all. A grey-green tide flows sluggishly down its length. It is a tide of cloth caps.

These caps have just left the ground of the Bruddersford United Association Football Club. Thirty-five thousand men and boys have just seen what most of them call “t’United” play Bolton Wanderers. Many of them should never have been there at all. It would not be difficult to prove by statistics and those mournful little budgets (How a Man May Live⁠—or rather, avoid death⁠—on Thirty-five Shillings a Week) that seem to attract some minds, that these fellows could not afford the entrance fee. When some mills are only working half the week and others not at all, a shilling is a respectable sum of money. It would puzzle an economist to discover where all these shillings came from. But if he lived in Bruddersford, though he might still wonder where they came from, he would certainly understand why they were produced. To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink.

Yet it was in Learoyd Avenue, nearly at the end, just before it turns into Park Drive, that Mr. Oakroyd’s adventures really began.

He had just stepped from the lamplit pavement into the shadow of a tree, when he tripped over something and went sprawling.

“What the bl⁠—!” he began, startled and shaken.

“Shush! Shush!” said a voice, close to his ear. “Naughty! Naughty!”

Mr. Oakroyd scrambled to his feet and peered through the gloom at the figure beside him. “ ’Ere, Mister, get up.”

The other giggled quietly. “Can’t gerrup,” he said. “Can’t poshibly gerrup.”

“Well, you can’t stay there all t’night, Mister,” said Mr. Oakroyd, who now understood the situation. “Can you now?”

“I dunno, I dunno,” said the other meditatively. “P’raps I can, p’raps I can’t. Who knows?” Then in a tone of great melancholy he added: “Nobody knowsh. And nobody⁠—nobody⁠—caresh. Nobody.” He seemed to be overcome by the pathos of this reflection.

“Well, you’ve got a load on and no mistake,” said Oakroyd. Then he reached out a hand. “Come on, come on. This’ll nivver do. ’Oist yerself up.”

“That’s ri’. Gimme a hand, the hand of frien’ship. Up we go!” And, aided by Mr. Oakroyd, he struggled to his feet, clapped Mr. Oakroyd on the shoulder, nearly lost his balance again, and finally clung to his companion’s arm and began staggering down the road. The lamplight revealed him as a large red-faced man, very smart in a light grey felt hat, check suit, and spats.

“You’re a good fella,” he cried. “A very good fella. And I⁠—I’m a good fella too. Both good fellas. Wass’r name? Mine’s George. I’ve had a mos’ extr’or’⁠—extr’or’⁠—’stonishin’ time. Mos’ ’stonishin’. Been away nearly a week. Racesh. Yes, I’m a rayshing man.

Mr. Oakroyd stood staring at the greenish-blue card in his hand, staring as if he were in a dream. Man⁠—Age 16 to 65.⁠ ⁠… Failure to surrender this card promptly⁠ ⁠… If the Insured Person⁠ ⁠… The Insured Person⁠ ⁠… All so familiar and yet so strange. He stood staring, baffled, lost in the dark of a world of notices and notifying, of sneering Comrades and stupid autocratic managers, of buzzers that kept your feet from the road, of signs that could never be hoisted, of daughters that grew up, laughing and singing, and then vanished over the sea. Then something inside him flared and went shooting through this bewildered dark like a rocket, and Mr. Oakroyd committed a crime.

“Oh, to hell wi’ t’card!” he cried, and tore it across and threw the pieces into the fire. Then, leaving horror-stricken amazement behind him, he picked up his bag of tools and his little basket trunk and made for the door.

“Now you’ve done it,” they were crying. “Where yer going?”

“Down South,” he replied, and vanished into the night.

For several days an unusually impudent and delicious little tune had been capering at the back of his mind, and now, after some preliminary flourishes, he set out to capture it. He fumbled about for a few minutes in the key of D major, but then slid into his favourite E flat. The next moment the poor hulk of a piano leaped into life. The tune was his, and he began toying ecstatically with it. Now it ran whispering in the high treble; now it crooned and gurgled in the bass; and then, off it went scampering, with a flash of red heels and a tossing of brown curls. There was no holding it at all. It pirouetted round the room, mocking the desks and blackboards and maps: the air was full of its bright mischief. Rumpty-dee-tidee-dee, rumpty-dee-tidee. But why try to describe that little tune or make any mystery of it? All the world knows it now, or did yesterday, as “Slippin’ Round the Corner.” What Inigo played that night was not quite the final melody that became so famous as a song and a dance tune afterwards: the butterfly was hardly out of the chrysalis yet; but, on the other hand, the lilt that came out then had not been blared and bleated and howled and vulgarized in every conceivable fashion, and still had all its enchanting mockery of things heavy and dull and lifeless. Inigo twisted it this way and that, sent little glittering showers of high notes over the melody, let it sink down in mock despair to the bass, then made it ring so

The notice, in large if faded letters, ran: Good Pull Up. Poppleby’s Dining-Rooms. Cyclists Catered For. Mr. Oakroyd regarded it with satisfaction. In the window were some yellow lace curtains, two bottles of lime juice and soda, four withered oranges on a plate, a slab of boldly checkered brawn, labelled Poppleby’s Best, some little cakes covered with what had once been bright pink icing, and innumerable generations of flies. Mr. Oakroyd did not stop long examining the window, but the sight of it did not lessen his satisfaction. He opened the door and was immediately assailed by the smell of food, which was strong enough to suggest that people had been eating day and night without cessation in that room for the last thirty years. It made Mr. Oakroyd’s mouth water. For the last hour and a half he had wanted food, and here, it was plainly evident, was food in plenty. So richly steeped was this dining-room of Poppleby’s in the atmosphere of cooking and eating⁠—the oilcloth on the tables was covered with crumbs and the stains of recent meals, the very walls and furnishings were greasy with fat, and the air itself was boiled and toasted and fried⁠—that only to walk into it was to be nourished at once. A person who was not very hungry or not very robust might find a mere entrance sufficient to satisfy or blunt the appetite, but such a hungry and