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By Root 1000 0

fall of its own weight into the soil and rest there, till, with a lazy lift of the shoulders, the hoe rises again, falls … the man stands, thinking. He straightens himself, spits on his hand and fits it lovingly around the sweat-smoothed wood handle. He gazes around him for a long while. A shout of rage comes from the house. He does not shrug, move, make any sign: he is attacked by deafness. Slowly, the hoe rises, falls, rises, falls. No sign from the house. Leaning on the handle he gazes into the distance, thinking of that lost paradise, the tribal village where he might be lounging at that moment, under a tree, watching his women work in the vegetable garden while he drinks beer. Another shout of rage from the house. Again he stiffens, without actually hearing. The hoe seems to rise of its own accord, and lazily falls, rises and falls, so slowly it seems that some invisible force fights against gravity itself, restraining the hoe in its incredibly lazy down-curve to the soil. ‘Can’t you go any faster than that?’ demands the white mistress from the verandah of the house. ‘What do you think I pay your wages for?’ Why? Well, of course, so that I can pay that stupid tax and get back home to my family … this thought is expressed in the sullen set of the shoulders. By the end of the day he has achieved the minimum amount of work.

Wally James, lazily allowing his chisel to slide over the cracked putty that held the cracked glass in place, remarked: ‘When we put the Labour Government in, we thought things would be better for the working people. But the way things would out, what’s the difference?’

‘According to the newspapers …’

‘Now, miss, you won’t hold it against me, but you don’t want to go reading those newspapers now.’ Scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape. ‘This is a real nice window, say what you like.’

‘It will be, when it’s mended. Been cracked ever since I came in.’

‘You don’t say. Well, next time you just let me know. You don’t want to go wasting time with those forms. Takes it out of a person, those forms do.’ He stood back and looked musingly down into the street. ‘Who’d have thought a working man’s Government would get itself all messed up with forms and such.’

‘I don’t see it’s much worse than the last, do you?’

‘I didn’t say worse, couldn’t be worse, could it? But when we put them in, we meant them to be better.’

‘Surely it’s better.’

‘We-ll,’ he grudgingly admitted, ‘you could say it’s better. But take me. I’ve got a wife and two kids. Two kids isn’t a big family. And my wife works mornings. And I earn eight quid a week. We earn eleven quid between us. Sounds a lot, don’t it? And I can’t afford to take the kids for a holiday, not a proper one. What do you think of that now?’ He scraped a little more, and stood back. ‘Working since I was fourteen. I’m thirty-four. And all the real holiday I ever got was the Army. Join the Army and have a nice rest. My old woman gets mad with me when I say that.’ He lit a cigarette and said: ‘How about a nice cup of char? Can you spare it? If not, I’ll bring you a bit of my ration tomorrow.’

Drinking tea, he remarked: ‘We could do that job in half a morning.’

‘Yes?’

‘Easy.’ He smoked peaceably. ‘Don’t see any point in slaving my guts out and getting nothing back. I’m fed up. What’s the sense in everything?’

‘Don’t ask me.’

‘I’m not asking, I’m telling. When I think of what those boys said before we put them in and what they do now. All the same, once they get in, that’s right, isn’t it, mate?’

‘That’s right,’ assented the other two. They listened to their foreman speaking with detached interest, I got the feeling that if he had made a passionate speech about raising production, they would have assented, with equal indifference: ‘That’s right.’

‘Listen to them,’ he said scornfully. ‘That’s right, they say, that’s right. Not an idea in their bloody heads. Do you know what they are? Slaves, that’s what. And like it. Let me tell you. Last week all the men were complaining about the tea in the canteen. It came cold every time, and the food was muck. There they were, grumbling