May-Day Celebration

== MAY-DAY CELEBRATION ==
=== by T. O. Beachcroft ===
Originally published in The Criterion, London, July 1935 
T. O. BEACHCROFT has had stories in The London Mercury, Criterion, The Adelphi, and a number of other English magazines and has also appeared in one or two newspapers. A Young Man in a Hurry and You Must Break Out Sometimes are the titles of two volumes of stories recently published by Boriswood. Mr. Beachcroft was born in 1903. At the time he wrote this short-story he was 35 years of age..
It would be about now they would be coming, Mabel thought, and her heart beat somewhat faster. Thomas's face was all about her, wherever she turned; changing, changing from the boy with black hair and violent ways to the elderly man with the patient look; the waiting look; and the eyes deeper and deeper set with something in them of failure, and something in them of sticking to it. 
Now she saw the red and white cheeks he used to have in his teens; now the grey face with heavy lines, and the stubble turning grey, and the shaggy eyebrows and his eyes, which looked tired. 
She heard the band now in the distance the marchers were coming into the gardens. The crowd grew more dense every moment, and tremors of excitement shuddered through it, like gusts of wind in high corn. Mabel was carried sideways against her will over towards the platforms and the banners. A dense crowd was waiting there for the marchers and the speakers. 
There were two platforms under the trees at the corner of the Gardens. Round them the red banners were stretched. Overhead clouds were racing in a stormy sky, and the branches threshing and weaving in the wind. 
Mabel found herself carried in the crowd into the arms of an old friend. The two women greeted each other. 
"It's a good muster," said Mabel. "The numbers are very good." 
"Who's going to speak? Is your husband speaking?" 
Mabel shook her head. 
"He's going to start it off," she said. "He's taking things a bit easy. This fellow Hardy's going to speak." 
The crowd was massed solid round the platforms now, and policemen's helmets seemed to float everywhere among the heads. And beyond the crowd she could see the heads and shoulders of mounted policemen gliding about. Mabel knew there were almost as many policemen as there were demonstrators and marchers. There always were at a big meeting. 
There came a wavering cheer, taken up uncertainly here and there: and the marchers began to file past the platforms. On each side of them marched a rank of policemen. Mabel saw first the bobbies' red faces, purple and red with the full blood of health and their red fleshy necks and their upright carriage; each man of them carrying his twelve and fourteen stone like a boy athlete. She saw beef as they went by: and roasting fires. She saw steaks sizzling in grills and frying-pans. She saw gravy, and crusty chunks of bread and butter and foaming pints of beer and stout. 
Then she saw the marchers; and she was watching pale, ill faces grey and yellowish: she saw the dragging feet and ragged clothes. Here and there a man squared his shoulders and stuck his jaw out. In every face she saw sadness and old despair: she saw the drawn lines that she had seen so often, and the patient, stern look of the men who were brave. She saw rain-soaked street corners, and men leaning motionless against street posts with the rain drifting over the cobblestones. The word hunger transfixed her like a spear, a pain that ached in her own body. Hunger marchers, she thought men who marched under the banner of Hunger. They were hungry: and they marched, because there was nothing else for them to do. 
Leading a section, her Thomas passed, looking steadfastly ahead. She pushed her way with purpose now towards the platforms. Thomas mounted the platform and held up his hand for silence. A hush fell. 
For a moment or two he looked about him at the marchers. What were his feelings? Mabel knew he was not thinking of himself, nor of her, nor of anything but of them. As he waited and looked from one side to the other a low mutter of recognition began to arise; it was a rough growl of friendship that never rose to a cheer: something more friendly than a cheer. Thomas's grave deeply lined face looked round on the crowd, and he held up a strong square hand. 
"Comrades," said Thomas, with slow Lancashire emphasis, "you know me well. You know something of what I have done for you in these thirty years. I wish it were more," he suddenly cried, "by God I wish it were more." 
A sudden silence spread now. 
"I'm not come here to speak for myself," Thomas went on more calmly. "I want to present to you Mark Hardy. He has been to Russia. Once he talked with Lenin himself. He is going to speak of our plans for the coming year." 
Hardy stood up. He was a man of about thirty-five over six feet. His face was thin and handsome, with deep set eyes. His hair was black and untidy. He wore a black coat and trousers and a red shirt open at the throat. 
Before speaking he suddenly flung off his coat and held his two arms towards the crowd. The murmur of talk round the platform died away. He began to speak at once swiftly and in loud, clear tones that carried far and compelled the attention. 
"Friends," he said, "comrades fellow workers. During the last five years we have passed through a century of experience in our long struggle: events have moved: and we have made a tremendous advance towards the inevitable downfall of capitalist misrule, and the building up of the workers' united and world-wide front. 
"In this five years we have seen every capitalist country sucked far down in the economic maelstrom. We have seen their foundations splitting and cracking. We have seen the feverish and insane efforts of Nazi and Fascist reactionaries in their despairing effort to shore them up." 
Mabel's mind began to wander: now she had seen the marchers and heard Thomas speak, she began to edge away towards the back of the crowd. 
Presently a burst of applause called her mind back to the speaker. Hardy was saying: 
"We are asked this year to celebrate King George's Jubilee. You know as well as I do that all this Empire hullabaloo in the lickspittle press is propaganda: cold blooded propaganda, aimed to divert peoples' eyes from the sickening state of present affairs. 
"What have we in truth to celebrate? First that after twenty-five years of the present reign we accept that millions of men in every capitalist country continue in permanent unemployment. A glorious achievement indeed! Millions of workers condemned to a standard of life that would be despised by primitive savages. Secondly, we celebrate that since 1926, Trade Unions have been placed in a weaker position than they have occupied since the days of Castlereagh and the Six Acts. Another great capitalist victory! Thirdly, that England continues to exploit by bloodshed, force and cruelty the Asiatic nations. Fourthly, that insane quarrels over the ill-gotten Imperialist gains among the nations lead us to the very brink of another horrible war, to which the workers will once again be driven: a war which brings to the workers nothing but torture, degradation, horror. And the next war will carry every fiendish device of slaying and torture into the workers' own homes among their women and children." 
Hardy poured all this out in a torrent of clear and unhesitating speech. Suddenly he paused and looked round. Then he went on with slow measured emphasis: 
"Stop it: stop it before it is too late. Remember Invergordon. Think of the power of the massed will of the people, the same needs, the same enemies in every country. There is no hope for you in nationalism. . . ." 
While he was speaking the sky darkened: clouds and gusty rain came spinning through the air. The trees swayed, and men tightened their collars round their throats. 
" Let's go," said Mabel to Beth. "Let's get back. I'd like to have some tea ready when Thomas comes in. He'll need some warming up." 
They slowly edged their way out of the crowd. When they reached its distant scattered fringe, they turned round and looked back. The outer groups of people were talking together: many were breaking off and going away as the rain came on. From here the voice of Hardy could still be faintly heard. 
"This form of state will go: be assured of it: war will go "_ 
Nearer in round the platform the crowd pressed silent, unmoving. Mabel looked back at the platform, and saw Hardy using his arms as he spoke, though his voice no longer reached her: and she saw Thomas sitting beside him: and the crowd packed round them. 
The platform seemed like a heart or core of life, sending its own pulse through the silent, waiting crowd that pressed round to drain life from it. Her mind became filled with the image: she saw it as a brazier of coals in the dark, and men pressing round it, with the light gleaming on their hands and faces and clothes: she saw it as the pay office at the mills when she was a girl, with scores of men struggling round to draw their money. She saw it as a multitude of flowing, changing pictures, with light breaking through the clouds. She saw it as a stone sending silent ripples across the surface of a pond. 
Both women were silent as the 'bus took them away from the parks and shopping streets to the grime-covered parts of the town beyond the two railway stations, where there were factories and warehouses and poor men's homes. 
Mabel led the way through the dark arches which carried one of the stations above the streets and houses. They came out into a street of small houses, which lay for ever under the shadow of the enormous viaduct. Their walls were crusted with sooty deposit, so thick that it fell away at the touch of a hand. The air was filled with smoke, white, grey and brown. And the little houses shook to the unending clamor of the trains overhead. 
Mabel led the way up a bare boarded passage and uncarpeted stairs: the walls of the passage were thick with railway grime. She had two rooms. When they got inside, Beth looked round at the linoleum, worn and polished, and at the bareness of everything. She was used to rooms in which beds and tables and upholstered chairs jostled against each other. 
"We've got another room here," said Mabel. "This is only the sitting-room." 
She hung her mackintosh and hat on the door: she stooped down and put a penny in the gas meter and lit a small gas ring for the kettle. They settled themselves to talk. They sat with their knees apart and their hands resting in the outspread laps. Mabel and Beth had led hard lives; but time had brought their bodies a roundness which gave a placid dignity to all they said and did. 
"It's a grubby place, this," Mabel said. She began to put out cups and plates. "I hope you'll overlook my not spreading a cloth: it'd only be black by the end of tea. The blacks get in even with the windows shut." 
As she spoke a long goods train rumbled past, filling the room with clanking. 
"I don't like living in Railway Street," she went on. "It ain't exactly my idea of a country cottage with nice roses to smell. But Thomas has got to find a place for his little printing press. It's what they call a platten. We can put it down in the basement on a stone floor here. It's not every street they'd let you have a printing press." 
"Does he print the Worker's Clarion on it?" said Beth. 
"No; it wouldn't take that," said Mabel. "That's got much too big an affair which is all to the good. But they want him to issue a lot of small pamphlets all the time." 
She opened a cupboard door and showed, instead of cups and saucers, piles of papers and pamphlets. A cascade of papers came sliding out on the floor: they began to fall from the shelves, manuscripts, printed sheets, blank paper, all confused together. 
"What do you think of that for a larder?" said Mabel. 
Beth shook her head. 
"Well," she said, after a long silence, "you would have him." 
Mabel pushed the papers back into the cupboard, moved another pile from a wooden chair, and sat down. 
"Don't think I meant that for a complaint against Thomas, or the way we live," she said. "You're right. I would have him and perhaps my people were doing right in trying to stop me. I was only nineteen. But I've never lived to regret it. I was quite right, Beth, young as I was. There are some things the young ones know. He's a good husband and a good man: and I say that after forty years of married life. What more can a woman say than that? How many can say that much?" 
Beth nodded. 
"Forty years, is it? We're getting old. I can remember it all so clear, too: as if it was only last year. It seems funny." 
They both fell to thinking of other days and times: far off scenes, when they were young slim girls in white muslin who ran with flying feet; who were caught by the waist on summer nights. 
Mabel began to put out a loaf and butter on the bare table top. 
"You'll stay and have a bite, won't you?" she said. "We don't live very high: but there's some bread and butter and jam: the butter's as cheap nowadays as the marge." 
"Unless you have the five-penny marge," said Beth. 
Mabel went on talking as she set out the tea with slow, quiet movements. 
"Mind you," she said, "my married life hasn't been all honey and jujubes. I'm not complaining. Why should 1 ? But when a man lives for something beyond the ordinary things of life, home can't be his be-all and end-all." 
Beth nodded. 
"That's it," she said. 
Mabel paused with a plate in her hand. "But take yourself too," she said. "It cuts all ways. Your Arthur's been a good steady worker always. But you haven't been too happy with him." 
Beth nodded again. 
"To all outward appearance," Beth said, slowly and decidedly, "Arthur looks like a 'usband to be proud of. But there it is. I got my crying over early in my married life. I did plenty of it then. He's a bully, that's the trouble: and he's never thought for anyone but himself. He's selfish to the bone. The first ten years of my marriage were all babies and black eyes." 
"There have been times when I've felt it hard, too," said Mabel. "I've never had what I should call a home. Never in all these forty years. I've had to see my young ones go hungry and cold, when they were little. And I've never been able to give them a farthing to help them now they're older. We never know where we may be from one week to the next. Years ago I used to cry too, when Thomas's views and meetings kept getting him the sack from good jobs. Many's the time I've said to him, * What's the use of going on?' Then every time he got a new job I used to think to myself, 'Now I'll have a proper home. 
But just as we was getting things together something always went bust. We've lived in fourteen different towns, let alone all the rooms: they're more than I can remember." 
"But he's settled in a good job now, isn't he?" said Beth. "He's been there for a year or two." 
"Yes, we're really better off now than we've ever been yet. I'm really beginning to hope now that I'm going to get a home together. We'll be out of this pigsty in a year. Thomas is beginning to take it easier now. He doesn't do so much not all day and every day, like he used to." 
"Well, he's getting on in years/' said Beth. 
"Yes, he says he feels he isn't in the forefront any more: he looks to leave things to the younger men. But he can still earn good money. He always could. He's a foreman compositor now on the Morning News working on the advertisements. It's a good job. I'm beginning to think we'll settle down yet, Beth: I'll be asking you to see me in a nice little place one of these days, in a little peace and comfort." 
Beth nodded. 
"I'm sure I need it," said Mabel. "The kettle's on the boil now. Til make tea. If he's late, I can make some fresh." 
"Is that the four-penny," said Beth, "from the Stores round the corner?" 
" It's the three-pence-halfpenny. Tell me what you think of it. The only thing I wonder is whether he'll ever be happy if he gives it up. His one grumble has always been 'e's never been able to do enough for the cause. He's said that every day for the last twenty years, I should think." 
"What did you think of that fellow's speech this afternoon?" asked Beth. 
Mabel sat silent for a little while. 
"He seems a nice enough man," she said at length. 
"Yes, but what about all that he was talking about?" 
"I don't know quite what to make of it," said Mabel. "And I've heard enough speeches in my time. He always talks that sort of thing. He means it when he says it. But I don't quite trust it somehow. What's he got to do with it all? He's a chap with a lot of money behind him. In Thomas's young days it was a fight against the owners: men understood what they were making for and knew who was against them. Thomas spoke to the men about their own towns and factories and homes, and what they'd better do next week: not about the whole of this world and kingdom come. I sometimes think speech-makers like him get so full of the new plans in front of them and all to that, they forget what these poor fellows want is just food and dry clothes." 
"But he's an important man, isn't he?" said Beth. "He's been an M. P., hasn't he? He'll be somebody one of these days." 
"Yes, I daresay he'll be someone," said Mabel, "on one side or the other. But it can't mean the same to him as it did to my Thomas when he was a young man. Yet he pushes forward and takes the limelight and Thomas takes a back seat." 
"Well," said Beth, "you oughtn't to mind that: only a moment ago you were saying you'd be thankful if only he would drop out of things a bit and keep a steady job for once." 
"Yes," said Mabel, "but sometimes I feel seeing all the work he's done giving his whole life to it he deserves something a bit more out of it." 
"You persuade him to give it up," said Beth, "and have a little peace and quiet for once in your life. I saw a little house out our way in Welcome's Fields a week back. You could have got it on the money he's making now. Let him spend it on you and his home for once." 
Mabel drew breath and compressed her lips: then she let it out as a slow, thoughtful sigh. 
"We'll see," she said. " We'll see what happens." 
"It's time you had your way for once," said Beth. "You take my advice." 
"Here he is," Mabel said. 
They heard his footsteps in the passage, then on the bare boards of the stairs. 
Thomas came in and greeted his wife and Beth a little absently. He sat down on a chair with a grunt. He was dressed in a dark serge suit with a muffler at his neck. His grey hair was closely cut and his face once full of fire and expression, had grown dour and set and stubborn. 
" I'm getting old," he said. 
"That's just what we've been saying," said Beth. "We're all getting old." 
"I'll just have time for some tea," said Thomas, "then I want to get down to the paper. I shan't be back till we've put her to bed. I'll be back about one. Then I shall have a full day on to-morrow, till late again. I had to work it that way so as to get off this afternoon." 
"You'll be worn out," said Mabel. 
"It won't be the first time," said Thomas. 
Beth said: "You ought to think of your health a bit more at your age." 
"I've got better things to think of," he said. 
"Not for Mabel." 
Thomas ignored her answer. Presently she said goodbye and went. 
"I wanted to get downstairs to-night," Thomas said. "We want another thousand of those Invergordon pamphlets. That's been doing good work. But I can't manage it now it's too late. Then they're asking me to do Hardy's speech later on. My Vanguard Press is getting well known." 
"What did you think of that speech of Hardy's?" said Mabel. " I only heard the first part." 
"It was good," said Thomas. "My job nowadays is to go and print what better men say. I sometimes think I've never really done anything worth while for our cause." 
"Don't be silly. Isn't it anything to have given your whole life to it?" 
"Idunno . . ." Thomas began: but stopped. Mabel started up. 
There was a loud knock at the street door. They heard it pushed open, and the tread of two or three men in the passage. 
" They're coming up here," said Thomas. " Hardy said he might come round." 
There was a loud knock at the door. "Come in," said Thomas. He went to the door and opened it. 
When he did so a police constable stepped into the room: behind him a plain clothes detective. 
They stared at Thomas for a moment, seeming to dwarf him by their height and heavy bulk. 
"Well," said Thomas, after a bit, "any trouble?" The detective stepped forward. 
"There's no need for me to ask if you're Thomas Devlin," he said, "because I know you by sight." "Yes, I'm Thomas Devlin." 
"I'm afraid, Mr. Devlin, I've got a warrant here for your arrest and a search warrant too." 
"What for? I'm an honest man. There must be some mistake." 
"No mistake," said the detective. "You work a small hand press down in the basement here. Whoever's at the back of you, the imprint's yours." Thomas nodded. 
"And you've been issuing a lot of very foolish pamphlets lately. There's one of my men downstairs just found a pile of these Invergordon leaflets with your imprint on them. I've got to arrest you under the new Act. There's the warrant." 
There was a pause. 
"Well," said Thomas, "do you want me to come with you now?" 
"Yes," said the detective. 
"Can't you give me time to make a few arrangements first?" 
"I must ask you to come at once, please. We don't want a crowd of people round here. And I must search this room before we go, too. I'm under orders to confiscate all the printed matter I find here." 
Mabel opened the cupboard door and showed the stores of pamphlets. In a surprisingly short time they had searched the room and made a clean sweep. 
Thomas began to make rapid arrangements with Mabel. 
"We're going to the Central Police Station," he said. "Will you tell them what's happened at the paper at once? Go and see them yourself. Then come along and we'll see what we can arrange about bail." 
"I wouldn't count on bail, Mr. Devlin," said the detective. "The authorities at headquarters aren't playing. I'm afraid this is a serious business for you." 
"I'll come, anyhow," said Mabel. 
Before going, Thomas kissed her and held her in his arms. 
"It'll be all right," he said. 
"Good-bye," said Mabel. "I'll be along directly." 
The door closed: and she was alone. 
She stood silent for a long time, thinking and seeing nothing. 
Then she slowly walked to the window and pulled the curtains. How grimy they were. Then she sat down beside the table which still carried the remains of tea. Many pictures of her broken and tattered life passed before her. She saw her hopes of the future torn in ragged dirty pieces, fluttering away. She knew now that she would never have a home: that from now on she need never hope for a home. 
The pictures of the little house she had begun to see changed to pictures of rooms in worse and worse streets: to fierce poverty, bare boards, and fireless grates, to comfortless old age. 
Yet she felt calm and almost joyful. She had seen the look in Thomas's eyes. She knew he was living through the proudest and happiest moments of his whole life. She fell to thinking of the red and white cheeks, the wild black hair, he used to have. And gradually her heart grew light. 
For a long time she sat silent and still until the penny in the gas was used up and the fire flickered out into cold, lifeless grey. Then she rose and put on her mackintosh to go out again. It was still wet from the afternoon's rain. 
Category:Beachcroft
Category:The Criterion