menu_book Chapter 1

chapter i the bindles at home women remarked bindle as he gazed reflectively into the tankard he had just drained women is all right if yer can keep em from marrying yer i don't old with women growled ginger casting a malevolent glance at the blue boar's only barmaid as she stood smirking at the other end of the long leaden counter same as before he added to the barman joseph bindle heaved a sign of contentment at the success of his rueful contemplation of the emptiness of his tankard you're too late old sport he remarked as he sympathetically surveyed the unprepossessing features of his companion where freckles rioted with spots and happy abandon you're too late you a three babies for your twenty-five ginger you're "'No, I ain't.' There was a note of savage menace in Ginger's voice that caused his companion to

look at him curiously. "'Ain't what?' questioned Bindle. "'I ain't what you was going to say I was. How'd you know what I was going to say?' "'Cause every stuttering fool says it, and blimey, I'm going to ammer the next, and I don't want to ammer you, Joe.' Bindle pondered a moment, then a smile irradiated his features, developing into a broad grin.

You're too touchy, Ginger. I wasn't going to say, Ginger, you're barmy. Ginger winced and clenched his fists. I was going to say, Ginger, you're no good at marriage without tack. If you add more tack, maybe you wouldn't have got married. Ginger spat viciously in the direction of the spittoon, but his feelings were too strong for accurate aim. The parson say as marriages is made in heaven, growled Ginger. Why don't

heaven feed the kids? That's what I want to know. Ginger was notorious among his mates for the gloomy view he took of life. No one had ever discovered in him enthusiasm for anything. If he went to a football match and the team he favored were beaten, it was no more than he expected. If they were victorious, his comment would be that they ought to have scored more goals. If the horse he backed won, he blamed fate because his stake was so small. The more beer he absorbed, the more

misanthropic he seemed to become. "'Vanikov's, Parsons,' remarked Bendel conversationally, "'not as I've anythink to say ag'in religion, providin' it's kept for Sundays and Good Fridays, and don't get mixed up with the rest of the week.' He paused and lifted the newly-filled tankard to his lips. Presently he continued reminiscently. My father ad religion, and

drunk hisself to death, keeping the chill out. According to him, if you're wanted to be appy in the next world, you ad to be a sort of aft fish in this. He could tell the tale, he could, and what's more, he used to make us believe him. Bindle laughed at the recollection. Two or three times a week he used to go to chapel to wash his sins away, winter and summer. The parson seemed to have to wash the old bloomin' lot of em, and my father never forgot to take something on his

way ome to keep the chill out. He was that careful of hisself. My life is God's, he used to say, and I must take care of what is the Lord's. There weren't no spots on my father. Why, he used to wet his air to prove he'd been merc'd, as he called it. You'd have liked him, Ginger. He was a gloomy sort of cove, same as you. Ginger muttered something inarticulate, and buried his freckles and spots in his tankard. Bindle carefully filled his short clay pipe, and lit it with a care and

precision more appropriate to a cigar. No, he continued, I ain't nothing again religion. It's the people what goes in for it as does me. There's my brother-in-law, Artie by name, and my missus. They must make Evan tired with their moaning. What'd you marry her for? grumbled Ginger thickly, not with any show of interest, but as if to demonstrate that he was still awake. Ginger! There was reproach in Bindle's voice. Fancy you arsed in a silly question like that!

Don't you know as no man ever marries any woman? If he's nippy, he gets orf the hook. If he ain't, he's landed. You and me wasn't nippy enough, old son, and here we are. There's something in that, mate. There was feeling in Ginger's voice and a momentary alertness in his eye. Well, continued Bindle, once on the hook there's only one thing that'll save yer,

tack. Or ammerunner blue, interpolated Ginger viciously. I draws the line there. I don't old with ammerun women. You can't ammer something what can't ammer back, Ginger.

That's for furriners. No, tack's the thing. Now take my missus. If your back answers her when she ain't feelin' chatty, you're as good as done. what I does is to keep quiet and seem sorry then she dries up harder a bit I'll whistle or um gospel

bells that's her favorite em ginger as if to myself then out I goes and when I gets on to supper I takes in a tin of salmon and it's all over till the next time with tack gospel bells and a tin of salmon you can do a rare lot with women ginger what'd you do if you couldn't whistle or um and if salmon made your old woman sick same as it does mine what d'yer do then ginger thrust his head forward aggressively bindle thought deeply for some moments then with slow deliberation said oh i think ginger i'd kill a slop they always ang's yer for killin slops there was a momentary silence as both men drained their pewters and a moment after they left the blue boar they walked along each deep in his own thoughts in the direction of hammersmith church where they parted

bindle to proceed to fulham and ginger to chiswick each to the mate that had been thrust upon him by an undiscriminating fate joseph bindle was a little man bald-headed with a red nose but he was possessed of a great heart which no misfortune ever daunted two things in life he loved above all others beer and humour or as he called it his little joke yet he permitted neither to interfere with the day's work save under very exceptional circumstances no one had ever seen him drunk he had once explained to a mate who urged upon him an extra glass i don't put more on me back than i can carry and i do ditto wi me stomach bindle was a journeyman furniture remover by profession and the life of a journeyman furniture remover is fraught with many vicissitudes and hardships. As one of the profession once phrased it to Bindle,

if it wasn't for them bespattered quarter-days there might be a living in it. People, however, move at set periods, or, as Bindle put it, they seems to take root as if they was blooming vegetables. The set periods are practically reduced to three, for few care to face the inconvenience of a Christmas move. Once upon a time family removals were leisurely affairs which the contractors

took care to spread over many days. Now, however, moving is a matter of contract, or as Bindle himself expressed it, you're asked to carry a bookcase under one arm, a spring mattress under the other, a piano on your back, and then they wonders why you ain't doing something with your teeth. All these things conspired to make Bindle's living a precarious one. He was not lazy and sought work assiduously. In his time he had undertaken many strange jobs, his intelligence

and ready wit giving him an advantage over his competitors. But if his wit gained for him employment, his unconquerable desire to indulge in his little jokes almost as frequently lost it for him. As the jobs became less frequent, Mrs. Bindle waxed more eloquent. To her a man who was not working was a brute, or a lazy hound. She made no distinction between the willing and the unwilling, and she heaped the fire of her burning reproaches upon the head of her luckless man whenever he was

unable to furnish her with a full week's housekeeping. Bindle was not lazy enough to be unpopular with his superiors, or sufficiently energetic to merit the contempt of his fellow workers. He did his job in average time, and strove to preserve the middle course that should mean employment and pleasant associates lost your job was a frequent interrogation on the lips of mrs bindle at first bindle had striven to parry this inevitable question with a pleasantry but he soon discovered that his wife was impervious to his most brilliant efforts and he learned in time to shroud his degradation in an impenetrable veil of silence only in the hour of prosperity would he preserve his verbal cheerfulness she thinks too much o soap in her soul to make an owlin success o marriage he had once confided to a mate over a pint of beer a little dirt an a less religion might keep her out of evan in the next world but it ud keep me out of ell an this

mrs bindle was obsessed with two ogres dirt and the devil her cleanliness was the cleanliness that rendered domestic comfort impossible just as her godliness was the godliness of suffering in this world and glory in the next her faith was the faith of negation the happiness to be enjoyed in the next world would be in direct ratio to the sacrifices made in this denying herself the things that her carnal nature cried out for She was filled with an intense resentment that anyone else should continue to live an obvious enjoyment of what she had resolutely put from her. Her only consolation was the triumph she was to enjoy in the next world, and she found no little comfort in the story of Divas and Lazarus.

The forgiveness of sins was a matter upon which she preserved an open mind. Her faith told her that they should be forgiven, but she felt something of the injustice of it all. That the sinner, who at the eleventh hour repenteth, should achieve paradise, in addition to having drunk deep of the cup of pleasure in this world, seemed to her unfair to the faithful. To Mrs. Bindle the world was a miserable place. But please God, it should be a clean place,

as far as she had the power to make it clean. When a woman sets out to be a reformer, she invariably begins upon her own menfolk. Mrs. Bindle had striven long and lugubriously to ensure Bindle's salvation, and when she had eventually discovered this to be impossible, she accepted him as her cross. Wilt struggling for Bindle's salvation, Mrs. Bindle had not overlooked the more immediate needs of his body. For many weeks of their early married life,

a tin bath of hot water had been placed regularly in the kitchen each Friday night that Bindle might be thorough in his ablutions. At first Mrs. Bindle had been surprised and gratified at the way in which Bindle had acquiesced in this weekly rite, but being shrewd and something of a student of character, particularly Bindle's character, her suspicions had been aroused. One Friday evening she put the kitchen keyhole to an illicit use, and discovered Bindle industriously rubbing his

hands on his boots, and, with much use of soap, washing them in the bath, after which he splashed the water about the room, dampened the towels, then lit his pipe and proceeded to read the evening paper. That was the end of the bath episode. It was not that Bindle objected to washing. As a matter of fact, he was far more cleanly than most of his class, but to him Mrs. Bindle's methods savored too much of coercion. A great Frenchman has said,

In other words, no wanton sprite or mischief or humor must be permitted to beckon genius from its predestined path. Although an entire stranger to philosophy, ignorant alike of the word and its meaning, Mrs. Bindle had arrived at the same conclusion as the French savant. Why don't you stick at something as if you meant it, was her way of phrasing it. Look at Mr. Harty, see what he's done. Without any thought of irreverence, Mrs. Bindle used the names of

the Lord and Mr. Harty as whips of scorpions, with which on occasion she mercilessly scourged her husband. At the time of Bindle's encounter with his one-time workmate, Ginger, he had been tramping for hours seeking a job. He had gone even to the length of answering an advertisement for a waitress, explaining to the irritated advertiser that, well, women, it was the customers as did the waitin', and that a man was more nippy than a gal. Ginger's hospitality had cheered him,

and he began to regard life once more with his accustomed optimism. He had been without food all day, and this fact, rather than the continued rebuffs he had suffered, caused him some misgiving as the hour approached for his return to home and Mrs. Bindle's inevitable question, What a job! As he passed along the Fulham Palace Road, his keen eye searched everywhere for interest and amusement. He winked jocosely at the pretty girls, and grinned happily when called a

saucy-ound. He exchanged pleasantries with anyone who showed the least inclination towards camaraderie, and the door he silenced with caustic rejoinder. Bindle's views upon the home life of England were not unorthodox. I'd like to meet the cove what first started talking about the happy home life of old England, he murmured under his breath. I'd like to introduce him to Mrs. B. Might sort of wake him up a bit, and make him want to immigrate. I'd like to see him getting away without a scrap.

Rummy thing, home life. His philosophy was to enjoy what you've got, and not to bother about what you hoped to get. He had once precipitated a domestic storm by saying to Mrs. Bindle, Don't you put all your money on the next world in case of accidents. Angels is funny things, and they might sort of take a dislike to yer, and then the fat ud be in the fire. Then, critically surveying Mrs. Bindle's manifest leanness,

Not as you and me together ud make much of a flicker in hell. As he approached Fenton Street, where he lived, his leisurely pace perceptibly slackened. It was true that supper awaited him at the end of his journey. That was with luck, but luck or no luck, Mrs. Bindle was inevitable. Funny how having a wife seems to spoil your appetite, he muttered, as he scratched his

head through the blue and white cricket cap he invariably wore, where the four triangles of alternating white and Cambridge blue had lost much of their original delicacy of shade. I'm hungry, hungry as an ock, he continued. Then after a pause he added, i wonder whether ox mary the idea seemed to amuse him well well he remarked with a sigh you're got to face it joe and pulling himself together he mended his pace as he had foreseen mrs bindle was keenly on the alert for the sound of his key in the lock of the outer door of their half-house he had scarcely realized that the evening meal was to consist of something stewed with his much-loved onions when mrs bindle's voice was heard from the kitchen with the time-worn question

got a job hunger and the smell of his favourite vegetable made him a coward how d'yer know fairy he asked with crude facetiousness what is it inquired mrs bindle shrewdly as he entered the kitchen night watchman at a garridge he lied glibly and removed his coat preparatory to what he called a rinse at the sink it always pleased mrs bindle to see bindle wash even such a perfunctory effort as a rinse was a tribute to her efforts when do you start she asked suspiciously how persistent women were thought bindle to-night at nine he replied nothing mattered with that savoury smell in his nostrils mrs bindle was pacified but her emotions were confidential affairs between herself and the lord and she consequently preserved the same unrelenting exterior bout time i should think she snapped ungraciously and proceeded with her culinary preparations mrs bindle was an excellent cook if her temper was like her cooking bindle had confided to mrs hearty life ud be a little bit of evan fenton street in which the bindles lived was an offering to the moloch of british exclusiveness

the houses consisted of two floors and each floor had a separate outer door and a narrow passage from which opened off a parlour a bedroom and a kitchen although each household was cut off from the sight of its immediate neighbours there was not a resident save those who occupied the end houses who was not immediately acquainted with the private affairs of at least three of its neighbours those above or below as the case may be and of the family on each side the walls and floors were so thin that when the least emotion set the voices of the occupants vibrating in a louder key than usual the neighbours knew of the crisis as soon as the protagonists themselves and every aspect of the dispute or discussion was soon the common property of the whole street fenton street suited mrs bindle who was intensely exclusive she never joined the groups of women who stood each morning and many afternoons at their front doors to discuss the thousand and one things that women have to discuss she occupied herself with her home hounding from its hiding-place each speck of dust and microbe as if it were an embodiment of the devil himself she was a woman of narrow outlook and prejudiced views hating sin from a sense of fear of what it might entail rather than as a result of instinctive repulsion

yet she was possessed of many admirable qualities she worked long and hard in her home did her duty to her husband in mending his clothes preparing his food and providing him with what she termed a comfortable home next to chapel her supreme joy in life was her parlour amid victorian riot of antimacassars stools furniture photograph frames pictures ornaments and the musical box that would not play but was precious as aunt anne's legacy bindle was wont to say that when yer goes into her parlour yer wants a map and a guide and even then yer is to call for elp before yer can get out mrs bindle had no visitors and consequently her domestic holy of holies was never used she would dust and clean and arrange arrange clean and dust with untiring zeal the windows although never opened were spotless for she judged a woman's whole character by the appearance of her windows and curtains no religieuse ever devoted more time or thought to a chapel or an altar than mrs bindle to her parlour she might have reconciled herself to having anything else in the world but her parlour would have held her a helpless prisoner

when everything was ready for the meal mrs bindle poured from a saucepan a red-brown liquid with cubes of darker brown which splashed joyously into the dish bindle recognised it as stewed steak and onions the culinary joy of his heart with great appetite he fell to almost thankful to providence for sending him so excellent a cook as he ate he argued that if a man had an angel for a wife in all likelihood she would not be able to cook and perhaps after all he was not so badly off remarked bindle indicating the dish with his fork and a momentary flicker that might have been a smile stillborn passed across mrs bindle's face as the meal progressed bindle began to see the folly of his cowardice he had doomed himself to a night's walking the streets he cudgelled his brains how to avoid the consequences of his indiscretion he looked covertly at mrs bindle there was nothing in the sharp hatchet-like face with its sandy hair drawn tightly away from each side and screwed into a knot behind that suggested compromise nor was there any suggestion of a relenting nature in that hard gray line that served as her mouth no there was nothing for it but to carry the banner unless he could raise sufficient money to pay for a night's lodging

saw ginger to-night he remarked conversationally as he removed a shred of meat from a back tooth with his fork don't talk to me of ginger snapped mrs bindle such retorts made conversation difficult it was mrs bindle's question as to whether he did not think it about time he started that gave bindle the inspiration he sought for more than a week the one clock of the household a dainty little travelling affair that he had purchased of a fellow workman it having sort of got lost in a move had stopped and showed itself impervious to all persuasion bindle decided to take it ostensibly to a clock repairer but in reality to the pawn-shop and thus raise the price of a night's lodging he would trust to luck to supply the funds to retrieve it with a word of explanation to mrs bindle he proceeded to wrap up the clock in a piece of newspaper and prepared to go out to bindle the moment of departure was always fraught with the greatest danger his goings out became strategic withdrawals he endeavouring to get off unnoticed mrs bindle striving to rake him with her verbal artillery as he retreated on this particular evening he felt comparatively safe

he was as far as mrs bindle knew going to a job and what was more he was taking the clock to be repaired he sidled tactically along the wall towards the door as if keenly interested in getting his pipe to draw mrs bindle opened fire how long's your job for she turned round in the act of wiping out a saucepan only to-night replied bindle somewhat lamely he was afraid of where further romancing might lead him "'Call that a job?' she inquired scornfully. "'How long am I to go on keeping you in idleness?' Mrs. Bindle cleaned the Alton Road Chapel, where she likewise worshipped, and to this

she referred. "'I'll get another job tomorrow. Don't be down-hearted,' Bindle replied cheerfully. "'Down-hearted? You ought to be ashamed of yourself!' exploded Mrs. Bindle, as she banged the saucepan upon its shelf and seized the broom. Bindle regarded her with expressionless face.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself, your great hokun brute. At one time Bindle, who was well below medium height and average weight, had grinned appreciatively at this description, but it had a little lost its savor by repetition. Call yourself a man, she continued, her sharp voice rising in volume and key, leaving me to keep the sticks together, me, a woman too, a-keeping you in idleness?

Why, I'd steal, for I'd do that, that I would. she made vigorous use of the broom, her anger invariably manifested itself in dust, a momentary forgetfulness of her religious convictions, and a lapse into the Doric. As a rule, she was careful and mincing in her speech, but anger opened the floodgates of her vocabulary, and words rushed forth bruised and decapitated. With philosophic self-effacement,

Bendel covered the few feet between him and the door, and vanished. He was a philosopher, and, like Socrates, he bowed to the whirlwind of his wife's wrath. Conscious of having done everything humanly possible to obtain work, he faced the world with unruffled calm. Mrs. Bindle's careless words, however, sank deeply into his mind. Steal! Well, he had no very strongly grounded objection, provided he were not caught at it. Steal! The words seemed to open up new possibilities for him.

the thing was how should he begin he might seize a leg of mutton from a butcher's shop and run but then nature had not intended him for a runner he might smash a jeweler's window pick a pocket or snatch a handbag but in all these adventures fleetness of foot seemed essential crime seemed obviously for the sprinter to become a burglar required experience and tools and bindle possessed neither besides burgling involved more risks than he cared to take had he paused to think bindle would have seen that stealing was crime but his incurable love of adventure blinded him to all else funny thing he mumbled as he walked down fenton street funny thing a daughter of the lord wantin me to steal wonder what old art he'd say end of chapter one read by don w jenkins rancho san diego california shaggybark dot blogspot dot com