THE ANGEL AND THE SWEEP
I’d been sitting in the Axe & Cleaver along of Mrs. Pellegrini for an hour at least; I hadn’t seen her in five years since she was doing the roads near Pontypool. An hour at least, for isn’t the Axe & Cleaver the pleasant kind of place? Talking or not talking you can always hear the water lashing from the outfall above Hinney Lock, the sound of it making you feel drowsy and kind. And isn’t the old bridge there a thing to be looking at indeed?
Mrs. Pellegrini had a family of pikeys who traded in horses, willow-wattles, and rocksalt; she was as cunning as a jacksnipe, and if she had a deep voice like a man she was full of wisdom. A grand great woman was Rosa Pellegrini, with a face silky-brown like a beechnut, and eyes and hair the equal of a rook for darkness. The abundance of jewellery hooked and threaded upon her was something to be looking at too. Old man and young Isaac kept going out to look at the horses, or they’d be coming in to upbraid her for delaying, but she could drink a sconce of beer without the least sparkle of hilarity, as if it were a tribute she owed her whole magnificent constitution, or at least a reward for some part of it. So she kept doing it, while her son and her husband could do no other and did it with nothing of her inevitable air.
Well, I was sitting in the Axe & Cleaver along of Mrs. Pellegrini when who should rove in but Larry McCall, good-looking Larry, bringing a friend with him, a soft kind of fellow who’d a harsh voice and a whining voice that we didn’t like the noise of tho’ he had good money in his purse. Larry gave me the grace of the day directly he entered the door, and then, letting a cry of joy out of him, he’d kissed Mrs. Pellegrini many times before she knew what was happening to her. She got up and punished him with a welt on his chin that would have bruised an oak-tree, and bade him behave himself. He sat down soothingly beside her and behaved very well. His companion stood very shy and nervous, like a kitten might be watching a cockfight.
“Who is this young man?” Mrs. Pellegrini asks.
“That’s Arthur,” said Larry: “I forget what Arthur knocks a living out of—I’ve known him but these three bits of an hour since we were walking in the one direction.”
“My dad,” said Arthur slowly and raspingly, “is an undertaker, and he lets me help him in his business: we bury people.”
“Oh come, young man,” said Mrs. Pellegrini, “that’s no sort of a trade at all—d’ye think it, Mr. McCall?”
“No, I do not,” replied Larry, “but Arthur does. It don’t seem to be a trade with very much humour in it. Life ain’t a sad solid chunk.”