"Well, not much. Tommy's not a youngster, you know. I suppose the Newspaper Press Fund will tide him over a bit."
Larkin dropped the subject, to listen to a story from Vernham. After all, it was the most casual thing in the happenings of Fleet Street to them: it might happen to them any day; it was bound to happen to them one day. And there would always be young men ready to take their places. Nobody was to blame; it was just one of the chances of the inexorable system which made their work a gamble, where men hazarded their wits and their lives, and lost or won in the game.
Humphrey knew more than they did what it meant for Tommy Pride. He heard as a mocking echo now, the old cry, "Two pounds a week and a cottage in the country."...
"Have a drink," Larkin said.
He became suddenly out of tune with the place. His perception of Fleet Street altered. He saw the relentless cruelty of it, the implacable demand for sacrifice that it always made. He visioned it as a giant striding discordantly through the lives of men, crushing them with a strength as mighty as its own machines that roared in the night ... a clumsy and senseless giant, that towered above them, against whom all struggles were pitiful ... futile.
VI
"One lump or two?" asked Elizabeth, holding the sugar-tongs poised over his cup of tea.
"One, please," said Humphrey.