“Very likely,” said Gorman, “just the sort of thing they would have. I know that class. Lived among them for years. He comes home at half past six. She has put on a clean blouse and tidied her hair so that he’ll kiss her, and he does. Then he kisses the baby, probably likes doing that, too, as it’s the first. Then he has a wash and she brings in the tea. Bread and butter for her with a pot of marmalade, an egg—at this time of year certainly an egg—for him.”
“And tinned peaches.”
“Eaten with teaspoons out of saucers,” said Gorman, “and they’ll enjoy them far more than you did that lobster salad at Scott’s.”
“I’m sure they will. And that is just where Ascher comes in.”
“I don’t see it,” said Gorman, “unless you mean that they’d be eating hothouse peaches if there were no Aschers.”
I did not mean that. I am, indeed, pretty sure that if there were no Aschers, if Gorman succeeded in abolishing the class, neither the city clerk, nor his pretty wife, nor any one else in England would eat hothouse peaches. There would not be any. I am inclined to think that if Ascher were done away with there would not even be any tinned peaches. Tinned peaches come from California. Somebody grows them there. That man must be kept going, fed, clothed sufficiently, housed, while the peach trees grow. He must be financed. Somebody else collects the peaches, puts them into tins, solders air-tight lids on them, pastes labels round them. He works with borrowed money. Somebody packs the tins in huge cases, puts them in trains, piles them into ships, despatches them to London, getting his power to do these things in some mysterious way from Ascher.
“While she washes up the cups and saucers,” said Gorman, “he brings round that motor cycle.”
“Paid for,” I said, “in monthly instalments.”
“Probably,” said Gorman, “with a deposit of £25 to start with.”
“It’s Ascher,” I said, “who makes that possible.”