"But how did you live all the time, wasting your money like that?"
He laughed harshly.
"It's easy to live south the line—in Australasia, anyway, if you're a drunkard. There's a lot of money about, you know. Men come from up-country with a big cheque to knock out—shearers and men like that, who live in the backblocks for months, hundreds of miles from hotels. They come down from the backblocks with perhaps a hundred pounds to spend on a week of blissful unconsciousness. Sailors come in and get paid off too. There's a lot of freehandedness. They treat the whole bar. If you won't drink with them, they knock you out of time before you know where you are, sit on your chest and pour it down your neck. Once you're in a pub in Australia you can stay in all day on nothing. And you can get in for threepence—the price of a pint of beer. And you don't get out till you're kicked out drunk."
"Oh—" she gasped.
"The devil of it is getting hold of the threepence. Sometimes you meet a pal and borrow it. Sometimes you pawn something and get it. If the Home boat's in, you go down to the quay, pick out a new chum—that's anyone from the Old Country—offer to show him round a bit, and he naturally treats you. Then you're in the haven."
He spoke cynically, bitterly. She grasped at his sleeve, as though she would pull him back.
"Oh—," she gasped.
"D-don't keep s-saying 'Oh' like that!" he cried impatiently. "S-say s-something s-sensible."
"Does your mother know all about the way you live?" she asked desperately.
"I told her. I enjoyed letting her know what they drove me to. But she doesn't understand. They don't ever understand, these easy, half-alive, untempted folks! She's never been away from a world of afternoon calls, broughams and shopping! I tell her I'm a beer-bum—yes, that's the word for it in Australia! Not a pretty word—not a pretty thing either! I gave the Mater and Pater a picture of myself once—broken shoes tied on with string, trousers tied on with a bit of rope because I'd sold my braces for threepence—slinking along in the gutter outside the Theatre Royal picking up cigarette ends that had been thrown away! Counter lunches! D'you know what counter lunches are?"