Chapter 25
The Oblong
During the following week the work at “The Cave” progressed rapidly towards completion, although, the hours of daylight being so few, the men worked only from 8 A.M. till 4 P.M. and they had their breakfasts before they came. This made 40 hours a week, so that those who were paid sevenpence an hour earned £1.3.4. Those who got sixpence-halfpenny drew £1.1.8. Those whose wages were fivepence an hour were paid the princely sum of 16/8d. for their week’s hard labour, and those whose rate was fourpence-halfpenny “picked up” 15/-.
And yet there are people who have the insolence to say that Drink is the cause of poverty.
And many of the persons who say this, spend more money than that on drink themselves—every day of their useless lives.
By Tuesday night all the inside was finished with the exception of the kitchen and scullery. The painting of the kitchen had been delayed owing to the non-arrival of the new cooking range, and the scullery was still used as the paint shop. The outside work was also nearly finished: all the first coating was done and the second coating was being proceeded with. According to the specification, all the outside woodwork was supposed to have three coats, and the guttering, rain-pipes and other ironwork two coats, but Crass and Hunter had arranged to make two coats do for most of the windows and woodwork, and all the ironwork was to be made to do with one coat only. The windows were painted in two colours: the sashes dark green and the frames white. All the rest—gables, doors, railings, guttering, etc.—was dark green; and all the dark green paint was made with boiled linseed oil and varnish; no turpentine being allowed to be used on this part of the work.
“This is some bloody fine stuff to ’ave to use, ain’t it?” remarked Harlow to Philpot on Wednesday morning. “It’s more like a lot of treacle than anything else.”
“Yes: and it won’t arf blister next summer when it gets a bit of sun on it,” replied Philpot with a grin.
“I suppose they’re afraid that if they was to put a little turps in, it wouldn’t bear out, and they’d ’ave to give it another coat.”
“You can bet yer life that’s the reason,” said Philpot. “But all the same I mean to pinch a drop to put in mine as soon as Crass is gorn.”
“Gorn where?”