So Slyme went ahead, and as he had to make his wages, he could not spend a great deal of time over it. Some of the joints were “lapped” and some were butted, and two or three weeks after the owner of the house moved in, as the paper became more dry, the joints began to open and to show the white plaster of the wall, and then Owen had to go there with a small pot of crimson paint and a little brush, and touch out the white line.
While he was doing this he noticed and touched up a number of other faults; places where Slyme—in his haste to get the work done—had slobbered and smeared the face of the paper with fingermarks and paste.
The same ghastly mess was made of several other “jobs” besides this one, and presently they adopted the plan of painting strips of colour on the wall in the places where the joints would come, so that if they opened the white wall would not show: but it was found that the paste on the back of the paper dragged the paint off the wall, and when the joints opened the white streaks showed all the same, so Misery abandoned all attempts to prevent joints showing, and if a customer complained, he sent someone to “touch it up”: but the lining paper was never used, unless the customer or the architect knew enough about the work to insist upon it.
In other parts of the same house the ceilings, the friezes, and the dados, were covered with “embossed” or “relief” papers. These hangings require very careful handling, for the raised parts are easily damaged; but the men who fixed them were not allowed to take the pains and time necessary to make good work: consequently in many places—especially at the joints—the pattern was flattened out and obliterated.
The ceiling of the drawing-room was done with a very thick high-relief paper that was made in sheets about two feet square. These squares were not very true in shape: they had evidently warped in drying after manufacture: to make them match anything like properly would need considerable time and care. But the men were not allowed to take the necessary time. The result was that when it was finished it presented a sort of “higgledy-piggledy” appearance. But it didn’t matter: nothing seemed to matter except to get it done. One would think from the way the hands were driven and chivvied and hurried over the work that they were being paid five or six shillings an hour instead of as many pence.
“Get it done!” shouted Misery from morning till night. “For God’s sake get it done! Haven’t you finished yet? We’re losing money over this ‘job’! If you chaps don’t wake up and move a bit quicker, I shall see if I can’t get somebody else who will.”
These costly embossed decorations were usually finished in white; but instead of carefully coating them with specially prepared paint of patent distemper, which would need two or three coats, they slobbered one thick coat of common whitewash on to it with ordinary whitewash brushes.
This was a most economical way to get over it, because it made it unnecessary to stop up the joints beforehand—the whitewash filled up all the cracks: and it also filled up the hollow parts, the crevices and interstices of the ornament, destroying the sharp outlines of the beautiful designs and reducing the whole to a lumpy, formless mass. But that did not matter either, so long as they got it done.
The architect didn’t notice it, because he knew that the more Rushton & Co. made out of the “job”, the more he himself would make.
The man who had to pay for the work didn’t notice it; he had the fullest confidence in the architect.