If they happened to be good “sloggers”—men who made a practice of “tearing their guts out” when they did work—they were usually forgiven, and after being admonished by Misery, permitted to resume work, with the understanding that if ever it occurred again they would get the “infernal”—which means the final and irrevocable—sack.
There was once a job at a shop that had been a high-class restaurant kept by a renowned Italian chef. It had been known as
“MACARONI’S ROYAL ITALIAN CAFE”
Situated on the Grand Parade, it was a favourite resort of the “Elite”, who frequented it for afternoon tea and coffee and for little suppers after the theatre.
It had plate-glass windows, resplendent with gilding, marble-topped tables with snow white covers, vases of flowers, and all the other appurtenances of glittering cut glass and silver. The obsequious waiters were in evening dress, the walls were covered with lofty plate-glass mirrors in carved and gilded frames, and at certain hours of the day and night an orchestra consisting of two violins and a harp discoursed selections of classic music.
But of late years the business had not been paying, and finally the proprietor went bankrupt and was sold out. The place was shut up for several months before the shop was let to a firm of dealers in fancy articles, and the other part was transformed into flats.
Rushton had the contract for the work. When the men went there to “do it up” they found the interior of the house in a state of indescribable filth: the ceilings discoloured with smoke and hung with cobwebs, the wallpapers smeared and black with grease, the handrails and the newel posts of the staircase were clammy with filth, and the edges of the doors near the handles were blackened with greasy dirt and finger-marks. The tops of the skirtings, the mouldings of the doors, the sashes of the windows and the corners of the floors were thick with the accumulated dust of years.
In one of the upper rooms which had evidently been used as a nursery or playroom for the children of the renowned chef, the wallpaper for about two feet above the skirting was blackened with grease and ornamented with childish drawings made with burnt sticks and blacklead pencils, the door being covered with similar artistic efforts, to say nothing of some rude attempts at carving, evidently executed with an axe or a hammer. But all this filth was nothing compared with the unspeakable condition of the kitchen and scullery, a detailed description of which would cause the blood of the reader to curdle, and each particular hair of his head to stand on end.
Let it suffice to say that the walls, the ceiling, the floor, the paintwork, the gas-stove, the kitchen range, the dresser and everything else were uniformly absolutely and literally—black. And the black was composed of soot and grease.
In front of the window there was a fixture—a kind of bench or table, deeply scored with marks of knives like a butcher’s block. The sill of the window was about six inches lower than the top of the table, so that between the glass of the lower sash of the window, which had evidently never been raised, and the back of the table, there was a long narrow cavity or trough, about six inches deep, four inches wide and as long as the width of the window, the sill forming the bottom of the cavity.