Are you married, and were you married at a Registry Office? If so, it's certain that you've met my dear old friend. Stepney Syd, the Congratulator, one of our most earnest war-workers; as "unwearied" as Lady Dardy Dinkum.
Congratulations, spoken at the right moment, in the right way, to the right people, are a paying proposition. The war has made no difference in the value of those mellifluous syllables, unless it be in an upward direction. It's a soft job, too. Syd never works after three in the afternoon. He cannot, because his work is the concluding touch to the marriage service. It consists in hanging about registry-offices—that in Covent Garden is very popular with young people in a hurry—and waiting until a cab arrives with prospective bride and bridegroom. When they leave, Syd is there to open the door for them, and respectfully offer felicitations; and so fatuous and helpless is man when he has taken a woman for life that he dare not ignore this happy omen.
Thus, Syd comes home every time on a good thing, and, by careful watching of the weekly papers in the Free Library, and putting two and two together, he contrives, like some of our politicians, to anticipate events, and to be where the good things are.
Strolling round Montagu Street the other night, I met, in one of the little Russian cafés, a man who pitched me a tale of woe—a lean, ferrety little man, with ferrety eyes and fingers that urged me to button my overcoat and secure all pockets.
But I was shocked to discover that he was an honest man. Diamonds and honesty seldom walk hand-in-hand, and precious stones and virtue do not yet publicly kiss each other; and he talked so much of diamonds that my first apprehensions were perhaps justified. I learnt, however, that his was a sad case. He was a diamond-cutter by trade, and in those war days one might as usefully have diamonds in Amsterdam (as Maudi Darrell's song went) as have them in London.
I had not before met a man who so casually juggled with the symbols of revue-girlhood, so I bought him some more vodka and tea-and-lemon, and led him on to talk. Stones to the value of £20,000 passed through his hands every day, but none of them stuck. This fact greatly refreshed my dimming faith in human nature, until he qualified it by adding that it wasn't worth a cutter's while to steal. Every worker in the trade is known to every branch, and he would have no second chance.
Apprenticeship to the trade of diamond-cutting costs £200: and, once out of his indentures, the apprentice must join the Union, for it would be useless for him, however proficient in his business, to attempt to obtain a post without his Union ticket.
The diamond-mechanic earns anything from £3 to £8 per week. The work calls for a very considerable knowledge of the characters of stones, for very deft fingers, and for exceptionally shrewd judgment; since every diamond or brilliant, however minute, has sixty-four facets, each of which has to be made and polished on a lathe.
The stones are handed out in the workshop practically haphazard, and in the event of the loss of a stone, no disturbance is caused. The staff simply look for it; the floor of the shop is swept up with a fine broom, and the dust sifted until it is found. The explanation of this laxity is the International Diamond Cutters' Union.