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.The blade of Keegan’s shovel just missed Galway’s throat.‘King of the fukken monkeys,’ Galway guffawed as a breast leaned out of sight above her machine, but before Keegan’s attack had time to change to Galway, Barney whistled from the scaffolding rail on the roof.The bay was ready.The mixer, in smoke and stink of diesel, roared in gear.‘Come on: shovel or shite, shite or burst,’ Murphy shouted above the roar.The shovels drove and threw in time into the long wooden box, tipped by handles at each end into the steel hopper when full, two boxes of gravel to the one of sand, and as the sand was tipped on the gravel Keegan came running from the stack with a cement bag on his shoulder to throw it down on top.Galway’s shovel cut the bag in two and the grey cloud of fallout drifted away as the ends were pulled free.The hopper rose.We could rest on shovels for this minute.When it stopped Murphy took the sledge to beat the back of the hopper, and the last of the sticking sand or gravel ran into the revolving drum where the water sloshed against the blades.As he hammered he shouted in time, ‘Our fukker who art in heaven bought his boots for nine-and-eleven,’ the back of the hopper bright as beaten silver in the sun.As the hopper came down again he shouted in the same time, ‘Shovel or shite, shite or burst,’ and the shovels mechanically drove and threw, two boxes of gravel to one of sand, and the grey fallout from the hundredweight of cement as the bag was cut in two, and the ends pulled free.It’d go on like this all day.Murphy ran the mixed concrete from the drum down a shoot into a metal bucket.With a whine of the lift engine the bucket rose to Sligo, a red-faced old man with a cap worn back to front, who tipped it into a cylindrical metal container fixed to the scaffolding, and then ran the bucket down again.The barrows were filled from a trapdoor in the container, and they ran on planks to toss the concrete on the steel in the bays.The best of the roof on a hot day was that wind blew from the Thames.In the boredom of the shovelfuls falling in time into the wooden box I go over my first day on the site a summer before.They’d said to roll my jacket in the gutter before I went in, and when I got on the site to ask for the shout.‘Who has the shout here?’ I asked.They pointed Barney out.He wore the same black mourning suit in wellingtons that he now leaned in against the scaffolding rail, watching the concreting on the roof, the black tie hanging loose from the collar of the dirty white shirt.‘Any chance of a start?’ I asked.His eyes went over me – shoulders, arms, thighs.I remembered my father’s cattle I had stood for sale in the Shambles once, walking stick along the backbone to gauge the rump, lips pulled back to read the teeth; but now I was offering to shovel for certain shillings an hour: shovel or shite, shite or burst.‘Have you ever done any building work before?’ Barney had asked.‘No, but I’ve worked on land.’ They’d said not to lie.‘What kind of work?’‘The usual – turf, oats, potatoes.’‘You’ve just come over on the boat, then?’‘Yesterday … and I heard you might give me the start.’‘Start at twelve, then,’ he said in his slow way and pointed to the wooden hut that was the office.‘They’ll give you the address of the Labour.Get back with your cards before twelve.’There was no boredom those first days, though time was slower and there was more pain, drive to push the shovel in blistered hands with raw knee in the same time as the others, a shovel slyly jabbed against a thigh as if you’ve stumbled, and the taunt, ‘Too much wankin’ that’s what’s wrong,’ in the way fowl will peck to death a weakened hen; fear of Thursday, Barney’s tap on the shoulder.‘You’re not strong enough for this job.You’ll have to look for something lighter for yourself.Your cards’ll be ready in the office at payout.’No fear of the tap on the shoulder on this or any Thursday now, shut mouth and patience and the hardening of the body.My shovel drove and threw as mechanically as any of theirs by now.‘What time is it?’ I asked Keegan.He fumbled in his pocket for the big silver watch wrapped in cloth to protect it against the dust.He read the time.‘Another fukken twenty minutes to go,’ Galway said in the exasperation of the burden of the slow passing of the minutes, a coin for each endured minute.‘Another fukken twenty minutes,’ I repeated, the repetitious use of fukken with every simple phrase was harsh at first but now a habit.Its omission here would cause as much unease as its use where ‘Very kind.Thank you, Mr Jones’ was demanded.‘There’s no fukken future in this job,’ Keegan complained tiredly.‘You get old.The work is the same, but you’re less able for it any more.In other jobs as you get old you can put the work over on others.’‘No sign of Jocko yet.’ Galway tried to change to Murphy.Galway wore a white handkerchief knotted at both ends to keep the dust out of his Brylcreemed black hair.‘I’ll give him his future when he comes,’ Murphy said as he sledged the back of the hopper.‘The childer go to school and they’ll have better than me,’ Keegan kept on at what was felt as nagging rebuke.‘They’ll have some ambition.That’s why I work behind this bloody mixer and the woman chars.So that they can go to school.They’ll have some ambition.They’ll wear white collars.’‘Pork chops, pints of bitter, and a good old ride before you sleep, that’s fukken ambition,’ Murphy left off sledging to shout, and when he finished he laughed above the mixer.‘That’s right,’ Galway agreed.‘Come on, Keegan: shovel.’‘I’ll shovel with a jumped-up brat any day,’ Keegan answered with the same antagonism, but fell behind, sweat running down from under the hat.‘Shovel or shite, shite or burst,’ Murphy trumpeted as he saw the competition, and then at last the hooter blew.We passed the Negro demolition crew as we went to the canteen, the wood from the houses burning fiercely behind the bulldozer.On the roof two Negroes hacked away slates with pickaxes.The prostitutes lived in the condemned row, moving from empty house to empty house ahead of the demolition.Limp rubbers floated in the gutters Monday mornings while they slept in the daylight.Through the hatch in the canteen Marge handed out ham or tomato rolls and mugs of tea.‘Ta ta, Pa,’ she said as I gave her coins.This had been hardest of all to get used to, to have no name at all easier than to be endlessly called Pa.‘Thanks, Marge.’ It angered me that there was still the bitterness of irony in my smile, that I was not yet completely my situation; this ambition of mine, in reverse, to annul all the votes in myself.I sat with the rest of the mixer gang at a trestle table.Behind us the chippies played cards.The enmity glowed sullenly between Galway and Keegan, but Galway ate his rolls and gulped tea without lifting his head from the racing paper, where he marked his fancies with a stub of pencil [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]