Copyright & Information

A Fair Day’s Work

First published in 1964

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The right of Nicholas Monsarrat to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

This edition published in 2012 by House of Stratus, an imprint of

Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,

Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.

Typeset by House of Stratus.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.

EAN	ISBN	Edition
1842321463	9781842321461	Print
0755140184	9780755140183	Kindle
0755140222	9780755140220	Epub

This is a fictional work and all characters are drawn from the author’s imagination.

Any resemblance or similarities to persons either living or dead are entirely coincidental.

www.houseofstratus.com

About the Author

Nicholas Monsarrat was born in Liverpool, the son of a distinguished surgeon. He was educated at Winchester and then at Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied law. However, his subsequent career as a solicitor encountered a swift end when he decided to leave Liverpool for London, with a half-finished manuscript under his arm and £40 in his pocket.

The first of his books to attract attention was the largely autobiographical ‘This is the Schoolroom’. It is a largely autobiographical ‘coming of age’ novel dealing with the end of college life, the ‘Hungry Thirties’, and the Spanish Civil War. During World War Two he joined the Royal Navy and served in corvettes. His war experience provided the framework for the novel ‘HMS Marlborough will enter Harbour’, and one of his best known books. ‘The Cruel Sea’ was made into a classic film starring Jack Hawkins. After the war he became a director of the UK Information Service, first in Johannesburg, then in Ottawa.

Established as a sort after writer who was also highly regarded by critics, Monsarrat’s career eventually concluded with his epic ‘The Master Mariner’, a novel on seafaring life from Napoleonic times to the present.

Well known for his concise story telling and tense narrative, he became one of the most successful novelists of the twentieth century, whose rich and varied collection bears the hallmarks of a truly gifted master of his craft.

‘A professional who gives us our money’s worth. The entertainment value is high’- Daily Telegraph

CHAPTER ONE

The view through the porthole was not encouraging. On a rainy day, Liverpool Docks were never at their best; on this rainy day, with the stuff coming down in sheets, spouting and sluicing off grimy warehouse roofs, then turning grimy itself and lying about in filthy pools and puddles on the whole length of Liverpool Landing Stage – on this rainy day, Liverpool looked its depressing worst.

The oldish man staring through the porthole thought: It’ll be a grand place to get out of. That was the only encouraging thing about Liverpool, on the dank, dreary afternoon of sailing day. And even that much was uncertain; no one could say whether this was to be sailing day, or just another day like yesterday – full of arguments and rows and bad temper, ending in postponement, a dead loss all round.

The man shrugged his shoulders, thin and stooping under the white mess jacket, and turned round to look at the cabin instead. The contrast was enough to bring a brief wintry smile to a grey face cut on grim North Country lines. The cabin – Suite A34 on the passenger list – was immaculate, bright, and neat, and clean as a pin; when Tom Renshaw moved something, as he did now, setting a bowl of flowers back six inches nearer the mirror, it was just for the sake of moving it. Suite A34 had been ready for the Chairman of the line these past twenty-four hours; and ‘ready’ meant perfect, in both their dictionaries.

Old Tom Renshaw might not be the youngest, spryest cabin steward on board the Good Hope. In fact he was the oldest. But he was still the best.

As he stood back and looked at the flowers, he was listening to the tell-tale footsteps outside the cabin. From long habit, he knew them all; and now they indicated that the passengers were beginning to come on board, from the local hotels where they had spent the last frustrating twenty-four hours at the company’s expense. It seemed to Tom Renshaw that they were not stepping lively, as they usually did, but hesitantly, as if they were afraid of being disappointed again. Many of them would be starting the voyage either nervous, or angry, or fed up. That was not going to make the next few days any easier.

Delay was bound to mean worry, cancelled appointments, trains missed at New York or Montreal, sore hearts; it could mean money, and money was always short … The baggage trolleys rumbled past along the corridors, the wheels clicking as they crossed the steel edges of each floor section. A light, hurrying step was a stewardess, already intent on cherishing one of her passengers. Running footsteps were children, excited and out of hand at the prospect of the voyage. The first queasy roll in open water would take care of them … A heavy, booted tread was the Master-at-Arms, making his mid-afternoon rounds. Quick tapping heels were probably a girl who was going to enjoy the trip anyway; delay or not, sore heart or not, she would find her guaranteed date with love, under the wheeling boat-deck stars … And the low-keyed knock on the door was almost certainly Suite A34’s stewardess, Mrs Webber.

It was. She peered round the doorway, and then came forward; a dumpy, motherly figure, starched of dress, warm of heart and hand. The two of them were old friends, because for thirty plodding years they had found in each other the same things; dependability, a good day’s work, a helping hand, no nonsense. Since the Chairman of the line was travelling alone, Mrs Webber would not have much to do with A34 on this trip. But she would give a hand with the bed-making, and clearing up after parties, and answering the bell when Tom Renshaw was off-duty. She would do all these things willingly, and be ready for more, because she and Tom Renshaw were two of a kind.

Maybe it was a vanishing kind. Maybe it was out of date, like the smart young chaps said. But there were still a few left on board the Good Hope; enough to share pride in a good job, and disdain for a sloppy one.

Now she came farther into the cabin, and glanced round it with a brisk professional eye, though she knew she could never fault what she saw. The flowers were beautifully done; the telegrams and messages were set out neatly on the desk; the mirrors gleamed, the glossy yellow-wood panelling showed not a single fingermark; the small bar was arranged just as his Lordship liked, with one bottle each of whisky, Plymouth gin, Canadian rye, French and Italian vermouth, chilled Evian water; with an ice bucket piled high, a bowl of maraschino cherries, and a miniature flask of pale baby onions … She said: ‘Now then, Uncle Tom’ – the Lancashire greeting which reads like a caution and sounds like a friendly pat on the back; then she went on: ‘It looks a treat … His Nibs not here yet?’

Old Tom Renshaw shook his head. ‘No. They say the boat train’s going to be an hour late. I don’t wonder, with all this chopping and changing … Did they send up the anchovy toast?’

‘I just chased him out of the pantry. His place is in the Tourist. I told him as much.’ Her mouth grew suddenly grim, and she sniffed her disapproval. ‘Victor Winston Swann … He may be your nephew, Uncle Tom, but he’s been nought but trouble lately. Always arguing and stirring things up … He’ll finish up in jail, you mark my words!’

‘You can’t go to jail for talking,’ said Tom Renshaw, without too much conviction.

‘You can go to jail for troublemaking,’ answered Mrs Webber tartly, ‘and that’s the road he’s walking.’

Tom Renshaw sighed, but he held his tongue. He could never really have defended Vic Swann, even though the lad was his own sister’s child, because he did not believe, for one moment, that Vic’s ideas were worth a penny piece. Between himself and Vic, like all the other young stewards of today, was a ditch so wide and deep that they could scarcely hear each other even when they shouted across it.

Tom Renshaw, sixty-two years old and ready for retirement, prided himself on doing a day’s full work for a day’s full pay; it was the way he had been brought up, and the way he had chosen, all his life. He had been a staunch union man in the past, and he still was; but all those battles had been won, against cruel odds which had now faded to nothing. Jobs were now reasonably secure, wages guaranteed, working conditions safeguarded by a hundred finicking regulations. There was no call nowadays to talk about the victimization of the working class; it didn’t exist any more. Especially, there was no call to walk off the job every time you were asked to work five minutes overtime, cleaning up the mess after a gala dinner.

It was this workshy attitude which he could never share with the young chaps. In his heart he despised them all. They talked of hardship, and they had never known it. They talked of the dignity of labour, when they had never done a willing day’s work in their lives. With them, it was simply a matter of what you could get away with; it meant drawing the maximum money for the minimum work. And to Tom’s public embarrassment and his private shame, it was his own nephew, Victor Winston Swann, who led the younger gang on board in this shiftless, discontented quest for soft jobs and hard cash.

Old Tom Renshaw was still the senior shop steward, and the official union spokesman, in the Good Hope; but behind the scenes Vic Swann did most of the talking, and he had the ear of the younger lot. There was no mistaking that. And one of these days he was going to prove it.

Tom Renshaw sighed again. Times changed, virtues went out of fashion. Sometimes he thought he would never catch up with either. In a shifting world, it seemed that he had been left far behind. Nowadays, ‘service’ was supposed to be a disgrace; stewards were ‘paid lackeys’ – they betrayed the working-class movement by ‘slaving’ for the privileged rich. What a lot of moonshine it was! Yet that sort of talk was persuasive; it made a lot of converts. Already, coming to a disgruntled head in the Electrical Union walkout of yesterday, it had held up the Good Hope’s sailing for twenty-four full hours. And there might be a lot more, and a lot worse, to come.

He was startled to hear Mrs Webber echoing these thoughts, when she asked: ‘Do you reckon we’ll get away today, Uncle Tom?’

‘There’s been plenty of talk.’ She was watching his face, aware of his worries, his behind-the-scenes tussles with people like Victor Winston Swann. ‘They’re saying it’s the stewards’ turn next.’

‘It’s just what I heard.’ But she did not want to be pressed; she had held aloof from all this nonsense, all her working life, and she was not going to be involved in it now. ‘You know how people talk. Nought else to do, some of them. I just hope it’s not true.’

‘We’ll be sailing,’ said Tom Renshaw manfully. ‘And anyone who tries otherwise is due for the sack.’

The door behind Mrs Webber had opened noiselessly, without a knock, without even the murmur of a hinge. She turned in surprise as a man’s voice said: ‘Who’s due for the sack? Let’s have a few names.’

It was the Chief Steward, Bryce, and the voice, like the man, was poised uncertainly somewhere between the crispness of authority and the soft soap of comradeship. Not quite an officer, no longer a steward, Chief Steward Bryce straddled uneasily, with a foot in each camp.

He was twenty years younger than Tom Renshaw, thin and tall and somewhat furtive; more of an operator, as he had to be, and less of a man. At the same age, Tom could have graduated to the same job, with the wavy gold braid and the wavier status that went with it; but he had chosen not to – he had ‘stayed with the lads’, as he had phrased it then, and now the lads, what was left of them, were rising sixty, and still cabin stewards, and all due for their pensions in a year or two at the most.

But once again, Tom Renshaw was not sorry. He still liked his job, as he always had; he liked doing it well; he liked passengers asking for the cabins he looked after, voyage after voyage; and above all he would have hated to be a man like Chief Steward Bryce – part-time steward, part-time snooper, part-time tale-bearer to authority.

He knew well that such a man was necessary, within the intricate hierarchy that made a ship work; but he had never wanted the job, not at any price, and twenty years later he was still glad of his choice.

Chief Steward Bryce sidled forward into the cabin (he always walked as if afraid of treading in something nasty); and as he did so, Mrs Webber simply disappeared. One moment she was there, the next she was not; she had glided out like a ghost at cockcrow. Hope Lines, who were always boasting of the ‘unobtrusive service’ on board their ships, might well have been startled at this demonstration of it.

Chief Steward Bryce, of course, knew that she had gone. But he did not give it public notice; it was a pattern he was accustomed to; if he remarked on it, he might lose what face he had. Instead he stood there, in the centre of the cabin, a tall, stringy, unloved figure, and waited for an answer. Any answer.

‘We was just talking,’ said Tom Renshaw dismissively, after a pause of his own choice. He did not call the Chief Steward ‘sir’, and he did not bother overmuch with his tone. He knew Bryce, and Bryce knew him; neither of them had to take any nonsense from the other. Out of this armed neutrality, they both got their money’s worth. Thus Bryce, who was the sort of man who normally had to know what everyone was talking about, all the time, now checked this thirst for discovery, and said instead: ‘There’s a few I could give the sack tomorrow, if I’d a mind to it … I just looked in, Tom. Are you all set up?’

‘The boat train passed Edge Hill,’ said Bryce importantly. ‘We got a call from the stationmaster. His Lordship will be along in twenty minutes or so.’

Tom Renshaw waited. This was all guff, and they both knew it. After a combined working life of nearly seventy years, neither of them was going to turn faint because the Chairman of Hope Lines was due on board. In this area, things went like clockwork. In fact, better than clockwork. Clockwork could always run down. The Good Hope, and ships like her, never did.

‘Now all we have to do is get away,’ he said. ‘We don’t want another day like yesterday … Have you heard anything, Tom?’

Bryce gestured vaguely. ‘You know, trouble.’ Then he repeated Mrs Webber’s phrase. ‘There’s been a lot of talk, hasn’t there?’

‘What about McTeague?’ asked Bryce. ‘Some of the lads have been slipping ashore and seeing him. I know that much. If I had my way–’ He paused, because – for a hundred reasons reflecting a hundred meagre strands of personality – there was no convincing end to the sentence.

McTeague, thought Tom Renshaw. They were all scared stiff of McTeague, as if they were a warren full of rabbits backing away from a ferret; it was a sort of Liverpool dockside contagion, like the acrid Mersey fog itself. ‘I’m not afraid of McTeague,’ he said stoutly. ‘He doesn’t run this union. Nor this ship, either.’

‘Of course I’m sure!’ Because he was not sure, Tom Renshaw’s tone had grown almost truculent. ‘McTeague’s just a talker. Sits in a little office ashore, pulls a few strings, and thinks he’s God Almighty. Unofficial union organizer …’ Tom drew a deep breath. ‘We expelled him once, from secretary, and we’ll do it afresh, if he ever gets his nose in again. And that’s a promise.’

‘So long as you’re sure,’ said Bryce once more. ‘You know Vic Swann’s been seeing him?’

Tom frowned. This was a subject he did not want to open up. ‘I’ll deal with Vic Swann.’

‘Maybe it’s high time you did,’ said Bryce, with something like spite. ‘He’s your own flesh and blood, when all’s said.’

‘Can’t help that,’ answered Tom Renshaw. ‘I didn’t father him.’ Then, conscious of impropriety – how could he have fathered a child on his own sister? – he sought to get rid of the subject. ‘Leave Vic to me,’ he said shortly. ‘And leave Mr Bloody McTeague to me. I’ll sort them both, if I have to.’

‘As long as you’re sure,’ repeated Bryce. It seemed the only crutch he had to lean on. ‘We don’t want any more trouble with the lads.’

‘Leave the lads to me,’ said Tom. They were both reproducing set phrases by way of reassurance, and he knew it, and he didn’t like it. Needing a rest from this foolishness, he made a firm move to end the interview. ‘Well, I must polish up,’ he said, not too convincingly. He turned aside, took a napkin from the bar, and began to massage, with intent preoccupation, one of the glasses, his back half turned to the Chief Steward.

It was enough. ‘Well, let’s hear about it, if anything turns up,’ said Bryce. ‘You know where to find me.’ And he added, on a note of good-fellowship entirely false: ‘Do what you can. Eh, Uncle Tom?’

Do what you can … Alone once more, Tom Renshaw gave up his pretence of work, set back the glass in its position on the bar, and crossed to the porthole again. The rain was clearing, but the skies still lowered; the dockside complexion remained unalterably grey, and pallid, and dreary. From his position at the porthole, he could see the covered gangway, masking the incoming traffic, and a line of slate roofs, and two cranes standing up like abandoned chimneys, and a derrick hoisting cargo and baggage into one of the Good Hope’s forward hatches. A few groups of men – dockside workers waiting to tend the mooring lines – stood disconsolate, crouching in whatever shelter they could find. Even their cloth caps looked sodden and dispirited.

Whatever happened to the ship, they seemed to say, there’ll be no sunshine cruise for us. We’ll be spending the rest of the year, maybe the rest of our lives, in Liverpool, in the wet.

Do what you can … It was what they were always saying to him, in times of crisis. Do what you can, keep things going, patch things up, pretend everything’s all right – until next time. Tom Renshaw’s eyes sharpened suddenly. One of the reasons why he couldn’t do much – why he couldn’t do anything – was just coming into his line of sight.

Wandering down the quay was a man whom Tom Renshaw would willingly have left behind, along with the rest of the derelicts. He was a young steward, one of the Tourist Class barmen, and he was palpably drunk; he staggered and weaved his way down the length of the ship, his raincoat flapping, his silly moon face shining with the last of the raindrops. He should have been on board, and at work, an hour ago, thought Tom Renshaw grimly; and now here he was, half drunk and wholly useless, and someone else would be doing his job for the rest of the day, and no one would make anything out of it. Even if he were caught at the gangway – and there was no guarantee of that, the slack way it was run these days – he would still be as useless tomorrow.

The worst that would happen to him would be a blast from the Captain, and a ten-shilling fine. He wouldn’t be sacked, because sacking didn’t work any more. All it meant was that he would be chucked back into the pool, and the union would close ranks round him, with murmurs of ‘no victimization’, and the first ship out would have to sign him on again – as a steward, conduct average, health good, skill adequate.

It was a process which would continue indefinitely, until he either assaulted a passenger, won a football pool, or missed the gangway and fell into the river. It made a joke out of unions, and a joke out of sailors too.

Maybe that was why they were always saying, do what you can; they knew what sort of trash he had to work with. In the old days, a chap like that young steward – now stumbling his way up the steep slope of the after gangway – would have lasted exactly one voyage; he would have been discharged ‘Unsatisfactory’ at the end of it, and that would have left a job open for a better man. More important still, during that one voyage his shipmates would have shown him what they thought of a drunken shyster who didn’t pull his weight.

But that was the old days, thought Tom Renshaw, when a man did his job and a bit more, bore a hand if a problem came up, and didn’t argue about his rights when the time came for an extra effort. Nowadays, the union – all the unions – came down on you like a ton of bricks if you put a foot outside your designated job. Yesterday had certainly proved that.

The quick electrical refit which the Good Hope was undergoing should have been finished twenty-four hours earlier. It was just a matter of switching on and connecting up, they said; and though, having watched the electricians at work for five days, Tom Renshaw did not think it would be as easy or as quick as all that, yet it had seemed that they really could not spin out the job beyond sailing time, at 4 p.m. But that was exactly what had happened, and he, Tom Renshaw, had been directly involved in it.

He had come back on board at 6 a.m., after a night at his sister’s place outside Liverpool, to find the pantry, and Cabin A34, in darkness. He wanted to get to work right away, in order to have the cabin ready in time, and after a bit of fiddling around he traced the trouble, to a fuse box one deck below. One of the small fuses had blown, cutting out about half a dozen lamps.

It was an easy job to set right, one that any man-of-the-house would do without thinking twice about it; the fuse box was open to anyone, and the spare fuse wire was hanging from a little clip at one side. Yet Tom Renshaw had hesitated, knowing the rules, the silly protective drill which decreed that any electrical job, even replacing a new light bulb, had to go to an electrician, and to no one else. Finally he went in search of the man for the job.

It was no use chancing an argument. There had been too many of them already. But he hoped that it could be put right quickly. He had his own job to do.

It was not put right quickly; in fact, it was not put right at all. He found an electrician – indeed, he found five of them, loafing about in one of the pantries, brewing tea. There was a pack of cards beside the teapot. They had stared at him, in lumpish hostility, as he told them what he wanted; then one of them, a spry, little, argumentative man with a great quiff of yellow hair, like a cock’s comb fried in batter, said: ‘All right, mate. We’ll fix it. Soon as we’re ready.’

‘I’m ready now,’ said Tom Renshaw. ‘And I can’t work in the dark.’ He looked round the company, and they looked back at him. ‘I’ve had my tea,’ he said, unwisely. ‘I want to get to work.’

‘Hark at him!’ said another of the electricians. ‘Six o’clock in the morning, and he wants to get to work. Take it easy, Dad,’ he said cheekily, ‘or you won’t enjoy your pension.’

The other men laughed. Tom Renshaw stared back at the speaker. ‘Aren’t you on at six, then?’

‘I’m on at six, too. I want to start my work, and I want that fuse repaired.’