The Town House by Norah Lofts Page B

know. In order that Kate and Stephen and Robin should eat tomorrow – for myself I did not care, I never wanted to eat again – I must accept this lie. I could see exactly what had happened; the Guild Aldermen had held a solemn conclave; Webster, a member of the Woolmen’s Guild had offended the Smiths by using me, a non-member, to do smith work; and the Smiths’ Guild had committed, not a fault, but a breach in manners, by spying upon Webster. So there had been a meeting of all the Aldermen, intent only upon smoothing the whole thing over. Webster had lied about employing me and Armstrong had denied the spying. No matter what it took of lies and falsity to do it the firm unbroken face which the Guilds as a whole presented to the world outside, must remain uncracked. Throw lies, throw a living man’s body into the breach and then seal it over with cakes and ales and renewed vows of brotherhood and fair dealing.
    And I, for the sake of a loaf of bread, dared not speak.
    Jesus Christ! I said to myself, if only a miracle could happen and I could deal with them all as they have dealt with me, with joy would I rub their faces in the dirt!
    I knew I was like a child, beaten by his father, thinking, When I grow up! But there was this difference. The child will surely grow.
    I went out on the hunt for work. The town was growing in size and business was flourishing, but work was hard to find. Out in the country more and more acres of arable land were being turned into sheep runs, and one man could tend the sheep where twenty had been needed to plough and sow and reap. Those put out of work came flooding into the towns, so that there were three men for every job. A good deal of the work going forward was building, and with my stiff leg and built-up shoe I did not look a likely digger, or a climber of ladders. I was passed over again and again.
    Soon, alongside Dummy and Peg-Leg, I was waiting at the town gates every morning, ready to fight for any despicable little job that mightbe going, to hold horses or walk hounds while their owners went into the Abbey to visit the shrine, to carry baggage, to lead the way to inns. Sometimes, standing there amongst the riff-raff I would think how far I had fallen, a smith, a craftsman who had served his time. By comparison my father’s life, bond as he was, had had dignity and purpose. I’d run a long way and borne a great deal and got nowhere.
    Now and again, having done a job and taken the meagre pay I would go into the country and buy apples or plums or eggs on some day that was not market day, and come back and hawk them through the streets. The walking tried me and I grew lop-sided, since the easiest way was to hitch the whole right-hand side of my body when I swung that leg forward. Dummy’s brood, on the rare occasions when they were sufficiently full fed to feel sportive, took to imitating me behind my back, as they did Peg Leg.
    I never passed on to Kate the word that our very hut was threatened, but some time during that summer the old midwife and layer-out, Agnes, came back from making a baker named Barnaby ready for his grave with news which seemed to excite her. She said that Barnaby had left all his money for the building of some almshouses and that as soon as they were standing everybody in Squatters Row was to move into them. It was strange to hear how that drunken old slattern, who lived under a piece of torn sail-cloth, spoke of having a house again, as though that was the one thing she wanted. But nothing came of it. The Barnaby houses were for eight widows whose husbands had been Guild members.
    ‘And there goes my last hope,’ Agnes said, and went out and got herself most enviably drunk.
    Dummy’s wife said, ‘They are only one up and one down, they’d be no good to my lot. Laying heel to head we go from here to there,’ she indicated the space between two buttresses.
    So Squatters Row went on just as before and that summer we had a new kind of visitor. The