FullReads

And indeed the influence of Crown Square, with its large effects of terra cotta, plate glass, and gold letters, all under a heavy skyscape of drab smoke, was depressing. A few very seedy men (sharply contrasting with the fine delicacy of costly things behind plate-glass) stood doggedly here and there in the mud, immobilized by the gloomy enchantment of the Square. Two of them turned to look at Stirling’s motor-car and me. They gazed fixedly for a long time, and then one said, only his lips moving:

“Has Tommy stood thee that there quart o’ beer as he promised thee?”

No reply, no response of any sort, for a further long period! Then the other said, with grim resignation:

“Ay!”

The conversation ceased, having made a little oasis in the dismal desert of their silent scrutiny of the car. Except for an occasional stamp of the foot they never moved. They just doggedly and indifferently stood, blown upon by all the nipping draughts of the square, and as it might be sinking deeper and deeper into its dejection. As for me, instead of desolating, the harsh disconsolateness of the scene seemed to uplift me; I savoured it with joy, as one savours the melancholy of a tragic work of art.

“We might go down to the Signal offices and worry Buchanan a bit,” said the doctor, cheerfully, when he came back to the car. This was the second of his inspirations.

Buchanan, of whom I had heard, was another Scotchman and the editor of the sole daily organ of the Five Towns, an evening newspaper cried all day in the streets and read by the entire population. Its green sheet appeared to be a permanent waving feature of the main thoroughfares. The offices lay round a corner close by, and as we drew up in front of them a crowd of tattered urchins interrupted their diversions in the sodden road to celebrate our glorious arrival by unanimously yelling at the top of their strident and hoarse voices:

“Hooray! Hoo–bl—-dy–ray!”

Abashed, I followed my doctor into the shelter of the building, a new edifice, capacious and considerable, but horribly faced with terra cotta, and quite unimposing, lacking in the spectacular effect; like nearly everything in the Five Towns, carelessly and scornfully ugly! The mean, swinging double-doors returned to the assault when you pushed them, and hit you viciously. In a dark, countered room marked “Enquiries” there was nobody.

“Hi, there!” called the doctor.

A head appeared at a door.

“Mr Buchanan upstairs?”

“Yes,” snapped the head, and disappeared.

Up a dark staircase we went, and at the summit were half flung back again by another self-acting door.

In the room to which we next came an old man and a youngish one were bent over a large, littered table, scribbling on and arranging pieces of grey tissue paper and telegrams. Behind the old man stood a boy. Neither of them looked up.

“Mr Buchanan in his–” the doctor began to question. “Oh! There you are!”

The editor was standing in hat and muffler at the window, gazing out. His age was about that of the doctor–forty or so; and like the doctor he was rather stout and clean-shaven. Their Scotch accents mingled in greeting, the doctor’s being the more marked. Buchanan shook my hand with a certain courtliness, indicating that he was well accustomed to receive strangers. As an expert in small talk, however, he shone no brighter than his visitors, and the three of us stood there by the window awkwardly in the heaped disorder of the room, while the other two men scratched and fidgeted with bits of paper at the soiled table.

Suddenly and savagely the old man turned on the boy:

“What the hades are you waiting there for?”

“I thought there was something else, sir.”

“Sling your hook.”

Buchanan winked at Stirling and me as the boy slouched off and the old man blandly resumed his writing.

“Perhaps you’d like to look over the place?” Buchanan suggested politely to me. “I’ll come with you. It’s all I’m fit for to-day…. ‘Flu!” He glanced at Stirling, and yawned.