第26章 Mitchell's Jobs(1)

"I'm going to knock off work and try to make some money," said Mitchell, as he jerked the tea-leaves out of his pannikin and reached for the billy.

"It's been the great mistake of my life -- if I hadn't wasted all my time and energy working and looking for work I might have been an independent man to-day."

"Joe!" he added in a louder voice, condescendingly adapting his language to my bushed comprehension. "I'm going to sling graft and try and get some stuff together."

I didn't feel in a responsive humour, but I lit up and settled back comfortably against the tree, and Jack folded his arms on his knees and presently continued, reflectively:

"I remember the first time I went to work. I was a youngster then.

Mother used to go round looking for jobs for me. She reckoned, perhaps, that I was too shy to go in where there was a boy wanted and barrack for myself properly, and she used to help me and see me through to the best of her ability. I'm afraid I didn't always feel as grateful to her as I should have felt. I was a thankless kid at the best of times -- most kids are -- but otherwise I was a straight enough little chap as nippers go. Sometimes I almost wish I hadn't been. My relations would have thought a good deal more of me and treated me better -- and, besides, it's a comfort, at times, to sit and watch the sun going down in the bed of the bush, and think of your wicked childhood and wasted life, and the way you treated your parents and broke their hearts, and feel just properly repentant and bitter and remorseful and low-spirited about it when it's too late.

"Ah, well! . . . I generally did feel a bit backward in going in when I came to the door of an office or shop where there was a `Strong Lad', or a `Willing Youth', wanted inside to make himself generally useful.

I was a strong lad and a willing youth enough, in some things, for that matter; but I didn't like to see it written up on a card in a shop window, and I didn't want to make myself generally useful in a close shop in a hot dusty street on mornings when the weather was fine and the great sunny rollers were coming in grand on the Bondi Beach and down at Coogee, and I could swim. . . .

I'd give something to be down along there now."

Mitchell looked away out over the sultry sandy plain that we were to tackle next day, and sighed.

"The first job I got was in a jam factory. They only had `Boy Wanted' on the card in the window, and I thought it would suit me. They set me to work to peel peaches, and, as soon as the foreman's back was turned, I picked out a likely-looking peach and tried it. They soaked those peaches in salt or acid or something -- it was part of the process -- and I had to spit it out. Then I got an orange from a boy who was slicing them, but it was bitter, and I couldn't eat it.

I saw that I'd been had properly. I was in a fix, and had to get out of it the best way I could. I'd left my coat down in the front shop, and the foreman and boss were there, so I had to work in that place for two mortal hours. It was about the longest two hours I'd ever spent in my life. At last the foreman came up, and I told him I wanted to go down to the back for a minute.

I slipped down, watched my chance till the boss' back was turned, got my coat, and cleared.

"The next job I got was in a mat factory; at least, Aunt got that for me.

I didn't want to have anything to do with mats or carpets.

The worst of it was the boss didn't seem to want me to go, and I had a job to get him to sack me, and when he did he saw some of my people and took me back again next week.

He sacked me finally the next Saturday.

"I got the next job myself. I didn't hurry; I took my time and picked out a good one. It was in a lolly factory. I thought it would suit me -- and it did, for a while. They put me on stirring up and mixing stuff in the jujube department; but I got so sick of the smell of it and so full of jujube and other lollies that I soon wanted a change; so I had a row with the chief of the jujube department and the boss gave me the sack.