AFTERNOON TEA
By MARK BEN NEY
Y half-past three the old men began to arrive. They came singly, huddled against the thin persistent Sabbath rain, poor, patient old men who carried all their possessions in their pockets and slept in their clothes. Deliberate as insects they shuffled over the running pave- ments, past the sleek cars at the kerb, past the dowdy tulips of Mile End Waste, to their bright beneficent goal. Their broken boots squelched as they went, but they made no other sound. By four o'clock there were three hundred of them gathered in the covered passageway of the Mission Hall. They herded together in a queue five-deep, stamping the cold from their feet, swearing placidly about the weather, wiping the rain from their faces with filthy rags. The warm diseased smell of them pervaded the passage and seeped through the closed doors of the hall. Spasms of coughing shook them as they waited.
In far-away Belgravia silver teapots were being lifted, Peking tea was being poured into fragile cups, Strasbourg goose-liver sandwiches and petits-fours were being circu- lated. These old men knew and cared nothing for that. They, too, were to have afternoon tea. At five and twenty past four the hall-doors were opened by a girl in a purple jumper, revealing bags of food stacked high on a table behind her, and baskets heaped with large china mugs. Along the queue hats and caps were removed, revealing pink scalps with fringes of white hair. "One at a time, please! " the girl shouted, and retired to the food-table. The old men shuffled forward eagerly, and each one as he passed the door was handed a mug and a paper bag containing two slices of bread and butter, and a hunk of fruit-cake.
At the back of the hall was a gas-fire. The first-comers clustered round this, and held their bread against the fire-bars to toast it. Others took their place in one of the four long rows of wooden benches ; and seated, turned to invite acquaintances to sit beside them. Within five minutes the hall was full. Sodden as their overcoats were—those who had overcoats—they did not remove them ; but a few in the middle of the rows, screened by the close-packed backs, bent and took off their boots. The stale evil-smelling steam rising from the crowd was mitigated by the wholesome pungency of burnt bread. Three hundred paper bags rustled, like woods in autumn. Many, too hungry to wait for the hot tea yet to be served, produced pocket-knives and began to cut their food into small cubes, and eat it ; a dainty refinement, this cutting up of the bread, where knees were tables and paper bags the only napkins. Soon the tea came. It was served from cans with long spouts like watering-cans, and assistants moved slowly down the benches, filling the mugs held out to them. As each man received his share he gulped it down quickly, so that when the assistant passed his way again he could ask for more. The paper bags rustled busily.
Little but crumbs and dregs remained when the secretary, a frank-faced hearty-voiced man, climbed on to the dais and called for grace. He recited the words first, bawling them cheerfully, and then, scrambling to their feet, the old men fitted a ragged tune to them: "Be present at our table, Lord, Be here and c_erywhere ador'd. . . ."
Later they smoked. Few had whole cigarettes or fresh tobacco. They broke up the cigarette-ends they had gleaned that day from the wet pavements, and stuffed them into pipes or rolled them in treasured fragments of rice-paper. Not more than a dozen matches were struck throughout the hall—lights were mostly obtained from the gas-fire or by holding cigarettes tip to tip. Now the faces were all relaxed, were gentle and happy. With childish glee the paper bags were blown up and popped. Men stood up and shouted pleasantries to friends at the other side of the hall. A few drew their clothes closely about them and dozed. The girl with the purple jumper appeared again, with a basket to collect the empty mugs. A dozen men crowded round her, competing to relieve her of the work.
At half-past five a stout, prosperous-looking gentleman took a seat at the table on the dias. The Secretary held up his hand for silence.
"I was up in the City the other day," the stout gentle- man began, in the easy, expansive fashion of the practised field-preacher, "and a chap said to me . . . " Anecdotes succeeded, illustrating a simple faith. Stories about godless bosses who came to perdition followed stories about " saved " derelicts who became rich and respectable. " If God can do that for him, He can do it for you!" The stout gentleman was an artist. He could chortle at his own jokes and then, in the very middle of a laugh, become low-voiced and intense, vibrant with passionate pleas. "You've got to be born again," he warned the old men, "You've got to be born again!" Quietly, the old men began to slip out of the hall, one at a time, tip-toeing so as not to drown that singing flow of words. They would have liked, perhaps, to pay for their tea with their faith, but they had none to offer. They were unpractised in barter. So they filed steadily out of the door, and pulled their collars up round their ears and shuffled off in the rain to follow the paths of a little-known world where there are no markets, no profits and losses, but where a few important things can be had for nothing.
When the preacher ended there were only half a dozen old men still seated in the benches. The girl in the purple jumper brought round a book of green forms, blank pledges of abstinence. The men signed them a little shamefacedly. They had all signed on the previous Sunday and would sign again the next.
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