Everything in Its Place

Rudd said nothing for a moment. The stove ticked. Somewhere beyond the thin wall a man was singing a hymn, badly, under his breath.

“Chapel,” he said at last. “They’d lose a week’s wages before they’d break the Sabbath. Thrift, hard work, keep your head down and your boots clean. They think it’s theirs.” He turned the tin mug in his hands. “It’s Crane’s. It was always Crane’s. They’ve just never noticed whose idea it was.”

He pushed a school exercise book across the table, its cover stained with tea rings. The strike committee’s minutes: a vote of sixty-one to four, a rule against any violence, and a line, underlined twice, asking that nobody go near the works after dark. “I wrote that rule myself,” he said. “Does that sound like a man planning to push someone off a stair?”

“Consent,” said Jonah, softly. “Gramsci. They agree to it.”

Rudd looked at him as if a stray cat had begun to recite the Manifesto. Then he laughed, one short bark. “Aye, lad. That’s the nearest thing to a diagnosis I’ve had all week.”

“And the committee?” you asked. “Does it ever ask whether the pay cut falls equally?”

Rudd looked at the stove, and did not answer. It was an answer.