No more frying pans, kettles and lines for Lijah Corey. While others wake and make their breakfasts in their bijoux kitchens, worn out torn up Lie, in jeans and jumper, cap and apron left far behind, walks home from the Welfare Hall to rest his troubles, but first a detour, by the old Ship Inn, to handle his cares, over a pint of ale, doing his best to forget the lives he can't change and the people who won't. Here Dahlia Jenkins
DAHLIA JENKINS : quietly curses early drinkers.
But still serves
LIJAH COREY : A pint of Princes' IPA and pork scratchings.
And she sighs
DAHLIA JENKINS : There are no good men.
While Lijah Corey drinks
LIJAH COREY : to forget the helpless turned away with empty bellies and empty hands because the Welfare can't balance the books with kindness or love.
But Dahlia sees only
DAHLIA JENKINS : a drinker wanting beer before nine a.m. not breakfast or coffee or tea and biscuits or one of those pastries fresh from the bakery in Church Street.
Abraham sits beside Lijah
OLD ABRAHAM : still thinking over his dreams of clean white snow.
He avoids judgement by ordering
OLD ABRAHAM : sausages with two eggs, enough bacon to sink a ship, some pale toast with butter.
And Dahlia smiles just for him
DAHLIA JENKINS : a good old gentleman who wouldn't drink.
So Abraham and Lijah Corey, both desperate to avoid company, silent, patient, and delicate, sit side by side at the old and worn wooden bar bundled up in overcoats and gloves while Dahlia Jenkins potters.
DAHLIA JENKINS : D'you see that picture there of the steamer Wayward Soul? That was the first to dock here.
She laughs at old memories.
DAHLIA JENKINS : Was the ship Grancha came on.
OLD ABRAHAM : It was the ship my family came in.
DAHLIA JENKINS : What was it like then? Were you there, my love, when the ship sailed in under the great smoke stack's plume of white and the wheels turning and the captain calling out, "We have come home!" they say, happy and hopeful, and the city all fine and welcoming.
LIJAH COREY : Was he there?
OLD ABRAHAM : I wa'n't born when the Wayward Soul landed with, "Does anyone want a job?" Oh, I wish they an't.
LIJAH COREY : You and others.
DAHLIA JENKINS : No need to be rude to an old man, he's a gentleman.
LIJAH COREY : I only mean there's no work now.
OLD ABRAHAM : And only factory or dirty jobs then.
DAHLIA JENKINS : Dirty?
LIJAH COREY : Coal fired!
OLD ABRAHAM : And isn't coal dirty?
DAHLIA JENKINS : Now don't start that nonsense and tell me the soot don't bring us all luck and a good living here.
LIJAH COREY : And those that queue at the Welfare, too?
DAHLIA JENKINS : Them that queue for handouts are just too lazy to work or too proud to take themselves to the Workhouse where they belong.
LIJAH COREY : Belong?
OLD ABRAHAM : I miss clean white snow and clean white linens hung out in the backyard to dry.