Page 233 - down-and-out-in-paris-and-london

an old soldier’s ear.
By seven we had wolfed our bread and tea and were in
our cells. We slept one in a cell, and there were bedsteads
and straw palliasses, so that one ought to have had a good
night’s sleep. But no spike is perfect, and the peculiar short-
coming at Lower Binfield was the cold. The hot pipes were
not working, and the two blankets we had been given were
thin cotton things and almost useless. It was only autumn,
but the cold was bitter. One spent the long twelve-hour
night in turning from side to side, falling asleep for a few
minutes and waking up shivering. We could not smoke, for
our tobacco, which we had managed to smuggle in, was in
our clothes and we should not get these back till the morn-
ing. All down the passage one could hear groaning noises,
and sometimes a shouted oath. No one, I imagine, got more
than an hour or two of sleep.
In the morning, after breakfast and the doctor’s inspec-
tion, the Tramp Major herded us all into the dining-room
and locked the door upon us. It was a limewashed, stone-
floored room, unutterably dreary, with its furniture of
deal boards and benches, and its prison smell. The barred
windows were too high to look out of, and there were no
ornaments save a clock and a copy of the workhouse rules.
Packed elbow to elbow on the benches, we were bored al-
ready, though it was barely eight in the morning. There
was nothing to do, nothing to talk about, not even room
to move. The sole consolation was that one could smoke,
for smoking was connived at so long as one was not caught
in the act. Scotty, a little hairy tramp with a bastard accent

Down and Out in Paris and London