Chapter 14
Alf spent the morning waiting for a summons. It would come. Nothing was more certain. He would lose his position as chief cleaning constable. And why not? Doctor Roberts had tried to warn him. ‘Strange and haughty,’ he’d said, followed by, ‘you’d do well to keep an eye on him.’ Had he done so? No, he’d been too busy wallowing in self-pity. Now look! They’d almost had a riot in steerage.
Alf moaned, sprinkling the bed boards with chloride of lime and passed the hawse bucket back to Harvey Rolf. If only he hadn’t argued with Bridie, or let his nagging sense of failure distract him. If only he’d looked up from his busyness, now and then, he might have noticed trouble brewing.
Good man! Indispensable! The words mocked him now. Then again, hadn’t it always been the case, at the ma
