Ginger
One of the Trafalgar Square regulars: three days down from York, in charge of the tea, and the one who keeps proposing that everybody stamp their feet in time to a song. Like Deafie, he carries the name of a man in Orwell's 1931 diary.
To get warm, and to get everybody else moving so that he can. Almost every idea he has that night -- the tea, the singing, the stamping in time, the pile on the bench -- is one of them.
The book
At a glance
- One of the group on Trafalgar Square through the night chapter
- York, three days earlier, on foot and sleeping out
- Chapter 3
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeGinger is one of the dozen people spending a freezing October night on the benches of Trafalgar Square in the third chapter of the book, which George Orwell sets out as a play. He is three days down from York, having tramped and slept rough half the way, and he has arrived with a boy the others call the Kike, who is younger and colder and has nothing on under his trousers.
His function in the group is the tea, and he takes it seriously. He is the one who says it is time for a drum of tea while there is still a coffee shop open, who goes for the water, who asks who has any sugar, who knocks a hole in the tin of condensed milk, and who calls the group to order when it is ready. He is also the one watching for the constable, and the one who decides when it is safe to lie down again.
He is not otherwise generous. He owns an overcoat, and the Kike wants to borrow it, and the answer is no because the boy is lousy. That refusal sits alongside the other things he does that night without any comment from the narration.
How the book draws them
- The teaHe runs it. "Come on, less 'ave a drum of tea while we got the chance." He fetches the water, sends the youngest to cadge the hot water, blows into the punctured milk tin to get the sticky grey stream out of the other hole, and announces the result: "What-o, ladies and gents! Tea is served. Cups forward, please!"
- The overcoatHe has one, and the boy who came south with him is freezing without one. "Take your 'ands off that bleeding overcoat, Kikie. You don't get no clo'es of mine while you got the chats on you."
- The singingTwo songs, all night, in fragments -- "There they go, in their joy" and "But I'm dancing with tears in my eyes". Charlie, who is the loudest man there, tells him he cannot sing any better than a tomcat with the guts-ache.
- Against the coldHe marks time on the spot and beats his arms against his sides, with the catchphrase "'Taters in the bleeding mould!", and keeps urging everyone to stamp their feet on the ground in time to a song, because it is the only thing to do.
- WashingHe has not washed for three days, and says so while asking Snouter how long it has been since he washed his face. His plan is the fountains tomorrow, if he can beg some soap.
- What he lives onHe and the boy stole four safety-razor blades from Woolworth's that afternoon. His proposal for the morning is Covent Garden, early enough to beg a few pears.
- Where he has sleptIn a graveyard one night with the Kike, waking up to find he was lying on a gravestone. In the churches that open for the winter, he says, they let you sleep on the stone floor with three newspaper posters instead of blankets, and you might as well be in the Square.
- The last of what he hasHe runs with Charlie for the surplus newspaper posters at three in the morning, and it is his tin of condensed milk that is torn open at quarter past four and eaten with everybody's fingers. By five he is offering to go halves with anyone on a doughnut.