Assessment, by Lionel Brearley
An original novel extract set in the twentieth century.
I did the Ackroyds on a Tuesday in March, 1933, between a widow in Bolton Lane with a lodger she had not declared and a family in Canal Street with a sewing machine. In those days that was how I thought of people: by street, and by what they had that they should not have.
The Ackroyds lived in a two-up two-down at the end of Pickering Row, and I could see as soon as Mrs Ackroyd opened the door that she had been expecting me. The front room had been scrubbed. The children were washed and sitting on the settle in a row. Mr Ackroyd stood by the fireplace with his hands behind his back, like a man waiting to be sentenced, which I suppose he was.
My job was simple. Under the new rules a man out of work for more than six months had his household means assessed before he received his transitional payment. Everything counted: savings, the earnings of grown children, any article of furniture beyond what was necessary for a family to live. I had a printed form with columns. I filled them in.
The eldest boy, Harold, was earning eleven shillings a week as a van lad. That went in a column, and came off the father’s money. There was a clock, which was allowed, and a dresser, which was allowed. And there was a piano.
It stood against the back wall under a fringed cloth, an upright walnut thing with brass candle holders, and when I lifted the lid I saw the keys had been dusted that morning.
‘That were her mother’s,’ Mr Ackroyd said. ‘Our Doreen plays it. She plays at chapel.’
The girl on the settle, who could not have been more than thirteen, went very red and looked at her shoes.
I knew what the rules said. A piano was not a necessity. It would have to be sold, and the money declared, before the allowance could be paid in full. I had made the same entry a dozen times that winter and I had not lost a night’s sleep over any of them. But I stood with my hand on the lid and I thought about writing nothing. Who would know? The house was clean. The man was honest. A piano is not money until somebody buys it.
Then I thought about Mr Speight, the district officer, who checked one form in ten, and who had a way of turning up at a house a month after the assessor had gone. I thought about my own two children and the house in Manor Road with the bay window that we had moved into at Christmas.
I wrote: Piano, upright, walnut, good condition. Estimated value four pounds ten.
Mrs Ackroyd watched me write it. She did not cry, or argue, or ask me anything. When I had finished she said, ‘Will you take a cup of tea, Mr Hebden?’ and I said I would not, thank you, I had other calls, and I picked up my hat.
As I went down the step I heard the lid of the piano go up behind me, and then the girl began to play. It was a hymn, slow and careful, and she played it right through without a wrong note. I walked to the end of Pickering Row and I could still hear it. I turned the corner into Mill Street, and I walked faster, and I made sure that I could not hear it any more.
“Mr Hebden is presented as a cruel man who enjoys his power over others.”
To what extent do you agree with this view?
You should write about:
You must refer to the language used in the text to support your answer.