Company Policy

I saw her by the showroom window
Standing alone on a market quay
As I passed her by I heard her sigh
As the military parade came on TV

There were twenty screens in the showroom window
Victors marching large and small
As they wheeled on by I heard her sigh
Oh, and oh for my darling boy

They called him Jack, they called him John
He was there sat tight offshore
They caught him cold in the heat of a battle
For a South Atlantic company store

Mama told me, don't you wed a soldier
Don't ever marry your heart's delight
He will be gone when the fighting's done
And you will be left for to mourn in the light

Every night I dreamed that I saw him
Dreamed I never would see him more
In my dream his body come floating
Away where the ocean rise and fall

But it was not death that bawled in the alley
Came skittering up to my love's door
It was not death that cried and howled
In the teeth of a South Atlantic roar

But the bomb bounding down on the alley
The bomb wrapped in a silver shell
The bomb that plucked the face from my love
Spread it wide on the face of the swell

Oh, sweet and soothing showers
Breathe upon his burning head
Ease among his waking dreams
Whose tears nightly drench my bed

For it was all a case of saving face
When they sent my love to the war
For eighteen hundred landless tenants
Of a South Atlantic company store

Eighteen hundred landless tenants
Eighteen hundred landless poor
Eighteen hundred waking dreams
Of Empire long gone before

In my dream I stand at Bluff
I've an empty shell up to my ear
The only sound the sound of cash
Being wrung from the snows of Antarctica

Ring-a-ring-a city roses
Victors march, and markets bloom
The flame that melted my love's cheek
Come a-dancing the Iron Lady too