The last couple of weeks of the school holidays in 1939 were as hot as anyone remembered. The children, who had lived in their bathers for a month or more, looked brown and wiry; endemic runny-noses had cleared up and their hair looked clean and sun-streaked.
Marie Partridge stood at her back gate and waved as one of the big girls took Bonnie off for the day. It was only half past nine, but Marie could see that the coloured washing was already dry. It was tempting to take it in and fold it down and get ahead of yourself, especially as she would probably feel guilty about Charlie getting back and finding it still hanging there. But greater temptation was to be going out on a Tuesday morning. Dragging herself away from the routine of the Tuesday coloureds, she dashed indoors where the kettle was already boiling for her stand-up wash-down in the bath.
In twenty minutes Marie was putting on her lipstick. She hesitated as to whether or not she should put a touch of Bourgeois behind her ears, but decided that perhaps it wasn’t quite the thing if you were going to be involved in anything to do with food.
Before she left, she made a quick inspection of the house to see if there was anything out of place – she didn’t want to provide Charlie with one single bit of extra ammunition. The plaster SS Queen Mary on the mantelshelf chinged the quarter hour: it was kept ten minutes fast, so she had loads of time. Time to get in the coloureds.
Once they were neatly folded and damped down ready for ironing, Marie felt lighthearted. She went out the back way and slipped the key under the lavatory mat. Her high heels clicked as she made her way from her house in Nightingale Road, along Gladstone Road towards Jubilee Lane.
Sam was in the garden picking runner beans. ‘Marie! What you doing out on a Tuesday morning?’
Marie, taken aback at seeing him, feeling a guilty blush trying to rise, said very brightly, ‘And what are you doing not at work? Those beans are looking good. Has Charlie seen them? He thinks nobody can grow runners like he can.’
Before he could answer, her mother-in-law came from the house. ‘Come on then, Marie.’ Marie hastened away.
Sam was halted in his tracks at seeing the two women wearing their afternoon shopping clothes in the middle of the morning, and with their faces made up and wearing ear-rings. ‘Where you off to? You know it’s my leg morning.’
‘Well, there isn’t nothing I can do about that, is there?’ Then, low to Marie, ‘Hurry up before he gets hisself worked up.’
Marie disappeared along the side of the house.
Dolly raised her voice. ‘If we’re not back by dinner time, I’ve left you some sandwiches in the larder.’
Close-shouldered, the two women hastened through the side-gate and away, leaving Sam with a feeling of mild outrage and a sense of being conspired against. There came one of the explosions of pain in his half-leg where the muscle had been blown away and left only bone. He thwacked the wooden replacement with his sturdy walking stick. ‘I know you’re not there, y’ bugger.’ The pain subsided like a beaten cur and lay quietly growling, waiting for the next time when it could pounce.
That he was the recognized head of the Partridge family was important to Sam. He might not have much left below the groin, but he was still head of his family. The family needed him. As he had said to his beer-mug cronies in the King William, ‘It’s all right for women these days getting uppity and laying down the law about married women getting jobs, but when it comes to it, it’s always a man who has to carry the can.’
This was the kind of unspecific statement with which the beer-mugs could readily agree. They nodded, ‘A woman’s place is in the home, Sam.’
‘Right. Five halves of Boilermaker, Joe.’
‘It’s her natural place, Sam,’ said Joe, drawing the beer.
‘And one for yourself, Joe.’
The beer-mugs nodded as the Boilermakers flowed. ‘And man is the bread-winner.’
‘Men must work, and women… cheers.’
‘Like in nature, Sam… the hen on the nest and the ewe with her lambs.’
The beer-mugs had pondered that one without perceiving that cocks and rams aren’t much of providers. But still, it was the general feeling that counted.
‘And no woman ever got her legs blown off like Sam there.’
Whenever Sam suspected that there was something going on in the family that he was not aware of, anxiety made knots in his stomach and gave him trouble with the bit of leg that had decomposed in France. He would admit it to no one, but he had felt bad ever since Dolly had gone behind his back and got her name down for this job at the kitchens at the Old Mission Hall.
And now where are they off to? Charlie didn’t know about it, or he’d have said. On a Tuesday! There was too many things going on these days. Nobody tells me, oh no. No legs, so no brains. And then there was Vern Greenaway going about telling people that the Labour Party would have to stop functioning if there was a war.
Although he had denied saying anything specific, only that there probably wouldn’t be enough members, Vern had looked pretty sheepish when Sam had tackled him about it. It all went towards giving Sam indigestion and shooting fires in his leg.
What was going on this morning? Another meeting? Dolly seemed to be here and there and everywhere since she had got herself this job. It wasn’t even proper cooking, it was seeing if turnips would do instead of apples to make jam.
‘Damn it, Dolly, the war won’t stop us growing apples.’
‘It’s a question of shortages through distribution, Sam. So don’t argue about something you know nothing about.’
Who’d ever think that somebody like Dolly would let a bit of authority go to her head.
If you didn’t laugh you’d cry.
And now Marie was gadding off on a Tuesday morning.
Sam knew that if he lost his place, lost control of the family, it would go to pieces.
He took the beans into the house, and knotted his tie prior to going for his regular stump examination. There was always something when you were responsible for a family.
Harry, for a start, always wanting to be off somewhere, dancing, dancing, dancing. Never the same girl twice. All sorts of bits of things. There was lads like him that Sam had known when he was in the army: they’d pick up anything wearing skirts in the hope that they wasn’t wearing drawers. Even Dolly couldn’t make excuses for some of them he went out with, and now he was talking about selling his motor bike and going in for a car. A car!
‘Can’t you just see it – a council house with a car parked in front.’
The trouble with Harry was, he had come along five years after Charlie – not that that was Harry’s fault – and seven after Paula, and they had treated him like a puppy; and I was out there having me legs blown off, not here to see what was going on. And he’d gone on being a blooming puppy.
‘What you going to be like when you’re forty, Harry?’
‘Blue-eyed and fancy-free,’ Harry said, not taking it a bit serious. Harry never seemed to take anything serious. A wonder he’d got his certificates. But he had. One thing you could say about the lad, he was blooming clever. Who else on the whole council estate has got a son working in the Town Hall?
Only you, Samuel Partridge, MM.
Charlie wasn’t so bad, not bad at all really. Got a nice place, as nice furniture as you’d find if you like all that modern gloss and figured wood. The trouble with Charlie, you always had that worry at the back of your mind that he was going to do something. He never had yet, but there was always that feeling. Like Charlie betting on horses.
I know you do it, Charlie, because whenever there’s a big race on you always got the racing paper in the front pocket of your bag.
And he’s always late with his Diddle’m money.
You don’t say nothing to him, Sam Partridge – Dolly always defended them – it’s none of your business if he has a flutter or not. Our Charlie’s master in his own house now. You’d have something to complain about if he went off boozing like some.
But there was always the worry that one day he might get a decent win and would start betting big money. Sam had seen it happen.
He took out his Rizlas and Black Beauty, rolling meanly as he’d learned in the trenches and set off to walk to the surgery.
Paula’s all right, thank goodness for that. She’s always been less worry than the boys… except that she was married to a docker, and dockers never knew where the next day’s work would come from. What a system! Treating men like animals in a pound… ‘You and you and you. No more! The rest of you can blow.’
What a way to run a country! It would have been better if Paula had married a local chap. A daughter ought to stop in her own town. Pity they hadn’t got no kids. Paula never said about it, but you could tell how she felt about kids. She’d have made a blooming good teacher if she’d a been born the right side of the tracks.
There’s still plenty of time, she’s only thirty still. Thirty isn’t old. It an’t young. Still – she’s healthy and plump as a corn-fed chicken.