Now August was well under way. The slow, comfortable pace of Markham appeared unaltered.
On Thursdays, carts rumbled through the narrow streets to the cattle-market. Horse-dung fell in the roads, and was quickly harvested in buckets by small boys who sold it for money to spend at the Picture House.
Dealers and farmers in breeches and gaiters crowded into town. In the stockyards they strutted carrying whippy sticks which appeared out of control, striking the backs of any and every animal. Having agreed a satisfactory deal, the weather-beaten men spat-and-slapped hands and went into pubs with all-day licences to tank up on enough pints to last them the week.
Downland-fattened sheep trotted and leaped into town, muddling their way from their peaceful fields to the riotous market pens, sometimes panicking wildly into front-gardens and up alleyways. Cattle moaned and pigs shrieked as soon as they sensed the slaughter-house behind the butcher’s shop.
Market Day in Markham, with the exception of the use of some mechanized transport, had stayed unchanged, over centuries.
But the self-satisfaction was beginning to crumble. In some back-gardens, little arches of corrugated iron which denoted an underground air-raid shelter appeared amongst the flowers. There were many fewer young men about. Although the school holidays had not ended, there was activity in classrooms. Piles of cardboard boxes containing gas-masks were being sorted. Buildings and rooms which had long been unused became offices from where ration-books, tokens, shrouds, coffins, vitamins and official information would be stored or issued.
As they had done twenty-five years ago, the people of Markham too scented the slaughter-house. National Socialism in Germany, which had at one time appeared no more threatening to civilization than the Scout Movement or British Communism, had grown terrifying and powerful. People like Sam and Vern Greenaway and Mrs Farr, who had yellow-jacketed Gollanczes in the living-room, and who had once been called Old Jonahs and prophets of doom for suggesting that Hitler meant trouble in Europe, were now asked when they thought the balloon would go up.
Not that Mrs Farr was asked often – for she was a separate, almost solitary woman. But rumour had it that she knew people who were now High-Ups. And she did know. Not only from men in the know who were old boys grown fat on her school spotted dicks but from letters direct from Germany where she had friends who were in danger.
On the last Thursday in August, Mrs Farr, having left her long, narrow house which faced the Abbey Walk, walked the hundred yards to what would be her new domain.
For some reason, which she suspected had to do with Mrs Hardy, the work had gone on apace. Those suspicions were only half correct: the other half was that Mrs Farr, in living so close to the Mission Hall, was better – or worse, depending – than a combined full-time Clerk of the Works, Foreman and designer.
When she arrived, Mrs Partridge was already at work scrubbing down behind the workmen.
‘That shouldn’t be your job, Mrs Partridge.’
Dolly Partridge did not stop creating spirals from the froth of soda and yellow-soap on the linoed floor as she smiled up at her new boss. ‘Ah well, it wanted doing. Those chaps have got no idea, no idea at all. Wouldn’t you think they’d done the distempering before the lino was laid?’
‘If I had not been away yesterday, they would have. At least we shall know that this is perfectly hygienic when you have been at it.’
‘You don’t have to call me Mrs Partridge.’
‘Thank you – it’s Dorothy isn’t it?’
‘Everybody calls me Dolly – but I really hate Dolly.’
‘Dorothy then? Mine’s Ursula.’
‘Yes, it’d be nice to be called by my proper name. Not much point having one, else… I dare say I won’t call you by yours, it don’t do.’
Dolly thought how blinking good it was going out to work, having somebody who appreciated that there was an art to scrubbing a floor. All the years that Dolly had spent on her knees at home, she had never once felt like humming, let alone singing in little snatches as she now did.
Mrs Farr and Dolly were, at the moment, the only two kitchen workers who were actually entered in Georgia’s wages book.
‘I had a letter from the Ministry this morning, Dorothy, which said in effect that we have got to have this place in working order by the end of the month. It’s where they will bring evacuees to be fed.’
‘Poor little souls. Can you imagine how they will feel, being carted off from their mothers and dumped down in a strange place?’
‘Well, yes I can. The ruling-classes do it all the time. I have seen a great deal of it… too much, in fact. Even so, it has given me a good insight into how to make the best of it. Children like familiar food… children who are brought up by nannies go on liking nursery puddings and suet duffs.’ She smiled.
Dolly said, ‘There is something comforting about a spotted dick with a bit of custard.’
‘I am sure that if you could see the menus at some Gentlemen’s Clubs in London, you would find that the most popular puddings are exactly the same as in public schools. So what you and I shall do, Dorothy, is to make sure the children from the East End of London who like shop-fried fish and chips will not have to stand having nourishing country broth thrust upon them. Time enough when they’ve learned to breathe the air.’
Dolly nodded. ‘That suits me, Mrs Farr. If there’s one thing I know, it’s how to make a good fritter and a good pancake.’
‘Splendid. And very nourishing too.’
Mrs Farr might be a single lady with no children of her own, but she understood about people. In all her years, Dolly had never suspected that work could be anything but a necessity. She was beginning to think differently, which was why she sang as she scrubbed.
Mrs Farr, as she inspected the altered appearance of the premises, thought it was a damned shame that it had taken a war to bring a retired building and a retired woman back into life and use again.
‘Young man, if you leave that protrusion of cement, it will collect dirt.’
The man touched his cap to the Old Battleaxe and got on with removing it, knowing that she would be back and he would have to do it in the end.
Mrs Farr wondered where the young man would be by Christmas.