The Consequences of War Page 11

‘Do you know what my mother would have said? Be ready for anything – you never know your luck.’ She picked up her bag and hat.

  Hugh said, ‘If you dare to put on that hat whilst you are still within my sight and range, I shall not be accountable for my actions.’

  ‘Cold shower, Captain – and that’s an order!’

  He raised his whisky-glass to her. ‘Any further orders, Ma’am.’

  ‘Report for the night-watch here at oh-one hundred hours. And this time bring your own bottle.’ At the door, the very lovely young Wren, whose complexion, lips and hair would outdo any Snow-White, pushed her hat over one eye and took up a stance like a tart, before she marched smartly to her office where for the entire period of her duty one might have felt convinced that the butter would not have had a chance of melting in her mouth. But then, the Hon. Angela’s mouth was not her hottest part.

  * * *

  Marie Partridge never received letters which her husband did not know about.

  This one, received this morning, stood behind the Queen Mary clock, as a source of friction. Marie had received from the MCN & ELF(P) an official offer, signed by G. Kennedy (Administrator), of a position as full-time kitchen worker. Ever since she opened it that morning, Charlie had been distant and sullen. That was not a surprise: they had already had one row in which the hot words which had been exchanged had not yet cooled.

  He had said, ‘Who’s going to do the washing and cleaning then if you go traipsing off out every morning?’

  Traipsing had annoyed Marie, so she had snapped back, ‘Perhaps we could each do our own. And I’ll tell you what, you’d have three times as much as me and Bonnie put together.’

  And then it became ridiculous. ‘And I’d have more towels than anybody else too, I suppose,’ he had said.

  ‘Not more, just dirtier, and you’d have to boil them.’

  ‘Perhaps I’ll stop doing the garden then.’

  ‘You’d miss that before I should.’

  At which point he had snatched up his sandwiches and gone off on his bike – presumably to the allotment. Now he was much later back than he usually was on a Saturday evening.

  Marie was determined that she would not let Charlie browbeat her into turning down this job as he had browbeaten her about the Saturday hairdressing job, just to satisfy his stupid pride. Even so, she wished she hadn’t got into that stupid row, especially on a day like today, when everybody was on tenter-hooks waiting to see what would happen. She had spent the day sewing black-out curtains for their house and Charlie’s parents’, and it had come home to her how silly they had been, when tomorrow the country could be at war.

  I won’t do anything to rile him. Charlie can often be jollied into doing something, but he never liked to have the law laid down. He could lay the law down himself, but that was different. Anyway, if Chamberlain declares war tomorrow, then Charlie won’t be able to say anything: women like me will be expected to pull their weight.

  She heard his bike scrape through the back gate, and Bonnie running across her bedroom to call to him from the window. ‘Come up and kiss me goodnight, Daddy.’

  ‘All right, Bon, give us a chance to wash my hands.’

  ‘And read me Worzel Gummidge.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘You promised.’

  When Marie heard him put the bags of vegetables down on the draining-board, she stopped treadling the sewing machine and went out into the kitchen.

  ‘Oh, lovely little beetroots. They look as tender as mushrooms, Charlie.’ Cheerfully. ‘Shall I do a couple for your supper?’

  ‘If you like.’ Politely.

  Neutral tone. Charlie could never be blamed for starting an argument: all you had to do was go along with his ideas and do things his way.

  ‘Beets and a bit of ham and lettuce do you?’

  ‘Oh yeah, that’d be fine – and a tomato.’

  He washed his hands carefully, scrubbing and rinsing off every vestige of soil, and dried them on the roller-towel, whilst Marie put the beets on to cook.

  ‘Won’t be more than half an hour.’

  ‘I’ll go up and read Bonnie her story.’

  As he passed her, she smelt beer on his breath, which meant that he had called into the four-ale bar of the King William where his Dad would always be on a Saturday evening. Of course, Sam would have had to be consulted about the letter.

  As Marie consulted Dolly.

  And hadn’t Dolly said, Just stick to your ground with Charlie?

  ‘Tell him you’re going to do it and don’t budge. Don’t raise your voice or he’ll only accuse you of going for him. Just don’t let him put you down, Marie, and you know that I’ll stick by you. He’s got his union when it comes to demanding his rights; we haven’t got nobody except ourselves, so we have to stick together.’

  Marie let Charlie eat his supper and get his belly nice and full. The silence in the small kitchen was filled with the sound of the wireless. They sat, as they often did on summer evenings, with the back door propped open so that they could look into Charlie’s beautifully-kept garden.

  ‘It looks lovely, Charlie.’

  ‘Needs syringing again: this hot weather and one or two drops of rain at night brings the greenfly on something awful. I’ll have to do half the allotment again tomorrow, and the water-butt is getting low.’

  ‘I’ll do the back-garden if you like.’ Suddenly, she felt sorry for him. Charlie was such a good man really. He was always cheerful. She and Bonnie had never wanted for a single thing. He never looked at another woman, nor ever would – that Marie was sure about. He was scathing about men who wasn’t faithful, and women who went off the rails were worse than scum in his eyes. There wasn’t a person in the whole of Markham who could utter a bad word about her husband. She had never loved anybody but Charlie Partridge.

  If anybody had a good marriage, then they had. It was just that there were times when she was so bored, so fed up to the teeth with looking after everything. Not people, but things. Polishing the same bits of furniture, scrubbing the same lino, dusting the same picture-rail till she could scream or burst into tears at the monotony of it. It wasn’t as if anybody would notice half the time if it wasn’t done.

  ‘All right then, thanks, it will save me.’

  Marie hoped that he realized that she wasn’t capitulating over the job. She was determined now to accept. It was nothing to do with anything Dolly had said, it was that Marie had realized that if she was stopping home putting beeswax on wood as a sop to Charlie’s manly pride, then it was time she stopped doing it.

  ‘Your Dad was right, wasn’t he, Charlie? He always said there wasn’t going to be no “Peace in our Time”.’

  ‘A course he was right. That was a lot of bull. I don’t know what they been mess-assin’ about for. Sooner we’re in, the sooner it will be over.’

  She felt that he was avoiding looking at her. She could read Charlie Partridge like a book. Probably Sam had been putting him up to something.

  ‘Do you think it will all be over by Christmas?’

  ‘Can’t see how it can be.’

  ‘Charlie?’ She put her hand over his. ‘Let me take this job. Please. There’s going to be a war and I want to do my bit like the rest. I won’t let this place go downhill, you know that – I think too much of our home to let it go. But let me have the job, Charlie.’

  She felt his knuckles tighten, but he did not pull away. He continued to look beyond the geraniums, lobelia and Little Dorrit in a hanging-basket by the back door, down the path bordered by roses to the hundred square feet of perfect grass surrounded by flowers and shaded by a pear tree.

  The best garden in Oaklands Road, everybody knew that.

  It wasn’t only that Charlie Partridge had better working hours than most men and had time to garden, but that he loved every crumb of earth and every leaf and petal that grew there. He almost loved every greenfly for having the check to defy him. ‘I’m sorry, you little buggers, but you should have
gone and sucked somebody else’s roses.’

  He moved his hand from beneath hers, then, after a moment’s hesitation whilst he tapped his fingertips on the table, he put his hand over hers and squeezed it.

  ‘I’m sorry, Marie. I really am bloody sorry.’ His voice was husky and she thought that he sounded as though he was close to tears.

  ‘I wouldn’t neglect the home, Charlie.’

  He shook his head. ‘I means sorry about the mess this country got itself in. It’s a lot of our own fault. People should have listened to people like my Dad. I never really listened. You’d think that a chap whose father had his legs and bits blown off would have had such a lesson shoved under his nose that he’d have moved heaven and earth to see it didn’t happen again.’

  ‘Oh Charlie, people like us aren’t to blame for wars. We can’t do anything.’

  ‘We all got a vote.’

  ‘It wasn’t much good giving women the vote if the men wasn’t prepared to give us equality. People need self-respect, and if women have to get permission from their husbands to run their own lives, they won’t ever get it.’ He started to say something, but she did not wait. ‘It’s like Bonnie. She thinks she’s princess of Markham – because we tell her she is. She’s clean and tidy, she gets good food and everybody in the family tells her she’s clever and pretty and asks her what she’s been doing at school and listens to her read. No wonder she thinks she’s the princess.’

  Marie was surprised at herself. She had often thought of herself speaking up like this though usually it was just a daydream after she had been to one of Sam’s Party meetings.

  ‘She’s grown up like that, believing herself. If she was like one of Gladys Dotrice’s little girls, you couldn’t say, “You’re a princess.” They know they aren’t, you know they aren’t. They’re too poor, too used to getting the dirty end of the stick, too often told they aren’t anybody. Women got the vote, but men have gone on telling them that they aren’t fit to have it. Not in so many words, but in things like telling them their place is in the home.’ She paused for a few moments, but Charlie said nothing. ‘Maybe it is, Charlie, maybe it isn’t, but it is for us women to decide. Not men.’

  ‘You’re probably right, Marie. You usually are.’ What else could he say when he was trying to find a way to tell her that, without consulting her, he had that day signed up in the RAF?

  ‘Anyway, this time tomorrow, we shall probably be at war.’ He nodded towards their view of the garden, at its best with the sun’s rays catching it obliquely, gilding white flowers, subduing the reds. ‘Take a good look at it, Marie, it won’t be there much longer. It’ll have to all go down to vegetables. The lawn will have to go.’

  ‘No, Charlie, not your lawn.’

  * * *

  Sam Partridge came home from the King William much earlier than usual that evening. Dolly was sitting in the yard crocheting a pale pink bolero for Bonnie, to go with her new school dress, when she heard the controlled tread of his slow artificial feet. Inexplicably, on Saturdays, he came and went via the front door. Without needing to see, she now followed his familiar pattern of movements as he hung his coat on a hanger and hooked it behind the living-room door, took a glass from the sideboard, rummaged in the kitchen drawer for the opener, hissed open her bottle of Guinness and added a dash of Sandeman’s port.

  He came into the yard and handed her her Saturday night Guinness.

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Good health.’

  On winter evenings, she would say cheers, and he would reply Good Health as they settled beside the range which would have its top open to reveal the red glow of a good fire. This evening he sat on the stump of what had once been a great plum tree when the Estate had been an orchard.

  Dolly waited. He trailed resentment, a prickly humour that might have been brought on by anything: from somebody at the King William playing a dubious hand at cards, to ancient injustice towards his class.

  Sometimes, his mood could be lightened by inconsequential gossip.

  ‘Who was round at the William?’

  ‘Only the usual. Charlie dropped in for ten minutes, says he’s going to start making an air-raid shelter in the morning – in the cellar.’

  ‘I wondered if he might.’

  ‘He says his lawn will have to go down to vegetables.’

  ‘That’s criminal.’

  ‘There’ll be worse crimes than that before this lot’s over.’

  ‘That don’t mean people like our Charlie should give up a thing like that lawn of his. There won’t be nowhere for Bonnie to play.’

  Sam poured himself a glass of the draught he had brought home from the King William, held it up to the light, then drank, savouring the pale brew.

  Dolly said, ‘Harry says he’s going to make one for us.’

  ‘One what?’

  ‘Air-raid shelter.’

  ‘Oh, is he! He never said anything to me.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he thought there was anything to say. I dare say he thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘I’m surprised he thinks he’ll have the time. Where’s he gone this evening?’

  Dolly guessed the reason for his mood. Either somebody at the pub, whistling down the wind of their own problems, had made a blue joke that had hit home at Sam’s impotence, or he had seen Harry with his new girlfriend.

  Dolly thought, Anybody’d think it was my fault Harry got all his ’coutrements, and Sam haven’t.

  ‘I don’t know, I think he’s gone dancing in Southampton.’

  ‘Is that right he’s getting about with that new blonde bit of goods come to work at the Post Office? I don’t need to ask – she’s just the type. My God, the way she gets herself up – that much make-up plastered on her face, you could stick her to a wall. But there, Harry wasn’t never very fussy, any bit of skirt that isn’t nailed down and he’s there lifting it. Only thing surprises me about him, is that he haven’t got some girl up the stick.’

  ‘You don’t have to be coarse at home, Sam. He’s your son. Don’t you want him to build a shelter?’

  ‘It don’t matter much what I wants – if Harry says he’s going to do it, and you agree with Harry, then we shall get a shelter.’

  ‘Why are you always down on Harry, Sam?’

  ‘Down on him? A course I’m not down on him. You say some blimmin stupid things sometimes, Dolly.’

  ‘Well, don’t be always criticizing him. He’s done well for himself. What other lad off this estate got a scholarship and then a job in the Council offices – what more do you want?’

  ‘I don’t want anything more.’

  ‘You do. He’s always tried to please you. He’s been trying all his life to get you to say, well, that’s really good, Harry, I’m proud of you; and all you ever been able to say is that you know he’s capable of being top.’

  ‘That’s a compliment, it’s saying I think there isn’t nobody better than him – if you had sense enough to see it. He’s got so much in him, he could do anything he set his mind to.’

  ‘Then why don’t you tell him that sometimes. He might not need to prove hisself in other ways.’

  ‘Harry knows what I think about him, you don’t have to slobber over your kids to let them know things like that.’

  ‘Nobody’s asking you to slobber.’

  Self-satisfaction at not having the last word, and having given vent to his irritable mood, the spark of animosity that had flared up between them went out, and they returned to their normal state of rubbing along together.

  ‘I’ll talk to him in the morning about where to start digging. Two bloody legs and one bloody ball, Dolly – half a man, just when you could have done with a man and a half.’

  ‘You haven’t heard me complain, have you?’

  * * *

  Harry Partridge, having walked the new girl from the Post Office to the end of her lane where there were no streetlights, kissed her goodnight, long and open-mouthed, and remained holding her close. Having
already investigated on the dance floor the fastening of her sleeveless top, he deftly slid his hand inside the opening.

  ‘Mmm, your skin’s like satin,’ he said.

  ‘I enjoyed the dance, Harry, I’d heard you were a good dancer.’

  ‘I heard about you, too,’ he said with a playful suggestiveness in his tone, and a friendliness in his casually moving hand.

  His voice had a husky, silken quality, with little trace left of his working-class background. His looks matched his voice. He dressed well and was very good-looking, with fair hair, full, warm mouth and wholesome teeth. But it was not merely his voice and appearance that made him so attractive to women: he had, as had Freddy Hardy, a quality that was indefinable, charm plus sex appeal.

  ‘Oh yes?’ she said archly. ‘And what’s that you heard?’

  ‘That you’re a good sport.’

  They were the young people of the Twenties generation. Nurtured on plenty of Hollywood, they learned to light cigarettes two at a time, drive with one arm round a woman, play hard-to-get whilst panting, and to flirt using double entendre. ‘Is that so?’ she said. ‘Well, if it was a game of tennis you wanted, you should have brought your sports gear.’ Her voice, too, had forsaken its roots, as had her accent its class, and her hair its dowdy colour. Like Harry Partridge, she was making herself.

  He took off his jacket. ‘We don’t need anything special to have a bit of a scratch single game.’ He kissed her again, this time slickly achieving the lowering of her shoulder straps.

  ‘You’re a fast worker, aren’t you, Harry?’

  ‘Sorry. I’m not usually like this. It’s just that I’ve never been out with a girl like you. You’re a damned lot of fun, you know.’

  ‘You are a liar, Harry,’ she said genially. ‘You’ve been out with every girl in Markham, But I liked going out with you.’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying. It’s as though I’ve been searching. There isn’t one to touch you. I’ve wanted to ask you ever since you first came to Markham.’ He covered her mouth with his own, and so stopped any riposte that might hit a true note.