Margaret

Margaret knew she had a good husband and a good marriage, even if Gordon and she saw some things differently. He was too idealistic. She was sensible and practical -- and a very determined young lady. She knew what she was doing. Her main achievement in life, so far, had been taking Gordon away from her attractive friend, Joyce, and marrying him. Sometimes she wondered how she had had the nerve. Now, her main thoughts were for the welfare of her children. Funny really, she often thought of them as 'her' children rather than 'our' children. Gordon was the provider, a means to an end, she was their mother, the home-maker!

Margaret was more convinced than ever that she had to move away from Edward Street. She needed to escape the dampness of the house, the cramped and unsanitary conditions and her bossy mother-in-law.

Her friend Sheila had told her that she and Jack were going to move soon, to a Corporation house.

"Jack's fed up with teaching at the Grammar School. Place of privilege, he calls it. He's got a new post at Skerton School. We'll be moving during the Christmas holidays."

Margaret assumed that what Gordon had told her about Jack thinking of going off to join the Spanish Republican Army must no longer be true. She kept her thoughts to herself.

"Don't you fancy buying a house of your own?" Margaret asked Sheila, thinking that they ought to be able to afford it. Jack must be earning more than Gordon. If she and Gordon had ambitions to buy a house why didn't the Matthews share those ambitions? Margaret could not understand it. By being thrifty, Gordon and she were well on the way to saving a deposit.

"Oh no," replied Sheila somewhat primly. "Jack says, 'All property is theft.' He says everybody should be provided with a decent Corporation house. All the landlords should be done away with. He won't hear of us owning a property.!"

That didn't make any sense at all to Margaret, but she did not pursue the matter. What they did was their affair. She hoped that Gordon would not be influenced by Jack's thinking. Jack already had too much influence over her husband and he'd only known him five minutes.

Now that Sheila might be on the move, Margaret's dissatisfaction intensified. She was going to feel even more isolated in that district away from all her relatives, apart from one sister in Lodge Street, whom she hardly ever saw.

It was all right for Gordon. He wasn't stuck there in the house all day and every day. He had his work and his friends in his department.

Who did she have? Well, old Aunt Elsie was good company. There was her loyal friend, Joyce, who occasionally came to see her. She was always good for a laugh! There was Sheila Matthews, who brought Rob to play with Michael regularly. Sheila was the only young wife she knew. The only one with young children like hers. The only one with similar day-to-day problems. And now, she was thinking of moving miles away.

"My life's all routine, day in and day out. Nothing interesting ever seems to happen."

She was more and more determined that she was going to make things happen. Aunt Elsie was right: they needed a place of their own.

Her new doctor, the one who had replaced Doctor Ruxton after his arrest and subsequent execution, agreed with her. If delicate Gwyn, was to survive, they would have to live in a better place. The baby had barely survived two winter bouts of congestion of the lungs and Margaret was terrified that she might die.

That new house she longed for was definitely a possibility -- but still many months away. Gordon was quite well-paid and every Friday, he came straight home, no diverting to a pub, unlike some, and handed her his pay-packet. She put it on the mantelpiece behind the clock until after tea. When the children had gone to bed and were asleep, she opened his pay envelope and doled out the money.

Most she kept in her purse for house-keeping and for buying Gordon's Daily Herald. Smaller sums were set aside and placed in tins which she kept in the kitchen cupboard. There was a tin for the rent money and others for fuel, clothes and doctor's bills. There was one for their compulsory holiday week in August, when Gordon was paid no wages.

She hoped that next year they'd be able to go for a week to Barrow because her mum and dad had just moved there. They'd been married seven years and it would be nice to have a holiday away , their first ever, and marvellous to see her folks.

There was yet another tin for Christmas money, for the kids' presents and an expensive chicken.

Her very special tin contained a good sum of money. By careful housekeeping, she was slowly accumulating cash for that new house out in the suburbs. She wanted to be away from the smoke and grime, away from the smell of beer from Mitchell's brewery.

Finally, she handed Gordon his few bob, enough for a three-penny bet on a two-way double, each day at work, where a bookies' runner collected bets from the men. She conceded a sixpence for his Littlewoods football pools. There was also a new extra expense, which she resented, for his union dues. Gordon insisted and she knew she could only go so far in getting her own way. After all, he'd given up all of his smoking and most of his drinking when they decided to save for the new house.

One good thing about his friendship with Jack was that it didn't cost much because the discussion group usually met at the Matthews' house. To Margaret's way of thinking, all they wasted there was time and their breath.

Margaret was a good cook and there was always a dinner, with meat, sustenance for the bread-winner, as soon as Gordon got in from work. On Saturday and Sunday they had a roast. They all shared that. What was left was warmed up for Gordon on Monday. Soup made from the bones did on Tuesday. She bought a nice, lean, lamb chop on Wednesday for Gordon, Michael had what was left on the bone off his father's plate. It was liver on Thursday, a little bit for everybody, and boiled ham, Michael's favourite, on Friday.

The weekend joint went a long way because Burt, on the Lancaster Indoor Market, always selected her a decent piece of beef.

She bought material off the Market and made most of her own and the children's clothes, using the sewing-machine with a foot-pedal that she'd had as a wedding present. Footwear was a problem because growing feet meant constant, new replacements.

Luckily, Gordon had taught himself cobbling skills and he repaired hers and his own boots and shoes. He had a shoe last and sat cross-legged in front of the fire using all the proper tools which he'd acquired before he married. He also cleaned and polished all the footwear.

She wished that they had a more varied social life. The only time they went out as a family was to visit relatives. If the weather was very good, a few of them would make the trip out to the sands at Morecambe or on the rocks near Heysham Head. They took a picnic lunch. Bus fares and a few pence for the occasional ice-cream and jug of tea meant the outings did not cost much.

When Gordon was at home, they made their own entertainment, playing with the children, having a game of cards, writing letters to distant relatives, reading library books and the newspaper. She liked romantic novels and Gordon's favourites were 'Sapper', P.G. Wodehouse and P.C.Wren. Now he was reading H.G.Wells and Bernard Shaw.

Jack had given him a reading list of 'suitable' books which she had to borrow or order from the library. He was forever bringing booklets and pamphlets home from his meetings and absorbing their contents. She couldn't be bothered with any of that stuff and felt shut out.

Now that they had finally won recognition for that union of his, he started spending some evenings reading rule books. He was the Secretary and worked for ages writing the minutes of meetings in a leather-bound volume. His handwriting was an immaculate, beautiful copperplate. How bored she was with him and his political obsessions! It seemed to her that he was becoming far too interested in learning about trades unions and his blooming Labour Party. She hoped that if Jack moved to Ryelands, Gordon would give up his blessed meetings.

An important thing was that she now had the new doctor's complete backing for trying to buy the new place she dreamed of. He agreed the dampness in their dwelling could be a killer! She would make sure that Gordon tried even harder to find the money they needed.

It was beyond her why he was so set against doing well-paid overtime. Gordon said it was because, "A man should have a decent week's wage for a decent week's work. The rest of my time should be my own." "Overtime," he said, "is the working man's enemy and the boss's best friend! The union's fighting for shorter hours.There's more to life than having plenty of money!"

Margaret thought, "That sounds like Jack speaking."

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• In the Vault painting by Tom Dodson. Reproduced with permission courtesy of Studio Arts, Lancaster