‘It’s a girl, Sam,’ she said quietly.
‘Ah, never mind,’ said Sam, fag still in hand, exhaling an irritable plume of smoke all over the new baby as he peered in for a look. ‘Ugly little runt, ain’t she?’ he joked with a grin. Then he looked at Edie and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. ‘A boy next time, eh?’
Edie did have a boy next time – two years after Dolly arrived – and Sam got royally pissed down the Dog and Duck celebrating with his mates and then reeled home and clouted Edie when she commented on the state of him.
It was a lesson learned – after that, Edie didn’t say a word when he got drunk, which he often did after a hard day on the railways. He’d started in the signal box after the war, but it was all hours and he didn’t like being cooped up in there, pulling levers and listening for the many different-sounding bells. It was all too complicated. So he applied for another job and went out on to the tracks as a wheeltapper. He liked that, all his mates were around him and they toasted him, slapped him on the back, said what a great feller he was.
Sam thought he was a very great feller indeed. After the boy was born – Nigel, they named him – Sam lost no time in climbing on board Edie and impregnating her a third time. A girl this time, Sarah, and then he got to work on Edie again and – at last! – another boy to be proud of, little Dick. After that, Sam put his own little dick to good use, and then along came Sandy, who was a boy but a bit sickly, prone to the sniffles.
‘She shouldn’t have many more,’ said the midwife, who’d attended all five of Edie’s births and could see that it was dragging the poor cow down. Not only having the kids, but on a railwayman’s wage it was a fight to keep them all clothed and fed. Edie was struggling, anyone could see that. If they wanted to. Which Sam didn’t.
Sam wanted a big Catholic family, seven minimum.
‘Mind your own fucking business,’ he told the midwife.
Who’d asked for her opinion anyway? He was keeping the kids fed, just about, although of course he had to have his fags and beer first. After all, he was the breadwinner, wasn’t he? There had to be something in it for him.
After Edie’s fifth pregnancy there was a stillbirth, then a miscarriage, then another stillbirth. Tired, depressed, Edie finally said to her husband, enough. He would have to use something if he wanted to go on enjoying marital relations. That earned her another clout around the ear. He was from a good Catholic family, Sam told her in a rage; what she was talking about, wasn’t that a sin?
