A Ration Book Christmas

by Jean Fullerton

  ‘He got a clip around the ear for contradicting an officer of the Crown and I hope it’ll learn him not to do it again,’ PC Beech replied, flicking a stray crumb from his shirt.

  Jo put her arm protectively around her brother’s shoulder.

  ‘So what’s this about?’ she asked, holding him firmly to her.

  ‘Ten shillings’ been taken from the tuck shop’s money box,’ PC Beech replied.

  ‘I never took it,’ sobbed Billy.

  ‘Lying won’t help you out of this one, my lad,’ said Mrs Garfield, giving Billy a sour look.

  ‘Cross my heart, Jo,’ said Billy, gazing up at her with wide-eyed innocence. ‘It wasn’t me.’

  Jo studied her brother’s upturned face for a moment and chewed her lip.

  Mrs Garfield tutted loudly. ‘Such lies! See what I have to put up with, Cuthbert.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mabel,’ said PC Beech. ‘I’m trained to get the truth out of miscreants.’ He turned his attention back to Jo and Billy. ‘Now, son,’ he said, giving them what Jo supposed was his coaxing smile, ‘we all know you took the ten shillings out of the tuck box so why not be a man and admit it?’

  Billy stuck out his lower lip. ‘Because I didn’t.’

  Mrs Garfield and PC Beech exchanged an exasperated look.

  ‘Who said Billy took it, anyway?’ asked Jo.

  A chair scraped across the floor as Mrs Garfield jumped to her feet. ‘Miss Dixon,’ she snapped. ‘And you can’t think the schoolmistress would lie about such a thing.’

  ‘Did Miss Dixon actually see Billy take the money?’ asked Jo.

  ‘Not as such,’ replied PC Beech. ‘But she found him and a couple of others loitering outside the tuck-shop window the day before.’

  ‘I believe thieves call it casing the joint,’ said Mrs Garfield, with relish.

  ‘Just so,’ agreed PC Beech. ‘The criminal underworld are known to use such colloquialisms to disguise their felonious intents.’

  Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Jo turned to her brother. ‘Who else was in the playground, Billy?’

  ‘Jim Potton, Peter Danson and Mark Smith,’ Billy replied, wiping his nose on his sleeve. ‘We were playing marbles.’

  Jo looked back at PC Beech. ‘Have you questioned them about the money?’

  ‘No I haven’t,’ he replied. ‘Because I can tell you straight, it weren’t any of them.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Jo.

  ‘Because they all come from families in the village that’s why,’ said Mrs Garfield.

  Billy started to cry.

  Jo squeezed her brother’s shoulders. ‘It’s all right, Billy.’

  ‘A taste of the birch is what he needs,’ continued Mrs Garfield, glaring across at them. Her gaze shifted onto PC Beech. ‘Aren’t you going to run him down to the station?’

  The officer chewed his moustache but didn’t reply.

  Mrs Garfield looked puzzled. ‘Cuthbert?’

  ‘He can’t,’ said Jo, ‘because he’s got no evidence.’

  PC Beech’s jowls quivered. ‘Not this time I haven’t but—’

  ‘Billy,’ Jo said, turning her back on the officer and ruffling her brother’s mop of red-gold hair. ‘Why don’t you trot upstairs and do your homework until supper?’

  Rubbing his red-rimmed eyes with the heel of his hand, Billy nodded.

  Twisting his cap in his hand and his head bowed in abject misery, Billy slunk from the room.

  Jo regarded the two people opposite her coolly. PC Beech held her unwavering gaze for a few seconds then grasped the front of his uniform jacket.

  ‘We’ll say no more about it this time,’ he said, working his way up the silver buttons. ‘But let me tell you, I’ll be keeping a very close eye on your brother, miss, so you make sure he keeps his nose clean in future.’

  Snatching his helmet from the table, he flipped it on his head and, after another quick glance at Mrs Garfield, marched out through the shop.

  The shopkeeper’s mouth pulled in an ugly line and she rounded on Jo. ‘I don’t care what you say, I know your brother stole the money.’

  ‘Do you now?’ Jo replied. ‘Well, in that case, where is it? Where’s the ten shilling you’re so certain Billy took.’

  Mrs Garfield was taken aback. ‘Well, he’s spent it, of course.’

  ‘What, ten shillings in an hour?’ said Jo. ‘And on what? The baker’s shut so he couldn’t have spent it on pies and cake. You sell sweets and comics so if he’d come in flourishing a ten-bob note you would have mentioned it before now, so where is it? I’ll tell you where,’ she continued before the older woman could reply. ‘In the pocket of the person who took it, that’s where.’

  ‘Everyone knows crime is a way of life to you East Enders,’ said Mrs Garfield. ‘So who else could it have been?’

  Jo shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe the caretaker had a hot tip for the three-thirty at Kempton Park or perhaps Miss Dixon herself took it to fund a wild night of gin and dominos in the Thatcher’s Arms. If PC Plod bothered to do his job properly rather than bullying a ten-year-old boy he might even find out.’

  Mrs Garfield glared at her. ‘I’m going to have a word with the placement officer about you both. Do you hear?’

  ‘You do that,’ shouted Jo over her shoulder as she stormed across the room towards the hallway.

  Leaving Mrs Garfield fuming in the shop’s back room, Jo made her way upstairs past the snug family bedrooms on the first floor and towards the narrow door at the far end of the corridor behind which the roughly made stairway led to the old servants’ quarters.

  Knocking lightly on Billy’s room she opened the door. Still in his school uniform, he was lying on the bed propped up against the headboard reading a copy of Champion, which he set aside as she walked in.

  ‘You should be doing your homework.’

  ‘It’s boring,’ he replied.

  ‘Well, you’ll never be able to join the RAF if you don’t pass your school exams,’ Jo replied.

  Billy pulled a face. ‘You sound like Mattie. She’s always going on about me getting my matriculation.’

  ‘Well, she’s right,’ Jo replied.

  ‘I’ll join the army instead then,’ Billy replied. ‘As long as I can kill some Germans.’

  Shaping his two fingers into a pistol he aimed at the bare light bulb over his bed and let off an imaginary round.

  Jo smiled and reaching out, tousled her brother’s ginger hair.

  Billy pulled a face and jerked his head away.

  ‘Joooo?’ he moaned.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why can’t we go home?’ he asked.

  ‘You know why,’ said Jo. ‘Because the Germans will be bombing us soon and it’s safer for children to be out of London.’

  ‘I hate it here,’ said Billy. ‘The local kids are always picking on us and saying we’ve got fleas.’

  ‘I’ve told you to ignore them,’ Jo replied.

  ‘It’s all right for you,’ Billy said sullenly. ‘You don’t have to go to school.’

  ‘No, I have the life of Riley working like a slave in the Garfields’ poxy shop instead of being at secretarial college like I was supposed to be,’ Jo replied.

  ‘At least you get money of your own at the end of the week,’ Billy replied.

  The corner of Jo’s lips lifted in a satisfied smile as she remembered the way Mrs Garfield’s piggy eyes had bulged when Jo had refused point blank to be an unpaid shop assistant.

  Billy’s face suddenly lit up. ‘Perhaps if Old Face-ache downstairs does speak to the placement officer like she’s always saying she will, we’ll get sent home.’

  ‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up,’ Jo replied. ‘For all her threats, Old Garfield’s not going to complain because she doesn’t want to lose the fifteen bob a week the government are paying her to keep us.’

  The miserable expression returned to her brother’s face.

  ‘Even if it is safer here,’ said Billy, ‘I don’t
understand. When Mrs Reilly from across the street asked Mum at Christmas if she was going to evacuate us Mum told her “over my dead body”. Why did she change her mind?’

  Jo shrugged.

  ‘Do you think Aunt Pearl told her to when she turned up last time?’ he persisted.

  ‘I supposed she might have,’ said Jo, knowing full well it was.

  Billy gave her a puzzled look. ‘But what about you? Why did mum send you away too?’

  ‘What does it matter, Billy?’ said Jo, sidestepping his question. ‘We’re here now so we’ll just have to make the best of it.’ She brushed his upper arm with a pretend punch. ‘Come on! Chin up.’

  Billy forced a cheery smile.

  ‘All right, sis, I’ll try.’ He delved into his trouser pockets and pulled out two crumpled letters. ‘I picked up the late post.’ He thrust them at her. ‘There’s one for both of us from Mum and another addressed to you.’

  At last!

  Jo put the letter from their mother into her pocket then, with her heart thumping uncomfortably in her chest, turned the other envelope over hoping to see Tommy Sweete’s bold handwriting on the envelope but instead she recognised her sister Mattie’s neat round lettering.

  With her heart somewhere in her boots, Jo shoved aside the feeling of despondency in her chest and tousled her brother’s hair.

  ‘Finish your comic, Billy,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you downstairs for supper.’

  Chapter Two

  WITH THE RED light of the September sunset cutting through the window, Tommy Sweete mashed the last mouthfuls of potato into what remained of the liquor then scooped it up on his fork. Popping it in his mouth he skimmed down the front page of the Evening News which was propped against the condiment set. A year ago he’d have turned straight to the racing results on the back page, but now he was interested in the account of yesterday’s fight between the RAF and the Luftwaffe over Beachy Head and the aftermath of the bomb that had been dropped in Hackney the week before.

  It was just after five on the first Friday evening of the month and he was sitting in his usual booth in The Centurion Pie & Mash shop opposite the LCC Fire Station in Roman Road. As ever, it was crowded with workmen in rough clothing like him, stopping off for something to eat on their way home from work, and mothers with children having a meal before going to Friday-evening Mass at the Catholic Church five minutes away in Victoria Park Square.

  With its white and black Victorian tiles decorating the walls, wooden benches either side of the scrubbed-pine tables and the steaming vats of stewed eels behind the counter, The Centurion had been feeding East Enders since the turn of the century. Like the décor, the menu hadn’t changed much since then and remained either stewed eels or a steak pie served with mashed potatoes – with the traditional lumps – smothered in opaque liquor. This pale gravy was in fact parsley sauce made with the water used to boil the eels, which gave it a unique flavour and a green tinge.

  Tommy’s grandmother had brought him and his brother here each Friday and, using a few coppers from her hard-earned wages, had treated them to a bowl of stewed eels followed by an aniseed twist which they’d both slurped all the way home on the tram. Although he no longer had an aniseed twist after his plate of double pie and mash, a visit to The Centurion was still something Tommy treated himself to each Friday evening at the end of a tiring working week.

  Although labouring, by definition, was always heavy physical graft, the last week had been particularly long and hard. Long because, with half the men in London called up he’d had a full week’s work and hard because hammering girders into place needed muscle. Thankfully, after years of training and fighting in Arbour Amateur Boxing Club he had plenty of that and, at a shade over six foot tall and with a forty-two-inch chest, he had the height and bulk to manhandle the ten-foot-long, six-by-six timber props needed to prevent buildings from further collapse. Now, though, he was aching all over.

  Skimming through the account of how the Ministry of Food was issuing new ration coupons with watermarks to frustrate black-market racketeers from forging them, Tommy picked up his mug of tea and washed down the last morsel of his supper.

  ‘That all right for you, was it, Tommy?’ called Dolly, from behind the marble counter.

  Somewhere in her late fifties, Dolly was dressed as usual in a floral wrap-around apron and had her bright orange hair tied up under a mauve chiffon scarf. With an apple-round face and arms like a wrestler, Dolly Walker gutted and chopped live eels and peeled mountains of potatoes each day as her mother had before her and her mother before that.

  ‘Nectar from heaven, Doll,’ Tommy replied.

  ‘’ark at you, and your old blarney,’ she replied, dimpling up like a schoolgirl. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting roly-poly and custard.’

  Tommy grinned. ‘Do you need to ask?’

  Grasping a ladle sticking out of the blackened saucepan at the back of the range, Dolly set to work and within a minute she was standing beside him holding a steaming bowl in her hand.

  ‘There you are,’ she said, as she set a dish of sponge floating in a pond of yellow custard before him. ‘I’ve given you a bit extra to fill those long hollow legs of yours.’

  Tommy smiled at her. ‘What would I do without you to feed and fuss over me?’

  ‘I wouldn’t need to if you pulled your finger out and found yourself a wife,’ she replied, picking up his empty plate. ‘Now eat your pudding before it gets cold.’

  She returned to serve the queue of customers at the counter.

  It was true she always made a fuss of him but then Dolly made a fuss of everyone, and gave so many of her customers a ‘bit extra’ it was a wonder she earned a living.

  Tommy picked up his spoon and made short work of his pudding, finishing the last mouthful with a satisfied sigh. Folding the newspaper, he stood up and shoved it in his pocket before taking his old donkey jacket from the back of his chair. He shrugged it on then, grasping the handle of his tool bag which he’d placed on the chair beside him, he went to the counter to pay for his meal.

  ‘You seeing Ruby later?’ Dolly asked.

  Pocketing his change, Tommy nodded.

  ‘Well then, you can heat this up for her,’ she said, sliding a battered Oxo tin full of pie and mash across the counter then wiping her hands on her faded apron.

  ‘Thanks, Dolly,’ he said, placing it in his bag amongst his hammer and chisels. ‘You’re a true diamond gal.’

  Dolly’s already red cheeks glowed a bit brighter but she shrugged. ‘Even with everything it wouldn’t be Christian to let her go hungry.’

  ‘Thanks, all the same,’ said Tommy. ‘And see you next week.’

  Outside, the streets were full of the early-evening bustle of people making their way home. Crossing the road, Tommy started up Globe Road towards Stepney Station and spotted the postman cycling away from the letter box with a full sack in his basket.

  Damn! He’d missed the evening post. Still, after four weeks what difference would it make if his letter arrived on Monday instead of tomorrow?

  In truth, if he’d had the sense he’d been born with, he’d have written it sooner instead of trying to pretend he didn’t care that Jo had stopped writing.

  They’d exchanged letters weekly for the first couple of months but since the beginning of August she’d not written back. At first, he wasn’t too perturbed and, not wanting to press her, he’d forced himself to be patient, but now after almost four weeks he was worried. Worried that, despite her telling him over and over how much she loved him, in the three months since she’d been sent away, she’d found someone else. Some well-heeled country type with a car and a brace of hounds trotting behind or some white-collar professional – a doctor or a solicitor – who could offer her a better life than someone with a dodgy reputation and very little prospects. After all, she was gorgeous enough to attract any man’s attention and he was certain she had.

  Dolly was right on the nail when she said he needed a wife. But
not just a wife. He needed Jo.

  Perhaps rather than beating about the bush he should have come straight out and asked her to marry him. It was for that reason he had spent all his lunchtime in Bishopsgate library around the corner to where he was working writing a letter telling her exactly how he felt about her and that he would be catching the early train next Saturday to see her. Because Dolly was right: he needed a wife and even if he had to wait another four years until she was twenty-one, he would shift heaven and earth to make Miss Josephine Margaret Brogan Mrs Thomas Sweete.

  Three-quarters of an hour later and after a brisk walk via Stepney Green Station, St Dunstan’s Church and Limehouse Basin, Tommy stepped over the slurry of rotting vegetables and horse dung congealing around the blocked drain and crossed Gravel Lane.

  By rights, at seven o’clock on a warm late-summer’s evening, the pubs dotted along the ancient riverside thoroughfare should have been noisy and full and the warehouses quiet and empty. However, since the country had declared war on Germany last September the reverse was now true. Instead of the dock hooter sounding the end of the day at five, the dockers and stevedores in all the London docks were now working double shifts.

  In the long, summer days of 1940 the cranes fixed to the quays and jetties swung back and forth from dawn to dusk unloading vital supplies from ships that had escaped the German U-boats lurking in the Thames Estuary. Dodging between the hand carts piled high with crates and sacks, and imagining Jo running into his arms as he stepped off the early-morning train from Liverpool Street Station, Tommy turned the corner into Brewhouse Lane.

  Passing the dilapidated row of once elegant terraced houses with their peeling paintwork and cracked and missing window panes, he came to the ten-foot-high double gates with ‘Sweete & Co Builders’ painted in an arch across it. Pushing open the door set within the left-hand gate he strolled into the yard. The area, which was perhaps fifty-foot-long by twenty wide, ran behind the row of houses and backed onto the solid brickwork of the Tilbury to Minories railway line. Parked in front of the small office with its one dirty window was Reggie’s three-ton Bedford lorry.