A Ration Book Childhood

by Jean Fullerton

  ‘That’s assuming there are any,’ said Ida. ‘I had to make do with an ox heart last year.’

  ‘Have you got much so far?’ asked Winnie as they shuffled forward again.

  ‘A few bits,’ said Ida, ‘plus enough dried fruit to make me Christmas cake, but I’ll have to add some apple to bulk it up.’

  ‘Better that than spuds,’ said Winnie. ‘I had another blooming Ministry of Food leaflet bunged through me letterbox yesterday with holly on it telling me ’ow to make shortbreads and marzipan with potatoes.’

  ‘Hopefully, when the government’s new extra-points rations come in next month, I’ll be able to splash out on a few luxuries to cheer us all up,’ said Ida, as the woman in front of her stepped forward to be served.

  Winnie rolled her eyes. ‘I’m sure I don’t understand what all that’s about.’

  ‘It’s the food and stuff the Americans are sending us; you know, dried milk and powdered egg,’ Ida explained. ‘We’re getting an extra ration book with points and depending on what arrives and what ends up at the bottom of the Atlantic each week, they will let us know how many of these extra points we’ll need to buy it.’

  ‘For Gawd’s sake,’ said Winnie. ‘My brain’s scrambled enough trying to add up coupon points for this without totting up another lot of numbers. I suppose you’ve got everyone at your place for Christmas again.’

  ‘All except my Charlie,’ Ida said, as an image of her strapping son flickered through her mind. ‘He’s out in North Africa, so God himself knows when he’ll be back. I won’t see his Stella or the baby either as she’ll no doubt spend the day with her family. Although I said I’d take Patrick to Midnight Mass with the rest of the family.’

  Winnie pulled a face. ‘I’m surprised she didn’t argue.’

  ‘She tried,’ said Ida, thinking of the look on her daughter-in-law’s flat face when she announced it. ‘Said it’d be better for him to sleep in his own pram and all that but as I pointed out to her, he’s with me most nights down the shelter while she’s working so I don’t see how him being with me at St Bridget’s and St Brendan’s is any different. He’s only six months so he won’t know anything about it anyhow.’

  Winnie gave her a sideways look. ‘I saw her the other morning getting off the last night bus at the Troxy.’

  ‘I expect she was coming home from a night shift at the factory,’ said Ida.

  ‘What in high heels with her lipstick all rubbed off her mouth?’ said Winnie.

  Ida didn’t reply and thankfully the woman in front of her collected her change and moved aside.

  ‘’Ello, Mrs B,’ said Ray Harris, wiping his chubby hands on his blood-stained apron. ‘How are you this fine morning?’

  Ray was the son referred to in the Harris & Son sign painted above the shop. In fact, he resembled his red-headed father so closely sometimes you had to look twice before you were certain which one of them you were talking to . . .

  Ray had always fancied himself as a bit of a ladies’ man but until recently, with heavy features and crinkly ginger hair, he’d been unlucky in love. Now, however, with the meat ration recently cut again, he had dozens of women keen to walk out with him.

  ‘Well enough,’ said Ida. ‘And all the better for seeing you’ve got some decent pork chops for once. I’ll have five, and a bit of kidney on one of them would be welcome.’

  ‘Right you are, Mrs B,’ he said, licking his fingers and scooping up a sheet of paper from the pile next to the scales. ‘Five pork chops coming up.’

  Leaning into the window, he scooped up the cuts of meat and plonked them on to the paper.

  ‘Just over the half and a bit of squiddly-diddly, too.’ He looked at Ida.

  She nodded. ‘And I’ll have three-quarters of braising steak, but make it lean.’

  Wrapping the chops up with a deft twist of his hand, Ray put the parcel to one side of the till. He slid another sheet of paper from the pile then leaned back into the window.

  ‘Your Cathy was in earlier,’ he said, dropping the paper and cubes of beef on the scales. ‘I managed to find her a nice bit of shin and a spare sausage for that little lad of hers.’

  ‘That was good of you,’ said Ida.

  ‘Well, it can’t be easy for her all by herself, like, with her husband away,’ the butcher continued.

  ‘Plenty of women around here are in the same boat,’ said Ida.

  ‘You have the right of it there, Mrs B,’ said Ray.

  Of course, Cathy wasn’t in the same boat because although there were thousands of young mothers like her up and down the country, most of them were raising toddlers alone because their husbands were in the army not, like Stan Wheeler, in prison.

  Ray slid the weights on and off to bring the central needle on the scales upright then he wrapped the rest of Ida’s order and placed it alongside the chops.

  He looked at her expectantly. ‘Anything else, Mrs B?’

  ‘A quarter of suet,’ she said. ‘And that should do me until Wednesday.’

  Ray grabbed a waxed tub from the small stack behind him and placed it with the rest of her order then took the stubby pencil from behind his ear.

  ‘Two and a tanner,’ he said, after scribbling the sum on a tatty pad next to the till.

  Opening her bag Ida took out her purse and handed him her ration book. He marked off her meat allocation then, shoving the pencil back where it came from, returned her ration book. She handed over half a crown and got her purchases in exchange. Popping them in her bag, she squeezed her way along the queue and out through the door.

  Wondering if there would be more than just cabbages and carrots on the greengrocer’s stall, Ida skirted around the men from Truman’s who were unloading barrels outside the Lord Nelson and headed towards the cluster of barrows under the railway arches at the bottom of the market.

  She’d just reached Feldman’s stationers on the corner of Chapman Street when a woman walked out of the Post Office on the other side of the road.

  Ida could hardly believe her eyes.

  ‘Ellen,’ she shouted. ‘Ellen!’

  The woman looked up. Ida waved and hurried across the street. ‘Ellen,’ she said breathlessly, stopping in front of the other woman. ‘I can’t believe it’s you.’

  ‘Ida,’ she said, looking incredulously at her.

  ‘Yes, it’s me,’ laughed Ida. ‘And I’m glad you recognised me after all this time.’

  Ellen’s eyes flickered behind Ida and then back to her face.

  ‘Of course I did,’ she said, giving her a guarded smile. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’

  ‘You neither,’ said Ida, looking her up and down.

  Actually, that wasn’t strictly true. Although she couldn’t see any grey in Ellen’s light brown hair, its bounce had disappeared. Her eyes, too, were dull, with dark shadows surrounding them. In addition, her cheekbones stood out in sharp relief. Unsurprising, really. After two years of food rationing and disturbed nights, everyone was sleep deprived and had shed a few pounds.

  ‘How are you?’ asked Ellen.

  ‘Well,’ said Ida. ‘Very well.’

  Ellen’s eyes flickered down the road again. ‘And the children?’ she said, giving Ida a tight smile.

  ‘All grown,’ said Ida. ‘Charlie, Mattie and Cathy are married with babes of their own and Jo’s engaged. Billy’s eleven now and a bit of a handful, but there’s no harm in him. Of course, we have Jerimiah’s mother Queenie living with us, cantankerous old so-and-so, but—’

  ‘How is Jerimiah?’ asked Ellen.

  ‘Fit as a fiddle,’ Ida replied. ‘But never mind about us. How are you? I thought you were in Sevenoaks?’

  ‘For a couple of years then we moved to Hastings.’ Ellen glanced down the road again. ‘Paul was promoted to deputy station master there but unfortunately even with the sea air to help, his condition got worse soon after he took the job and he died.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ said Ida.

  ‘It was a few yea
rs ago now . . .’ Ellen gave her a brittle smile.

  ‘So where are you living?’ asked Ida.

  ‘I’ve got a couple of rooms in Juniper Street,’ Ellen replied.

  ‘You should have written and told me about Paul,’ said Ida, her heart aching for her old friend’s loss.

  ‘I didn’t want to trouble you, not when you had your own family to worry about,’ said Ellen.

  ‘Perhaps not, but we were so close once, me and you,’ said Ida.

  ‘Yes, we were,’ said Ellen softly, a sad smile lifting her thin lips.

  Ida’s gaze ran over her old friend’s face as long-buried images and unbearable emotions surged up. Her hazel eyes captured Ellen’s grey ones and the years since they’d last met disappeared for a heartbeat or two. Then her friend glanced up the street once more.

  ‘Look, Ida,’ she said nervously, ‘I need to tell you something. Something important. The reason—’

  ‘Mum!’

  Ida turned to see a young lad of about Billy’s age, dressed in a green school uniform, scooting down the road towards them.

  Darting between the shoppers and stall holders, he skidded to a halt beside Ellen.

  ‘I got the last one, Mum,’ the lad said, waving a copy of Boy’s Own with a Spitfire shooting down a German bomber on the front cover. ‘Look!’

  Fear flashed across Ellen’s face but then she turned to the boy.

  ‘Well done,’ she said, smiling at the lad. She took his hand. ‘Michael, this is my oldest friend Ida.’

  Michael turned his snub-nosed, freckled face to Ida.

  ‘Hello, Auntie Ida,’ he said, smiling innocently up at her.

  Ida opened her mouth to reply but the words stuck in her throat. Staring down at the lad’s square jaw, broad forehead, black curly hair and soft grey eyes, the blood drained into her boots.

  ‘Be a luv, Michael,’ said Ellen, cutting across Ida’s chaotic thoughts. ‘Pop over and buy me a couple of apples from the stall across the way.’

  ‘Right you are, Mum,’ he replied, giving her a smile that ripped through Ida’s heart.

  Taking the couple of coppers from his mother, the lad dashed across to the greengrocer’s barrow. Ellen watched him for a second or two then she looked back at Ida.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to find out like this, Ida,’ she said, in a tone that belied her words.

  Ida stared incredulously at her. ‘Is he—’

  ‘Yes, Ida,’ Ellen interrupted. ‘Michael is Jerimiah’s son.’

  Chapter Two

  JERIMIAH BROGAN PATTED Samson’s piebald rear as the sixteen-hand gelding buried his muzzle in his supper.

  ‘There you go, me fine lad,’ he said to the horse as he filled the overhead manger with sufficient hay for the night. ‘We’ll be having a better day tomorrow, so we will.’

  The draught horse flicked his ears in response but continued to munch away. Jerimiah patted the horse’s rump again, checked the water in the drinking trough and left the stall.

  Securing the bolt across the door, Jerimiah hung the bridle and tack on the wall hook next to the horse’s cart collar and harness. The railway arch where he stabled Samson and stored his wagon was situated within sight of Shadwell Station in Chapman Street, under the Blackwellto-Minories railway. Samson’s stall was at the far end of the arch, constructed to keep him dry and out of the wind that cut like a knife up the Thames some nights.

  Next to Samson’s stall was an office that Jerimiah had built out of a couple of old door panels and windows. Furnished with a school desk that could have come from the ark, a clerk’s chair with no arms and a kitchen dresser without any doors in which he stored his accounts book, it was nonetheless comfortable, especially after a long day scouring the streets for scrap metal or any other odds and ends that Jerimiah could sell on.

  To be truthful, it had been a better day than many he’d known in recent times.

  As the fog meant the Luftwaffe hadn’t come calling last night, for once he hadn’t had to coax Samson through the emergency crews as they cleaned up after a night’s bombing. What’s more, he’d been able to search unhindered for fragments of shell cases and twisted metal amongst the debris. He’d discovered a tail fin and a long section of brass casing amongst the rubble along with melted house railings and warped coal-hole covers. Under the Ministry of Defence directives, he would get nothing for the railings as all unclaimed metal was deemed to be government property and vital to the war effort, but he would be paid for collecting the remains of the German armoury although, sadly, he wouldn’t receive what the brass and copper were actually worth.

  He’d made light of it to Ida that morning, but in truth, with furniture and household goods being either unobtainable or extortionately expensive, no one was throwing out household items any more so some days he barely scraped together enough to feed Samson let alone give Ida her weekly housekeeping. The small allowance he received for being a member of the Home Guard helped a bit, but the fact of the matter was he’d have to put his thinking cap on to figure out a way of increasing his income. Easier said than done for an Irish rag-and-bone man who left school at twelve.

  Casting his worries aside, he kicked the wedges under the wagon’s back wheels. He opened the door cut into the left-hand double gate, ducked his head and stepped out into the street outside.

  Although it was only just after four, the blackout was already in force so taking his muted torch from his sheepskin pocket he pointed it at the floor and headed along the street towards his end-of-day watering hole.

  In truth, his boots could probably find the way by themselves as the Catholic Club that backed on to St Bridget’s and St Brendan’s was the Brogan family’s second home. Not so much for the bar on the first floor but for things like Irish Dancing classes, young mothers’ groups, wedding receptions, birthday parties and funeral wakes, which all took place in the main hall below.

  With the beam of light just in front of his toecaps, Jerimiah joined port workers in donkey jackets and heavy boots as they trudged home after a twelve-hour shift unloading vital food supplies in the docks. Mingling amongst them were dozens of women pushing prams loaded with toddlers, sandwiches and flasks of hot drinks: although the air raid warning had yet to sound, they were on their way to a bomb shelter or an underground station to bed down for the night.

  Turning the corner into Dean Street, Jerimiah strolled on towards his well-earned end-of-the-day Guinness and within a few moments he reached his destination. Situated around the corner from the church, the Catholic Club had been built fifty years ago and was a square, functional building typical of the Edwardian period. Of course, the windows now had the extra protection of gummed tape criss-crossing them to stop shards of broken glass littering the room in the event of an explosion.

  The main hall on the ground floor, where the Brownies and Scouts met and the club’s Shamrock League held their ceilidh dances, was now one of the local rest centres. It was manned by the WVS and gave shelter to those who had been bombed out.

  As there hadn’t been any bombing the night before the rows of camp beds at the far end of the hall were currently empty, with a brown, government-issue blanket neatly folded on each one. There were a handful of people sitting at tables drinking tea while mothers with babies balanced on their hips or hanging on their skirts were sifting through the rails of second-hand clothes looking for bargains.

  Jerimiah pushed open the brass-plated door that led into the entrance hall. Passing the noticeboard with a poster showing a German soldier surrendering with the caption ‘We Beat ’em Before; We’ll Do It Again’, he headed along the concrete-floored passageway to the stairs at the far end.

  Taking them two at a time he soon found himself in the club bar on the first floor, which already had a good number of his fellow members supping pints within. With its scrubbed wooden floor and private booths, this bar was like many others in the area. There was a dartboard in a wooden frame with a chalk scoreboard on one side and an advert for Jameso
n whiskey painted on the other. There was a worn rubber oche on the floor showing the required throwing distances, and a couple of sets of darts jammed into the bottom on the surround.

  Greeting old friends as he passed by, Jerimiah strolled between the tables to the bar and slid on to a vacant stool.

  ‘The usual, Jerry?’ called Pete Riley, the club manager, who was drying glasses at the other end of the bar.

  ‘When you’re ready,’ Jerimiah replied.

  He and Pete’s families had lived a few doors apart in Pennington Street. They had been snotty-nosed, barefooted kids running the streets during the last few years of the Old Queen’s reign. Mostly, trying to keep out of sight of PC McDuff, the keen-eyed heavy-handed beat bobby.

  Like Jerimiah, Pete was the father and grandfather of an ever-expanding family but whereas a lifetime of heaving household items on and off a cart had helped Jerimiah avoid middle-age spread, Pete’s buckle was strained to its last notch.

  Miraculously, both had survived the trenches, leaving Pete with a lump of shrapnel embedded in his right thigh and Jerimiah with the unswerving conviction that the officer class, their self-styled betters, were nothing more than a collection of inbred, fecking idiots.

  Hooking the last couple of glasses on the brackets above the bar, Pete flipped the tea towel over his shoulder and took down a pint glass.

  ‘Good day?’ he asked, putting the glass under the brass spout and grasping the pump on the top of the counter.

  ‘So so.’ Jerimiah pulled a couple of coins from his trouser pocket and put them on the counter. Taking his drink, he raised it to his lips and took a long swallow, enjoying the rich bitterness as it slid down his throat.

  Smacking his lips, he placed the glass on the polished mahogany counter and looked at his old friend.

  ‘How’s the family?’

  They exchanged anecdotes about their respective offspring for a couple of minutes until the door of the bar opened and a chap Jerimiah vaguely recognised entered. He spotted Jerimiah and strolled across.