A Ration Book Childhood

by Jean Fullerton

  Today he was standing in a freezing-cold school yard beside a pile of household items and a handful of other local traders and he still had another two hours’ work ahead of him before he could sink his first Guinness of the day.

  Over the past year, with the government gathering every bit of scrap metal for the war effort, Jerimiah’s livelihood had practically disappeared.

  However, as Father Mahon often remarked, when God closes one door he opens a window. It was true, albeit in often sad circumstances, for the nightly destruction had opened new possibilities for Jerimiah.

  Items such as beds, furniture, crockery and the like that had been salvaged by the council from bombed properties where the owner was deceased were put up for sale. These, of course, were the very same items that people who had lost everything but their lives after a raid desperately needed.

  ‘Three and six, three and six . . .’ the auctioneer surveyed the handful of men surrounding him. ‘Any advance?’ No one answered, he clapped his hands. ‘Sold to Jerry Brogan.’

  The auctioneer’s assistant, a spotty youth with a West Ham scarf wrapped around his neck and wearing an oversized overcoat, handed Jerimiah a chit.

  ‘Lot twenty-three,’ shouted the auctioneer.

  Shoving the ticket in his trouser pocket with the other half-dozen, Jerimiah strolled over to the wooden hut by the school gate. The door creaked as he walked in, causing the young girl sitting hunched over the desk at the far end to look up.

  She was about Jo’s age and was one of the Kemp brood who lived in Three Colts Lane in Limehouse. She was wrapped in a camel-coloured overcoat with her reddish hair poking out from under her knitted beret. Despite the fierce blue and orange light flickering behind the paraffin stove’s small window she was wearing fingerless gloves.

  ‘Afternoon, Maureen, me darling, and how are you this fine day?’

  ‘Fine day?’ She gave a hard laugh. ‘After sitting in this hut all day, if I was a brass monkey I’d be ball-less by now. You settling up?’

  ‘I am indeed,’ said Jerimiah, pulling the dozen or so auction receipts from his pocket. ‘Did I hear a little whisper going around that there’s another one next Tuesday in Fairfield Road?’

  Blowing on her hands, she nodded. ‘There’s a notice in the Advertiser today.’ She held out her hand.

  ‘Do you happen to know what they’re putting under the hammer?’ asked Jerimiah as he handed her the tickets.

  ‘Now you know I’m not supposed to let dealers know what’s on the books before the Monday viewing.’

  ‘Sure I do and I wouldn’t want to be getting you in trouble at all,’ he replied. ‘But could you not do a kindness to a poor old tinker like meself?’

  A wry smile lifted the corners of Maureen’s orange-lipsticked mouth. ‘As long as you don’t let on who told you.’

  ‘Wild horses couldn’t drag it out of me,’ he replied.

  She studied him for a moment then spoke again. ‘All right, the St Bart’s rest home at the back of the church in Roman Road had its side blown off so along with the usual stuff there’s a dozen beds and chairs, bundles of linen and towels plus a couple of boxes of china. Now stop badgering me and let me tot up what you owe.’

  Jerimiah grinned.

  Dipping her nib in the inkwell, Maureen turned her attention to the enormous ledger spread on the table before her.

  Leaving her to her sums, Jerimiah gazed through the dirty window to where the auctioneer was selling the last few lots.

  ‘Three pound, twelve and thruppence,’ Maureen announced, cutting through his heavy thoughts.

  Delving into his other pocket, Jerimiah pulled out his wallet and took out four green pound notes. He handed them to Maureen who unlocked the cash box at her elbow and tucked the money beneath the coin tray.

  ‘Seven shillings and nine pence,’ she said, dropping the collection of silver and copper coins in the palm of his hand. ‘If you could just check and sign.’

  Swivelling the accounts book around to face him she pointed to the line beneath a row of figures.

  Casting his eyes over the coins and finding them correct he put them in his pocket and looked down at the page.

  Although he knew to the last penny what he’d spent, Jerimiah cast his eyes down the numbers just to check. Satisfied she’d entered them correctly, he took the spare pen from the inkwell and scrawled his signature across the bottom.

  ‘Ta very much,’ she said, turning the ledger back the right way.

  Jerimiah returned the pen to its pot. ‘And to you, me darling.’ He winked. ‘There’ll be a drink waiting for you in the club.’

  He touched the peak of his leather cap again and left the hut.

  With the ice-skimmed puddles crunching beneath his hobnail boots, Jerimiah crossed the playground to where Samson stood patiently waiting for him. He took his bridle.

  ‘Just let me load all this stuff up on me wagon, old boy,’ he said, leading the horse towards the pile of furniture he’d just paid for. ‘And I’ll soon have you tucked up in your stable.’

  ‘Evening to you, Father,’ Jim Bridge called down from his driving seat as the horse plodded by pulling the Meredith and Drews wagon behind it.

  ‘And to you,’ Father Mahon called back, raising his gnarled hand in greeting. ‘And how’s that fine boy of yours?’

  It was five fifteen in the afternoon and the sun had just disappeared. Usually, at this time in the evening, Father Patrick Mahon would be in the cool of the church getting ready to recite his evening prayers, but today he had something to do before ending his day.

  ‘Well, he’s got a good pair of lungs on him, I can tell you,’ Jim called back.

  ‘Much like yourself as a babe,’ Father Mahon replied, ‘if I recall correctly.’

  Jim, who was a driver for Meredith and Drews biscuit factory on the Highway, laughed. ‘So me ma tells me. My Mary will be wanting him baptised soon.’

  ‘Just pop around to the rectory and I’d be mighty happy to oblige,’ said Father Mahon.

  Jim waved again and then pulled on the reins as the chestnut gelding turned the corner.

  Father Mahon continued on past the Britons’ garage and towards his destination at the end of the row of railway arches. Reaching number 125 he read the notice nailed up outside before pushing the doorway cut into the gate. Lifting his cassock, he stepped over the threshold and walked into the space beyond.

  As always, the space under the arch was crammed with all manner of things but whereas before the war it would have been battered prams, dismantled iron bed frames and handleless saucepans, now the small yard was filled with double wardrobes, chests of drawers, rolled-up rugs and mismatched chairs. In addition, there were smaller day-today items that housewives needed to run a household like scrubbing boards and zinc tubs. Everything was stacked on and around the wagon, which was parked, shafts tipped back, against the far wall.

  Beyond that stood a piebald horse munching his way through a net of hay suspended at head height on the wall in front of him, while the man Father Mahon had come to see brushed him down.

  Hearing someone behind him, Jerimiah Brogan straightened up and turned.

  ‘Father Mahon,’ he said, his face creasing into an easy smile. ‘What brings you down to this neck of the woods?’

  ‘Oh, I was just passing and as I haven’t seen you in church for a few weeks, I thought I’d drop by and see how you’re faring,’ Father Mahon replied.

  ‘Me?’ An ingenuous expression settled on Jerimiah’s rugged face. ‘I’m grand, so I am.’

  ‘What about Samson?’ asked Father Mahon.

  ‘Oh, he’s grand too.’ Jerimiah slapped the horse’s hairy flank affectionately.

  Heedless of his cassock skimming across the beaten earth floor, Father Mahon strolled across to the horse’s head.

  ‘You know, my father had one just like Samson when I was a boy,’ he said, stroking the gelding’s whiskery muzzle.

  Jerimiah grinned. ‘So me ma told me.
’

  An image of a slender young girl, her dark hair bouncing down her back as she sat astride his father’s old workhorse, flashed through Father Mahon’s mind. Pulling himself back to the present, he raised his almost invisible eyebrows. ‘I’m surprised your mother remembers, it’s so long ago.’

  ‘It was the first thing she told me when I brought him home from the auction,’ Jerimiah replied.

  ‘How old is he now?’ he asked.

  ‘Twelve,’ said Jerimiah.

  ‘So he’s a few years in him yet?’ said Father Mahon.

  ‘I hope so,’ said Jerimiah, coming to stand on the other side of the horse’s head. ‘He’s got a steady temperament and a strong back, which is as well now because . . .’

  Father Mahon listened while Jerimiah told him of his venture into the removal and second-hand furniture business.

  ‘Yes, I noticed your new sign,’ said Father Mahon.

  ‘Our Jo did it,’ said Jerimiah, his face creasing again in a friendly smile.

  Father Mahon looked suitably impressed.

  ‘She’s a bright girl,’ Jerimiah continued, his chest swelling a little.

  ‘Just like the rest of your and Ida’s young ’uns,’ said Father Mahon.

  ‘Even Billy,’ said Jerimiah, with a wry smile, ‘if he did but apply himself to his school work instead of bedevilling his teachers.’

  Father Mahon’s gaze fixed on the younger man’s face.

  ‘And what about Michael?’ he asked softly. ‘Do you think he’ll take after you for the love of learning?’

  Jerimiah looked surprised for a second but then he gave a heavy sigh. ‘Sure, you must have had a hundred people give you the news.’

  ‘A hundred and one,’ said Father Mahon, with a compassionate smile. ‘But your mother told me not to be too harsh.’

  ‘Well, feel free to ignore her, Father, because you could be no harder on me than I’ve been on meself.’ Pain flitted across Jerimiah’s rugged features. ‘I deserve no less after what the whole business is doing to Ida.’

  Stepping forward, Father Mahon placed his hands on his shoulder. ‘Why don’t we sit a while?’

  Jerimiah nodded and led the way to the old leather sofa in front of the small back office.

  Tucking his cassock under him, Father Mahon sat down at one end and Jerimiah the other. He waited and after a long moment Jerimiah spoke.

  ‘I want to tell you, Father, I’d never been unfaithful to Ida before I went with Ellen; nor since, in fact.’ A wistful smile lightened his expression a little. ‘Since the moment I saw Ida with that bright red ribbon tied in her hair, there was no one else. As God and all his saints are my witness, Father. I didn’t plan it or want it and as soon as I came to my senses I was so ashamed I . . .’ Placing his hand over his eyes, Jerimiah paused for a moment and then looked up with tears sparkling in them.

  ‘And your ma tells me this all happened around the time James died,’ said Father Mahon.

  ‘It did but ’tis no excuse,’ said Jerimiah.

  ‘No,’ agreed Father Mahon. ‘But you’re only human, my son, and as I remember it was when men stood idle on corners for want of work and the church kitchen fed hundreds each day and your poor wife was fair out of her mind with grief.’

  Jerimiah nodded. ‘True, they were hard times, Father, the worst I can remember before or since. Some days me and Ida went hungry and had nothing but potatoes to feed the children . . .’ Sadness flicked across his face again. ‘The fourth of October. I remember it as if it were yesterday; the day James was born. Ida woke me at four, telling me her pains were on her and sent me to fetch Mrs Callahan, the mothers’ helper, from Cartwright Street. It had rained that morning and I still recall running through the puddles to fetch her and the struggle she had to get him out. I remember holding him in our front room as I’d held all the others and he greeted me with a damp arm where he’d wet through his nappy. He was dead a week later; those tiny fingers that had gripped mine cold and still for ever . . .’ He pressed his lips together for a moment then took a breath. ‘To be truthful, with Ida so lost in grief and with Ma not able to do anything because of the way me dad was with the drink, if it hadn’t been for Ellen helping me with the children I think the council welfare officer would have come and taken them away . . . Well, somehow – and even now I can’t clearly recall how, me and Ellen ended up—’

  ‘Indeed,’ cut in Father Mahon. The image of the young dark-haired woman on the horse galloped through his mind again. ‘As the Good Book tells us, frail flesh is weak.’

  ‘But that’s not the whole tale, Father,’ Jerimiah continued. ‘Because . . .’

  Father Mahon’s listened in silence as Jerimiah told him more or less what Queenie had told him about the reason for Ellen’s return.

  ‘May the Lord have mercy on Ellen’s soul,’ said Father Mahon, crossing himself when Jerimiah had finished.

  ‘Amen,’ said Jerimiah, doing the same. ‘And when all’s said and done, Michael is my son and responsibility, which is why I just pray to God and all his saints that Ida will not only forgive me but agree to care for him. However he arrived in this world, Michael shouldn’t suffer for it.’

  ‘No, the poor lad is the innocent party in all this,’ said Father Mahon. ‘But you are asking a great deal of Ida.’

  Jerimiah nodded. ‘I expect with all this blackening of my soul, I should find my way to the confessional.’

  ‘You should,’ said Father Mahon. ‘But it is a great deal more comfortable here.’

  Jerimiah gave Father Mahon a sheepish look and bowed his head, causing an ebony curl to fall across his forehead.

  ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned; it’s been . . .’

  As Jerimiah recounted his fall from grace over ten years ago, Father Mahon contemplated the man with his head bowed before him. Father Mahon had first set eyes on him as a six-month-old when Queenie Brogan walked into St Bridget’s and St Brendan’s for the first time. Looking at him now, with shoulders like an ox and hands the size of a navvy’s shovel, Father Mahon mused, not for the first time, how the slightly built, red-haired Fergus Brogan, a man more drunk than he was sober and who would have pushed Judas Iscariot aside had there been thirty pieces of silver for the taking, could have produced a son such as Jerimiah.

  Wearily dragging herself through the back door, Ida plonked her shopping bag on the table. Christmas would be here before she knew it and although she was feeling anything but festive, she’d managed to pick up a few extra bits to add to her stash of food.

  ‘Anyone in?’ she called through the door to the back parlour as she unbuttoned her coat.

  Thankfully, no one replied.

  She hadn’t really expected to find anyone at home at this time on a Thursday morning. Thanks to a high explosive bomb landing on the parade of shops opposite Naylor, Corbet & Kleinman the night before and blowing every window in the solicitors out, Ida had finished work an hour and a half later than usual.

  Jo was on a day shift at the ambulance station and Stella would have picked Patrick up an hour ago. Having been released from her great-grandmotherly duties, Queenie would be on her round collecting bets for Fat Tony at the various pubs along the Highway and sinking the odd Guinness or two ‘to keep body and soul together’ while she did.

  Jerimiah, who came home as regular as clockwork at midday for his dinner, would have been and gone too. However, since he’d turned her world and mind upside down and inside out by telling her the reason for Ellen’s return, she wasn’t totally upset at missing him. It saved her seeing the look in his eyes that almost willed her to tell him she would accept Michael and care for him once Ellen was gone.

  Going to the stove, Ida held her hand over the kettle for a second. Finding it still warm, she relit the gas. Leaving it to boil, Ida took off her coat and hung it on the nail behind the door. Yawning, she added a spoonful of National tea to the pot then, snatching the kettle from the heat as the whistle started to rattle, made herself a well-ea
rned cuppa.

  Holding the cup in one hand and taking the copy of Home Notes she’d picked up from the newsagent’s on the way home in the other, Ida strolled through to the parlour and headed for her easy chair by the fire. Shifting her knitting bag to the side, she sat down.

  Putting her drink on the occasional table at her elbow, Ida kicked off her shoes and rested her feet on the fender. Queenie had left the fire banked up so within a moment or two Ida felt the heat on her frozen toes.

  She glanced at the clock on the mantelshelf: a quarter past one. A full hour before she had to change into her WVS uniform and take over from Mrs Finkelstein at the rest centre tea bar for the teatime stint.

  Ida yawned again. She switched on the wireless and as the warmed valves released the soothing strings of the BBC concert orchestra, her eyelids flickered down.

  She must have drifted off because a sharp rap on the door brought her back to the here and now with a start. Blinking the sleep from her eyes Ida stood up and, knowing she was paid up with both the rent and the milkman, wondered who it could be banging on her front door. She padded barefoot across the carpet and opened the door. The chilly hallway drove the last remnants of weariness from her mind but even so, when she opened her front door, Ida wondered if she wasn’t dreaming, as standing on the scrubbed doorstep was her younger sister, Pearl.

  Ida’s heart sank.

  Three years Ida’s junior, Pearl, with blonde hair and blue eyes, had always been the pretty sister and their mother’s favourite. Ever since she could remember, Ida had been instructed to ‘look after your sister and don’t let her get into trouble’. Something Ida always tried but failed to do.

  Hardly surprising, really, given that as soon as she was able to totter about on her chubby legs Pearl had left havoc and conflict in her wake. If Pearl wanted it then she would raise hell and high water until she got it, regardless of who suffered along the way.

  These days, she was what the locals called ‘well preserved’; at a distance she looked a decade younger than her thirty-nine years but close up was a different matter.