This Christmas memory is from my friend Yvonne who was born and raised in the East End of London.
Before the war dad’s family owned a shop, they did decorating, painting and paperhanging mostly and were doing quite well but World War II changed all that.
No one was thinking about redoing the lounge when the bombs were being dropped.
Mum’s mother died when she was a teenager, so she had to quit school and help raise her younger brothers and sisters. When she was 15 she met Dad, he was a handsome bloke in his Army uniform and Mum fell in love at first sight.
Shortly after they were married, he was sent to Scotland for training. Mum went with him, but when he was sent overseas, she returned to London.
My brother Tony was born during his first tour of duty and already walking when Dad got his first leave. By the time he went back to his regiment, Mum was pregnant with me.
London was hit hard during the war, and whole neighborhoods were reduced to rubble. I remember piles of bricks and bombed-out buildings; there were some streets that were totally fenced off; it was feared there were unexploded bombs among the rubble.
Going down to the bomb shelters when the sirens went off seemed perfectly normal. We were too young to realize the danger, but I know now that Mum must have been terrified.
Dad was injured during the war and spent almost a year in the hospital in Scotland. Mum was beside herself waiting for him to be released.
We had been living in a flat at the East End of London in an area that was bombed heavily. More than half of the houses on our street had been hit.
The first thing we did when Dad came home was to move to a nicer area; there was still a lot of rubble, – it took years to get it all cleaned up – but the house was bigger, and Dad’s family lived nearby.
During the war, we never even thought about celebrating Christmas. We had very little food and no money to spend on presents, but neither did anyone else. Now that the war was over we were all looking forward to having a real Christmas feast and stockings hung by the fire and maybe even a Christmas tree.
Food was rationed, which meant each person in the family was allocated a certain amount of sugar, flour, tea, butter, and meat. If you wanted to purchase something you had to have the ration stamp as well as the money.
When Mum told the Aunties she wanted to have a big Christmas dinner with all the trimmings they decided to pool the ration stamps to get the necessary supplies.
Since we were all going to eat together, the cooking would be done at our house. The only problem was that some things were not available even if you did have a ration stamp for it; meat was one of those things.
Dad said not to worry; he would sort it out.
Dad was always very enterprising, and somehow he got us a Christmas tree. We immediately set about making paper chains to decorate it.
If we could find bits of metal or anything interesting among the rubble we would clean it up and hang it on the tree. There were no colored lights or ornaments as such.
Uncle Cyril drove a bakery van so his contribution to the feast would be whatever was leftover at the end of his deliveries.
Dad’s brother Sid had a small allotment in the back of the house where he had a vegetable garden.
Tony and I had a special interest in the garden; we were in charge of supplying the fertilizer in the form of horse manure.
When we heard the horses’ hooves on the cobblestones and the clatter of the bells on their harnesses, Tony and I would grab our shovels and buckets and follow the horses down the street to scoop up the dung for Uncle Sid’s garden.
It’s funny how it sounds really disgusting now, but at the time we didn’t give it a second thought.
One night about a week before Christmas Mum and Dad took us on the double-decker bus up to the city to see the lights. The shops were all closed but we weren’t there for shopping we were interested in the window decorations; I remember Selfridges and Marks and Spencer always had the best displays.
We would walk along the River Thames and see the tugboats with their lights shining on the water; it was cold, but we were so excited we didn’t mind the temperature. We stopped to get chestnuts from the man on the corner that roasted them over a big wheelie bin. It was a most magical night.
Mum and Aunt Sylvia wanted to make a fruitcake but were short on some of the ingredients so they went around the neighborhood seeing if anyone could help.
Mrs. Carter had a tin of dried fruit that relatives had sent from America. Mr. Smyth-Jones had a tin of nuts. In exchange, both were promised a piece of the fruitcake and invited to come around for a bit of Christmas cheer.
The only thing remaining to be gotten was the main course and as the time grew near everyone was afraid Dad would not be able to come through. He had a lot of connections and felt sure he could work out a deal somehow, but it was not proving to be as easy as he thought.
Christmas Eve dawned and still no sign of a proper piece of meat. Finally, when we were just about to give up hope, Dad came up the back alley on his bike. He had something wrapped in an old blanket on the handle bars which he handed over to Mum.
She quickly grabbed it and ran into the scullery; always the inquisitive one, I stood by the doorway anxious to see what was going on.
As they stood at the table, Mum unwrapped a wonderful plump goose. Everyone just stood and admired it. It was a thing of beauty; sure it would be more than enough for all of us with some leftover for Boxing Day.
The Aunties congratulated Dad. “We knew you wouldn’t let us down, Len.”
Dad was grinning, and everyone patted him on the back like the hero he was.
Confident that everything was in order, the relatives when home and Tony and I were sent to bed, but curiosity got the best of me, and I snuck back downstairs.
All these years later I can still remember my parents’ conversation.
“Len, where in God’s name did you get this goose?”
“Where do you think? I tried every which way to get a bird, but no one was coming through for me. So this afternoon in desperation I went out to the lake in Hyde Park and waited until it got dark and nabbed this fellow.”
“But those birds belong to the King.”
“Do you think he goes out and counts them? There were so many I’m sure they wouldn’t miss the odd one. I did it for you, Luv. I knew you had your heart set on a real Christmas feast.”
On Christmas night, as we gathered around the dinner table enjoying a wonderful Christmas feast, we gave thanks for all those family members present and a special thanks for our lovely plump goose courtesy of the King.
Lambert writes from Cold Spring.
