Mum's Memoirs - Part 4

I hope you enjoy this part of mummy's memoirs - I did.

 

The summers were lovely. I could not wait after the hard winter for the day when the sun came out and I could take my shoes off and go barefooted. It was so thrilling going down the freezing concrete stairs, the stairs growing colder and colder under my feet as I went down to play. Then the stones in the yard! Every stone seemed to cut a fresh wound with every step. I would stub my toes on anything but I would not put my shoes on. It would be heavenly to sit down and give relief to my feet but this was what I had waited for so long, pleading with my mother, refused so many times. The pain was really part of the pleasure.

After a few days I forgot my feet. I only put my shoes on to go to church. Then the shoes were agony, hot and tight. The relief of taking them off and letting the warm air flow and calm the ache.

The washing in the house was done in a communal wash room. Large concrete tubs with fires underneath would boil the clothes, then the clothes would be put in large wicker baskets and carried down to the river for rinsing. A hut ran across the river with half the floor cut out and a ledge. Ladies knelt along the edge and opened the clothes to let the river water rinse them. I wanted to help too but mother would not let me. I would fall in and no-one could swim to get me out. But I kept on trying to join in when she wasn’t watching. When she caught me at it I would get a big thump and I would run out of the hut screaming. One day after a extra hard wallop I ran out crying and bumped into a tree with my nose. I thought I’d broken it. I was stunned! I ran back to mother but she only gave me another smack for not looking where I was going. After that I did not bother going with the washing. It was useless, she would not let me help her and I got more smacks there than at anything else. Mother was always short tempered. She was not well, something to do with her stomach. She was always taking medicines. She could not go to the toilet. I think it was around that time she became a senna pod fiend. There were always cups of senna pods in water. She would not eat and was very thin.

[After granny died, we filled a whole dustbin with her prescription senna pods].

I was thin too. I was not interested in food. Lunchtime I was cooked special soup made from bacon bones and pearl barley. Pearl barley was good for me to restore my appetite. I just couldn’t bear it. The soup would be put down in front of me as first course. Great big plate of it. If I did not eat it I would not get anything else and I would not go out to play!

I would get a spoon, and in desperation put it into my mouth. The pearl barley would go round and round in my mouth but I could not swallow it. The strong bacony taste would make me feel sick. I would starting retching - father would hold my chin and command me to swallow it. The next spoonful would take even longer and tempers would get shorter. The soup would get colder, I would end up crying, looking at the pattern of the old table cloth I would blubber away. I still remember the blue squares of that cloth with flowers within the squares with wooden pieces nailed around it to keep it from fraying. I would sit there for hours, until I found they had lost interest and I would sneak out when they weren’t looking.

Their friends would praise their children to me. How much they ate, and how strong they were. They made me feel bad that I did not eat big plates of soup like their children. I’d think I can do it - until the next meal.

I was a great trial to my mother. She seemed to have no understanding, whatever I did, it was wrong, nothing made her happy. She was always downcast and miserable. She would not let me go out to play if she could help it. I used to look out the window after the rain and see the children making dykes out of the mud and die to get out, I’d beg her to let me go but she would get an old shoe box and pieces of material to make a bed of it and coax me to play with it. I’d sit at the window watching the children, pretending to play with the box. She would get flour bags made of cotton, on which I would draw flowers and patterns. I was quite keen on embroidering them and armed with the flour bags and embroidery silk would say I would much rather sew them in the yard with the sun. So she would come with me. There were wooden benches in the yard. The yard was big. The houses were built in a square around the yard. Around the outside of the houses there were gardens allocated to the tenants. In the road grew walnut trees and in the autumn whole families turned out to knock the walnuts down. These were gathered and shelled and stored for the winter in the lofts which were also used for drying clothes when the weather was bad.

We had two rooms, the windows were double. In the winter it was very cold. When we woke up in themorning the snow was higher than men. Tunnels were built where people could walk.

I had two great ambitions at that time. Wellington boots with zips up the side and a sledge.

I got the boots and the sledge for Christmas. I was so thrilled. I took the boots upstairs to show Frani. Her lover was with her. He too showed great keenness for my boots, pulling the zip up and down and making a great fuss of them. Then he asked me could he have them. I had thought how wonderful he was to appreciate them so much as I did but when he asked me for them I was stunned. How could I refuse? I said he could have them, hoping he was joking and would not take them at all.

He put on his coat and hat, put the boots under his arm and said “Good night”. I heard him going down the stairs. Would he come back? I waited listening for his footsteps to return. He did not come back. I shot to the door, down the stairs, out of the house and then I saw him, I was sobbing with fright that I would not find him or my boots.

By the time I reached him I was howling noisily. He turned round and saw me. I cried “I want my boots”. He gave me them back and we both returned to the house. They all thought it was very funny. I liked him.

On my sledge I would spend hours on the hills. At first even the smallest ride would fill me with fear. After a few rides I got better and bolder, higher and higher I would climb, until I reached the highest part of all. Even then the slide was not steep enough. I found another higher hill with dips in it and I would spend hours and hours on it. Once I crossed a lake with big hills surrounding it. I climbed to the highest hill, lay on my sledge and down I went. When I reached the lake the sledge did not stop. It carried me round and round. I clung to the sledge praying it would not overturn, I had never gone so quickly and I was very frightened.

After a few goes and when the sledge overturned I got a few bruises but even that became tame. But by the time that passed the winter would be nearly over. I was quite cowardly and each winter I would have to go through the same process. The courage I had had the winter before had gone, even the small slides would be frightening.

The spring would arrive, with Easter. In the shops on display weeks before were Easter Rabbits made from chocolate. Spring lambs made from white and pink sugar with sugared flowers on the lamb’s head, they were very beautiful. Small speckled eggs with cream inside were the only Easter eggs made.

Mother would boil eggs in onion skins - they would turn a beautiful orange brown. Easter morning the table would be set with the brown eggs in the centre, salt on a plate. The eggs were taken in the hand and we would crack them against each others. It was a great thing if you happened to have such a hard skinned egg that everyone else’s egg cracked.

Then after Easter on Sundays people would go for long walks into the country. Miles and miles. Then they would settle for picnics. Big baskets of food would be taken and lemonade for the children, beer and wine for the grown ups.

There would be music, harmonicas, zithers and even a fiddle. Most of the men wore lederhosen. Short leather trousers with embroidered braces, long grey socks and a pork pie hat with a big shaving brush on the side.

Everyone would sing. The yodelling was fantastic. I’d yodel as loud as I could but mother didn’t like me doing it, so I would keep out of her way. Later in the afternoon, rested with fortified wine and beer, they would dance.

In the early evening we all would wander home. Father would have to carry me. I used to be too sleepy to walk.