Mummy's Memoirs Part 7

Here is Part 7, I hope you enjoy the read.

Grapes were grown all round Berndorff. At the end of summer the grapes would be harvested. In each village they would have a wine feast on different Sundays.

People would go to the selected village and there would be a fair and a market. The beer houses would be in full swing.

I loved the lottery best of all. It was like bingo. In the fair field a large platform was raised and above a large board with numbers coming up. Father would buy me a ticket for about sixpence. I had tremendous luck. I won little prizes but I also won for my father a bicycle, a sack of flour and a large ham.

But one rainy Sunday I got into trouble.

I had been down to the station. It was a new place to explore. Hunting around looking for anything worth finding I cam across a pair of clippers. Clippers for punching holes in tickets. I took them home, secretly using them only when Mother was not there. I knew she would not let me keep them. So I hid them from her.

When the weather was bad they liked going to bed on a Sunday afternoon. I did not want to waste my time going to bed. So I mooched around until I remembered my clippers.

I got them out and found quite a lot of things to make holes in but the trouble was I had to pick up the little rounds of paper that the clippers ejected.

So I left the apartment - I could not go out it was raining hard. I looked through the hall window hoping someone was out and as I did not mind the rain I would go and play with them. But there was no-one around.

All I could see were rows of potted plants people had put in the yard to catch the rain. I got a nice big leaf and pressed my clippers. It was even nicer to punch crisp leaves than paper. I thought the people would be quite pleased to find holes in a pattern on the leaves. They looked very unusual. They’d say, who made our flowers so pretty.

So I punched on to make everyone happy. Then I realised I was getting too wet. I would have to abandon my task, although there were still a lot of the plants left undone but if they found me wet there would be trouble.

Not long after I’d crept home and dried myself a knock came to the door. I opened it and there stood a group of women all looking cross. They wanted to see my mother. So I called Mother but Mother not speaking German got father out of bed too. The women were very nasty. I had been seen doing something to the flowers. I confessed under the duress of Mother’s shrieking and beating.

Father promised full restoration. So they got dressed and we trudged to the nursery and father bought similar flowers to the ones I had damaged. Mother took the damaged flowers and gave the owners the new flowers. One of the plants lived for about 20 years. My clippers were confiscated.

Mother was even nastier to me than usual. She would find fault with me the whole time. Once walking along a road I made her angry about something, so I ran away from her, she chased me. Across the road there was a barrier down across a railway line. It was two poles held together with lengths of ropes.

I climbed the barrier, the train having passed the barrier shot up and I was lifted with it high in the air.

Mother went wild. “Come down you little so and so”. I would not come down. After more threats and shrieking I promised to come down if she would not smack me. So she gave way, she would not smack me if I got down.

As soon as I reached the ground she pounced on me, slapping me all over. I got away from her, crying I shrieked I would take a knife to bed with me and kill myself with it.

Worse was still to come. When father came home he was told all about it. I had to bend over the chair, he took off his leather belt and gave me a stinging whack!

“Are you going to take the knife to bed with you and kill yourself?”.

“Yes, yes” and for every “yes” I got another one.

In the end I had to give in. I would not take the knife to bed with me.

“That’s what they think, I’ll show them”. I would take it this very night. They’d be sorry to find me all covered in blood and dead. Then they’d know it was all their fault.

But they watched me. I couldn’t get hold of a knife.

Now thinking about it, I can’t imagine why I had to it in bed, or anywhere else. I suppose doing it in bed was more dramatic.

Still things would go wrong. Mother once sent me to the butchers for beef. I looked at the counter and saw some beautiful red meat. When I gave the assistant my order she picked up some darkish nasty looking stuff. “No” I did not want that meat. I wanted the lovely red meat. So she weighed it up for me and I took it thinking how pleased Mother would be. What a clever shopper I was.

Mother opened the packet, looked at it and said “What’s this, this isn’t beef, this is horse flesh, take it backand get me beef. I can’t eat horseflesh. Horseflesh is only for the gypsies”. She packed it up shouting her head off. I tried to explain how lovely it was. It must be good. Better than the brownish stuff. She should try it, she would find out how lovely it was.

But she was adamant! Back it must go. I walked back to the butchers slowly. I was too scared to tae it back. Supposing they wouldn’t take it!

In the end I crept back to the shop, so humiliated I could hardly talk. The assistant didn’t seem surprised and to my relief she changed it without a word - whereas I had expected her to attack me too as Mother had done.

At school we were taken swimming into the open air swimming pool. I loved it. I found out you could go anytime but you had to pay. It was very difficult to get money out of Mother! Swimming - swimming what do you need swimming for? I have never been swimming and I am still alive. I had a money box, so I would put the knife in and rattle it and the money would slide down the knife and into my hand. Off I’d be. I couldn’t yet swim, so I would walk around the shallow end lowering myself in the water and pretend I was swimming. People would be walking around too. The latest style in swimming costumes was just one strap on the shoulder, the other would be left off hanging loose. I wore my strap down too - being very modern, wearing the latest fashion.

Then one day when my money box unbeknown to my parents was nearly empty, I was standing in the queue at the turnstile and I heard a boy say “I am with the school” and he was let in without paying. From that time on I was always “with the school”.

The money box raid was discovered. I did my bending over the chair but I had found a way to carry on with my swimming.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Terry x