Christmas in John Street – 1962
This house is amazing! It isn’t ours; we’re only renting it from Mr. Eardly-Wilmott – we never live anywhere long enough to bother buying. It’s the fifth house in a long terrace. It has two front doors: one for people and one for pigs. The pig door leads to a flagstone passageway and then into the back yard. There’s another passage at the back of the yard, with high walls either side. At the bottom, you turn right and there is the garden, which runs along the back of all the other gardens in the street. There’s a tiny raised walled garden in the corner that I think was once a building. There’s an enormous old apple tree, which is great for climbing, loads of fruit bushes, a vegetable patch and lots of flower borders. It’s all dead now though but I bet it’ll be lovely in the spring. We’ve been here two months
Inside the house there are doors everywhere – four in the front room alone. One leads to the pig passage; the second is at the bottom of the stairs, a third to the kitchen and another to the den. The furniture wouldn’t go up the stairs, so the removers took out the window frames in the front bedroom and pulled it up on ropes. The kitchen is a great big room with a stone floor, a walk-in pantry, a cellar, a coal house and a door to the yard. The den’s a bit of a funny place. Dad uses it to make his boats. You can only get to it by going through the front room – well, actually, that’s not quite true. High up on the wall is a cupboard. If you climb into it you can get right up to the attic and come out in my bedroom – brilliant!
That’s a laugh – my bedroom I mean – I sleep in a cupboard at the back of Mum and Dad’s room. There’s just room for the bed but nothing else. I have a shelf, where I keep my books and a bedside light. I don’t mind though, because of the secret tunnel to the room downstairs.
It’s just a few days before Christmas. We woke up this morning to findeverywhere literally knee deep in snow. Mum put some washing on the line at the bottom of the garden and now she can’t get down to pick it in as the passageway has filled up with snow. She put Dad’s wellies on, but the snow came over the top, so she gave up. Even she had to laugh.
Even though it’s only round the corner, the school is closed (yippee!) the snow’s too deep, the buses can’t get here and the boiler’s packed up. Dad and my brother, Richard can’t get to work. They tried to dig the car out but it was hopeless – the roads are impassable anyway. It seems it’s all over the country.
I’m getting excited about Christmas. Dad says he’s ordered two chickens. I express my concern as to the adequacy of two chickens between eight of us, but he assures me they are Jersey Giants, whatever that is, and mum seems happy enough. There will be mum and dad, me and Richard, my sister, Brenda and her husband Tony and the baby, also called Tony. He is really cute now he’s six months old. Oh, and Ike of course. He came with the house. I know that sounds odd. Apparently he is an old family retainer, who worked on Mr E-W’s estate, as did his father and probably his father before that – it’s that kind of place. So Ike gets to ‘look after’ the house and whoever rents it has to look after Ike. He’s alright, though it’s a bit funny having him here. He’s very quiet and keeps to himself, though he’s taken a real shine to mum and will do anything for her. She’s very kind to him and makes him feel at ease. He never goes anywhere – I don’t think he has anywhere to go.
There are also the Davids (two of them). They work on power stations like dad and Richard. They always end up in the same place as us eventually and usuallylodge with us. This is why I sleep in a cupboard! Anyway, the Davids are stuck here because of the snow, so we will now be ten for Christmas dinner.
It’s Christmas Eve and I am in the yard, throwing snow at the wall. Richard comes out and we start a snow ball fight. Then the Davids come out, and then Dad and Brenda and Tony. Even Mum and Ike join in for a while. They behave like a bunch of kids, yelling and squealing, but it’s lots of fun.
Dad has made me a sledge out of some old wood and the sides of an old iron bedstead. After lunch, Me, Richard and the Davids troop up to the playing fields, which are on the top of a steep hill. Everyone in the town is there and the snow has become hard and slippery. The sledge weighs a ton. I’m sure it will sink when we sit on it. I see Alethea Ship; she really fancies herself because her dad is rich. She has a brand new, shiny, yellow sledge. She spots mine and laughs spitefully; my face burns. The sledge is big enough for all of us to squeeze onto at once; me in the front, then Richard, then the Davids. The boys push hard with their legs and we whizz down the slope. It’s brilliant! The sledge goes really fast; the iron runners are perfect on the compacted snow. We overtake everyone on the smaller sledges – including Alethea Ship. I give her a ‘mine’s better than yours’ look. She tosses her head and pretends to ignore us, but I can see she’s furious. We haul the sledge back up the hill for a second run, shrieking as the wind stings our faces. At the bottom we tumble into a heap, laughing and yelling. We go up and down the hill until it starts to get dark. We are soaked through and exhausted Mum makes hot chocolate and we sit around the kitchen table in the warm, eating hot toast dripping with butter, and fruit buns straight from the oven. Mum makes the best cakes in the world.
At last it’s Christmas Day and we are all allocated tasks after opening our presents. I have already been to the dairy at Pierce’s farm to get the cream. It’s richand dark and has a thick, buttery yellow crust on the top. I took one of Mum’s best dishes and a beaded cloth, carrying the whole very carefully. Mr. Iles (the local barber, who breeds them) has already delivered the Jersey Giants – they are huge! I can’t believe my eyes. They’re so big Mum can’t find a dish big enough to roast them in. She eventually gets the better of them – they are tamed and harnessed. Shehas forced them into two dishes and is now trying to get them in the oven, but the door keeps bursting open. ‘You’re supposed to kill them first,’ Richard says. Eventually Dad wedges a stool under the door handle and ties a length of rope right round the cooker. The door stays shut, but every time Mum wants to baste the chickens, it all has to be undone and then done up again. She gets fed up after the third time and says they’re on their own. We all laugh about it, but I think the cooker is ruined.
Ike is very jolly today –I think he’s been at the Port. He’s been helping Mum with the vegetables, so I suppose he deserves it. We scrub the table when they finish. We have to eat in the kitchen as this is the only table big enough for all ten of us. The kitchen is hot from the cooking. There is an Aga and Mum has filled the oven and the hobs on that, as well as the cooker. She tells Richard to get more coal. As he opens the door an avalanche of snow piles into the kitchen – the coal house has no roof. Everyone squeals and we rush to shovel it out before it melts.
We cover the table with a white bed sheet as we don’t have a cloth big enough. There are red and green crackers and Dad has cut some holly that hangs over from next door. The red crackers and berries pick out the red in the pattern on the china and the table looks beautiful. One fat, brown Jersey Giant sits at the head of the table, waiting for Dad to carve. There is a big white dish of crisp, golden roast potatoes, roast parsnips, carrots, sprouts and chestnuts, two sorts of stuffing and thick dark gravy. You could mop the smell up with bread it is so delicious. The other Jersey Giant sits on top of the Aga, waiting to be sacrificed. I can’t imagine we will need it, but we do. The Christmas pudding is still in the cloth, suspended over a pan of boiling water and the cake is on the flap of the kitchen cabinet. The cake is a work of art, as always. Dad does the icing – he’s very good. This year we have different coloured parcels and Christmas crackers made of marzipan. He had a clever idea and decided to mix the icing with his electric drill – it went everywhere. We all giggled, till we saw Mum’s face. She did see the funny side – once we had cleaned up the mess.
We all sit quietly at the table.
‘For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful,’ Dad says before attacking the Jersey Giant. Crackers bang and we all put on the paper hats, even though we know they look silly. We take it in turns to read out the jokes and riddles, groaning at their corniness. The baby laughs when we do, which makes us laugh even more. The table is a crush of arms and dishes passing back and forth. The food is wonderful and there is a lovely feeling of togetherness. It’s as if a happiness spell has been cast over us. The baby sits in his high chair sucking a chicken leg, burbling and chuckling. Everyone makes a big fuss of him and tells him what a clever boy he is.
I look at Ike. He has a smile as big as a banana. I’ve never seen him look so happy. His face looks as if it’s been polished, his cheeks red against his nut brown skin. I’m not sure if it’s the heat, or the Port. I wonder what Christmas is normally like for him. Is he always made welcome by the people who live in the house? And are they as kind to him as my mother is? Today, he is one of the family and seems very content.
We are all stuffed, but no one refuses when Mum offers Christmas pudding. I fetch the cream. It has been in the pantry, on the marble slab and it is cold against the hot Christmas pudding.
Plates are pushed back. Nobody can move; we are all too full. No one is in a rush to leave the table, it’s as if we are afraid we will break the spell, we are all so happy in each other’s company. We talk and laugh and then Ike strikes up with ‘Deck the Halls’ and we all join in. We sing ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ very badly, laughing and stumbling over the words. Ike tells stories of his days working on the estate. As a boy, he was a beater, scaring the birds into the open for the shoot, carrying them home to the kitchen afterwards. As he grew he worked the land or helped in the stables; it seems he could do most things if need be. He maintains the old countryside traditions still and will be out early tomorrow to bag his spot for the Boxing Day hunt. He talks of a different world – servants and stables and ladies in ball gowns. We are entranced.
‘Mrs.,’ he always calls Mum that, ‘this is the nicest Christmas I’ve spent in many a long year. Thank you, my dear; thank you all.’ I feel sorry that he doesn’t have a family of his own. At least the Eardly-Wilmotts try to make sure he is looked after. They even bought him a Christmas present.
Ike nods his head and soon his snores echo round the kitchen. The baby, too, is tired and Brenda takes him for his nap. We push our chairs back quietly, trying not to scrape them on the stone floor, though I don’t think Ike would wake if the end of the world came. We take turns washing and drying the huge pile of dishes, leaving them on the side, ready for tea, though no one can imagine ever wanting to eat again. Mum and Dad have sloped off to the front room to watch a film on the television. The rest of us file in one by one and soon all the chairs are taken and the floor is littered with bodies. Everyone is sleepy and no one has the energy to play games. I look out my Christmas books and bag the window seat. It is lovely to look out on the wintry scene beyond the glass, whilst I am warm, cosy and safe inside. The togetherness feeling has filled the whole house. It’s like we have been wrapped up together in an angel’s wings, love flowing from one to the other, bathing us in joy and peace.
This has been the best Christmas ever
