OUR CHRISTMAS DINNER OF 25th DECEMBER 1944
Our dining room is on the back of the house and looks out over the garden through a bay window. The window panes are steamy and running with water because it's really cold outside. (When I say "dining room" I really mean that it is our living room as well and has been all through the war except on Sundays and at Christmas. It's where the wireless set is). As you go in to the room, the dining table stretches down the length of it. Mum sits at this end of the table with her back to the wall and facing the window, Dad is at the other end, in a dining chair with arms, I am next to Mum and then my sister is on the same side as me. She and I look over to the other side of the table, towards the fireplace where a fire is burning as well. (The house is ever so warm and cosy today, even though it's such a jolly cold day). Sheila normally sits over there when there's only the four of us. But today is different, it's a bit special and that's because we have a guest and it's the guest who is sitting there, on the other side.
As I look across the table I think of past times when other people have sat there. Especially, it was my brother's place. But Graham hasn't sat there for three Christmases now. This is him and me when I last saw him, at home for a few days in February of last year). And at this very moment he is somewhere up in the mountains in the middle of Italy having some sort of Christmas dinner with his comrades and possibly just thinking a bit about us all sitting around the familiar dining table. He took this picture there. It's how he gets his food.
And I also think of my grandpa who regularly used to sit there, by the side of my brother. I was only three or four when he was last with us. I can still remember him looking across the table at me but I don't think that it can have been at a Christmas meal because of what he was eating. Perhaps it was a Sunday evening supper. He sat there with a piece of toast on the plate in front of him, he picked up a strangely shaped bottle with something called anchovy sauce in it, shook it vigorously, took the cork out, tipped the bottle up on end and started to pour the stuff out onto his toast. It came out in a narrow, orangey stream and Grandpa started on one edge of the slice. He drew a line with the sauce on the slice, then immediately went back in the opposite direction with another line as close as he could get to the first one. Gradually he edged across the slice of toast with line after line. I got more and more agitated as this went on. In the end I could stand it no longer and well before he had worked his way to the other edge I shrieked out: "THAT'S ENOUGH!" After the surprise had worn off I think they all treated it as a joke and I didn't get into any trouble for being so rude. And after all, I was only about three.
One day, we all hope and pray that my brother will take his proper place again on the other side of the table. But Grandpa won't. He was bombed out of his home in Handsworth or Harborne or somewhere in the autumn of 1940, caught pneumonia and never really recovered. I'm sure Dad and Mum still remember him and I do, just a bit. But he is still with us in one way - his grandfather clock now stands against the wall behind Mum's chair, ticking patiently away and chiming the hours. My grandfather's grandfather clock.
All the food is on the table. Potato, mashed and roast, and cauliflower and carrots and those horrible bitter Brussels sprouts which you chew and swallow as quickly as you can because of course you never, ever leave any food on the side of your plate in this house. Dad gets very cross if I am ever suspected of picking at my food. "If you were in Europe today you'd probably be picking food out of dustbins...." I hate being told off like that and do everything I can to avoid it. Dad is now standing up and carving the meat. This year it is a fine cockerel. Like a chicken only much bigger. We usually have goose, sent by post from a farmer who Mum and Dad know in South Devon. But not this year. Mr and Mrs Cummings have had to leave their farm so that the American Army can take over all the nearby land for training. They still can't go back to it.
Dad carves away. Leg, wing, slices of breast and stuffing are passed around the table. As I watch him I know he's doing it because it's his job as Head of the House. He seems to like doing it. I don't think I shall when I'm grown up. It looks quite difficult, you have to treat everybody fairly, you are the last one to get stuck into your meal and by then other people, if they've been rude enough to start, have nearly finished. And, on top of all that, you probably only get the scruffiest end of the meat.
Anyway, everyone is served eventually and they settle settle down to eat. Including our special guest. He's a young man, he smiles a lot and is very nice to us. And he's a Yank.
Bob is my sister's friend. We are not allowed to call him a boyfriend. She is very fussy about things like that. She's 17 and knows her own mind and so we have to be careful what we say. I think she met him either at the Ice Rink or at a dance somewhere in Birmingham. I imagine it was her idea to invite him for Christmas dinner. He's been here before and I have met him several times. She likes him and we all do. As I say, it was possibly her idea to invite him but it was probably with Dad's encouragement as well.
....to be continued......
