Jean Fullerton - A Ration Book Childhood

Jean Fullerton is the author of thirteen historical novels and two novellas. She is a qualified District and Queens nurse who has spent most of her working life in the East End of London, first as a Sister in charge of a team, and then as a District Nurse tutor. She is also a qualified teacher and spent twelve years lecturing on community nursing studies at a London university. She now writes full time.

Find out more at www.jeanfullerton.com

Also by Jean Fullerton

No Cure for Love

A Glimpse of Happiness

Perhaps Tomorrow

Hold on to Hope

Call Nurse Millie

All Change for Nurse Millie

Fetch Nurse Connie

Wedding Bells for Nurse Connie

Christmas with Nurse Millie

Easter with Nurse Millie

A Pocketful of Dreams

A Ration Book Christmas

First published in paperback in Great Britain in 2019 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright Jean Fullerton, 2019

The moral right of Jean Fullerton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Paperback ISBN: 978 178 649 6072

E-book ISBN: 978 178 649 6089

Printed in Great Britain

Corvus

An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

2627 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

To my seven grandchildren, Hannah,
Nathan, Sarah, Imogen, Amelia, Annabelle and
Tabitha, who I love to the moon and back.

AS EVER, AT seven thirty on a working day, the signature tune of the BBC Home Services Up in the Morning Early programme drifted out from the Bush radio on the dresser. Ida Brogan, already dressed in her workday skirt and jumper and with her bouncy chestnut-brown hair encased in a turban scarf, flipped a slice of yesterdays bread in the frying pan.

It was the second Monday in October and Ida was standing in the kitchen of number 25 Mafeking Terrace, the three-up three-down Victorian workmans cottage that had been her familys home for the past dozen years.

Mafeking Terrace was situated between Cable Street to the south and the Highway to the north, just a short walk from London Docks. The narrow street was lined on both sides by houses identical to Idas. Every front door opened straight on to the pavement, without the benefit of a small garden or railing for privacy, while at the rear, each house had just a square paved yard with an outside toilet. A shared alleyway ran between each house and the one either to the left or to the right of it.

Before Chamberlain announced the country was at war with Germany a little over two years ago, families used the open space behind their homes to store their prams, tools and bicycles, but now the small yards were cluttered with stirrup pumps and sand-filled buckets ready to extinguish incendiary bombs, while barrels filled with soil were used for growing potatoes and iron drinking troughs for sprouting winter cabbage.

Life in the street had changed, too, since that fateful broadcast to the nation. Men had received their call-up papers and had gone off to the army, Idas eldest son Charlie among them, while children and expectant mothers and those with babes in arms were evacuated to the country.

Last year, when the Luftwaffe blitzed East London nightly, the Brogans terraced house had been packed to the gunnels as all the family took shelter there, but now that her two eldest daughters, Mattie and Cathy, were married with babes of their own, there was more room to spread out. Jo, her youngest daughter, had a bedroom to herself at the front of the house while Billy, the baby of the family, no longer had to share with his big brother.

Of course, as Queenie, Idas argumentative and contrary mother-in-law, occupied the front parlour, it was still a bit of a squeeze, but they were better off than many of their neighbours, who might emerge from their shelters after a visit from the Luftwaffe to find their houses reduced to a pile of rubble and all their worldly goods gone.

The blackout would still be in force for another hour, so the curtains across the window overlooking their backyard were closed as was the one across the back door. Therefore, the room where the Brogan family ate their meals, drank tea and exchanged gossip was illuminated by a 40-watt bulb which hung from the ceiling above. What with the blackout coming into force at half five in the evening and lasting until most people were arriving at work in the morning, you barely had time to draw back the curtains before you had to shut them again. What with that and the low-wattage output from the power station to conserve coal for the factories, the inhabitants of East London well, in fact the whole country were living in a dull twilight land.

Looks like the fogs lifting, said Jerimiah, dabbing his freshly shaven face as he stood by the sink in his trousers and vest.

Ida raised her eyes from his breakfast sizzling in the lard and studied her husband of twenty-five years.

At forty-four Jerimiah Boniface Brogan was two years older than her and although he sported a few grey hairs at his temple and amongst the curls on his chest, he was as easy on the eye as he had been when theyd met all those years ago. A lifetime of heaving discarded household items on and off the back of his wagon meant his big-boned frame was still tightly packed with muscle and he towered above most of the men in the area by a good three inches.

Pity, said Ida. The German bombers are bound to be back tonight, then.

Pity too, he winked, because I was hoping perhaps to have another night with you in the same bed.

Suppressing a smile, Ida turned her attention back to the frying pan. Honestly, Jerry, fancy thinking of such things and at your time of life!

What can you be meaning, woman? he replied, an expression of incredulity spreading across his square-boned face. Im as frisky as a man half me age.

Are you now? said Ida, making a play of moving the pan on the gas.

He flipped the towel over his shoulder and, striding across the space between them, grabbed her around the waist.

Sure, dont you know the truth of it, me lovely girl? he said, pressing himself against her. And a woman of your age shouldnt be complaining either.

Get away with you, she laughed, shoving him. Im the mother of four grown-up children not some slip of a girl to be dazzled by your Irish charm.