In the year of austerity 1930 Christmas was streaked with hunger like today.

 It was the first week of December 1930 that my mum told my dad he was for the chop. She announced to him what everyone else knew, she had a lover, and her heart’s fancy was coming to live with us in the doss house. Nobody at St Andrew’s villas cared that mum had a boyfriend moving in because they thought she was a widow. We were newly moved there, and my mother’s first orders to her children when we arrived were to call our father grandad in the company of others.

It was easy to do because by then dad looked old and beaten from having to exist as an invalid on poor relief. Forced from his marriage bed, Dad moved upstairs to share the unheated attic with his children because the rent was free in the loft. I shared an ancient flock mattress with my dad. It was stained with the piss of other people who had used it before us and was as comfortable as sleeping on a farmer’s unturned field. We kept warm in our slumbers by throwing winter coats over our bodies and hugging each other closely like animals in their den.

That night after my mum ended her marriage with my dad, he began to unravel emotionally. The shock had worn off, and he was angry. My father snapped and lashed out in rage for the first and last time. Mum tossing him out of their marriage smashed his belief he could ride out the Great Depression, bruised and bloodied but alive with his family intact.

At midnight, when evening brushed into the early morning, my mother called to him from the top of the stairs to stop his brooding in the common room and go to bed in the attic.

I was in bed, but I heard my dad scream from the first-floor landing.  “I am betrayed; I am cheated.” 

My father sounded to me as wounded as a  dying animal. With my sister, I rushed down to find our mother looming outside the door of the room we let in the doss house. Below, I saw my dad charge up the stairs swearing and cursing.

 In his hand- he held a small knife; he used it to clean his pipe. It resembled a tiny shoe. It was a blade that would have trouble causing a paper cut, let alone wreaking jealous havoc against my mum’s body.

My dad lunged at her with the knife. But my mum easily knocked the knife out of my dad’s hand and pushed him to the floor.