"To survive poverty; you must do unspeakable things. It turns you feral, or it makes you dead." Tales from the Green & Pleasant Land
Chapter Twelve:
Happy Christmas 1930
It's the 21st century and I am an old man of over 90 years of age. My allotted time on this earth is nearly complete. I have experienced and lived through so much, but parts of my childhood tug at me as if those events occurred only the day before. Some memories feel recent or are like wounds that never grew scar tissue.
During those early years of my life, my dad's love for me was always plentiful. No matter how sparse our existence was materially during that long ago time of my boyhood, he attempted to bring cheer to all the gloom around us. Dad certainly didn't get as many glad tidings as he gave.
I will never be sure if he understood how loved he was by me. I have missed him during the many decades I have existed since poverty parted us. What a horrible and criminal waste it was for capitalism and our so called British democracy to allow people like my dad to sink under the waves of penury. Those that were lost to the economic catastrophe of the Great Depression were like sailors who had fallen overboard a ship. Their cries for help were heard but no attempt at a rescue operation was ordered because they were considered non essential cargo. .
On Christmas morning, high above the flock mattress I shared with my sister- rain smudged the skylight window of the attic in the doss house. My body felt damp and cold underneath the coat I used as a blanket. Dad woke my sister and me with a greater-than-usual gentleness.
My father gave my sister and me each a penny candy wrapped in coloured paper. He served us weak, lukewarm tea, which he had made in the room my mother and Bill Moxon occupied below us. The tea was sweet from dollops of sugar. When I finished drinking it, I sucked on the penny candy whilst washing my face with a rag I dipped in a wash bowl of stale water.
My father instructed us to go and wish our mother a Happy Christmas. Which I reluctantly did because I was not looking forward to encountering Bill. He was only a few weeks into being part of my life as my mother's "pretend" husband. But Bill acted towards me as if he was there to smarten me up with stern discipline. He was always made worse by drink and I knew he'd had a stomach full on Christmas Eve. I heard his drunken carousing because his songs, swearing, yelling, invectives, and jokes barged into the attic on the violent wings of his booming voice. I knew meeting him on Christmas morning, he'd be hungover, sullen and prone to sharpness against me.
Downstairs, I found my mother making a breakfast of fried toast that I washed down with another cup of tea. She had a present for both my sister and me that the Church had provided indigent mothers so that their children wouldn't believe Father Christmas had forgotten them.
My mum had enrolled my sister and me in the diocese festive charity meal. Before lunchtime, I left the doss with my sister and walked to the parish church to hear mass and receive the church’s bounty.
The feast for Bradford’s catholic poor was held in a gymnasium owned by the Saint Vincent De Paul Society. Inside, a nun gathered us in prayer. We who were destitute, hungry, poorly housed, and unlucky gave thanks to the ever-watchful Jesus.
I prayed that the nuns were in a forgiving mood that day. I did not want my ear pulled or my backside bruised by their love for discipline in the name of the Lord.
We sat on long bench tables and ate our Christmas meal. It consisted of stringy poultry, spuds, and pudding. The gravy was thin, and the food tasted of lost hope.
A priest with a tubercular cough wearing a dingy Father Christmas suit arrived after the meal. He presented each of us with an orange and a pair of socks. The priest was impatient and irritable with us because he enjoyed drinking more than ministering to children.
At home, I found my father upstairs in the attic. Frost was on the skylight that was streaked with coal soot.
“Happy Christmas, lad, sorry there weren’t much for thee and thy sister. Next year, hey son, next year…”
In the first week of 1931, my father moved out of the doss house and out of our lives. Dad left quietly without even a goodbye to me. He was gone as if he had never been in my life.
When I turned eight, I stopped asking my mum about my dad. He was alive, but I was told to think of him as dead because that was my mother's story, and she needed to tell that story to survive. Much later in my life, I understood to survive poverty; you must do unspeakable things. It turns you feral, or it makes you dead.
Thank you for reading my subtack and the chapter selection above from Harry Leslie Smith’s The Green and Pleasant Land. Your help is needed because the cost of living crisis has become a merciless grind. During these past 24 months, I have posted 245 essays, as well as excerpts from the unpublished works of Harry Leslie Smith - along with chapter samples from my book about him. My newsletter has grown from a handful of subscribers to 1200 in that period. Around 10% of you are paid members. I appreciate all of you but ask if you can switch to a paid subscription because your help is NEEDED to keep me housed and Harry Leslie Smith's legacy relevant. But if you can't all is good too because we are sharing the same boat. Take care, John.