Читать книгу Cracked Eggs and Chicken Soup - A Memoir of Growing Up Between The Wars - Norman Jacobs - Страница 14

With practically all of Dad’s money gone, Mum had to think of how to eke out the little we had left until Dad could find some more work. So, very early on Monday morning, while Dad made his rounds of the furniture shops in Whitechapel looking for work as a lino-layer, Mum turned to Julie and me and said, ‘You two’ll have to skip school this morning and go out and find what food you can for as little as you can. Ikey, you go off to Funnel’s and get some stale bread,’ and gave me sixpence. As I opened the door, Mum called after me, ‘Don’t forget the pillowcase, Ikey!’ I raced down the stairs and went off to our local baker’s with my pillowcase. You had to go very early in the morning as many other families were in the same plight as us and were having to do the same thing. We were not always lucky but, on this day when I asked for ‘sixpenn’orth of stale bread, please’ I was very lucky as the lady in the shop threw five loaves of differing shapes and sizes in various stages of staleness into my pillow case. When I got them home, Mum broke out into a big smile and patted me on the head, saying, ‘Well done, Ikey! That’ll keep us going for a bit. Let’s sort them out.’ We then sorted out the fresher, or should I say the least stale, for eating, and the remainder were put aside to be soaked down for a bread pudding. Delicious.

Julie meanwhile had been dispatched to Kramer’s, a big provision store in the Lane, on the corner of Wentworth Street and Goulston Street, to get some eggs. The eggs were sold outside the shop from a long stall on which were placed four or five long wooden crates of eggs. The lady who sold the eggs stood with her back to the wall behind the stall. Julie was also given sixpence, but she had a basin rather than a pillowcase. When she reached the stall, she said to the lady, ‘Sixpenn’orth of cracks, please.’ The lady then put in a dozen cracked eggs from a tray marked, ‘best new laid’. Whether they were new laid or not was very debatable. As always, when Julie got them home and Mum cracked them open, at least three or four of them were found to have gone bad.

Mum gave me and Julie a bit of crust each as a reward and then said, ‘Time to get some washing done.’ This was a regular Monday-morning chore, whether Dad was in work or out of it. Once again I had to get the bath out, only for washing this time. I placed it on our table rather than the floor, and Julie and I had to bring the water up from the yard. A similar process to bath night took place as Mum heated up the water and poured it into the bath. Regular washing of clothes was, of course, along with the never-ending battle against the invasion of lice and bugs, all part of trying to keep our family clean.

Once Mum had decided the bath had enough water in, she put all the clothes in and scattered some Rinso or Hudson’s Washing Powder over them and left them for a few minutes to soak, while she placed our washboard next to the bath. Then she would take the clothes out one by one, place them on the washboard and give them a good hard vigorous rub with some Sunlight Soap. It was bloody hard work and, of course, while she was sweating away doing this, she had to keep an eye on all us children, which in itself was a full-time job. Most times, she would just tell us to go out and play in the street. It seems funny to say that in this day and age, but off we’d go, including the two-year-old Abie, in fact all of us except the baby, to play outside. Normally she would place Joey in his large makeshift cot, made from yet another orange box. Although we were very young to be outside on our own, there was not much fear of traffic in those days, though I do remember that one day when we were jumping on and off Tingle Jacobs’s low loaders as we often did – the idea being that as many boys as possible would jump on and then one of us would shout out ‘whip behind Guv’nor’ when we saw Mr Jacobs or one of his men approaching and we would all jump off – I gave a big leap off the back and got run over by a horse-drawn cart that was coming along. Luckily I was unhurt.

That evening, Dad got back quite late. He sat down and took his boots off before saying a word. Then he just shook his head, looked at Mum and said, ‘Nothing! No one wants any polishing, no one wants any lino laid and even the bloody club said they’ve got enough waiters at the moment. It’s desperate out there, Becky. Everyone looking for work that doesn’t exist. So much for Lloyd George’s land fit for sodding heroes.’

Mum started sobbing again. ‘What are we going to do, Jack? Ikey got us some stale bread this morning and Julie got some cracked eggs but that was nearly all the money we had.’

‘I’ll try again tomorrow, but if there’s nothing then, we might have to call in the Relieving Officer.’ This was the first time I can remember Dad looking so unhappy and almost defeated. In my eyes, he had always been such a strong, happy man. Things must be bad, I thought.

Mum started crying even harder. ‘No, Jack, supposing they put us in the Workhouse. Can’t we try the Board of Guardians first?’ The Workhouse was a threat that hung over all poor families at the time. It was the most hated institution in the country and families did all they could to avoid being incarcerated behind its dark forbidding walls. It wasn’t prison of course, but it might just as well have been. Families were split up and the men and boys put to work on hard labour, while the women too had to ‘earn their keep’ while trying to look after any young children they had. It was to be avoided at all costs. But if you had no money and couldn’t feed yourself or pay the rent, sometimes there was just no alternative other than begging on the streets.

‘They won’t put us in the Workhouse, Becky,’ Dad said. ‘I’ll make sure of that! But perhaps you could try the Guardians tomorrow to see if they can help.’

The following day, Mum took us brood of kids along to the Jewish Board of Guardians’ office in Middlesex Street where we joined a long queue of people waiting to be seen. Eventually it was our turn and the man behind the desk said, ‘Hello, Mrs Jacobs, haven’t seen you for a while. How bad is it this time?’

Mum replied that Jack was out of work and had been trying to get another job but so far had been unsuccessful, ‘I’m sure it won’t be for long. He’ll be back in work in no time, but if you could give us something to tide us over we would be very grateful.’

The man drummed his fingers on the table. ‘You know, Mrs Jacobs,’ he said eventually, ‘it wouldn’t hurt if maybe you came to shul more often. We like to help Jews down on their luck, but we have to be careful how much charity we give out, and maybe the more deserving get the most.’

Mum started crying. ‘Can’t you see the handful I’ve got here with all my kinder? We just don’t have time for shul. But I promise we’ll come as often as we can, believe me.’

The man gave a snort and said, ‘Yes, I’m, sure Mrs Jacobs. I’ll give you a couple of tickets this morning, but maybe you should take notice of what I said already.’

The tickets he gave us were known as BMC tickets, which stood for bread, meat and coal. Their value was 1s. 6d. and they could be exchanged at any shop displaying the notice ‘We take BMC tickets’. The tickets had a proviso printed on them saying the shopkeeper was not allowed to give any change; you either bought the exact amount or paid the extra if it was over. The reason for this being that some people might buy a small amount then booze or bet with the change. The shops that displayed the signs were mostly run by Jewish owners and it was to these that we went after obtaining our tickets.

Although they were called bread, meat and coal tickets, they were accepted for any purchases. Mum’s priority this morning was to get some veg for a stew, so it was off to Nelly Ragan’s in Shepherd Street to get some pot-herbs, carrots, turnips, onions and potatoes as you could get a much greater quantity of these for your 1s. 6d. than meat, and a nice stew would see us through a few days with luck. As there was no actual meat in the stew, Mum also bought an Oxo cube. At that time they were little hard objects which took about an hour to melt but at least they gave you a vague taste of meat.

One other shop we went to when times were hard was Palacci, a small general store in Shepherd Street near White’s Row. It was here we would be sent with one of our own cups for a penn’orth of jam or mustard pickles. This was done by weighing the cup first then adding the jam or pickles till a penny’s worth was registered. We could also get a penny packet of tea or cocoa here.

We were also fortunate in living near Spitalfields, a big fruit and vegetable market. This was always very busy, especially in the morning when Commercial Street would be choked with moving and parked traffic. All the produce sold there was laid out on sacks, in baskets or in boxes. One of the sights of the market was porters carrying numerous round baskets of produce on their heads. The importance of morning at Spitalfields for us though was that this was the best time to go looking for ‘specks’. These were bad oranges or apples thrown into a box which could be scavenged for nothing. Selecting those with half or more salvageable I would take them home where the bad parts were cut away and the remainder eaten. This was also the source of much of our orange box furniture.

As it seemed unlikely the Board of Guardians would be giving us any more tickets in the near future, Mum spent just one of the tickets, saving the other for a few days’ time if Dad still hadn’t managed to get any work, though in truth, Mum wasn’t too concerned that the Board of Guardians had threatened her with no more tickets unless we went to shul once in a while as, fortunately for us, though, I suppose, unfortunately in other ways, there were a number of other smaller charities who dispensed second-hand clothing and BMC tickets, who weren’t quite so fussy about who they gave their charity to. Camperdown House in Aldgate was one such place. These places created a band of people known as professional schnorrers, who were always to be seen wherever anything was being handed out. They would line up for the clothes and then flog most of what they got, so getting a few bob at a needy person’s expense.

As the week wore on, it became obvious that there was just no work around and that we were going to have to continue to rely on charity to see us through. So, in spite of Mum’s misgivings, Dad did go and see the Relieving Officer with our famous pillowcase, hoping to get it filled up.

The Relieving Officer was employed by the Ministry of Health to assess claims for support as a result of unemployment or sickness. Although many, like Mum, were afraid this assessment would lead to a spell in the Workhouse, the local Board of Guardians of the Workhouse were in fact more interested in trying to keep families together in their own homes if at all possible as it put less pressure on them to have to house and feed yet more inmates.

When Dad returned from the Bun House, which is what we called the Relieving Officer’s establishment, he emptied the pillowcase on to the table and, to our great delight, out fell a large quantity of basic foodstuffs, more stale bread, cracked eggs and the like but the highlight of this haul of food was a stone jar of Hartley’s strawberry jam, which I think we finished up in less than an hour! As well as its being a little treat, the empty jar served as another cup for us. An item of foodstuff we weren’t so keen on was a piece of very smelly cheese – God knows how old it was! Davy exaggeratedly held his nose and said, ‘Phew! That smells like sweaty feet!’ Ever afterwards in our house, cheese we obtained from charities was always referred to as sweaty feet.

Dad told us that the Relieving Officer had also given him some money to pay for the rent and gave it to Mum to put away for the next time the rent man called. Looking back on this now, I think we were very lucky to have such a responsible father. I guess many at the time would have just drunk the rent money away, but Dad was a real family man and hardly ever went out for a drink. His first priority was always looking after us.

As winter was approaching, Dad had another idea about where we could get some relief and this was the Soup Kitchen in Butler Street. It opened three nights a week and issued bread, marge, saveloys, sardines and of course soup. The first time Dad went down there, he took me with him. He had to fill in a form – name, address, number in family etc. – which the clerk at the desk stamped and placed on a pile of other such forms. He then handed over what he called a kettle, though it wasn’t like any kettle I’d ever seen. It was a round tin with a lid and metal handle with a thick wire attached to each side, upright when held, lying down the side when not in use. Because of this we always called it our can rather than kettle. These cans had a number stamped on the side depicting how many portions you were to get. Because we had such a large family, ours had the number four stamped on it.

Visiting the Soup Kitchen became a way of life for us over the next few years and it was usually me who Mum and Dad sent along to get our supplies. By opening time, there would usually be a long queue along Butler Street and when the doors opened we would all file in. Once inside, six crash barriers had to be negotiated in a single line till the door leading to the serving area was reached. There would be two men doing the serving, both dressed in white and wearing tall chef’s hats. The first one would give me four brick loaves, two packets of Van den Burgh’s ‘Toma’ margarine and two tins of sardines. If you preferred them you could also ask for saveloys here, but then you couldn’t get soup as well. It was a case of either/or. I was invariably told to get the soup as we had saveloys once but they were 80 per cent bread so we never got them again.

Having dealt with the grocery department I moved along to the soup giver. He was a great favourite of mine; known by our family as ‘the fat cook’, he was a stout, domineering man with a fine beard. As I gave him our can he would look me in the eyes and ask ‘Fleish or no fleish?’ If you did not want any meat you’d say ‘No fleish’. Now although the meat was, as a rule, 50 per cent fat, I was always instructed to get some, so I would return his gaze and reply in a loud voice, ‘Fleish.’ He would then glare at me and go off to a large boiler to get it.

I always took our food home for the family to eat there, but some people had their soup at the kitchen itself. There was a long table with form seating each side, set out between the boilers and the servers, where anybody, Jew or gentile, could go in and sit down to a bowl of soup and a thick slice of bread. They did three different varieties of soup: rice, pea and barley alternately, one variety per night. People who did not want the soup at all but just the groceries were given a metal disc with the portion number stamped on it. Funny, not wanting soup in a soup kitchen.

Every Passover, before they closed for the summer, we would be given four portions of various groceries for the holiday which consisted of four packets of tea and four of coffee, some ‘Toma’ marge and many other foodstuffs. I loved the smell of the coffee, its aroma came right through the packet, a red packet with Hawkins printed on it. In spite of being to see you through Passover, matzos were not supplied; these were obtainable from the shul. Dad would come back from Duke’s Place Shul with about six packets of these crunchy squares. There were two makes, Latimer’s, which we disliked as we thought them too hard, and Abrahams and Abrahams’, which were a trifle better and the ones Dad normally got.

With a growing family, the other big problem we had when Dad was out of work was finding money for clothes. This particular period of unemployment was to last several weeks and, although there were many cheap second-hand clothing shops and stalls down the Lane, they were still out of our reach financially.

One evening, as we settled down to our dinner of a slice of stale bread and marge, Mum said, ‘Jack, we really need to find some way of getting some clothes for the kids. They’re all growing up so fast that all their clothes are getting too small.’ I was certainly glad to hear this as at the time I was stuck with two pairs of boots I hated and just wanted to get shot of. The first was a pair of girl’s high lace-up boots, which I felt highly embarrassed wearing and I had several terrible ribbings at school and amongst my friends. I didn’t like it but wear them I had to. As the saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers and I suppose the reality was that we were little more than beggars. The other boots I had was a pair of button-up boots that were really awkward to do up, and that’s putting it mildly. One side of the boot had six holes, the other side had matching buttons. To get the buttons through the holes a button-hook was employed, a long iron rod with a hook on the end. Putting the hook through the hole then round the button and pulling back through the hole was the method, six times for each boot. I just prayed and hoped that if Dad was going to get us some new clothes, it would include new footwear for me.

I can’t remember ever having a new pair of shoes or boots, even in good times, as they were very expensive and we mostly relied on the many second-hand stalls in and around the Lane for our footwear. Once we had them they would last as long as possible and get repaired over and over again as long as there was still an ounce of life in them. These repairs were always carried out by Dad on a last he had, which had three foot sizes. The soles were always finished off with Blakey’s metal studs, the heels having a half-round one at the back.

Dad replied, ‘What about your friend, Ada? She’s done all right for herself. How about asking her for a few cast-offs for the kids?’ Ada Bloom was an old friend of Mum’s, whom she had worked with at Toff Levy’s. Ada had done all right for herself by marrying one of the bosses and had moved off to the leafy suburbs of Stamford Hill, living in her own house in the posh Osbaldeston Road. Ada had six or seven children of her own, varying in ages from a few years older than Julie, down to a two-year-old toddler, so there were plenty of clothes to be had.

The following day, the whole family went on an expedition to Stamford Hill. It was quite an adventure for us kids as we went on the tram. Although it didn’t occur to me at the time, but thinking back now, I wonder where Dad got the money from for all the tram tickets. When we arrived at Osbaldeston Road itself I couldn’t believe it. It was nothing like any road I had ever seen near where we lived.

I think I must have walked along this stunning quiet tree-lined street full of enormous Victorian houses with my jaw open all the way until we came to no. 95, Ada’s house. There was a large knocker on the front door and Dad gave it a loud bash. Ada came to the door and looked a bit taken aback to see our motley crew on her doorstep. But her surprise soon gave way to a big smile, ‘Becky, bubbeleh,’ she said, beaming, and threw her arms round Mum. ‘So lovely to see you. Come in, come in already!’ As we went through the front door, I looked around her hallway and up the stairs and wondered how many families must be living here and where their rooms were.

She showed us in to her living room and once again my jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe how big the room was. She sat us all down, with Mum and Dad sitting on a big leather sofa and us kids on the rest of the three-piece suite. The room contained a sideboard, a large gramophone, a huge table with six proper wooden chairs round it – not upside down crates – and an upright piano. I had never seen a room like this before. All this furniture! We would only have had just about enough room for the sofa in our house! Ada went off to the kitchen to rustle up some tea and cake. The cake was so delicious that I asked if there was any more. Mum immediately put her hands up, ‘Oy vey, Ikey, where’s your manners?’ she said, ‘I’m sorry about that, Ada.’ Ada smiled and said, ‘That’s all right, of course he can have some more.’ At which, Julie, David, Bill and Abie all started chorusing, ‘Me, me too. I’d like some more cake.’ I think Mum was a bit mortified as it looked as though she starved us, but Ada didn’t seem to mind at all.

After tea and cake, Mum got to the point of the visit. ‘Ada,’ she began, ‘I was wondering if you could help us out a bit. I wouldn’t normally ask, but Jack’s having a bit of a rough time at work, in fact there isn’t much work and we haven’t got a lot of money coming in. I was just hoping you might have some cast-off clothes from Clara, Rachel, Mossie and your other kinder that perhaps you don’t need any more.’

‘Of course, Becky,’ smiled Ada, ‘anything I can do to help. I’d be only too happy. You have such delightful children. So well-behaved.’ And so we left Ada Bloom’s with a sackful of children’s clothes to sort out at home.

Over the next few years as Dad drifted in and out of work and both sets of children got bigger and bigger, this pilgrimage to Osbaldeston Road in Stamford Hill became something of a regular habit. But Ada never seemed to mind. In fact it was fairly general for the better-off to give their second-hand clothes away to poorer families. It was a bit like charity shops, only missing out the middleman and going straight from the donor to the needy.

We were fortunate enough after a few weeks of unemployment to have the gas man call. It was always a red-letter day when the gas man called, but especially if it came during one of Dad’s periods of unemployment. The gas man unlocked and removed the money box, a heavy tin one, from the gas meter, spread the pennies out on the tabletop and started counting them into piles of twelve. Finishing this task, he then produced some five-shilling bank bags and put that amount of coins into each one. That accomplished, he put his share into a thick leather case and left us our rebate loose on the table. ‘What a nice, kind man,’ I said to Mum. ‘Gertcha,’ replied Mum, ‘the old bugger’s only left us what we’ve been overcharged anyway.’

This particular period of unemployment lasted several weeks, but with stale bread, cracked eggs, BMC tickets, cast-off clothes and the rest, we just about managed to struggle through. But I can still remember the day that Dad walked through the door and announced that one of the local cabinet makers, Solly Lebovsky, had offered him a French-polishing job. Mum broke down in tears again, but this time happy tears, and threw her arms round him. ‘Oh Jack, that’s wonderful.’ Of course, there was an added reason for her joy this time as she knew by now that Manny was on his way.

This round of cracked eggs, stale bread, a penn’orth of jam, the Soup Kitchen and the Relieving Officer became a way of life for us for many years. Our only relief from this permanent pattern of poverty and living on charity came at Christmas and Easter as Dad could really only guarantee being in work as a French-polisher in the two months leading up to Christmas and for a month or so before Easter, when his skill was much in demand. At these times he would work late into the night earning as much money as he could to try to tide us over for a bit. We were always in bed by the time he got back home, but we went to sleep happy knowing that there would very likely be a little something for us in the morning as, on these occasions, he would always bring us home a little treat such as a bag of Everton Toffee or Sharps Kreemy Toffee, the latter always in a tin shaped like a bucket.

Christmas was eagerly anticipated by all us children. I doubt if our parents shared this enthusiasm but because Dad invariably was in work for the couple of months leading up to the big day, we didn’t do too badly. A few weeks prior to this blessed event a cup was placed on the gas-meter shelf and we were told to put any money we might acquire from scavenging or doing odd jobs into it then, when we were asleep, Father Christmas would come and take it to help him get our presents. We followed this instruction to the letter as we couldn’t take the risk of offending him of all people.

On Christmas Eve, Mum used to say to us, ‘Don’t forget to hang your stockings up. Father Christmas will be here during the night, then we can see which of you have been good boys and girls.’ This was a bit worrying as we all started to remember some of the naughty things we had done during the year, but we hoped they would be outweighed by the good things we had done. So Christmas Eve saw a row of assorted stockings hanging from the mantelpiece, the younger members borrowing mum’s stockings.

There was much anticipation the following morning as we all woke up early and there was a lot of chatter between us about what we might get and what we hoped for. We were always under strict instructions not to leave our room until Mum or Dad came in and told us it was time to get up. This waiting time was agony, which we usually tried to relieve by bouncing up and down on the beds and engaging in mock fights, much to Julie’s disgust as she tried to quieten us down. Letting off steam like this not only tided us through the waiting time but helped keep us occupied and banish the lingering feeling we still had that we might have been too naughty to get any presents.

Eventually we were allowed up and we scampered into the living room where, to our great relief, we saw all the stockings filled. As we each dashed to our own stocking and opened it up the volume of the chatter would rise in crescendo as our excitement grew.

‘I’ve got a tangerine,’ Davy might say. ‘Me too,’ someone would add. Usually we found we all had oranges and some nuts and, if it was a particularly good Christmas, maybe even an apple or a tangerine. Having got through the fruit at the top, we would then start fishing out the little schlorems below. Now these were much more interesting than the foodstuff. And a typical Christmas continued like this:

‘I’ve got some crayons,’ came the cry from Bill. ‘I’ve got some chalks,’ said Abie, ‘and a colouring book.’ ‘I’ve got one of those too,’ put in Bill hurriedly, not wanting Abie to think he had more than him. ‘I’ve got a story book,’ I added to the list of presents being reported. ‘What have you got, Julie?’ I asked. Julie replied that she had a box of beads and a small paint tin. We all made little neat piles of our own presents and once that was complete, we’d go over to the table, for there on the table were some more presents with our names on.

‘Look,’ said Davy, ‘I’ve got a Ludo game.’ ‘Well I’ve got snakes and ladders,’ put in Abie. ‘Lotto for me,’ chimed in Bill. All of us had received a cheap board game or something similar. ‘Mine’s a Post Office,’ I added. It contained little stamps and envelopes with some writing paper, a rubber stamp and some small weighing scales.

One year when I was a bit older I received a dartboard and three feather darts. The board was a square piece of laminated wood with a paper dartboard stuck on it. This must have been where my love of darts began, something I carried on into my young adult life.

Looking back from this distance of time, our presents were only cheap and nothing much to write home about but in relative terms they probably cost our parents an awful lot of money, though the sacrifice they must have made never entered our heads of course. After all, weren’t all these presents from Father Christmas? In any case, to us our presents were simply wonderful and whether they were cheap or not we loved them because for the rest of the year there were hardly any treats. Even our birthdays went by without much, or even anything, by way of presents. Dad might be lucky and get a few weeks here and there, either as a French-polisher or a lino-cutter or as a waiter, but there were many more times when he was out of work than in it and we had to tighten our belts. It was a struggle just to put basic food on the table. Presents were completely out of the question. Of course, to me, growing up as young boy during this period, I didn’t really think anything of it. I thought this must be how everyone lived.

After we’d opened all our presents we excitedly got down to the serious business of playing with them until dinner time, which although it was the normal chicken we might expect on a good Sunday, it was the only time of the year when we had roast chicken rather than boiled up for lokshen soup. With some roast potatoes and a bit of cabbage, it was the best meal of the year.