A Ration Book Christmas Broadcast by Jean Fullerton

Author:Jean Fullerton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books

Chapter Eight

‘Once again I’m really grateful that you all agreed to take part in our Ordinary Folk Christmas broadcast,’ Grace said to the three young women sitting opposite her.

‘We’re thrilled to be asked, aren’t we, girls?’ said Mattie McCarthy, a slender brunette and the eldest of Ida and Jeremiah’s daughters.

‘We certainly are,’ agreed Cathy McIntosh, who, with her gold brown hair and hazel eyes, favoured Ida’s colouring.

She was sitting in the middle, with her one-year-old son, brown-skinned curly-haired Rory, on her lap. Well, what was left of her lap, as she was also very pregnant.

‘Yes,’ said Jo Sweete, the youngest Brogan girl, who looked so like her eldest sister it was uncanny.

It was just before three and they, along with the recording equipment Dave had been humping in from the van since two, were on the stage at the far end of St Breda and St Brendan’s church hall, where the WVS rest centre operated. Now everything had been set up and tested, Dave and Harry were sitting on a couple of chairs having a coffee and a smoke.

Pushed against the wall behind them were racks of second-hand clothes of all sorts and sizes, while in the main hall to their left, behind a row of mobile fabric screens, were a couple of dozen trestle beds with grey blankets, made up ready for the next wave of V1 victims. At the other end of the hall, where the WVS canteen operated, there were several eight-seater benches. But today, instead of hosting the usual ARP wardens, army personnel and workers enjoying a well-earned mid-afternoon cuppa, the tables were covered with bright tablecloths and paper party hats and crowns made from women’s magazines marked the place settings in preparation for the children’s Christmas party.

This afternoon the Brogan sisters had been joined by another member of the family – Queenie Brogan.

She was sitting just to the side of her granddaughters in an old armchair Dave had found hidden backstage.

They had all dressed for the occasion. Mattie was smartly dressed in a mulberry-coloured suit and Cathy wore a royal blue, polka-dot maternity dress with white collar and cuffs. Jo, who was on duty at six that evening, looked every bit as well turned-out as her sisters in her black ambulance driver’s uniform. Queenie Brogan’s attire was, however, a rather different matter.

As she was attending a party, albeit a children’s one, the matriarch of the Brogan family had decided to dress up. Mindful of the inclement weather, she wore a tartan kilt that skimmed the ankles of her button-up boots and a black Edwardian-style high-neck blouse, which would have gone well with her kilt had it not been for the cricket jumper worn over the top of it. The whole ensemble was topped off by a bowler hat that had been decorated with a wide, emerald-green ribbon.

She’d arrived just after her granddaughters and, although she wasn’t officially part of today’s interview, Grace had written in a couple of questions for her about the Christmases she’d had when she was a girl.

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