Mixed Metaphors

This definitely was not what little Sis and I had in mind.  Our taste buds were yearning for something along the lines of marzipan, sugar-dusted Turkish Delight, mince pies...   Although we knew it was perhaps a tall order, nothing prepared us for this.  Not for one second did we imagine the vision before us.  A pig’s head sat on a platter, its tongue lolling out in a soft, stupid docility.  The thick, bushy eyelashes were set in a half-closed smile, a grin almost, as if it had welcomed the assassin's knife coming towards the jugular, welcoming the thought of its life source gushing to the floor in a scarlet torrent. 

Jana and I stopped in our tracks.  “Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrr,” we both gasped. Dad smiled.  A bit like the pig’s smile we thought.  “Don’t be ridiculous girdles,” (He pronounced the word ‘girls’ thus).  “This will make the most delicious brawn ever.  Come on Mařenka, YOU love brawn, remember?”

Oh my goodness, I did, especially served with a gherkin and potato salad.  “I can’t eat THAT though, the poor thing.”

“You eat your bacon don’t you? well, this is no different.”  He was right of course but there and then I decided never to touch brawn again, but not so bacon I have to admit.

“Look,” continued dad, “once this head has been broiled with onions, peppercorns, juniper berries, the meat scraped out and chopped up and set in gelatine, it will look altogether different.  It is a delicatessen.”  The description served only to make us take a further step backwards, so unconvinced were we by the picture which came to mind. 

From the corner of my eye, I spied the chicken, newly arrived in the post from Fearn, Ross-shire, Scotland, its neck rung by my Godmother Dolly Nimmons, a couple of days before. Its dead half-closed eyes and congealed bubble of blood stuck to its beak; its poor head and scraggy neck hanging over the edge of the pantry shelf.  Didn’t fancy that either. Oh crikey, this was promising to be another disastrous Christmas…

Mum lifted the heavy cauldron lid and recoiled against the vicious steam. She signalled to Dad who ever so gently, ever so gingerly, affording every courtesy, reverent even, lowered the pink swine head into the broiling abyss. “Oh, where’s his tongue gone?” I asked, having noticed that the docile smile of the beast had now collapsed into a look of resigned submission, its lolling tongue having been removed. “It’s here.  Come and see how good it is.”  It was just about to be submerged.  Separated from under its snout and now floating alongside the protruding ears of the head,  it was studded with cloves with a bay leaf for company.  To us kids, it resembled a miniature submarine lurking ominously just below the waterline ready to break the surface at any moment.  My parents stood staring into the bubbling water quietly.  For a moment I felt they were going to mutter a prayer.  A sort of Ode to Pork or maybe Farewell my little Piggy as little Sis offered up. But no.  Taking no heed they merely proceeded to firmly place the lid on the massive pot and began straight away to discuss the vigil which would have to be kept over the boil.  Well, what was the point of being gentle now?  It’s stone dead I thought.   After what that poor pig had suffered hitherto, why oh why afford it kindness now? But, secretly, I had opted for the Farewell my little Piggy option and wished I had pushed for it.

Very soon the sickly smell of broiling porcine flesh filled the tiny house.  It was monstrous; cloying and clinging, sticking to the window vapour and running down the panes like tears.  A sort of Memoriam to a pig.  We sloped off into the little sitting-room despondent.  Although Jana and I put forth some cheerful ideas such as wrapping a rubber doll in swaddling clothes and laying it in a shoebox to create a manger scene, without a tree and the smell of pine needles or mince pies, it seemed futile.  We fell instead into adding to the yards of coloured paper chains we had been constructing for weeks.  Sold in neat bundles of colour we would peel off one, lick the end and stick it together.  This was repeated many times, one red, one green, one orange one blue each ring interlocking through the other.  Our tongues became yellowed with the foul-tasting cow gum glue and our lips almost sealed up altogether. 

“Can we put up the decorations?” we called out.   “Not until Christmas Eve. You know festivities don’t begin until then in Czechoslovakia.  You have to wait. Anyway, mum doesn’t want the pine needles.”

What?

NO TREE!

This from a man whose mother would send him and his sister back into the woods if the tree they had dragged home through the snow, hadn’t been thick enough, tall enough, lovely enough.  (“There’s a FOREST out there and you bring back this weedy one?  Try harder!”)

Jana and I looked at each other in horror.  This sounded altogether too ominous to bear.

What could they be thinking of?  We did not feel confidant at the outcome and a nasty little worm of thought began to unwind in my mind. Oh please, please don’t let it be.  Not a ‘pretend’ tree.

I had worked it out.  A flash of clarity.  I knew what my parents were hinting at.

Unbeknown to us and in a far-off county of my imagination, the owner of a bottle brush factory sat bolt upright in bed.  He had just had a brainwave and it was a brilliant one at that.  Nudging his sleeping wife he began “Errrrrrrr Doris I’ve had a brilliant idea, duck.”  She turned her head towards him, hairnet over one eye.  “It had better be a good’un waking me up like this,” she moaned.

“Oh, it IS my dear.  It is.”

Bottle brushes had been big sellers on the Hill estate.  The poor devils who lived here had all been taken from the Eastend and dumped in new rows of ugly houses somewhere in the hinterland that were known as hutches. And they bred like rabbits too. Babies were being born one after the other and all of them would at some time require a bottle.  The way of cleaning all these bottles was soap powder, hot water and a bottle brush.  The door-to-door salesman had scored a hit at almost every house.  Those with no babies or any on the way, which were few, bought a bottle brush anyway to stick down the spout of the teapot when it became bunged up with tea leaves.  Everyone needed one, and every house had one.  These long-handled aids to hygiene lived in a triangular container in the corner of the butler sink called a ‘sink tidy’ along with a washing up mop and a rusty bit of wire wool reserved for burnt saucepans.  They were also very handy to clean the overflow at the side of the sink which again was more than often blocked and gave vent to noxious gasses.  Hot on the success of the bottle brush followed the toilet brush.  All council houses boasted their own indoor WC, but this in itself had brought a new challenge to the housewife, that being the need to keep the contraption clean.   No longer outside, shared with other families and enjoying fresh air through the gap at the top and bottom of the door and generally unattended from a cleaning point of view, it now became fashionable to proudly sport a sparkling clean lavatory where one could linger longer and appreciate the luxury of being inside.  Fancy toilet rolls were screwed to the walls, delicate paint colour applied to walls, mirrors hung, scented soap and matching towels.  Added to this would often be a plant placed on the windowsill, a bottle of vicious bleach hidden behind the soil pipe and a majestic toilet brush sitting upside down (very often in half an inch of dubious coloured water) in a container.  Every house boasted one.  A lot for ‘show’ only.  The brush company were on a roll.

Now… thought Mr Bristo (for that surely was his name) surveying the upturned bottle brush in one hand and the retaining receptacle in the other, with a tweak here and there, extended length, more bristles a change of colour… a longer handle, bedecked with lights and tinsel, a fairy on top and hey presto! what do you have?  Why a Christmas tree of course and a practical one at that!  No pine needle drop with these bristles and the poor devils would surely recognise the practicality of sticking it in the loft for next year when the season was done with. They would sell like hot cakes.  Keep ‘em cheap and cheerful, that will do it.  “You can start booking your holiday, Doris” he said. “and make an appointment to get your hair done, luv, it looks like one of me bottle brushes”.

He was spot on!

“Close your eyes, girdles” said Dad.  We complied.  This was the moment when all would be revealed.  Behind the door would stand a glittering Christmas tree decked in lights and sweets and toys a star shining on top. The scent of forest pine, the glimmer of the baubles, the proud branches heavy with sweetmeats.  A far-off memory of Adamov, of fur coats, cousins in their red velvet dresses, walnuts gleaming with gold leaf the shimmer and gleam of dozens of tiny wax candles clipped to branches casting dancing light on the faces of the beholders. That wonderful, wonderful moment. 

“Open them!” came Dad’s order.

We wished we had not.  The sheer disappointment plummeted like a lift down to our feet making them leaden and unable to move.  There was nothing there, at least not where our eyes were searching up near the ceiling.  Instead, an ugly stiff brush concoction stood in a flowerpot on top of our bathroom stall.  We tried to take the horror of this imposter in.

“Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr” we gasped.

“What do mean errrrrrrrrrrrr?” questioned Dad.

“Where’s  the real tree?  Where’s the star, where’s the manger and the angels.  Where are the toys?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” came the answer.  “We are in this country now.  We can’t afford such things.  This is a modern tree for a small room.”

“It doesn’t shed its needles either,” added Mum and when Christmas is done with we can pack the thing away until next year.”

Already my parents were planning the demise of the festive season and yet it had not even begun.  “You need new clothes before anything else; and besides you cannot have everything you want.  Think of it as an austerity Christmas”. 

I would have loved for this comment to have been made in a sort of jest merely to tease and heighten our expectations, but experience had already taught me that it was the hard truth.

“But you’ve got YOUR brawn daddy,” piped up Jana. “And Mummy  has baked a plaited loaf.”  Silence as we glanced at the overly glossy and overcooked dough which, as usual, had not made it in the rising stakes.

An ominous pause as our father, for a moment, tasted the Christmas loaf of his homeland; light as a feather yet podgy and bloated full of juicy sultanas and glistening with melted butter.  The heavy lump on the table would be fit for toasting only.  A pang of homesickness hit him changing his mood.  That mood would have plummeted to his toes had he been privy to what I had seen what happened earlier.  I had witnessed my poor mum bundling a dollop of unrisen dough in newspaper along with her two Woodbine dog ends and pushing them to the bottom of the bin.  I had checked it out but was complicit in the silence to protect her from shame.  However, at the same time, I spied a Pollards bag.  Oh, good Lord that meant only one thing.  School gym knickers under the toilet brush tree.

Dad broke the stalemate.

“Och, run along and play you minxes,” he sighed.

Later, in bed, Jana blubbed as usual.  “I don’t like our tree.  Wish we had a tin of sweets.  I don’t like brawn.  Do you think Father Christmas will remember us?” 

The answer came to me like a bolt out of the blue “I don’t think he is real.  Mum and Dad get the presents.”

“Ooooooooooohhhhhhh nooooooooo” came the wail from beneath the feather quilt. Does that mean I won’t get my dolls house?”

My childhood was not going as I would have liked.  It seemed to me that childish joy was wrenched from me before I even got to experience it. 

“What about my letter to Santa?” asked Jana.  I made a stab at it “Well, eeeeerrrrr, I think they get our present lists down and then they KNOW what we want and get it.”

“Oh I will NEVER get the dolls house AND ballet shoes will I?”

“No”

“And YOU won’t get your roller skates either”.

Goodness she was right! I was furious that I had seen through it all, that the ‘wonder’ had gone forever and wished fervently that I hadn’t been deprived of yet another bit childish joy.  I yearned to be deceived forever, in fact.

It was not a continental-type Christmas and yet not an English Christmas either, but a sort of Smorgasbord of the two.  There was the silvery lavatory brush of a Christmas tree, slightly askew with the weight of an overly big fairy was ablaze with electric lights.  The paper chains Jana and I had painstakingly constructed hung from the ceiling going from corner to corner then looped under the centre light in a joyous ruffle.  Two little pink frocks hung on hangers on the picture rail. A small pile of presents either side of the tree.  No labels or ribbons.  Left for Jana, right for me. They had been hastily wrapped in last year’s paper although it was good to see it again somehow.  On the sideboard, an iced cake with a robin, a snowman and a miniature snow-clad tree (another toilet brush) decoration, the Robin redbreast  being the largest figure and therefore putting the other adornments out of scale which I noticed immediately.  A plate of toasted celebration loaf buttered and warm although smaller than it should be now and somehow a lot harder to digest.  Some mince pies, cups of tea, cob nuts and a coconut with a hammer alongside for cracking; some oranges, a box of dates in a pretty oblong box with a desert scene on its lid, some Meltis Newbury fruits and a chocolate Father Christmas. But to crown it all and placed alongside was a huge bowl of homemade potato salad rich with garlic a huge platter of cold meats: salami, ham, pastrami, chicken and homemade brawn, thinly sliced, so that the peppercorns and juniper berries were split, slightly shining and decorated with gherkin. 

We set about unwrapping our gifts.  A Christmas Girl Annual and Girls Crystal book each, some colouring pads and crayons, school gym knickers, a pencil case with sharpener and rubber, a packet of toffees, a little horse toy that had a walking motion when put on a slope, bright coloured plastic birds which shrilled when water was added and blown like a whistle, little knitting sets with tiny needles a skipping rope, tins of miniature paints with little paintbrushes and a stencil set each. Best of all, a doll shaped hot water bottle for Jana and a bear for me.  No roller skates nor dolls house but we had completely forgotten we ever wanted one.

We were in heaven. All our trepidation and wants and fears evaporated into thin air. It was clear that our parents had gone to a lot of trouble to do something special.  It was all they could afford. With mum and dad sitting either side of the glowing fire watching us it was wonderful.

And when a plate of brawn and sliced tongue garnished with a pickle and potato salad (a veritable smorgasbord) was put before us, we couldn’t disappoint our Dad. We tucked in. 

“Good delicatessen girdles?” He enquired a smile playing on his lips.

“Ohhhhhhhhh yummy, yummy, yum yum,” came back our reply.

Because delectable it was.

None of it was what we had imagined or wanted.  It was way different; a mixture of metaphors, and yet, somehow our parents had achieved a Christmas celebration of sorts and we thought it quite wonderful.