Cities of Greed: A Granny’s Cake Tin prequel
Cities of Greed
From the diary of Doreen Etheridge.
25th December 1947
Today felt like magic. Everyone in the house seemed happier than they have in a long time. I woke at 5 am and felt so excited about Christmas day, I could not get back to sleep. I woke Cynthia. She wasn’t happy but soon joined me in my giddiness. Not daring to fiddle with the new electric lights, which have not been working thanks to the cold snap, we crept downstairs with a candle, giggling the whole way. We found a small pile of gifts under a small Christmas tree! Cynthia almost fell over it. Pops brought it home as a surprise late last night. It is the first our family has ever had and is truly beautiful. I heard him and Mother arguing after we had gone to bed because Pops would not say where he found it, but she stopped asking after a while and admitted she loved it, so it could stay.
We smelled orange around the tree and guessed the round gifts to be fruit. Yum!
By 7 am, all five of us; Cynthia, George, Michael, Lucy, and I, plus mother were downstairs, chatting at speed. None of us bothered to comb our hair! We wore blankets and managed to light a small fire. As second eldest of the five, I am permitted to do this, provided I follow Pops’ instructions. Slightly warmer, we watched the other children playing in the street, our breaths steaming up the window.
When Pops came downstairs (7.30 am), we said prayers and expressed our thanks and gratitude for peacetime, and our being together, the whole family, in health.
It even snowed, just a little. We all watched the flakes and shared a fire with the neighbouring families out in the street, which we gathered around, rubbing our hands, singing songs.
In the afternoon we ate a small meal of chicken and vegetables from the garden (Mr. Cartwright, father’s employer, kindly sent him the meat, which was delicious).
After that, we opened gifts: an orange each, some pencils and paper to share.
A little later, Mother and Pops asked us to gather around the kitchen table. We worried there may be bad news, or that we might somehow be in trouble, but to our delight, Pops surprised us with a Mars chocolate bar! It was the best thing I have ever tasted. Cynthia, George, Michael, and Lucy all agreed. We had one-fifth each and I sucked it until every last bit of the chocolate, caramel, and nougat (I don’t know what nougat is, but it was sumptuous!) had melted away. I shall never forget its silky sweet taste.
We played games in the street, in the house, and went for a walk. I loved watching other people enjoying their Christmas day, forgetting their struggles as we forgot ours for a moment. Then Mother told ghost stories before we fell asleep. The one about the headless man in the churchyard was awful, but I did not want Cynthia to see I was scared, so I smiled anyway, but laid awake for some time.
I feel so lucky. Pops said that some families in the area did not eat this Christmas, and he said we must spare what we can with neighbours who are either poor or had suffered because of the cold-snap fuel shortages. He says we can never tell when this might happen to us.
We all giggled in bed, and I started to write this, but I am sleepy now.
26th November 1986
A melancholy has set in on my mind this evening. The winter gloom outside the window, so often a source of welcome comfort, troubles me. I do not know why. Perhaps it is the quiet after the noise. Michelle took Terry and Jonathan home at 5.30 pm and it takes me a little longer to reacclimatise to my own company, without my Jack.
I am trying my best not to judge Michelle for the way she allows those children to run amok, to cram their faces full, and chew with their mouths open, but I raised her better than that. My lessons have not been passed down. She lets them leave the table before the adults have finished eating. Terry gorged himself on four Wagon Wheels, and Michelle said nothing when she blatantly saw her son pocket two Penguin biscuits, and a mint Viscount on the way out. It won’t do them any good.
Terry is the loudest of the two boys, but Jonathan quietly eats himself into docility too. Michelle should know better. I told her the stories of what we had to make do with, how we cherished what little we had, but I can see in her eyes that she thinks we like to exaggerate it for sympathy. She says Terry will run the excess weight off as soon as he’s at school, but I worry for the boy. Perhaps next time, I should ration the little- no, I must not be unkind. How will he learn self-control if he never has the chance to make his own choices? I have worked hard to provide such a generous selection of goodies for my grandchildren, but it should not be received as an invitation to do physical damage to their young bodies. I must talk to Michelle privately, raise the matter again, even if she remains ignorant of my concerns. It is she who must teach them etiquette, not I. The look in Terry’s eyes belonged to an animal, not a developing child. It will not do.
12th January 2012
I must find peace with my fragility, the slowing of my lust for life over these past 10-years. Every physical exertion comes at the cost of fatigue, frustration, or pain. It need not be so. The look in Maude’s eyes opened the door to something wicked today, as we drank tea in the supermarket café. She suggested we need a new purpose, and I must confess, I did not intend to speak the words that came next. Anger made them and I could not stop them before they left my mouth. It was as if something wicked borrowed my body for a hatched the idea. We walked the aisles after our drinks, and she referred to the towering shelves full of chocolate, cakes, and biscuits as ‘cities of greed.’ I said that if the new generations wanted excess, why should we sit back and denounce them? We should give it to them, three times over, and not let up until they learn the error of their ways through consequences. I did not know what this meant, but she nodded in agreement and began to fill a new basket to the hilt with all kinds of indulgent food; cakes, chocolate, ice cream, and said I was right. She invited me round for tea tomorrow afternoon and told me we could discuss this further. She seemed somehow prouder, even fierce as we walked and she talked. At one stage, she became so animated, she slammed a pack of crème eggs into her basket and shouted so loud that she drew the attention of the other shoppers around us. I must confess, I felt this glee too. My words, it seemed, had instilled in Maude the same playfulness. It was only at the checkout I realised I had not felt my sciatica. Not one bit. The pain was there, but it had been muzzled by something I wanted to understand, but do not yet know the shape of.
Cities of Greed serves as a prequel for Granny’s Cake Tin - available as part of Stories for the Apocalypse #1: Notes on the New Normal from April 7th 2022.