Who were they, those men, standing so silent and solemn, all faced to the left in their orderly queue? Their backs stood straight, but their eyes were cast down, as if by tacit agreement they could no longer look at a world that had let them down.

 

A dapper man wearing strange, clean clothes was in the process of setting up a large camera on a tripod, in order to capture the men on a photographic plate. How odd, I thought, that he should want to photograph these people, especially as none of them would look at him or face his camera, despite his cajoling.

 

As we drew closer, I tugged at my mother's sleeve. She was in a hurry to be home, and she looked down at me impatiently, shaking off my insistent hand. As she hurried on into the ponderous gloom that held promise of rain, I ran to keep up, making three small steps and a skip for each one of her bustling strides.

 

‘Mama,‘ I called, as I raced to catch up with her, ‘who are those men?'

 

‘Sssh,' she admonished me, grabbing my small hand and dragging me onwards. ‘It's rude to speak of people in their presence.'

 

I gave this considerable thought. Ten seconds later, I started again, ‘But-‘

 

‘Hush now! I will not tell you again.' Keeping a firm hold of my hand, my mother yanked me away from the line of men, but as I tripped along the road in her wake, my head was turned to the left, as I strove to keep them in my sight.

 

Once home, my grandmother, a dour woman who never smiled, came hurrying out of the house, and I was set to do the chores while she and my mother whispered together in the kitchen. By the time I started to sweep the yard, fat drops of rain had begun to fall, laying down the choking dust and relieving me of my task. Soon the yard was a quagmire, the rainwater making rivulets through the red earth, washing away any last remnants of useable topsoil into the creek beyond.

 

I scurried into the house, glad to be freed of my final chore. Delicious smells were coming from the kitchen and I hurried to wash up and present myself at the table, where I sat down quietly. My mother and grandmother had made stew, and what a wondrous meal it was. Little chunks of real meat floated amidst the hard root vegetables in the thin broth.

 

‘Chicken!' I breathed, in an awed voice.

 

‘Hush now, child, and eat,' said my mother, ladling stew into a bowl and placing it before me. ‘And mind not to tell anyone what you have eaten tonight.' She glared so sternly at me that I nearly dropped my spoon.

 

‘What should I say we have eaten tonight, Mama?' I asked timidly, eager to get things right, so that I could ladle the hot food into my churning stomach.

 

‘You will say, if asked, that you ate vegetable broth,' I was instructed.

 

I dutifully repeated, ‘Vegetable broth,' in a solemn voice, before ladling the first spoonful of wonderful food into my eager mouth.

 

‘Will the child tell about the chicken?' I heard my grandmother whisper.

 

‘Now you hush up too, mother,' my mother sat at the table as she spoke. ‘The child will say nothing to anybody.'

 

I ate my stew as quickly as I could, burning my mouth and not caring. I knew only that for the first time in months, I was eating meat and I cared not from where the scrawny chicken had been taken.

 

I was starving – we all were, three generations of womenfolk with no men left to support us. This pathetic meal of watery gruel, mouldy vegetables and stolen chicken was a feast for us all, the highlight of that terrible year of 1935.

 

When our bowls were licked clean, I asked my mother again about the line of men we had seen in town.

 

My grandmother looked up.

 

‘Soup kitchen,' said my mother.

 

‘We'll be there soon,' said my grandmother, and my mother pursed her lips but said nothing.

 

The two women ignored me as I sat quietly in a corner of the room.

 

‘Things will get better,' said my mother bleakly, as the rain sluiced across the yard and obliterated the landscape. ‘They have to.'

 

It was a long time before they did.

 

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