Hunger was Julia’s strongest memory of childhood. She was born in 1938, so she had known nothing else. There wasn’t much in the shops to show for her Mum queuing for hours. Weekly bought rations were: 1oz cheese; 1 egg; 4 oz bacon or ham. Scrawny chickens scratched at the end of the garden, poor layers on a diet of grit and snails, but better than nothing. What they could make for themselves was what kept them fed.

Oliver, her brother, made his contribution by converting every available speck of earth into vegetables, saving the seeds for next harvest. From scraps of wood scavenged by fair means or foul from bomb-sites he made rabbit hutches which lined the garden fence; Julia’s job was to forage for weeds to feed the rabbits, ranging far afield, her arms full of groundsel and dandelions, while her sister Margaret picked fruit, blackberries, rose-hips, crab apples, anything which seemed ripe and grew wild, to make into jam.

Mum would roast the rabbits, then stew the left-overs, then mash it with turnips for rissoles, then make soup from the bones.

On leave from the navy, one of Julia’s uncles brought her a banana. She had seen

pictures of them, but never held one. Afraid to break it, she sat on the wall outside the house and held it to her mouth, without peeling it. Like bees, a small group of children with identical pinched faces gathered watchfully.

“Is it real?” said one boy, breathing heavily through his nose, never taking his eyes from the fruit.

Julia nodded. “Our Uncle Joe brought it back with him.”

She peeled the banana as Uncle Joe had instructed her, nonchalantly ignoring her

audience. Not knowing quite what to do with it now, she sucked the fruit, and around her, stomachs growled.

“Can I ‘av a bit?” asked the boy, and Julia shook her head, worried that the

movement might damage the banana.

Having created the sensation, she went back indoors and hid the banana under the bed, out of Margaret and Oliver’s reach. The next day, although the banana was blackened, she sat on the wall again, proud of her possession, and the same hungry group gathered admiringly.

“Is it another one, Julia?” they asked, and she nodded, proud of her Uncle who could supply them with exotic fruit.

By the fourth day, the banana was frankly horrible looking; black and slimy, and not fit to show to her audience – so she finally ate it.

On that leave, Uncle Joe had also brought a special present for Julia’s mother – a jar of rainbow-coloured sweets, just like the ones in Julia’s Enid Blyton story book.

Mum kept the jar in the bathroom, Julia supposed because it was the only place she was ever alone, and she’d want to savour the sweets on her own. They were beautiful sweets, too – shaped like little hearts.

So, greatly daring, one morning when Mum was downstairs and Margaret and Oliver

were out, she stole into the bathroom and opened the jar. The smell was delightful. It was like the kitchen when the jam was boiling. She shovelled three of the heartshaped sweets into her mouth and chewed. Suddenly her eyes watered and she gagged. Her mouth was foaming and she couldn’t breathe.

“Mum! Mum!” she sputtered through the rainbow-coloured, fruit-scented froth, and

her mother came running from the kitchen.

At a glance she saw what had happened, and bent Julia’s neck over the bathroom

basin, washing her mouth out with cold water, and drying her tears.

“Hinny, hinny – they’re for going in the bath, they’re soap, not for eating!”

And then, to her surprise, instead of being angry, Mum knelt on the floor, clutched the frail body of her daughter to her and sobbed as if her heart would break.

Not all the hunger in the world, though, could make the children eat Donald Duck.

One day, their father came home from work with something wrapped in his

handkerchief, and placed it carefully in Julia’s opened palms. It was a blue egg, warm and sweet-smelling. Julia sniffed it.

“Shall we eat it, Dad?” she asked.

“No, pet. I want you to keep this nice and warm, all the time. One day soon, it’ll be a duckling. Then it’ll be a big duck. Then we’ll eat it.”

Julia took his instructions seriously. She put the egg inside her petticoat and kept it there, peering at it now and then, and feeling it to check it had not cooled. At night, in bed with Margaret, she could hardly sleep for fear she would damage the shell. When called to shelter or table, the egg was there. Held between her bony chest and her

darned woollen sweater, the egg waxed strong. One day, there was movement from

within, and Julia took it to show her brother and sister.

Margaret and Oliver watched as the outsize yellow bill tapped a hole in the shell.

Julia’s thin brown fingers picked away and enlarged the hole.

“Don’t let’s rush him,” Oliver warned; although it was his calloused hands which finally freed the chick from the shell, and Donald quivered in the light, damp and ugly.

He peeped miserably at the three hungry children who could convert a fluffy pet into cutlets without turning a hair. A breeze moved a wisp of Julia’s bright hair and the little apple-seed eyes focussed on the movement.

“Peep!” said Donald.

“Awww!” the children breathed, and Margaret stroked the yellow fluff, now drying.

“We’ll have to keep him away from Dad,” she warned.

Alarmed, Julia picked the little creature up and hugged him to her chest and her eyes widened with horror.

“Don’t worry, Titch,” Oliver assured her, “I won’t let anyone get him.”

But it wasn’t as simple as that. With the imagined scent of roast duck in his nostrils,

Dad, pitiless, became a thing of iron resolution, like any overweight man deprived of extra rations.

He began eyeing Donald as if he could already taste him, roasted with potato and

gravy made from the meat juices, as Donald, unaware of impending doom, waddled

around the kitchen at Julia’s feet.

“We can’t afford to keep an animal that doesn’t pay it’s way,” Dad said, pompously,

and Oliver glared at the fat she-cat who perched on Dad’s shoulder.

Mum, knowing what was coming and unable to quarrel with the sense of it, snapped

at the children.

“Get that bird out of my kitchen!”

The children retreated to a quiet spot behind the currant bushes.

“He could fly away,” Julia suggested.

“He can’t fly,” Margaret said, coldly. “You carry him everywhere.”

“He could learn,” Oliver said, “He’s a duck after all.”

They climbed up onto the shed using the bough of the peach tree, and settled on the roof – Donald, Julia, and Oliver. Margaret stayed down below, to catch the duck if it fell.

“He won’t fall,” Oliver claimed, “Because he’s got wings – but just in case.”

He clutched Donald in front of him and the duck gaped happily into the breeze,

enjoying the view, and reassuringly close to his mother, Julia.

“One, two, three… now!” Oliver hurled the duck off the shed roof, and Donald fell trustingly down, quacking once but never opening his wings, to land safely in Margaret’s skirt.

Again and again they tried, but Donald had no idea that the air was his gateway to freedom. They knew he liked water – he spent most of his time in a bucket – so they took him to the pond and put him on the water. He paddled idly in the shallows, and eventually, tearfully, they thought it was time to leave. They hadn’t turned the corner before they heard a cheery honking from behind them, and there was Donald. Julia picked him up and carried him home.

But she couldn’t carry him all the time, and one day, the bells of doom tolled for Donald, while all the children were out at a church fete. A delicious smell met them on their return. It was meat, and the house was silent, without Donald’s quack.

Long faced, they sat around the table, and Dad carved the roasted duck, whistling. He lifted a slice of the dark meat onto his place, then Mum’s, then raised a slice above

Oliver’s plate. Oliver’s fair face suddenly turned very red.

“I’m not eating damned Donald!” he shouted, pushed his chair back, and stomped from the room into the garden.

The girls looked stricken. As one, they stood, not daring to raise their voices, but quietly leaving the room, and out into the garden. They couldn’t help listening – there was no sound of quarrelling, no demand for their return.

They gave it an hour, trying to stem their hunger by eating hard peaches from the tree, then tiptoed indoors again.

All was quiet and Mum was washing the dishes, while Dad was still at the table,

playing Patience. Neither parent spoke, to the children or to each other. Having tested the water, the children went outside to sit in the last of the evening sun, ignore their gurgling stomachs and mourn their duck, knowing they would be offered nothing but duck stew, duck rissoles and finally duck soup, for days, and would eventually cave in. There were no such things as picky eaters in that house.

By the back door, Margaret pointed. There was an old dish on the ground and by it, Dad’s cat was in ecstasy, her eyes glazed and her whiskers greasy as she dined heartily on Donald.

The next week, Dad brought them home a present – a sweet ball of yellow and black fluff, like a bumble bee, a duckling such as Donald had once been. They called her Daisy, and she slept in a box at the foot of the girl’s bed, and Mum never once complained about the mess she made on the floor-boards.

Dad assured them, he’d never eat duck again in his life – but this time, they made sure Daisy knew how to fly.