Six at the Table Read online

  I spent the rest of the evening moaning and rubbing my stomach. It seemed to have stretched and swollen to several times its natural size. I loosened my skirt at the side and pulled it down a little so that not even the slightest contact was made between the band and my waist. I couldn’t draw attention to my discomfort, as that only brought with it a scolding and a lecture from Mum about greed, and greed being a sin. Instead, I kept my moaning and belching as discreet as possible and suffered in silence until bedtime.

  Delia

  Few television programmes got my mother’s attention. Dallas, Roots and The Late Late Show were the exceptions. For Dallas and Roots, I was sent to bed for a reason unknown to me, though I was sure it had something to do with adults in bed with sheets wrapped tightly across their bare chests. I was never allowed in the room when programmes like that were on. For The Late Late Show I was also in bed but that was because it was on too late and far too boring for me to watch. On Mum’s television nights, she washed up quickly after dinner. I watched her fill the copper kettle, prepare her mug with coffee granules, and set two biscuits on a saucer. Then, before she poured the hot water, she sent Kevin and me to our beds. From upstairs, I heard her pull out the pouf from its corner and sit down to watch the week’s instalment.

  Delia Smith’s Cookery Course led to another such night. It wasn’t an exciting drama and it wasn’t Gay Byrne, but we regarded it as a right of sorts for Mum to watch it – that’s what mammies did.

  ‘It’s nearly time – you can turn it over now,’ she’ d call into the sitting room on Delia nights. Begrudgingly one of us would slope over to the television and see the last of The Incredible Hulk, The Six Million Dollar Man or Wonder Woman as the dial was turned to the bbc. Mum would hurry into the sitting room when she heard the opening credits, with her supper in one hand and a few scraps of paper and a Biro in the other. Catherine, Lucy and Kevin would make their annoyance clear as they filed out of the room, and for half an hour Mum would scribble furiously in her Pitman shorthand. She’ d pause now and then to watch Delia layer potatoes and vegetables in a casserole or stuff cannelloni with a piping bag. She’ d nod at the screen in understanding and then scribble her notes again.

  I stayed to watch Delia, as I liked the way her freckly hands moved about her airy and tidy kitchen. Her hands were sensible and hard-working hands, too, like my mother’s. They made every task look simple. I wanted to be like Delia when I grew up. I wanted to stand still in a kitchen and put tiny bowls of ingredients into bigger bowls and shove all the dirty, empty dishes aside for someone else to clean. It seemed glamorous to be cooking without all the mess and preparation work – to be doing the glory work and getting all the oohs and ahs, without having to weigh, chop, peel, grate, mince, grind and, worst of all, wash up.

  Some of the recipes Mum tried straightaway. And they worked. ‘I swear by Delia!’ she’ d gasp upon receiving praise for her latest creation. If she neglected to try a recipe within a week or two, the scrap of paper got buried under the next week’s notes and then the following week’s notes, never to be seen or tasted. Eventually when Mum tidied out her recipe drawer, unable to make out her own shorthand, she’ d fling most of the recipes in the bin. Only a few would survive the cull.

  Watching Delia every week mattered less now, as Dad had given Mum the first volume of Delia’s Complete Cookery Course for Christmas. Or, as I suspected was the case, Mum bought it for herself and wrapped it up for Dad to give to her in front of us on Christmas morning. There was something in the way she said, ‘Oh thanks, Tom, it’s a book. i-hope-it’s-delia’s-book-is-it?’ that suggested Mum was prompting, rather than thanking, him. She put on a good show of surprise and pleasure at receiving the book and thumbed through it as though she had never laid eyes on it before. It was a dense tome, with hundreds of straightforward recipes but only a few pictures. However, its instructions were clear and the recipes required what Mum described as ‘normal’ ingredients – Dunnes Stores and Quinnsworth stocked them. I loved to sit at the kitchen table on dreary afternoons and read this book, along with the more colourful cookery books in Mum’s collection. I flicked to the picture pages and imagined what Creole Chops, Cheese Potatoes, Shoo-Fly Pie or Crêpes Suzette tasted like. I did my best to persuade Mum to make them.

  So over time Mum’s urgency to keep up with Delia’s programme waned, and we hogged the television until bedtime with few interruptions. Once in a while she did pull rank and request a channel change to Delia. But I didn’t mind. I stayed with Mum and watched as Delia took ‘one I prepared earlier’ out of the oven. I wondered what happened to the other three dinners she had to make, in order to show us the various steps it took to make just one. Did she freeze them? Give them away to poor people? Let the cameraman take them home to his family for tea? There was lots to think about when Delia was on television.

  A Marathon

  I kept my five pence pocket-money in a red metal tin shaped like a treasure chest. It had a slit at the top to put the money in and a rubber stopper on the bottom to let it out. On weekends I was allowed take a few pennies from the tin and walk as far as the corner shop with Kevin to spend some of it. I’d not received any pocket-money since Dad went into hospital and my stash was dwindling. But I was looking for solace. I wanted some fun. I prised off the rubber stopper with Mum’s nail scissors and shook out all the money I had left. Together Kevin and I walked hand in hand and crossed the road carefully. I didn’t know the name of the people who ran the shop. I didn’t pay attention to the sign above the door or to the elderly woman behind the counter. It was simply the corner shop to me.

  The array of penny sweets displayed under the glass counter was thrilling; bright colours, animal shapes, frostings, coatings and dustings. The glass jars, up high on the shelves behind the shopkeeper, were brimful of Black Jacks, Sherbet Pillows, Gob Stoppers, liquorice-filled Bullets, yellow and white dusty Bon Bons, Cola Cubes that cut the roof of your mouth with their sharp granulated coating, and Pear, Apple and Clove Drops. These sweets had to be put on the scales that sat up on the counter, with its long finger pointing out the weight of sweets being measured. This, in turn, was converted to a money amount. I was intimidated by this process of weighing and measuring. Never sure if I’d enough money to pay, I avoided these sweets. There were other sundry items that titillated me and occasionally I spent my money on them: Rice Paper, which was novel but almost tasteless, Liquorice Wraps, Candy Cigarettes with their pale pink burning tips, red candy lipsticks that I ran around my lips before gobbling, soft Milk Teeth that I bared like a childish Dracula, and my favourite, the Sherbet Dip that I could make last the entire walk home.

  But for me, treats and escapism were all about chocolate. Chocolate bars were more expensive than sweets and they sat in neat rows in their display case, behind glass and just out of arm’s reach. It was difficult to make a choice, as each one meant something different to me. Mentally I established the expected pleasure quotient of each bar, then compared this to all of the others in a complex play-off in my head. This mathematical model had to be processed in a few moments as I stood in front of the shopkeeper, staring hard through the glass. A finger of Fudge was not enough for me, I wanted to feel completely satisfied. A Curly Wurly was long and value for money but it was not gooey enough and most of the chocolate fell off the toffee in little pieces during its stretch, before I got it into my mouth. A Picnic bar was chewy but it did not have a thick chocolate coating; it was just like a Rice Krispie bun with an extra bit of toffee. Bars of Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut, Tiffin and Golden Crisp were tempting; I liked the thought of eating the bars my parents preferred and eating all eight squares by myself, but it felt a bit too grown-up for me – they were unlikely to yield any amount of fun.

  A Star Bar was close to perfection, having all the necessary ingredients for pleasure – thick chocolate, chewy toffee, peanuts, and it was fun to eat. I ate my Star Bar the same way each time – nibbling away at one side of the toffee the entire length of the
bar and folding back what was left of the toffee tunnel, to reveal the peanut roll within. Then I ate this buttery log on its own, before folding all the toffee and chocolate into a ball and shoving it into my mouth, for what resulted in a long dribbly chew. I was resolute, the Star Bar was it. Until my eyes settled on a Mars bar. The chocolate on top was very generous in places, the toffee was of a softer, stretchy consistency that flopped back onto my chin after a big bite and the nougat was the only nougat I ever ate. But a Mars bar did not have the peanuts of a Star Bar.

  The decision got harder the longer I stared at the rows and rows of bars, tilting down towards me. And then I saw a Marathon. A Mars bar with more. A Mars bar with peanuts – how could I pass it over? Without undertaking a final cross-referencing of the pros and cons of the various options before me, I made my choice – a Marathon, please. I was happy to trade several weeks’ pocket-money for the chunkiest, nuttiest and most pleasing chew. I was satisfied with my choice for once.

  Slowly we strolled home together. Kevin opened his Sherbet Dip and made exaggerated sucking noises after each dunk. I bit the wrapper off the Marathon bar and chomped straight into it – without having to offer a bite to anyone else first, as was the rule at home. I savoured the thick and cloying sensation of chocolate and toffee as it lodged in the gaps around my teeth and over my tongue and the roof of my mouth. I relished the nut and toffee mix as I churned it around. It only lasted four large bites. As we approached our house, I picked at the nuts stuck in my back teeth and ran my tongue around my mouth to mop up any remaining hint of chocolate on my gums. Having ensured that I’d got to eat the entire bar by myself, I arrived home feeling more than a twinge of guilt for my greed.

  Wine

  The wonderful pleasure of the chocolate had faded by the time I reached the garage door. It lay open and Kevin and I walked through the garage and into the kitchen to see Mum looking wild and wide-eyed with splashes of deep red across her apron. She was hurriedly mopping at a red puddle on the kitchen floor and around the sink. I panicked. Was Mum sick now too? Where was all this blood coming from?

  I turned and saw the large empty glass jars sitting on the garage floor – demijohns, Dad called them. Mum had poured the entire contents of each down the drain. Without Dad around she didn’t know what to do with them. She didn’t want their constant presence reminding her of Dad, each time she opened the hot press door. Without explaining anything to us, she slumped down at the kitchen table, put her head in her hands and, for the first time, she cried openly. I hesitated and then slowly walked over to her crouched figure and put my arms around her neck. She shook and heaved. She turned into me and we hugged for a very long time.

  Dad’s experiments with wine had started a few years previously. He’d heard about it from a friend. This was an unusual hobby for a lifelong member of the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association but it was part of his self-sufficiency drive, so he was keeping an open mind. The initial outlay involved purchasing a few large glass jars with oddly shaped stoppers and a few packets and sachets of magic powder. After this investment there would be big savings, he was assured. He could make six bottles of wine for less than the price of one bottle of Blue Nun.

  Carefully he followed the instructions. I watched as he poured vast amounts of water into the demijohns and sprinkled in the contents of the sachets. After some stirring and shaking he lifted the heavy glass jars upstairs and placed them inside the hot press, where they remained, tucked in snugly beside the hot tank, for months on end. When I opened the bottom of the hot press, to put in wet shoes or clothes, I stared at the crimson liquid. Sometimes large bubbles filled the neck of the jars. At other times these bubbles went right up into the weird stopper.

  As Dad gained confidence in wine-making, Mick, his mentor, decided it was time to forgo the packets and go straight to the source. The elderflower. It was in season during May and June and freely available on roadsides everywhere, he told us. Kevin and I, being too young to have other engagements, were dragged, with large plastic buckets, up the Dublin Mountains. We drove around with Dad and Mick all afternoon stopping at bushes here and there. While Dad passed along the bushes with secateurs, we followed behind him, picked the large branches with white flowers off the ground and filled our containers. We whinged each time the car stopped at a fresh cluster of bushes. We were bored and there was no sign of this task ending. We didn’t stop picking until our car was full of elderflowers and the thousand tiny flies we’d inadvertently harvested along with them. We complained all the way home, swatting and flicking at the clouds of these pests hovering around our heads. I felt seriously aggrieved.

  We stopped at Mick’s house first and handed our haul over to him, as only he had the right equipment and know-how to make the wine straight from the flower. By what means alcohol was extracted from those weed-like bushes was never revealed to Dad. Instead, many months later, we got a few bottles of wine for our trouble. ‘Elderflower 1979’ was written in Mick’s curly hand across the fresh label he had stuck on each bottle. This wine was placed on a shelf in the garage, right beside Dad’s own hot-press vintage.

  While Mum had the honour of tasting the very first glass from each vintage, she never finished it. Luckily for the visitors to our house, they were never required to do more than admire the row of neatly labelled bottles, lined up on the garage shelf. They were offered a taste, too, but no one ever accepted. They demurred with polite refusals – ‘It’d be a shame to open the bottle just for me’, ‘Sure, keep it for a few years and it will only get better with time’.

  Dad’s wine was one of the few things I was never that keen to try. While the colour was pretty, its smell was strong and the expression on Mum’s face was all I needed to see. With all these bottles at her disposal, she keenly scoured newspapers and magazines for recipes that required wine. Coq au vin, beef bourguignon, chicken with white wine and mushrooms, all started to make regular appearances at our table.

  When Mum and I pulled back from our embrace, her eyes were puffy and red. My nose was running and my face was wet, too. She grabbed a few tissues from a box and we both smiled faintly at each other. We wiped our faces, and finished cleaning up the mess together in silence.

  The Recipe Drawer

  There were four drawers in our kitchen. The top one held the cutlery, neatly separated in a bright orange plastic organiser. The next drawer down was where Mum kept the clean tea towels – red-and-white check, blue-and-white check and a few souvenir ones featuring the Eiffel Tower or London Bridge – folded neatly and ready for use. The third drawer was called the Junk Drawer, as it held exactly that – a miscellaneous collection of playing cards, tiny toys from inside Christmas crackers, Sellotape, dice, loose elastic bands, throat lozenges, occasional sticks of chewing gum, loose plasters, old balls of Blu-Tack, scraps of paper for note-writing, and lots of grit and crumbs on the bottom that jammed under my fingernails when I shoved my hand in to grab something. The bottom drawer was Mum’s Recipe Drawer.

  This drawer was crammed full of magazine and newspaper cuttings and recipes written in her own hand, or her sister’s or a neighbour’s. Anyone who served up a tasty meal, dessert or cake was asked to reveal their secrets to Mum, and these spilled onto the floor when the drawer was opened. Underneath all the loose scraps was Mum’s recipe notebook. She received it as a present when she got engaged – her new role very clear – and into it she carefully wrote the recipes for the first food she nervously prepared for her new husband. Gammon steaks with pineapple, brown stew, Madeira cake and Curry cake – recipes neatly written into the first few pages of the notebook; the remaining pages were blank.

  While originally only one inch thick at the spine, the book now gaped open to five or six inches. It regularly got so fat with all her inserts that it made closing the drawer impossible. When this happened, Mum sat down at the kitchen table with the contents of the drawer spread out in front of her and attempted to put some order on her collection. Her categories were Meat, Stews, Fis
h, Pastry, Desserts, Cakes, Tray-bakes, Breads, and Miscellaneous – the last being the largest. Carefully she scanned each scrap and cutting and considered the likelihood of ever making its recipe – honestly. She discarded those that had lain for too long without ever being made. The desserts that involved, not only pastry, but also an egg custard filling, a glaze and gelatine got dumped; they may have originally impressed her with their beauty but she knew she would never get the time to make them. Similarly, dinners that involved a marinade or a sauce on the side got ditched in favour of the one-pot recipes she loved dearly. She kept others that, although well past their use-by date, she considered worthwhile for some unspecified reason – she gave them a stay of execution, with the serious intention of using them … soon. When she could cull no more, she placed the notebook back in the drawer – with a few loose recipes kept apart, as these were frequently used, or were too difficult to categorise. And still the drawer would barely close.

  The hoarding resumed unabated. The latest episode of Delia’s programme would see at least two fresh recipes added, Saturday’s Women’s Section in the newspaper provided another, and there were a few from Aunty Mary in England. Each of these took their turn on top of the pile, until they got buried by their successors. Experience showed that if Mum didn’t try a recipe straightaway, chances were she never would. Most recipes only saw daylight when the Recipe Drawer refused to close again.

  Gadgets

  Mum did not get a food processor when they emerged as the ‘must have’ of the neighbourhood mothers. In other kitchens a big Krups or Moulinex took pride of place on the kitchen countertop, with the lethal-looking attachments just out of reach. But Mum continued to chop, shred, grate, mix, grind, purée, blend, knead and slice by hand. She managed to convince herself that food processors were a waste of time. She assured me that by the time all the bits and pieces were dismantled, washed and put away, she could have done the work faster by hand. Instead, Mum relied on a plethora of less impressive yet novel ‘time-saving’ devices.