Six at the Table Read online

  ‘You’re not on a diet again are you?’ she said, exasperated. ‘In my day you were told you could have “a little bit of everything” and it worked for me. All this diet nonsense – sure, you don’t need it anyway!’ She was frustrated with her youngest but her voice was tender.

  Depending on her resolve that day, Mum relented or not as the case may be. Mostly Grandma drank her tea and ate her cake, while her daughter sipped despondently at black coffee.

  Irel Coffee

  Dad had not returned to work, so when I came home from school I never knew if he was going to be asleep in the sitting room or in bed upstairs. In order to fatten him up and rebuild his strength, Mum encouraged him to have an afternoon coffee and some cake. Dad did not, as a rule, eat between meals; three square meals a day had long been his dietary requirement. But Mum wanted more flesh on his bones. She asked me to make Dad an afternoon coffee, butter a scone and bring it in to him where he lay asleep on the couch.

  The fine granules of Maxwell House or Nescafé was what Mum drank, black. The only way to get coffee into Dad was to give him Irel coffee. Dark and syrupy, it was in a tall narrow bottle that had sticky trickles down the sides. The top was difficult to screw off because years of old sticky coffee had lodged in the grooves. I knew how to make it just the way Dad liked. I placed one spoonful of coffee and two of sugar in a mug, poured in a generous amount of cold milk and stirred it to a grainy paste; then hot water from the kettle was poured in by Mum. I stirred this again until the paste was fully dissolved. Next, I slit open a scone and scraped a fine layer of butter across each open surface, also the way Dad liked. I put the scone and the mug onto a plate and went to the sitting room to waken him. It took a few calls of his name to stir him, then he shuffled himself back up to a sitting position on the couch, reached out for the plate and said thanks. He ate what he was given, without questioning if he wanted it or not, or if he was hungry or not. He was very passive. After a few mouthfuls, he placed his mug and plate on the coffee table, his snack gone, his appetite returning.

  The only other use for Irel coffee was as an ingredient in Mum’s magnificent coffee cake. Coffee cake was her signature cake, the one she proudly brought to other people’s houses, the cake that never failed to please. A tablespoon of Irel in both the cake mixture and the butter-cream icing was all it took to impart the essence of coffee. Mum baked two coffee sponges and stuck them together with a generous amount of her filling. Then she scraped gently at the sides of the cake, to get a pile of crumbs on the countertop. After icing the sides, she up-ended the cake and rolled it like a wheel in the crumbs. Finally she iced the top. The finishing touch, which I was allowed do, was to place seven walnut halves on top; six in a circle around the edge and one in the centre. It almost looked like a shop-bought cake created by a professional. At nine years of age, I was forbidden to drink coffee, so I savoured the illicit flavour in Mum’s best cake of all.

  Trifle

  Dad’s homecoming brought with it the return of the weekly roast, which was greeted with unspoken relief and joy by everyone. The last roast we had eaten was the one Grandma had made, with carrot rounds and pale potatoes. I could again take huge pleasure in the dubious sight of a chicken defrosting by the embers of our open fire, or in a joint of beef oozing a pool of deep red blood as it sat in our fridge, thawed and waiting to be roasted. The return of the roast also meant the return of Sunday dessert.

  Cheesecake – lemon or strawberry – was a dessert Mum made regularly for Sunday dinner. Bowls were spread out across the countertop: egg whites in one, unused yolks in another, cream in a third, cream cheese in a fourth and gelatine dissolving in the fifth; or if it wasn’t a posh recipe, this last bowl would have a packet of Bird’s jelly dissolving in it. There was lots of spoon- and bowl-licking to be had when cheesecake was being made. My job was to put twelve digestive biscuits into a plastic bag and bash them with a rolling pin. When Kevin got involved in biscuit-bashing, it was double the fun, with both of us crushing and mushing the digestives, but the amount of sneaky biscuit pieces I could eat, without Mum noticing, was halved.

  Unfortunately, however, Mum’s cheesecakes couldn’t be relied upon. They were often not worth all the whipping, mixing, dissolving, stirring and bashing. Some were so rubbery as to require chewing before swallowing. Others were watery and full of large air holes and tasted of nothing. Trifle was a much safer bet – always popular and always demolished completely.

  Trifle was the only thing Lucy ever made. It was her thing in the kitchen. No one else was allowed to make it. It took her the entire weekend to prepare her trifle. She started it after her hockey match on Saturday morning and only finished it seconds before dinner on Sunday.

  Firstly, she sliced the Gateaux Swiss Roll and neatly lined the bottom of a large glass bowl with it. She then strained a tin of fruit salad through a sieve and poured some of the juice over the sponge. She kept aside the pale cubes of fruit for later. Next she dissolved a packet of Bird’s jelly in boiling water and when all the sticky cubes had shrunk and disappeared, she dribbled some of this over the sponge too until it was soggy and pink. The remainder of the jelly she put in the fridge to almost set. The key was to ensure that the jelly never set completely at this stage. She had to catch it at just the right time, so it was soft enough to tip onto the sponge and form a distinct jelly layer.

  The problem arose when Lucy went outside with Catherine to play with their pogo-stick and forgot about her trifle. When she returned, she charged into the kitchen, opened the fridge and screeched when she saw her deep red and rigid jelly. ‘Mu-um, what’ll I do?’ she whined. Patiently Mum got out a saucepan, filled it with boiling water and placed the bowl of jelly on top. It had to be re-melted and re-set. By Saturday night the jelly was as it should be and ready to be placed onto the sponge and the fruit squashed down into it. This was returned to the fridge. Now it could set to its heart’s content.

  After Mass and our visit to Grandma’s on Sunday morning, Lucy made the custard. She had to make a strong yellow custard, if it was to be thick enough. Bird’s Custard Powder was generously added to warm milk and stirred, bubbling, to thicken. It remained in the saucepan, cooling for most of the afternoon, before Lucy gently tipped it on top of the jelly in another even layer. Back again into the fridge it went to set.

  As Mum banged around the steaming kitchen that evening, stirring the gravy and draining the vegetables, Lucy sauntered in to finish her creation. There was no room on the countertop for Lucy to plug in the electric whisk, so with minutes to spare she set about manually whisking the fresh cream. The pace of her whisking soon slowed down. She took a break and shook her tired arm and then gave it another go. Eventually she looked over her shoulder, pleadingly, at Mum. If she was frustrated at this untimely request for assistance, Mum didn’t show it. She stopped what she was doing and took the whisk from Lucy. Her arm rotated rapidly and the balloons of the whisk became a blur in the thickening cream. Within seconds it was in soft peaks. Lucy spread this on top of the trifle, right up to the rim of the bowl. If there was a block of cooking chocolate in the kitchen, she grated a generous amount of it on top, with a confident flourish. She had made dessert. The bowls, whisk and grater she left in a pile by the sink.

  Trifle was high on my list of all-time-favourite desserts. I was banned from making it, so I devoted myself to eating it. I looked through the clear glass bowl at her magnificent creation, and the clean lines of Lucy’s layers were impressive. Four distinct and colourful layers, to be enjoyed both individually and as a combination. Eating trifle was a special pleasure, too. Moist and yet crumbly on the bottom, cold and sweet in the middle, topped off with at least an inch of custard and cream and a grating of chocolate. Excitedly I asked for hush at the table, as Mum’s large serving spoon entered the trifle. I wanted to hear the farting, sucking noise when the first spoonful was pulled out. It was seldom I got to hear my food making such atavistic sounds.

  The fun went out of trifle when Mum disco
vered a new way to make it. It was supposedly more sophisticated – ‘This is the way they’re doing it now,’ Mum told me – and it didn’t take two days to make. Mum tossed the sponge, fresh raspberries and bananas together and poured a real and very pale egg custard over them and let it set with lumps and bumps sticking out haphazardly. She plopped cream in a casual fashion on top. Finally she sprinkled on toasted flaked almonds – cooking chocolate or Cadbury’s Flake would no longer suffice. Gone forever were Lucy’s clean smooth lines and distinct layers. Why did they have to mess with trifle?

  Milk Pudding

  There were few things as comforting to me as warm milk puddings, and there were plenty of these to choose from on damp winter nights in our house. Each one brought great satisfaction and a fight over who got the ‘scrape’ – the overcooked bits stuck to the side of the dish. Mum regularly rotated the puddings in her repertoire to avoid repetition and boredom.

  Sago: Clear, softened beads like frogspawn suspended in a white stretchy goo that clung greedily to the side of my bowl. I could only get all the sago off my spoon with vigorous licking and sucking and eventually by resorting to my teeth.

  Semolina: Very fine grains whose sole purpose seemed to be to change milk from a white liquid into a pale yellow solid. A large amount of sugar added greatly to the enjoyment.

  Rice Pudding: The king of milk puddings. When this was placed in the centre of the table, we fought for the brown skin that formed on top during its baking. Mum cooked it to perfection so that the grains were still intact, with a bit of bite. The creaminess made winter nights endurable.

  Farola: While its name suggested something exotic, or at least foreign, this was almost indistinguishable from semolina, except that Mum served this baked pudding with a blob of raspberry jam or some tinned peaches in their syrup resting on top.

  Custard: One word – Bird’s. Bright yellow and very sweet, it could be poured over anything and paraded as a dessert. I loved it over apple purée, warm prunes, fairy cakes or just on its own. Mum had a unique twist on custard – she put chopped bananas and pears into the thick mixture, then put whipped egg white on top and baked it in the oven until the custard was set and the meringue was golden and crispy.

  Blancmange: With the exception of Bird’s Custard Powder, this was the only ‘packet’ dessert Mum ever made. She looked down her nose at Angel Delight and refused, despite my pleading, to put it in her shopping trolley. But for some reason, known only to herself, she thought shop-bought blancmange was acceptable. The raspberry-, strawberry- or vanilla-flavoured powder was stirred into milk and poured into a jelly mould to set. But Mum’s blancmange never set. When she lifted the mould off, after hours in the fridge, the dessert would invariably collapse and slither over the serving plate and drip onto the table. This annoyed her but didn’t bother us. The Day-Glo pink or shocking yellow provided enough novelty and excitement; we were delighted to be eating hues not found in nature. Mum and Dad never ate it; even Dad with his sweet tooth drew the line at blancmange. The four of us would devour large servings of it in seconds.

  Bread and Butter Pudding: Lots of stale bread was required to make this pudding. Bread rarely lingered around long enough to go stale in our house, so we didn’t get it too often. From time to time, though, Mum purposefully spread bread out on the countertop for half a day, then she buttered it, layered it with sugar, spices and raisins and poured a mixture of milk and beaten eggs over it before baking it. For a milk pudding, this was too dry for my liking. I was glad we didn’t have it too often.

  Queen of Puddings: Its name alone suggests that this pudding is a cut above. Breadcrumbs soaked with warm sweetened milk, then topped with raspberry jam and a crown of crispy meringue. The wonderful combination of crunchy sweet meringue and raspberry jam with the soft, slightly savoury taste of the breadcrumbs made this a family favourite. Unfortunately for me, however, this dessert became known as ‘Catherine’s favourite’, and it was always Catherine who got the scrape. On queen of pudding days, she momentarily forgot her sulky teenage angst and with an imperceptible and totally maddening smile, she dragged the empty pudding dish in front of herself and happily scraped away at all the crunchy brown bits of baked jam and meringue, like the big child that she was.

  And what was my favourite? I didn’t have one. I loved all things milky and sweet and so was in with a chance for every scrape, but I never got priority on any one in particular. I could only look on in envy as Catherine devoured hers.

  Milk puddings played a central role in helping Dad get his strength back. Little else seemed to whet his appetite. He was out of hospital a long time now but had to go back in every once in a while for some treatment. He slept a lot and only ate a little. He sat at the dinner table with us, but usually ate Weetabix, soup, or some other bowl food.

  Milk puddings, however, held Dad at the dinner table longer than usual. So in the constant struggle to keep him eating, Mum let me make rice pudding for him. She showed me how to rinse the grains in a sieve under running water until the water ran clear. Then I spilled these into a baking dish and sprinkled two tablespoons of sugar over them. Carefully Mum let me pour enough cold milk into her measuring jug to cover the rice. Finally I dropped a knob of butter into the centre of the milk, where it promptly sank to the bottom. I was allowed to lift the dish into the hot oven, with Mum hovering at my elbow.

  I beamed as Mum placed the rice pudding in the centre of the table after dinner, a stack of bowls and spoons in front of her. It had a deep golden skin stretched taut across it. The skin was aching to be ripped off and gobbled – normally I would have attempted it – but this evening I wanted everyone, especially Dad, to sit and stare at my simple but perfect creation.

  ‘Sheila made the rice pudding this evening, Tom. Will you have some?’ Mum asked ceremoniously, yet unnecessarily, as he never refused rice pudding. With a large table spoon she cut through the skin into the ivory milk-and-beads mixture below.

  ‘I don’t feel like it tonight. I think I’ll just go inside and lie down,’ he said, as he lifted himself off his chair.

  I watched his back as he left the room. It was narrow even when wrapped in his thick maroon dressing gown. The sight of his alabaster and hairless ankles shunting across the kitchen in his navy slippers made him look impossibly vulnerable.

  I was crestfallen. I didn’t want Dad to see just how important this was for me. Why had I placed so much importance on a rice pudding? I was being silly. But it was important. I believed that somehow it was vital that he eat my rice pudding.

  ‘Just a small bit?’ Mum suggested to his departing back.

  ‘Not now,’ he said, with his hand on the door handle. And he was gone.

  ‘This looks lovely,’ Mum said brightly, turning to me, choosing to gloss over my obvious disappointment. She couldn’t address every single nuance and upset that arose each day – there were too many for her to deal with alone. She kept her head down and divided the pudding into four generous portions – she herself always passed over dessert on week nights.

  Taking my lead from her, I said nothing. I ate my dessert in silence. It should have been delicious. I couldn’t taste it for the tears rolling down my face.

  The Vegetable Patch

  It went against the grain with my parents to pay someone for work that could be done in-house. Tradesmen were a rare sight, as Dad used to do all repairs himself. But these days, without his strength and skills around the house, Mum had to rely on herself or employ help. She winced when she wrote a cheque for the plumber who came and bled our radiators – she didn’t tell Dad about it. Nor did she mention the few pennies she sponsored our next-door neighbour’s Boy Scouts Club for mowing the back and front gardens. She decided, too, that the vegetable garden Dad and she had tended for several years had to go. She couldn’t manage it alone – us children were of no help at all. Reluctantly she paid two teenage boys from up the road to turn the soil in our back garden and put an end to their days of suburban farming. It didn�
�t seem right, but she said she had no choice.

  Their plan on how to live independently and not rely so completely on commercial enterprises had required Dad to dig up half the back garden and plant rows and rows of round lettuce, onions and peas every year. I knew spring had arrived when I walked into the garage and Dad was crouched over trays filled with compost. He placed tiny seeds precisely half an inch apart and let me press them under the soil with my small fingers. Then these trays were laid out on the kitchen windowsill, watered and tended every evening until seedlings appeared above the surface and grew in strength. When the time was judged to be right, and no more frost was likely, seedlings were planted out in the vegetable patch, and the tender young tomato plants moved to the protection of the garden shed. Planting out was a tedious chore, I always thought. All I ever had to do was the watering and weeding, and only then if I was overheard complaining of having nothing to do.

  When the onions were pulled from the ground in early summer, they had to dry out. The stalks had to wither and the protective brown skin had to take hold. Freshly picked onions were lined up on every windowsill that faced the sun. They were placed on trays in the garden under old panes of glass leaning against the wall. They covered any clutter-free surface in the shed for the few weeks it took until they were ready to eat.

  During summer, the lettuce sprouted quickly. And before long they looked like giant green roses with layers of leaves wrapped tightly in concentric circles around the firm heart at the centre. These big lush leaves then loosened out and spread across the vegetable patch until Mum pulled them for dinner or slugs got at them.