by Sheila Maher
Aunty Teresa was the daughter who had stayed at home to look after her deaf mother, ailing aunt and elderly father. Now they were all gone and she lived alone in the family home. Dad had shown me the small house, at the foot of The Rock, in which he was born. The house we were staying in was the one in which he had spent most of his childhood. It was on the main street of the town, right at the heart of the action, beside the entrance to the grand hotel, opposite several pubs and only down the road from Burke’s sweet shop. Very tall and narrow, it was a house with so many stairs winding up through its centre that I lost count.
There was an unused shop at the front of the house, where Dad’s mother had run a small grocery business. The shop had long been abandoned but the fixtures and fittings were still in place. Kevin and I liked to lift up the counter and walk in behind, examining the empty shelves that were still lined with old newspapers. We played shop with a few tins and packets stolen from Aunty Teresa’s kitchen, taking turns at being customer and shopkeeper.
The rest of the house comprised another three floors – it was very confusing. The sitting room was upstairs and one bedroom was on the same level as it; then the bathroom was above this and there were more bedrooms up higher again. I could never remember where the toilet was and inevitably barged into Aunty Teresa’s bedroom, which was either a floor above or below it.
Aunty Teresa thought she was giving us a treat on our first night when she served up tinned Campbell’s Meatballs for dinner. Mum never served an entire meal from a tin; a few peas, some salmon for a salad, or Spam when we were camping, but an entire meal, never. So Aunty Teresa was doing her own thing, spoiling us a little with this foreign dish. Served warm in a cereal bowl, the red sauce was sweet and the meat was rubbery. It had odd flavours. Before leaving home, Kevin and I had been warned by Mum to clean our plates and remember our manners, so we ate everything Aunty Teresa put in front of us.
That night I awoke from my sleep with a tummy ache. I knew something was wrong. I needed to go to the toilet. I wanted to be sick. But where was the toilet? Was it just a few steps across the hall or did I have to go up, or was it down, a flight of stairs? I lay in the bed beside Kevin, who was fast asleep, and wondered if I should waken Aunty Teresa and ask for help. I was very confused. But before I could climb over Kevin, it was too late. I heaved involuntarily and the warm red contents of my stomach splashed all over Kevin and our bed. Kevin woke up screaming. I started crying.
Aunty Teresa burst into our room. She stood at the door, her hairnet pinned down, securing every strand and curl in its rightful place. Her face was glistening with the Pond’s Cold Cream she gently massaged into her skin morning and night. She held her dressing gown tightly across her chest. She didn’t show revulsion or get cross, instead she started to laugh her warm infectious laugh. She couldn’t stop herself. She held her stomach tightly in her efforts to stop but she just laughed more and more. Her unexpected reaction stopped our wailing. We sat on our soggy bed and I started to giggle a little too – I was feeling better already. Kevin almost saw the funny side of it.
When she recovered her composure, Aunty Teresa got us out of the bed and stripped Kevin of his pyjamas. She wiped him clean and put on his day clothes – there were no spare pyjamas lying around her house. She got me a drink of water and told us to wait in the sitting room next door. We sat shivering on the old chaise longue in the darkened room while she made up our bed. Then she tucked us in again and kissed us firmly on our cheeks, through a final wave of her laughter. Aunty Teresa got much pleasure from recounting this story on our return to Dublin.
Onion Sandwiches
Mum loosened her grip on the kitchen a little on Saturdays. Usually she allowed us to make our own breakfasts and lunches. She may have suggested that there was ham in the fridge or plenty of Calvita cheese and crackers, but she let us get on with it as a form of learning exercise. So after a morning spent watching Swap Shop and Tarzan movies, it was time for lunch.
I chose to ignore the saucepan of Erin potato soup Mum had left on the cooker. I was going to make myself Dad’s favourite – an onion sandwich. This was one of the few ‘meals’ Dad made and he only got the opportunity to do so on a Saturday. He enjoyed rekindling his bachelor days and striking out for culinary independence every once in a while. In any case, Mum refused to make what she considered a revolting idea for a sandwich.
I watched in fascination the first time I ever saw him make one. His preparation in all tasks, whether it was diy, gardening or sandwich-making, was meticulous and painfully slow – the exact opposite of Mum’s frantic and blindingly fast scraping, chopping and mixing. When it came to peeling an onion, a tedious task for most people, Dad ensured that the shiny outer skin, and only the outer skin, was removed. He considered it a failure and wasteful if he stripped away a layer of edible flesh. So with the tip of a small sharp knife, he broke the outer skin of the onion and chipped away patiently at it until every last fleck of skin was on the chopping board and he held only a clean, white and naked onion in his hand. He placed two slices of white bread flat on the bread board and spread margarine thinly out to every corner, missing nothing. Holding the onion high, he did not take his eyes off the carving knife as it slid through the flesh. The slices were so thin I could see the light from the kitchen window through each one. Four slices of onion covered one slice of bread and a fifth slice was chopped finely and used to shore up any gaps. He didn’t even use a quarter of an onion to make an entire sandwich. He sprinkled plenty of salt and white pepper over the onion, before gently pressing down the top slice of bread and cutting the sandwich neatly in two. Then he sat at the table with his bachelor meal and a tall glass of milk.
I looked on in disgust and horror as Dad raised the sandwich to his mouth. I made involuntary gagging noises when he took his first bite.
He got irritated. ‘Don’t say it’s disgusting until you’ve tried it!’ he snapped.
He was right. I felt foolish and silly, and so in an attempt to save face with Dad, I rose to his challenge and asked for a bite. How bad could it be?
‘You can have this,’ he said, and smiled as he passed me the other half of his sandwich. He wasn’t going to let me off with a mere bite.
‘Thanks,’ I said in my most nonchalant voice.
I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t want to seem weak. I bit straight into it.
The onion sandwich was a revelation. My teeth met with soft bread, a hint of grease, the clean crunch of the juicy onion and gritty salt. It had a nice bite. There was a good combination of textures in that simple sandwich. It was similar to the Tayto sandwich – Cheese & Onion crisps squashed down and crushed into delicious pieces between two slices of buttered bread. I became an onion sandwich convert there and then. Dad was delighted to see that he, too, could pass on some ‘recipes’ to his children.
And so, as he lay asleep upstairs in his darkened room that Saturday, as a form of morose homage to him, I made myself an onion sandwich. It was my way of feeling close to him. My slices of onion were thicker, my butter was applied in lumps, and I didn’t add pepper, but together with a big glass of milk it made a completely satisfying meal that resonated with me all afternoon, and kept me belching until tea time.
Fillamillu
Grandma’s hearing degenerated steadily. After much persuading, she relented and got a hearing aid. Wearing it irritated her. It made sonic feedback noises most of the time. We suspected this was when its battery was running low. When the high-pitched screeching started, Grandma reached behind her ear and turned it off. She hated spending money on new batteries, so most of the time its purpose was decorative and, more importantly for Grandma, being seen to wear it kept her concerned children off her back. At night-time she wore giant headphones plugged into her television set so that she could hear it without disturbing the neighbours. When I tried to have a conversation with her, I shouted until my face turned red. Sometimes I got frustrated repeating myself and shortened my sentences and my conversation
s with her. At other times the consequences of her deafness were a source of much amusement both to us and to her, as she didn’t take herself too seriously.
On Sundays, after the scones and tea and when Maudie had gone back to Grantham Street, Grandma went to Uncle Pat’s, Aunty Eileen’s, or to our house for dinner. There was an unspoken and casual arrangement between her children and their spouses: Grandma was to be with her offspring for the rest of the day. She was brought from Ranelagh to suburbia, and entertained and fed before being dropped home, just in time for the nine o’ clock news. It was a system that worked well.
On the Sunday nights that Grandma was absent from our house, she phoned at ten to nine precisely to speak to Mum; no one but Mum moved to answer the phone – what was the point? The only sounds I heard coming from the hall were Mum’s patient ‘Yes … Yes … Right … Really? … Is that so? … Yes …’ as Grandma regaled her daughter with the events of the day.
In the sitting room I silently stared at the screen, not paying attention to the news, just glad not to be in bed with nothing but a Monday morning to look forward to. I hoped that if I was quiet and caused no trouble, Dad would stay asleep and not wake up to see me and Kevin still downstairs after nine o’ clock. It had worked so far.
At a quarter past nine one particular Sunday Mum returned to the sitting room. ‘My God!’ she exclaimed, exasperated. ‘Every little fiddle faddle! I have to hear every detail about her day. And look, now I’ve missed the news.’
She plonked herself back down on the sofa and, in turn, recounted to us, over the sound of the closing news summary and weather forecast, each minute detail of Grandma’s day. How Pat’s house was looking; how the diy he was undertaking in the bathroom was progressing; what his two boys were doing and what they said; what Mary, Pat’s wife, was wearing. The meal, being her favourite part of the ritual, Grandma had described in even greater detail. The lasagne was perfect: firm but not hard; not too dry nor too runny; it held the square shape of the portion as Mary served it; the baked potatoes were lovely and floury, with a dollop of sour cream melting in the cross at the centre. She only ate a small amount of salad. But knowing Grandma’s sweet tooth, Mary had saved her best for last and spoiled her mother-in-law with an impressive new Italian dessert.
Pleased to have a funny anecdote that might lift the mood in the room, Mum told us all about this delicious dish. About the layers of creamy, cheesy mixture on top of the layers of sponge fingers dipped in coffee laced with alcohol, all beautifully arranged and on view in Mary’s glass serving bowl. There was a dusting of chocolate powder on top, or was it Cadbury’s Flake? Grandma couldn’t remember. It had chilled all afternoon in the fridge and was cool and spongy and wickedly boozy to eat. Grandma had seconds, with fresh cream on the side, on both occasions. It was very professional-looking, she said. But the best about it all was the name that Grandma had misheard – Fillamillu.
Mum got a faint chuckle out of each of her four children on the recounting of this story – having never tasted tiramisu, the joke meant little to us, though we laughed for her sake. Dad barely lifted an eyelid during its telling. Mum glared over at him, irritated that he had neither listened nor found it funny.
‘Right now, you pair, off to bed with you. It’s way past your bedtime,’ she said.
The atmosphere reverted, just like that.
The Drinks Cabinet
Very little alcohol was consumed in our house. Mum poured herself a solitary glass of sherry while preparing the Sunday roast and the Christmas turkey. This tiny glass she kept by her side, taking it with her as she moved from surface to surface around the kitchen. A drop of alcohol had never passed my father’s lips, the brass Pioneer pin he wore on his lapel and moved from jacket to jacket bore testimony to his abstinence, so no other alcoholic beverage was consumed most weeks.
The ‘drinks cabinet’ was a press in a unit that Dad built, which fitted snugly into the alcove in our sitting room. On the bottom shelf sat our set of encyclopaedias – A to Z lined across the width of the unit, with just enough room for a Philip’s Atlas at the end. I was encouraged – forced, I should say – to use these books when I had a question about geography, nature, science or music. ‘You’ll remember it better if you look it up yourself’ was the annoying mantra Mum and Dad sing-songed if I moaned at the prospect of having to work for the answer. (It never occurred to me that they might not know the answer.) On the next shelf up were some old novels by A.J. Cronin and Daphne Du Maurier, and a few John F. Kennedy biographies. This is where our Oxford English Dictionary and our Irish–English dictionary by Tomás De Bhaldraithe sat. Above this was open shelving filled with photos of our extended family, and the drinks cabinet.
When visitors called, once greetings were over and they were seated, the door to the drinks cabinet was let down, like a drawbridge over a castle moat. It was the only door in the house that opened like that. There was an unusual smell inside the cabinet, too – an old, sweet and damp smell. All the drinks were on display so that guests could take their pick. There were always large bottles of Paddy’s Irish Whiskey, Martini, Harvey’s Bristol Cream and Gordon’s Gin. (Never one to let anything go to waste, Dad made several lamp shades from empty whiskey bottles of curious shapes. A Dimple Scotch Whisky bottle sat in my bedroom for years. Through the clear glass I could see the wire enter from a tiny bored hole in the base of the bottle and travel on up through the main cavity into the light bulb. I thought it was ingenious.)
Around these large bottles were fitted numerous toy-like bottles of rum, brandy, Curaçao and other odd-sounding potions, as well as bottles shaped like musical instruments and churches, which Mum and Dad received as gifts from abroad. These were never opened. On a shelf above all the alcohol sat the glassware. There were a few mismatched Waterford crystal glasses – wedding presents – but never a complete set.
With visitors in the house, Mum had a Martini, maybe two. She liked it mixed with tk White Lemonade and ice. Some guests went straight for the whiskey and water, while the sophisticates from London always asked for a g&t. On such occasions, the odd glass of ‘mineral’ did it for Dad. To whet his appetite, Mum now regularly included huge bottles of Cidona, Club Orange and red lemonade in her shopping – ‘for Dad’ we were told. He liked to sip at different drinks all day and sugary ones were more appealing to him. They were lined up on a high shelf in the cold garage for Dad to drink his way through or until guests arrived. When we had visitors, we children were allowed to enjoy a glass of mineral, too.
Cidona made me feel grown up. There was something mature about the look and smell of this drink. I shook my glass and let the ice cubes clink off the sides. I was a femme fatale from a Hollywood movie, knocking back strong liquor that had been poured over ice from a silver shaker. It tasted as if it was something I shouldn’t be drinking. It definitely didn’t taste like other drinks for kids. It was the fizzy drink of choice for the discerning child.
Christmas Cake
The learning load in school eased off. I counted down the days left until the Christmas holidays. We lit all three of the purple advent candles; we made yards of paper chains to hang around the prefab, in a vain attempt at brightening it up; and we learned ‘Silent Night’ in German. No German had ever been taught in our school, and none of the teachers knew how to speak it, but phonetically we learnt ‘Schteel-a-gay Nacht, Hile-a-gay Nacht’. We even sang it in harmony when a few of the classes got together in the hall and our voices filled its hollow space.
Our Christmas tree wasn’t up yet. There was no festive atmosphere at home. I saw the lights shimmering on Maeve’s tree through the bubbly pane of glass beside her front door as we approached her house. It was a fat tree adorned with thick scarves of tinsel and multicoloured balls. The sight of it made me yearn for one in our hallway too. I wanted to smell the sweet pine and touch my favourite decoration – a blue sparkling sparrow – and place it high on a branch where I could see it as I climbed the stairs.
Mum had nev
er bought a Christmas tree on her own before, she couldn’t fit it into the car, she didn’t know how much to pay – there were many reasons why our house was the only one on the road with no tree visible.
But when Mum opened the front door to greet me on the last day of school, the house was filled with the smells of Christmas. Lying across the hall was a small, naked but very fragrant tree, on the thin side, it had to be admitted, but a tree all the same. Our boxes of decorations were down from the attic and stacked up beside it. And wafting up the hall was a delicious smell that made me giddy inside. I skipped into the kitchen and there, in her biggest earthenware bowl, Mum was steeping fruit for the Christmas cake. Raisins, sultanas, currants, glacé cherries, dates – they were all bathing in a decadent mixture of whiskey and orange zest and juice. The wizened fruit was soaking up the liquid, slowly getting plump and glossy. I smelled the wonderful aroma of nutmeg, mixed spice and cinnamon.
On the table were strips of grease-proof paper. Mum was muttering and ‘damning’ away to herself as she cut out circles and strips to line the inside of her blackened cake tin. She hated this fiddly job but her notes from the previous year reminded her that her cake had burned, and she had to be extra careful today. On the countertop, around the weighing scales, was every bowl we possessed, each one filled with a different ingredient. Ground almonds, chopped walnuts, grated lemon and orange zest, grated apple and half a dozen eggs.
