by Susan Duncan
'Possie,' he said one day when we were teenagers and doing the dishes after a family Sunday roast, 'do you wash a floury bowl in hot or cold water?'
I didn't have a clue but figured if he'd asked, it had to be cold, because hot is normal.
'Cold!'
'Right! Now tell me why.'
'Bugger!' I said, and we laughed because we both knew I was guessing.
'Because,' he explained,'hot water cooks flour and turns it into a gooey paste.'
I have no idea where his passion for food came from. But I feel as though it was there from the earliest times I can remember. He was always adventurous with it. Loved oysters at an age when most of us retched at the sight of them.
On school holidays at my grandparents' home, we'd be sent off to the dam (to get us out of the way) to catch yabbies by dangling a piece of raw meat from a string. When we felt a tug, we'd wait for a few more tugs, which meant the yabbie was firmly latched onto the meat, then we'd pull in the string. Not many yabbies ever let go once they've got a taste of raw, red meat.
When our buckets overflowed, one of us would run back to the house to fetch our mother. She'd light a campfire on the bank of the dam and boil a billy until steam filled the air. Then she'd grab those snapping, angry crustaceans behind the neck so they couldn't bite her and chuck them in the hot water. When the yabbies turned from muddy brown to raging red, she tipped out the water and showed my brother how to rip off their tails and suck out the meat in noisy slurps. They'd eat their way through a bucket load.Then she'd fire up another billy and start again.
They ate about fifty yabbies at a time, and when they were full, they'd chuck the live ones back in the dam for another day. I remember my mother sitting on the cracked clay dam bank, her wide floral skirt floating around her, hair bright blonde in the sun, teeth flashing white, with my brother crouched next to her. Both of them golden, somehow, and incredibly beautiful.
I watched their abandoned gluttony enviously but couldn't bring myself to taste even a morsel of the muddy white flesh. In those days, I wasn't game enough to go beyond lamb chops. Hell, I wouldn't even eat fish when my father, trying to make amends after losing heavily at the racetrack, would come home with deep fried flake and vinegar soaked chips. My mother and brother loved fish, a rare treat in those landlocked days when we lived at Bonegilla migrant camp, where Dad worked after he quit the army and before he bought the pub.
At heart, my father and I preferred rissoles – minced meat made with chopped onions, parsley and loads of salt and pepper, with a bit of egg and bread to bind it. He'd eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner and if my mother didn't make them regularly enough, he'd shuffle into the kitchen and make them himself.
'Got to loathe the smell of them,' my mother told me years later. 'It's all he ever wanted to eat. Rissoles . . . and mushrooms.'
Come to think of it, my father was a good plain cook. When he prepared the Sunday roast, which he did often, he was painstaking and patient. He even made cheese sauce for the cauliflower.
And he cleaned up as he went along. My mother was a much more impatient cook. She'd turn the heat up to the max and burn the bums out of saucepans and leave the kitchen looking like a war zone. But there wasn't much she wasn't game to try – snails, frog's legs, lamb's brains, and fish eyes. Though even my brother reared back from fish eyes.
When we were little kids, my mother and I went mushrooming while my father taught my brother how to load a rifle and hit a target which he thought would make a man of him. My brother didn't enjoy it much, but he became a crack shot. After a bit of practice myself, I wasn't too bad either. Dad needn't have worried about my brother's courage, though. He had it in spades.
My father was passionate about mushrooms. Every autumn, the whole family trekked through soggy paddocks in cheek whipping winds, picking everything from tiny, shiny white buttons to field mushrooms the size of dinner plates. When the car was so crammed with boxes that the only place my brother and I could sit was on each side of my mother's lap, we drove home to peel, clean, cook and bottle. My father's technique was to sauté the mushrooms in butter, add a bit of milk and thicken the juices with cornflour. Then they were poured into Fowler's Vacola preserving jars and pulled down from the shelves reverently each morning to be warmed and piled on toast for breakfast. He ate mushrooms for breakfast until supplies ran out.
I was always terrified a poisonous mushie or two must surely have found their way into the pot. I knew about poisoned mushrooms.
They grew under the pine trees near the block where we lived and were brilliant red with white spots. Fairytale style mushrooms.
Deadly, my mother told me. Not even safe to touch. And there were puff balls that looked so similar to button mushrooms I was sure one would sneak into the mix. So I'd beg my father not to eat them, and when he just smiled and loaded up his plate, I watched and waited for him to suddenly retch and gag, to go purple and then die. I was an adult before I felt safe eating mushrooms.
One Christmas,my mother experimented with the stuffing for the Christmas bird, adding a can of chopped water chestnuts, crystallised ginger and plenty of orange rind to the mix. It really wasn't bad, but my father and I looked at each other and pushed it aside. We didn't like surprises in our food. My passion, if I even had one in those days, was for good food. Quality but predictable ingredients cooked with respect.
Mum made that ritzy stuffing the first Christmas after the pub was sold and my parents moved us into the brick veneer wastelands of outer Melbourne suburbia. Our new house was a spit from where my mother was raised and I couldn't help wondering whether we moved there because it felt more like home to her than anywhere else did. Does it always feel safer when we go back to our roots?
'Used to be cherry orchards here,' she told me soon after the family moved in. 'My sisters and I would steal in at night and eat them until we turned purple. Then we'd go home and face a belting.'
And she looked wistfully across the jam-packed houses from the window of her split-level home – the best she and my father could manage financially. Not exactly her retirement dream of a grand house with soaring columns at the front entrance and a sweeping staircase. But the split level gave her four steps and she contented herself with those.
'You'll just have to sweep down slowly in your gowns,' she told me. 'Make the most of it.'
For whom? For what? I asked myself. It was her dream of grandeur, not mine. The grinding reality was, my parents were better off than many, with enough to see them through to the end of their lives, but only if they were careful and lived with constraint. There weren't enough resources after the pub was sold, for my mother's legendary wild flings (flying lessons when she turned forty), her lavish entertaining and her dream of becoming a flirty, middle-aged jetsetter. Anyway, by then Dad had a rotting liver from too many brandy heart-starters for breakfast, and lungs choking with nicotine.
You've got to do what you enjoy, I thought at the time, because there's no telling how it's going to end up. But I forgot all that as the years marched on. By the time my parents relocated to suburbia, my brother had ditched law for the racetrack and turned into a charming but wild larrikin. Every now and again, a debt collector would knock at the door and my father would pay up. Debt, to my father, was the greatest of all shames. Thank God he lived long enough to see my brother triumph.
I'd dropped out of university for a career in journalism instead of focusing on making a successful marriage. My mother didn't seem to understand that no matter how many times she ironed my clothes and tweaked pink into my cheeks, I was never going to turn into the powerful beauty she'd been in her youth. She'd been a knockout, apparently. Her waist a man's hand span, her eyes bluer than sapphires.
'Engaged twenty-two times,' she told me as I grew taller and taller, all arms and legs with a rather large nose she referred to as my peckin' thing because it looked like a beak. 'Used to write their names on the kitchen door and cross them out one by one as I called off each engageme
nt. Nan thought someone would shoot me one day. But they never did,' she added.
Looking back, the move to the brick vanilla, as we called the new house, was not one of the glossier times of my mother's life and she was riddled with disappointments. But she took up tennis again, and played nearly five days a week. And it diverted her mind from unpleasant details. It was her own style of coping. Of being tough. Of not letting life get her down.
That first Christmas when we struggled to embrace the barren confines of suburbia after being sprawling country kids all our lives was a shocker. The temperature hovered around 103 degrees, the light twanged and the bare asphalt street in front of the house pooled with mirages. The bank of white petunias in the neighbour's yard across the road sagged, and there were no trees on a street that was eerily quiet.You could've launched a missile and not hit a living soul that Christmas Day. Where were they all? Hunkered indoors, hiding from the heat? Or gone back for the day, to the cramped family homes they thought they were escaping when they were first seduced by the scent of fresh paint and the dream of a second bathroom?
It felt hotter than an oven indoors so we set the table on the concrete slab we called the patio, on the shady side of the house. There were plans to plant a garden but my father had no interest and my mother didn't know where to begin. We'd always had spectacular gardens but that was because we'd always had gardeners. Those days were over. We'd all thought it would be a relief to be together for a quiet family Christmas instead of dishing up roast turkey and ham for a hundred guests at the pub.
But it was a limp kind of day as we sat there with the hose running over our feet to cool us down. Without a crowd, it didn't feel like Christmas.
After that year, my brother, in his early twenties, took over the Christmas celebrations. And as his fortunes improved, the event grew.
After he married Dolly, they became extravaganzas. In their big sitting room, sofas and armchairs were shoved against the walls to make way for thirty feet of trestle tables. People contributed their own specialties – fresh lobsters from the bloke who lived near the fishing boats, a giant pudding from the best cake cook amongst us, seafood mousses from the person who lived closest, champagne or wine if that suited you better. Outside the laundry door, plastic garbage cans were filled with ice and loaded with enough beer and wine to sustain thirty or so guests through a five-hour lunch and a late supper of leftover turkey and ham sandwiches. When we were tipsy enough, we sang Christmas carols then turned up the music and danced until we ran out of puff.
But my brother is dead. And Christmas since his death has been more of an ordeal than a celebration. However, this first Pittwater Christmas, when I live in the wooden house set at the water's edge, I am determined to get organised in a way that my brother would have approved, revive the Duncan family tradition. I want it to be a grand time for the fourteen people who will gather around the table on the deck at about noon. My goal is to restore, if I can, a little of the old joie.
I begin making the pudding only a week before Christmas Day. Which is a bit scary because it's a three-day process. First, double the recipe.Then candy the orange and lemon peel and soak the raisins, sultanas, dates and currants in four times the suggested amount of brandy, letting the fruit sit for a couple of days. Stir (by turning over, not mashing!) every time you go past the bowl and make a wish. Invite everyone who passes to stir and make a wish. Watch them succumb to the sweet, dizzying brandy fragrance. See them close their eyes, breathe deep and hold their breath. Then wish.
'Never heard of this tradition,' Marie notes, wielding the thick wooden spoon. 'But it's a great way to get your pudding mixed!'
For a moment I wonder if it's a tradition I invented myself. Then I remember Christmas at the pub. A local woman, famous for her puddings, soaked bucket loads of dried fruit in rough-as-guts brandy for a day or two in an old tin baby's bathtub in the pub's concrete-floored laundry. A barrel of batter, made from butter, eggs, dark brown sugar, ginger and flour, was poured on top, bringing the mixture to almost the rim of the tub. It was too huge and heavy for one pair of hands to mix, so the tub was ceremoniously dumped in the public bar for a couple of hours and everyone asked to have a stir and make a wish. By the time the bar closed at six o'clock, the batter had been turned over hundreds of times and the fruit was well and truly mixed in. A bit of cigarette ash and a slop or two of beer as well, I suspect.
After mixing, the batter was divided up and wrapped in steaming, floured calico, to be dumped in the copper boiler where the sheets and towels were washed on Monday mornings. The puddings were tied to a stick so they didn't sink and fill up with water, and they bobbed on the surface like giant dumplings for about six hours. Then they were pulled out and hung from an indoor clothesline to cool down. I like to think now that those puddings were filled with the wishes of decent but reticent country blokes who would never dare say them out loud. As I recall, they were loaded with threepences and sixpences, which we warned guests about every year after one bloke swallowed a sixpence and nearly choked.
On Scotland Island, when I finally assemble the pudding mixture about three days before we're due to eat it, I'm anchored to the house for the next six hours, topping up the water in the pot. It's a broiling job but easily bearable. When the heat feels overpowering and sweat rolls down the valley in my back, I walk out the door and fall into the sea. Nice life, huh?
In that final week of Christmas frenzy, I drive two hours to pick up my mother and Wally. I install her in my bedroom, Wally on the back porch, and put myself on the silly bunk bed accessible only by the neck-breaking toeholds.
The evening before Christmas Eve, my mother polishes silver cutlery at the dining table while I make jugs of brandy sauce and a hard sauce and assemble the dry ingredients for the turkey stuffing.This year, I'm trying ground hazelnuts and grated orange and lemon peel in sourdough breadcrumbs. There's more of her in me than I like to think, sometimes.
The fridge is bursting with smoked salmon, smoked trout, ham and turkey, all the sauces and as much booze as we can fit in.The rest will go into iceboxes in the morning. There's potatoes galore. A salute of sorts to my husband, who was so genuinely shocked the first time I suggested a cold, casual Christmas lunch instead of the traditional whirlpool that he had to sit down.
'You'd at least have roast potatoes, wouldn't you?' he asked, holding his chest as though he had a cramp.
'Well, no, not really. Not with prawns.'
'Suppose you mean there'd be lots of rabbit food, instead?' His face turned pink.
'What's wrong with salads?'
'Nothing. If you're a rabbit.'
I went back to cooking a turkey on what is usually one of the hottest days of the year.
First thing in the morning on Christmas Eve, I make up the bed in the top bedroom – the captain's cabin for Pia – my old housemate from Sydney. She's due around lunchtime. I've convinced her to get here in time for the dog race. 'Bit of local culture,' I'd told her.
'Do local and culture go together out there?' She laughed because she loves the place as much as I do, but I felt oddly affronted, as though she'd called my new baby ugly.
The house gets a final dust and mop and just as I put on the kettle, Bomber and Bea, two recent friends, wave from their barge. I rush out on the deck.
'Come on in. Just put the kettle on.'
Bomber and Bea run a mooring service from an emerald and white working boat called the Trump – the only emerald boat I have ever seen. She's shaped like a boot, long in the front with a turned up toe, tall in the back with a bit of a heel. She's a common and cheery sight on Pittwater, scuttling from bay to bay, lifting and repairing moorings. Bomber, a tall, handsome man with a permanent tan and smile, has a big heart and a generosity of spirit that is legendary. Need a hand? Bomber is there. Need rescuing? Bomber is there. He is a backbone in Pittwater community life.His partner, Bea, is tough on the outside but mush on the inside. She has laughing blue eyes and, like Bomber, a kind streak a mile wi
de. She has a wicked sense of humour, too, and when she makes you a friend, the friendship is forever.
Most days, at the end of work, they motor past my front door to their anchorage in Bayview, Bea at the helm, Bomber coiling ropes and chains. If I am home and they have time, they tie up at the end of the jetty and come in for a cup of tea or a beer, depending on their mood. So do their dogs. Jessie is a soft-eyed mutt with a bit of labrador who looks like a big brown grizzly bear. Marley, a highly strung, yapping black kelpie with quizzical blonde eyebrows, has more bravado than brain and drives Bea to distraction. Old Pitey, a tan sausage dog, loves everyone and likes to sleep on your feet. Which is great in winter.
Bea sticks her head out of the cabin when I call. Marley streaks up and down the deck, barking her head off.
'Can't come in.Too busy,' she yells. 'Shut up, Marley!'
'See you at the dog race?'
'Shut up, Marley! Yeah. See ya. Shut up, you stupid brainless idiot bloody dog!'
And they wave as the emerald boot chugs on, Marley's hysterical barking fading in the distance.
When I try to pin down details about entering the dog race, though, people look at me blankly.
'I told you. The race just happens,' Marie says when I call her for more information. 'Everyone knows it's on Christmas Eve and if you want to be in it, get to The Point with your dog around five o'clock.'
Right!
Wally's been in full training with Stewart's and Fleury's daughters, and he looks sleek as a seal. His muscles ripple in the sunlight and he won't come out of the water even when you call him for dinner. Which is historic. Wally's never intentionally missed or been late for a meal in his life.
My stepdaughter, Lulu, arrives mid-afternoon with Bella, her border collie, and we decide Bella should enter the race too. She's the kind of dog who loves swimming even more than running. Drops twigs in your lap all day,mutely begging you to throw them. Which gets a bit wearing after a couple of hours. For us, not her. I've never seen that dog tire.