by Sheila Maher
A few days later I went with Mum to collect her order. The counter boys marched in file out to our car carrying open cardboard boxes, laden with individual bags of bloody meat. Rapidly they identified each item to Mum. They had a numbering system, too, in case she needed it: in bright blue marker each bag was numbered, each number corresponding to a little piece of the cow in a picture on the shop wall. It seemed very complicated to me.
Dad was on standby when we got home – there was not a second to be wasted, no meat was given the chance to go off. Working swiftly together, like a relay team, they filled the base of the freezer, Mum making a mental note of what went where. Then she turned the dial up fully and blasted the meat with cold air.
Mum didn’t put the butcher’s burgers to freeze right away, she kept them aside. While the rest of the meat was chilling, Dad painstakingly took one burger at a time and reshaped it into two new burger patties of a modest size. This was his idea. ‘Quarter Pounders’ might be the norm in America or in Dublin chip shops, but he considered them unnecessarily large and wasteful. So Mum respected his minor role in matters culinary and in the space of an hour he doubled the number of burgers we got from the butcher; then she placed them in the freezer.
In late summer, when lamb was a little cheaper than in spring, the procedure would be repeated. Gigot chops, loin chops, cutlets, legs, shoulders – an entire lamb joined what was left of the cow in the depths of our freezer. Year in, year out, cut by carnivorous cut, we chewed our way through animal after animal.
A Finger in My Mash
Mealtimes were not always fun; six of us squashed around the square table, cheek by jowl, shoulders and arms touching, looking closely at each other, listening to each other chewing loudly, or someone gulping and swallowing their milk noisily. I’d shiver when the tine of a fork scraped at an angle across a plate. Seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year – this was not enjoyable.
My ‘end of the table’ was the troublesome one. Dad and I sat opposite each other with Catherine at right angles between us; three quick-tongued and hot-tempered individuals in such close proximity that our dinner plates touched. At this time Catherine was well into her stride as a teenager, full of sulks and causing tension. I resented how she could change the temperature of a room just by entering it. She had kind moments when she let me try on her jewellery or let Lucy borrow her clothes but these were the exception; sulking and scowling was her norm. I, on the other hand, was opinionated and vocal. My school reports were already peppered with complaints such as ‘disruptive’, ‘troublesome’, ‘talks back when corrected’. We were three strong personalities confined in a tight space, dinner in and dinner out.
Dad, who had been known to swing from quiet and uncommunicative to loud roaring in a matter of seconds, had become increasingly unpredictable. At some meals he seemed withdrawn and vacant, and let arguments take place around him and wash over him. At other times he was easily angered and flared up quickly. I noticed that an air of tension had crept into the kitchen at dinner time in the last few weeks; no one knew when, or if, his temper would flare and at whom it would be directed.
Down the other end of the table were Mum, Lucy and Kevin. They watched quietly, out of boredom, shock or wisdom – I never knew which – while our end of the table combusted one evening. Dad shouted louder and louder; Catherine screeched hysterically; I roared deliberately-made-to-inflame comments at each of them, until it all became too much for Mum.
‘Stop it! Stop it the lot of you!’ she shouted in a tremulous voice – it was never difficult to provoke Mum to tears. ‘I’m fed up with you all. I’ve been working all day to get this dinner ready and you’ve just ruined it.’
She left the table and stood over the sink, blowing her nose and patting her eyes. I stared down at my half-eaten dinner. I knew I couldn’t leave the table, that would divert too much of the tension in the room onto me. I’d have to stay and see if I could redeem myself. But if there was going to be trouble, I wasn’t going to suffer alone. And so I started the blame game.
‘It’s all your fault. Happy now?’ I muttered out the side of my mouth to Catherine. I was half hoping Mum would hear me, chime in and blame her too. But she didn’t.
Catherine’s frustration at not having won the initial argument and now having to deal with a tearful mother and upstart young sister got the better of her. Right under my nose she launched an attack on my dinner.
‘So there!’ she snarled, a big greasy index finger diving into my hill of mashed potato. When she pulled out her finger, it left behind a clean tunnel, boring deep into my mash.
Even though she did this kind of thing regularly, it always left me speechless. There was no lower blow I could imagine. The disrespect, the utter disregard for precious food, stunned me into silence. I assessed her plate. I could swipe all her peas onto the floor. I could pick up her pork chop and fling it against the kitchen wall. I could slam my fist into her potato. These images flashed before my eyes but I couldn’t bring myself to execute any one of them. To waste and destroy food in such a manner was anathema to me. Instead, I appealed, in my best whine, to my seething Dad and snivelling Mum to sort Catherine out; to deliver the appropriate punishment.
Sometimes Mum would sit down and try to break the ice, and a timid conversation might follow until it was time to vacate the kitchen. Other times we carried on in a strained, chewing silence for the rest of the meal, until each of us had cleaned our plates. We’ d mutter our excuses and leave Mum in the kitchen, alone.
That evening I felt a strong sense of guilt as I looked at my red-eyed mother. I saw that my behaviour was not making her life any easier. So I said quietly, ‘Sorry, Mum’, and got a faint thank-you smile and a weak pat between my shoulder blades.
Peas
Lucy was generally considered to be ‘the good one’ in our family, the child who caused little or no trouble. Catherine was too moody to be a contender for the title, I was too hot-tempered, and Kevin, he was just Kevin, the baby. So out of us lot, like cream, Lucy rose to the top as the best-behaved child and she was rarely at the receiving end of Dad’s temper.
The smallest of the three girls, Lucy had had an operation for a squint when she was little. She had feet that turned in, too, and had to wear her shoes on the wrong feet to correct them. The rest of us decided that, for all of these reasons, Dad felt she needed extra protection.
He wasn’t so patient with the rest of us. I’d seen him take after Kevin when he’d been naughty. He’d chase him round and round the two apple trees in the back garden, sports jacket open and flapping wildly, coins and keys jangling loudly in his trouser pockets. He’d curse Kevin under his breath and call for him to ‘Come here, ye little brat’ until he pounced on him and landed a loud whack on his bottom.
Several times he’d thundered up the stairs in pursuit of me, as I locked myself into the toilet to escape a slap, knowing my attempt at avoidance was futile – I had to come out eventually. (This strategy had been known to commute my sentence. Dad’s slaps were less enthusiastic after half an hour of cooling off time. However, it was a strategy that required much resolve to stay put inside that tiny, locked cubicle. I also had to pray that no one else needed to use the solitary toilet or else I was at Dad’s mercy.) When I did come out, I was sent to my room for the rest of the evening.
As for Catherine, Dad sat within arm’s reach of her at the dinner table, so she learned to be deft at jumping out of her seat to avoid a swipe.
Lucy’s veil of protection, however, did not save her one evening when Mum served peas with our dinner. Lucy didn’t like peas. She spent the entire meal moving them around her plate, hiding some under a piece of discarded fat or sinew, accidentally-on-purpose knocking a few onto the table or floor. Furtively she looked at Dad as she executed each of these ingenious plans to get rid of her peas. Without looking in her direction, Dad was keenly aware of her agenda.
I carefully fingered my last few peas onto my fork and brought them to my mouth, an
d put my knife and fork together on my plate as I was told to do, a signal that I was ready for my next course.
Lucy nervously twitched her cutlery, trying in vain to hide a few peas under her knife and fork.
‘Eat your peas, Lucy,’ Dad suddenly snapped across the table.
‘I’m not hungry any more,’ Lucy tried.
‘They’re good for you, now eat them.’ Dad’s voice got louder.
‘I don’t like peas,’ Lucy snivelled.
‘Everyone else can eat them and so will you.’ Dad’s face turned red, a hue that signalled impending danger.
Lucy bent her head low and started to cry. The rest of us watched in silence. And then she was gone. She bolted out of her chair and made a brave dash for the door. Dad jumped up out of his seat and tried to intercept her but he was slower than usual and having to manoeuvre around Catherine’s chair hindered his progress. He was not quick on his feet and certainly no match for a twelve-year-old. So he let her run upstairs and went into the hall and bellowed up after her, ‘That’s it, Lucy. No dessert for you. And I don’t want to see you down here for the rest of the evening, ye hear!’
He returned to the kitchen, slammed the door and rejoined us at the table. His breathing was laboured from the sudden exertion and he gripped the edge of the table, shaking from pent-up anger, his forehead glistening like a skinless chicken breast.
Lucy’s crown as ‘the good one’ certainly slipped a little that night.
Grace After Meals
I couldn’t put my finger on it. The atmosphere in the house was different. It wasn’t just that the house was quiet most of the time, it was because Mum was quiet. She still gave orders and told me what to do, but when she wasn’t doing that, she was quiet. She didn’t sing to herself. She didn’t turn the radio on every time she entered the kitchen. I’d find her staring out the kitchen window at our back garden, or at her own reflection if it was dark outside. She was still.
Foolishly I mentioned a new prayer to her. I was doing my best to help lift the fug that had settled over our house. I was seeking approval. I yearned too desperately to be her favourite. Mum and Dad didn’t have favourites, but that didn’t prevent me, in the heat of a row, from taunting them with accusations that another sibling was their favourite. Dad brushed off such accusations angrily as ‘bloody rubbish’. Mum usually turned misty-eyed and bestowed a hug of guilt on her accuser. I wanted some sign that I was her pet. But no treat or extra time together was ever enough. I wanted her to come right out and say it to my face, which she never did. So I resorted to obsequious strategies from time to time.
On this occasion, I told her about the prayer we read in my religion book in school – it was ‘Grace After Meals’. Not only could you start a meal with a prayer, but you could end it with one too. I thought it would cheer her up if she could see that she had one ‘holy’ child. I knew how important religion was to her and I hoped to use it to wipe away that air of sadness that hung over her like a shroud. And it worked. She thought it was a great idea. ‘You can’t do a good thing too often,’ she said, smiling benevolently at her youngest daughter.
The next day I regretted planting that seed. As we scraped the last bits of stew from our plates, Mum took out my religion book and started to recite the new prayer we were all to say. Catherine and Lucy groaned loudly and gave me dirty looks. Mum persisted. For several days she insisted on chanting the prayer – as we made moves to leave the table.
‘We have a lot to pray for,’ she snapped, glaring at each one of us in turn.
I didn’t understand her subtle allusions, but I obediently sat down again to pray with her.
Mum found it hard to judge the best time to say this prayer. In our house the unspoken and vague rule about leaving the dinner table was that in order to leave, your plate or bowl had to be clean and everyone else had to be nearly finished too, only then could you ask to be excused. Permission might be granted and it might not – leaving the table was at Mum’s discretion. If she had something to say or felt the meal had been too rushed, she might refuse permission and we were all required to sit at the table until she decided we had spent sufficient time together as a family. So picking the right time to say a final prayer was a dilemma. Saying it while some of us were still eating was rude and rushed us to the end of our meal. Waiting until the last person had finished meant there were only two or three people left at the table, so she ended up saying the prayer by herself or with one unfortunate chorister. This last approach encouraged Kevin and I to gobble the remainder of our food and jump down from the table together, so that neither of us had to suffer the embarrassing intimacy of saying a prayer, alone, out loud, with Mum.
Thankfully Mum knew when she was beaten. She didn’t try too hard to impose the ‘Grace After Meals’. Instead, she insisted each of us bless ourselves upon leaving the table. A lasting compromise we were all grateful for.
Banana and Jam Sandwiches
The winter had set in and it was dark as I walked home from school with Maeve. Our gabardine coats couldn’t keep out the chill and my bare legs turned purple with the cold, but still we walked slowly, pushing our bicycles, chatting all the way. We were later than usual, as we had Irish dancing after school, but there was still time to get our homework done before dinner. I said goodbye to Maeve at her house and sauntered the rest of the way home.
I arrived at our front gate to witness Mum and Dad getting out of the car ahead of me. From the bottom of the driveway, in the evening gloom, I watched them unnoticed. I saw Mum help Dad out of the car and link him up the steps to the front door. He looked smaller, stooping, no longer the tall handsome man I saw in my baby photos. He looked frail as he shuffled into the house.
I didn’t say a word when Mum placed a banana and jam sandwich in front of me for dinner. I lost myself in the novelty of eating fruit between two slices of bread. The banana had started to dissolve and it was soft and runny, delicious and sweet.
Something told me it would be nice to help Mum clean up after our tea that evening, so I stayed in the kitchen with her. She was quiet and I wanted to reassure myself that I wasn’t to blame. I busied myself returning the milk and butter to the fridge, putting the jam back in the press, wiping the place mats clean with a cloth. I even pushed the table back against the wall.
Then Mum put her arm round my shoulder and guided me, without speaking, to sit down. Leaning in to me, she started to talk in her softest voice.
‘Sheila,’ she said. Her voice was low and it caught in her throat.
I hated it when Mum cried, it was embarrassing. It was bad enough when she cried in the sitting room when we were watching a film on television and tried to wipe her eyes and nose without anyone seeing her. Now she was doing it right beside me.
‘Sheila,’ she said again, gently, to the crown of my head.
I forced myself to look up, dreading the sight of her watery eyes.
‘I just want to have a little word with you.’ Her voice was almost a whisper.
What have I done now? I wondered. Did Sister Brigid tell her about me not finishing my spelling homework? Did Kevin tell tales about me breaking the back wheel of Action Man’s jeep?
‘You may have noticed that your Dad hasn’t been feeling very well of late. It’s nothing to worry about’ – she put her hand lightly on my arm – ‘it’s just his teeth. He’s going to his dentist soon and they’ll take out a bad bit and some teeth – he’ll be fine then. Okay?’
I said nothing.
‘I told Catherine and Lucy already and now I’m telling you, Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I said, unsure of what else I could say.
‘I don’t think I’ll tell Kevin just yet. He’s still a bit young. Maybe in a while. So you needn’t say anything to him, Okay love?’
‘Okay.’
Then she gave me a hug that stopped the blood flow in my arms. I was pinned to the chair. I was sure I heard her muffled sniffles in my hair.
I didn’t know where to put
this new information. It didn’t sink in or change me in any way that I recognised. It sat outside of me – an extra piece of knowledge that I had acquired. It went no further than that.
Sugar
We put sugar on everything.
Occasionally, to add to the ceremony, we had a starter on a Sunday – either a wedge of melon or half a grapefruit each. Regardless of which, every piece was covered in caster sugar and Mum also placed a tiny bowl of sugar in the centre of the table, just in case the slightest note of bitterness was to hit anyone’s palate.
In the summertime, we sprinkled sugar on our freshly picked raspberries and strawberries, before smothering them in whipped cream, which also had sugar added to it. At breakfast time, my bowl of porridge was always covered in sugar. And I liked Rice Krispies and Corn Flakes better with lots of sugar sprinkled over. When all the cereal was eaten and a grainy pool of milk remained in my bowl, I checked that Mum wasn’t looking, then tilted my head back and gulped down the over-sweetened and crunchy milk, ignoring the dribbles running down my chin and neck and settling in as a stain on my navy school jumper.
Mum and Dad both had heavy hands with sugar when it came to tea and coffee, until one Lent they decided it was time to quit. Mum breezed through those forty days, probably motivated by the extra inches she whould lose but also with the assistance of the tiny metal box of Hermesetas she kept beside the coffee jar, one miniscule tablet plopped into every cup. Dad, on the other hand, struggled. Being a purist, he refused any sugar substitute and went cold turkey. After two days, he gave in; he couldn’t cope with the withdrawal symptoms and slipped back into his old ways.
When Grandma was minding us one evening, she made ‘goodie’ for supper. I was treated to it in hushed tones in the kitchen when everyone else was watching television or doing homework. I was being let in on an old family tradition, a touch of decadence – from the war years. She took two slices of bread, buttered them heavily, then held each one in turn above the sugar bowl and sprinkled sugar over them, any excess falling expertly back into the bowl – clearly she had done this before. Then she placed the sweetened bread in a small dish and covered it with hot milk. It was an instant milk pudding, so of course I loved it.