Six at the Table

by Sheila Maher

  The pea harvest was usually disappointing. Not only were peas more time-consuming to grow, as they had to be teased up and tied to thin bamboo sticks, but one meal was all we ever got from a whole bed of plants. Perhaps this was because I was given the task of podding them – more peas made it into my mouth than into the colander.

  Tomatoes required the most work. Dad spent long hours in the shed watering and feeding them; Mum joked that he talked to them. Then our neighbour’s trees grew out of control and blocked all the sunlight that had shone through the Perspex roof of the shed. No tomato was going to turn from bright green to a succulent red in a dark and shadowy shed. The hot press came in handy to assist with the final ripening. It was getting increasingly difficult to farm under such circumstances.

  Beetroot also frustrated Dad. A whole bed of seedlings yielded only a handful of golf-ball-sized vegetables. After a few seasons of failure, he refused to try them again. ‘It’s the soil,’ he complained. ‘Oul’ builder’s muck, no good for beetroot.’ It was sufficient for rhubarb, however. Thick stems with giant, prehistoric leaves sprouted effortlessly from their allotted patch. Herbs also grew easily. Parsley, thyme and chives were the only herbs used in Mum’s kitchen and for much of the year she was able to get them from the back garden.

  There were obligatory oohs and ahs at the table when a meal was prepared with our home-grown, organic vegetables. A salad with our own lettuce and tomatoes, a stew with a few onions and herbs, a rhubarb crumble – these were all a source of pride for Mum and Dad.

  Neighbours and relatives also benefited from my parents’ labour. Any caller to our house was sent home with some bright green and mucky lettuce, a bag of onions or a bunch of rhubarb, depending on what was in season on our plot. Maeve’s Dad swapped his pears and plums for our onions and tomatoes in a casual barter that benefited both families.

  Mum and Dad enjoyed living ‘The Good Life’; it was nice to be self-sufficient in some small but significant ways, even if it was back-breaking and often tedious work. I suspected that there was a small part of Mum that was glad to see an end to the vegetable garden. After all, when you totted up the hours of labour and the back pain and subtracted all the ‘gifts’ of vegetables they gave away and the vegetables that rotted or never ripened, it probably didn’t save them any money at all.

  It may have been guilt or sadness that was in her eyes as she stood staring out our kitchen window watching the boys turning the soil that Dad had fortified for the last few years. They sprinkled the fresh earth liberally with grass seed and our garden returned to its original state.

  Pancakes

  Why did we only have pancakes once a year? Every year Mum swore she would make them another day and every year we only ever got pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. They were greasy and soggy and absolutely heavenly.

  Mum made the batter early in the day and then whisked it throughout the afternoon, when she caught a glimpse of the glupe-filled jug resting in the fridge.

  Cooking all the pancakes and keeping them hot, so that each of us could have our fill, was a marathon effort. The four spiral rings of the cooker were all on the go. On the front rings there were two frying pans with melting butter sizzling in each; at the back, two saucepans of water bubbled away with dinner plates acting as lids – these were her improvised bains-marie. She poured batter into each frying pan and turned the pancakes carefully with her fish slice – Mum did not believe in flipping pancakes – then lifted them to her hot plates when they were cooked. When five were ready, she served them out to her charges and immediately returned to the cooker, where she continued to cook another batch as we gobbled away.

  We’ d dabbled in the past with apple sauce, golden syrup and honey as toppings, but there was only one that stood the test of time for us – freshly squeezed lemon juice and a generous sprinkling of caster sugar. Rolled up and sliced into bite-sized pieces, the pancakes soon disappeared and it didn’t take us more than a few seconds to have our plates out for more.

  Mum worked very fast to keep up with demand. The kitchen filled with grey smoke as the butter on the pans became more burnt with each successive batch. The bubbling water from her bains-marie added to the steam and condensation. I was oblivious to any discomfort and worked just as fast to squeeze juice, sprinkle sugar and eat quickly to ensure I got thirds and fourths. If I wasn’t going to eat pancakes for another year, I was going to cram in as many as I could today.

  When Mum got to sit down, only a few small black pancakes remained wilting on the warm plates. Without asking if anyone wanted any more, she smothered them with sugar and lemon juice and relished her quota. Through bittersweet mouthfuls, she promised me she would definitely make them again – before next Pancake Tuesday. I tried to have faith in her this time.

  After-Dinner Cigarette

  Some meals ended in a fight, sending each of us from the table in different directions. Others saw us drifting off when we had finished our food, and excused and blessed ourselves. But after a satisfying meal, with no rows and all plates cleaned, Mum and Dad got out their packets of Benson & Hedges.

  Sitting beside Mum, I watched closely as she slid the cigarette out of its slim gold box. She leaned forward across the table to Dad’s lit match, and holding the cigarette to her lips, she gently touched Dad’s hand to steady the flame. She inhaled deeply until her cheeks went hollow, the tip of her cigarette went red and the paper burned back a little. She exhaled long and hard, sending her plume of smoke up to the kitchen ceiling above our heads. Then she relaxed back into her chair, sighed and paused a moment before taking another deep drag, usually the longest drag. These were her few illicit moments of quiet relaxation. She was not expected to talk. We knew not to ask her a question. Stillness. A pause hung in the air just above our table. Into this she directed her smoke. I liked to watch the red tip move back along her cigarette. I sensed her pleasure.

  But for Mum and Dad this ritual stopped abruptly on Ash Wednesday, 1980. While I was planning to hoard sweets until Easter – except for St Patrick’s Day when I got a special dispensation from the Church because it was a very holy Irish day and I could eat as much of my stash as I wanted – Mum and Dad gave up cigarettes for good.

  ‘They’re bad for you,’ she explained to me, ‘and with Dad and everything …’ She trailed off.

  So after dinner, Mum – who had also given up sweets, biscuits, cake and chocolate – struggled to drink a lone cup of coffee. She stood up abruptly and started to clear away the dishes from the table while we were still eating. She made it through to Easter without a single cigarette.

  Dad, on the other hand, wrestled with his demons for longer. After dinner he reached for a plain biscuit to dunk into his tea. He nibbled at the soggy bits until the biscuit was gone, but the urge was still with him. I could see it in his fingertips as they tapped the side of his cup and fiddled with his teaspoon. He swallowed what remained of his tea in an audible gulp before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a packet of Polo mints. In haste his fingers scraped and teased open the tightly bound foil and he popped one into his mouth. I was doubtful that such a tiny sweet would help.

  Finally he sat down after his dinner one evening and took out a pipe and a pouch of tobacco. Mesmerised, I watched him press brown flakes into the bowl of the pipe and set them alight. He puckered his lips and made funny kissing pouts with his mouth around the stem of the pipe. Eventually large plumes of smoke billowed out from him, covering his entire family in a blue haze and filling the kitchen with a new, not unpleasant smell. This was how Dad gave up cigarettes.

  Easter Eggs

  During Lent, Kevin and I were dragged to early morning Mass before school. Mass was at 7.50 a.m. in our parish, and so, while our neighbours’ houses remained in darkness, we were dressed in our uniforms and shunted into the car. We sat through a speedy eighteen-minute Mass and then rushed home to gobble breakfast and get to school on time. Some days we went to evening Mass instead. Throughout Lent we roamed from parish to pari
sh, to churches in the Mount Merrion, Univeristy College Dublin, Booterstown, Kilmacud areas – Mum was fickle when it came to getting Mass, any parish with a convenient time would do.

  The evenings Mum forced us to say the rosary at home were the worst. We all stood up from the dinner table – Mum didn’t even stop to clear up the dishes, in case any of us escaped – and we were corralled into the sitting room. We knelt down on the floor, a few of us leaning on the couch, the rest against chairs or whatever surface was the right height for praying. Dad was allowed to sit on a chair facing us all; he wasn’t strong enough to be getting up and down on his knees. Mum was the only one who knew all the Mysteries, so she introduced each one briefly, and without drawing breath, she started to recite a decade of the rosary.

  ‘Today is Monday so it’s a Joyful Mystery – the Virgin Mary was told she was going to be the mother of Jesus. Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name …’

  We mumbled our responses to her prayers. The role of leader then moved around the room, along with barely suppressed sniggering. We four children never discussed it with each other before or after prayers, but it was understood that we should compete to see who could say the ‘Fastest Prayer’ – who could get through a decade at top speed, while still pronouncing all the words and not bringing the wrath of Mum on our heads.

  ‘HailMarfullgraceLordswitheblestarthoumongwomenblestfruitothywombjeez …’

  On rosary nights I prayed for the phone or the doorbell to interrupt the proceedings. If the phone rang, it was answered – unfortunately only the recipient was excused from rosary and no one ever phoned me. If someone knocked on the door, one lucky person was relieved from praying duty. But if someone called or rang for Mum, it meant an immediate end to prayers for all, as Dad didn’t take over her leading role and continue in her absence. He preferred to read his newspaper.

  On top of all the extra religiousness of the Lenten period was the requirement that we give up chocolate and sweets for six weeks. This included any biscuit with the tiniest hint of extravagance. (Catherine only had to give up bad language. Mum said it was more important that Catherine, as a teenager, stop saying ‘damn’ and calling people ‘spas’ than stop eating chocolate. I wished that was all I had to do.) Each time I did an errand up to a neighbour’s or helped Grandma, and got a few sweets, a stick of Twix or a lollipop for my troubles, I said thank you and duly took my goodies home to store in a shoe box that I hid in the back of my wardrobe. I tenderly fingered my growing stash, ran my hands over each item and wet my lips in anticipation of their demise. Half a pack of Munchies for helping Grandma weed her garden; a Club Milk from Mrs Devitt up the road for fetching things to help her bathe her youngest; a Walnut Whip for being good for Mum; and some lesser items such as a Sherbert Dip, a Time Bar, a Wagon Wheel, and a few Refreshers for minor chores.

  On Easter Sunday all I wanted to see was shiny purple foil. It didn’t matter how big or small the egg – though big was definitely better – or if there was a bag of sweets inside or two bars on the outside. Just as long as the box and the foil around the egg were purple, then it was a proper Easter egg.

  What I got from Aunty Maudie was a small egg wrapped in red foil. This egg didn’t come in a box, nor was it sitting on an eggcup or any kind of container – it was just an egg, on its own. She got them in the markets on Camden Street, around the corner from her house. The chocolate inside the red foil was a dark brown colour, not the milky brown I was used to. Nor did Maudie’s egg make the sharp snapping noise I was anticipating as I broke into the shell. Instead of shards of chocolate breaking clean away from the egg, soft lumps of chocolate peeled away from each other in quiet surrender. Its taste was vile, too. Kevin and I loudly spat the chocolate out into our hands. Mum heard us and told us we were spoilt and ungrateful. We just opened our purple eggs instead – to get rid of the taste of Maudie’s one.

  I spent Easter Sunday and Monday – and every day that followed – gorging on chocolate until all my eggs and my entire Lenten stash was finished. I was not like Lucy, who stored her eggs under her bed and ate them gradually, in tiny amounts, over the following months. I made myself sick with chocolate. I shoved piece after piece into my mouth in an attempt to capture some taste that I knew was just beyond my reach, a taste that was hinted at but never lingered on my tongue long enough for me to appreciate adequately. So I ate more and more, intoxicating myself in the quest for some elusive taste. I never got it. And I never stopped searching.

  Blake’s

  We went to Blake’s Restaurant in Stillorgan for Lucy’s Confirmation. I had been to Bewley’s with Mum, for a Coke and a cream bun, as a treat after a visit to the optician, or when Aunty Teresa was up from Cashel, but this was the first time the six of us went to a real restaurant as a family. We’ d polished our shoes and were all dressed in our Sunday best. We buttoned up our good coats and stood in the hall while Mum and Dad locked up the house and Dad checked his wallet for the third time. After Mum gave each of us a final appraisal, we squashed into our Opel Kadett, Kevin lying across the three girls’ knees in the back seat. It was only a short drive, so he didn’t complain too much.

  The restaurant was large and circular in shape. The window tables overlooked the large car park and the busy roads outside. The centre of the room had a mixture of tables and booths. Getting a booth was great. Sliding across the bench, I felt American. I was one of Charlie’s Angels, laughing in a diner with Bosley after rescuing a kidnap victim from merciless villains. It was the moment just before the camera froze and the credits rolled.

  Each table in Blake’s had its own salt and pepper shakers, an aluminium napkin holder, and a bowl filled with sachets of tomato sauce, vinegar, mayonnaise and brown sauce. The room was so big it got dark towards the centre. Colourful stained-glass lamp shades hung low around the room yet emitted very little light. The carpets were deep maroon with a yellow-gold leaf pattern. There were several serving stations for the waiters and waitresses at key points in the restaurant, where I could see them chatting as they folded napkins and sorted cutlery. It was very impressive. I couldn’t wait to be old enough to get a job there. To walk around the restaurant all busy and important, to look smart in the black-and-white polyester uniform and to know what went on behind the swing doors leading to the noisy kitchen – to have access to the magic going on in there – that must be very exciting.

  However, there was a bit of tension at our table as we’ d been seated beside one of these work stations. As waitresses energetically polished the cutlery, they flung each gleaming knife and fork into the cutlery container, the awful racket drowning out our conversation. Mum kept talking, her voice straining, getting louder and louder as she tried to ignore the clatter and keep the atmosphere light and airy. Dad got cross and fidgety, half-heartedly looking around, as if seeking someone to complain to – but he held his peace. That would have spoilt the mood completely and so he endured the crashing of steel on steel (with a lot of sighing and tutting) until the waitresses got bored with their own industriousness and moved away.

  ‘Isn’t this lovely?’ Mum said as we set about reading the menu. She smiled broadly as she looked round the table at each of us, her eyes a camera recording the scene for posterity.

  Blake’s gave us families just what we wanted – big generous portions of safe, filling and affordable food, either baked, roasted or fried, served on thick, scalding hot plates. The menu was large and laminated, with small white stickers here and there noting a price change. Obviously the dishes on offer never changed.

  Egg mayonnaise for the starter – a few leaves of lettuce, a wedge of tomato and a slice of drying cucumber provided a nest for a hard-boiled egg, halved, face down and drowned in thick mayonnaise with a sprinkling of paprika on top. Or melon served as a wedge, with the flesh cut into chunks and placed back on the skin, each alternate piece slightly off to the left and the right making a zigzag pattern, with a glacé cherry pierced by a cocktail stick on top. Minestrone soup came
in a stainless steel bowl with some bread on the side. The soup of the day, if it was tomato or potato, came with a blob of whipped cream dissolving into it and perhaps a few chopped chives on top.

  There was a large selection for the main course: chicken Maryland, chicken Cordon Bleu, chicken and chips, half a roast chicken, chicken Kiev, mixed grill, plain burgers, cheese and bacon burgers, lasagne, spaghetti bolognese, pizza. There was nothing to disconcert on the menu. No need to question the waitress as to nuances of flavour; no fear of getting too many exotic or unidentifiable spices in your dinner. The buttery, garlicky stink of chicken Kiev was as adventurous as it got.

  I wanted value for money at Blake’s. I wanted a very full plate to be placed in front of me. If I didn’t pick the best dinner to arrive at the table, it would take some of the enjoyment out of the meal for me. So I looked around at the surrounding tables to see what other diners had chosen.

  The mixed grill looked like a big hitter – at least ten different items squeezed together on the plate. Sausages: two; rashers: two; white pudding: one; black pudding: one; lamb chop: one, possibly two; all served with a pile of fried mushrooms, half a tomato and a generous portion of chips. This was going to be hard to beat!

  But even at my young age, I felt I would be better served by trying something different. Something Mum did not cook at home. This is where chicken Maryland came in. It ticked all the boxes. Your plate was piled high, Mum never served battered fruit with her chicken, and it came with chips. A large, golden-crumbed breast of chicken served with a banana fritter and a corn fritter, a garnish of lettuce, cucumber and tomato and a messy mound of coleslaw, plus half a plate of chips. Another serious contender.