Secrets My Mother Kept (6 page)

‘No, not really.’ She laughed. ‘Well, maybe just a little bit – go on up you go.’

I stood watching her for a moment, then feeling the draughty fingers of cold from the front door chill my legs and feet, ran to the toilet as fast as I could before hurrying back to the warmth of my bed, and Margaret and Mum, my living hot-water bottles.

Of course that was before the Peter problem happened.

Mum was always exasperated by Peter. He refused to conform and follow the rules like the rest of us. He often teased us younger children.

‘Give me your hand,’ he commanded.

I trustingly obeyed.

‘Here’s the tree,’ he pointed to my upturned palm, ‘see here are the swings’ (pointing to the base of my thumb) ‘and look,’ he spat into my hand, ‘there’s the pond!’

I screamed. ‘Yuk! You’re disgusting!’

‘Peter, what are you doing to those children?’ Mum would shout.

He’d just laugh as he ran out of the door.

Another time Mum had ordered him to take me for a walk. I don’t know how old I was, but must have been quite young.

‘Now make sure you keep an eye on her, and don’t let her wander off,’ Mum instructed. ‘Now why are you taking your bike?’ she shouted after us as Peter led me down the path. ‘Don’t you go putting her on the crossbar, she might fall!’

As soon as we were round the corner and out of sight, Peter lifted me up onto the crossbar.

‘But Mummy says you’re not to.’

‘Oh don’t worry about that,’ Peter said and off we flew. As the wind blew into my face and I screamed with joy, I loved my brother even more than before.

I didn’t understand why, but it seemed that Mum had not lived in Valence Avenue much when he, Mary, Marge and Marion had been little children. Certainly she never held, kissed or cuddled any of these ‘middle’ children the way she did Margaret and me. Life in our house was always chaotic, and she would send them out at any opportunity. Occasionally they would be made to take Margaret and I along. I clearly remember their annoyance when they had to take us to Sunday Mass, and can remember wondering why they didn’t want us to go with them.

Peter was always going missing. He would disappear for days sometimes, even when he was still quite young. ‘He’s gone to find his father in Ireland,’ Aunty would say, and Mum would ignore her and look the other way.

Aunty had always favoured Peter, probably because Mum had left him in the care of her and Granny from when he was quite small. He was like her own child, and she certainly treated him differently from the rest of us. She would always stick up for him against Mum and take his side in any conflict, and there was plenty of opportunity for that.

Now he had grown up from a scruffy bedraggled little boy into a handsome young man with a pretty large local female following. One Friday afternoon when Peter was about seventeen, there had been a flurry of activity all day. As Catholics, we were not allowed to eat meat on Friday so if Mum had enough money we would sometimes have fish and chips for dinner. This usually meant that Aunty would have fish and chips and the rest of us would share several bags of chips and maybe a wally or two – a large pickled gherkin – or a piece of cod roe. On this particular Friday I remember Mary, Marge and Marion were already home from school and we were waiting for my older sisters Pat and Josie to get back from work.

‘Put the kettle on, the girls will be home soon,’ was a familiar refrain from my mum. You could almost set your watch by it, twenty past five every weekday. Today though there was something different. Mum seemed agitated, and we had been made to ‘clean up’. Those two simple words always struck dread into our hearts. Clearing up was not easy in our house. There were too many people and too much furniture and there was far too little space. Over time the house had become more and more cluttered, which resulted in it becoming more and more untidy and ultimately very dirty. We had a large settee across the corner in the kitchen. This was quite old and had become saggy with constant use. To make it more comfortable, Mum would pile newspaper under the seat cushions. These would periodically slide out on to the floor and have to be pushed back under. There was also a gap at the back of the settee where it crossed the corner. We thought this was extremely useful, as whenever we had to tidy up the kitchen we children would just throw everything behind the settee into the yawning gap. The problem was that every now and again the gap filled up and began to overflow. That morning Mum had suddenly announced, ‘We’ll have to pull out the settee.’ That struck terror into our hearts. I hated those times. You never knew what you were going to find. There would be some old friends of course, like the odd toy that had been lost, or a friendly forgotten sweet still in its sticky paper bag, but mostly there would be less welcome finds, such as pieces of mouldy food, crusts of bread, dirty clothes and other items of detritus that had accumulated. Worst of all, though, were the silverfish. These little creatures seemed always to be present. They sound so pretty, don’t they? But I hated them. They would slither so quickly that I would just catch them out of the corner of my eye, them and their friends the woodlice. The room was eventually tidied and cleaned to Mum’s satisfaction. Pat and Jo had arrived home, tea had been made and poured, but there was a tense atmosphere in the house, which wasn’t helped by Aunty’s arrival at six. An air of expectancy hung over everyone. We were hungry but didn’t dare to mention food. Suddenly there was a loud knock on the door.

As Mum stomped out to answer it, Pat turned her chair, which was directly in front of the television, so that her back was set to the rest of the room. Josie hovered around getting out cups and saucers that I didn’t even know existed. Plates of sandwiches appeared, which was also very unusual. The only sandwiches I remember having were those that we took when we went on outings, which were usually sweaty and soggy. Mum came through the door leading a woman and a man, closely followed by Peter and his girlfriend Linda.

‘Go and play you two,’ said Mum, shushing Margaret and me out of the room, ‘Marge, take them upstairs will you? And Marion, you go too.’ We dutifully did as we were told until we got to the top of the stairs, where Marion and Marge stopped and knelt down to try to listen.

‘You two go in the bedroom,’ said Marion.

‘But I want to hear!’ I grumbled.

‘Go in the bedroom and shut up,’ said Marge. ‘Mum will tell you off if she catches you listening.’

‘Well, you’re listening too!’ I said as I was bundled roughly through the doorway. It was no good though, once in the bedroom it became impossible to hear what was going on downstairs. The man and woman seemed to stay for ages, but it was probably no more than half an hour. We didn’t get any visitors at our house, apart from family and the tally men, so this was very unusual.

It wasn’t long after this that Peter and Linda got married in a register office. Linda had their first daughter six months later. They were still both just seventeen years old when they moved with their new baby into the box room, which now made eight adults, five children and two babies living in a three-bedroom house with just one tiny scullery for cooking and laundry, one kitchen to live and eat in and one toilet and bathroom between us.

8

Feast or Famine

Food played a big part in my childhood. Mum definitely signed up to the feast or famine philosophy of eating. She was a good cook and could conjure up amazing meals within our limited means when she was in the mood. Roast breast of lamb was a favourite, and I learnt to cook this for the family from a very young age when Mum was unwell and unable to come downstairs. I would run up and down to the bedroom picking up instructions from Mum. ‘If it’s getting too brown turn the gas down to number 5’ or ‘put the potatoes into the oven now and turn the gas up to 7.’  This would go on throughout the cooking period so that the dinner was all ready by the time Aunty came home from work at six o’clock. Of course my cooking generated a lot of washing up. That was supposed to be Margaret’s job, but inevitably as she was only a little girl it built up and the scullery was always a complete mess by the time dinner was served out. Pots, pans, dishes, plates, spoons would spill out of the old Butler sink, over the wooden draining board and on to the cupboard shelf. All surfaces would be covered in a mound of clutter that was always left to the twins to deal with later.

Another more unusual favourite was curry. Now I know that curry is commonplace right across the country today, but in the late 1950s and early 60s it was considered a very exotic dish and none of the other families I knew ate it. I suppose the reason we did was because our Granny was born in India, where her father was stationed. He had fled Ireland to escape from the potato famine in the 1850s and spent the majority of his life serving in the British army. We had curry usually once a week, cooked in a huge metal pot on the gas stove. The memory of the smell of curry powder frying with onion and meat still makes my taste buds tingle. Mum would throw in copious amounts of chopped up vegetables, and leave it to simmer for most of the afternoon. The aroma would fill the house and Margaret and I would stare longingly at the bubbling concoction, desperate for it to be ready, mouths watering, tummies rumbling. We would often have it cold for breakfast the next day, when it seemed to taste even better.

Marion, Marge and Mary did most of the household jobs when I was very young. Pat and Josie were absolved as they went to work and earned wages. Aunty never did household chores for the same reason and Margaret and I were too young to do them properly, although we liked to try.

Over the years we all learnt to cook. Mum taught us how to behead and gut mackerel, scrape the scales off the skin, and dip it in white flour ready for frying; how to rub flour and fat together to make smooth creamy-coloured pastry, used to top rich-smelling beef and kidney pies. We would help Mum to concoct aromatic stews and soups, my favourite being a rich salty pea and ham soup. Those were the good times of course, when there was enough money, but there were also too many days when there was no money at all. Those were the days when we ate a plate of boiled potatoes, or a bowl of porridge, or a lump of suet pudding for our dinner. Once, when there was no money for the gas meter, my sisters had to cook the porridge in a big pot on the coal fire.

‘I don’t want it,’ I cried, pushing the bowl away and refusing to eat the sooty grey slush that it contained.

‘Don’t be silly,’ Marion said, crossly. It had been a long day and Mum was in bed ill. The ice was starting to form inside the windows upstairs; it was a bitterly cold winter and the only warm room was the kitchen, with the coal fire scorching the knickers drying in front of it. They were poked through the wire of the fireguard, and the rest of the wet clothes hung from the picture rail that ran around the walls. There was a damp feel to the air and it must have stunk of coal and cigarette smoke, but you don’t notice the smell when you live with it. As a teacher I could always tell which children lived in families with smokers. Their book bags always had that same smell.

Mum had been unwell and so the twins had been kept off school to look after us. We must have been a handful, especially along with all the other household duties they would have been required to do.

Seeing my sulky face, Marge tried an alternative tactic. ‘Don’t be silly. Don’t you know that porridge is best when it’s cooked on the fire?’

I began to consider this information.

They ate their porridge with manic enthusiasm. ‘Mmmm yummy! This is sooo nice,’ Marion mumbled through mouthfuls of thick porridge.

‘I want some!’ I said, reaching out for my bowl and wolfing down the whole lot. The problem was from that day onwards I always refused to eat porridge unless it was cooked on the fire, which exasperated my family on many occasions.

The gas and electric meters were hungry monsters in our house. Mum would feed them with shillings whenever she could but they were never satisfied and cold food and darkness were their cries for more. Every three months the electric man or the gasman would come to empty the meter. This was a bit of a red-letter day as because of the way the meters were calibrated households always overpaid, so there would usually be a sizable rebate to come. Margaret and I would wait expectantly in the kitchen while the meter was emptied. Then there would be a knock on the kitchen door that would indicate the gas or electric man was ready to go. Outside in the scullery, underneath where the gas and electricity meters were screwed to the wall, would be a pile of shilling coins sparkling with promise. This would definitely be a banana roll day if we were lucky!

Of course there were also the desperate days when the meter would have been broken into and there would be no money inside. This happened more than once, and I can remember the meter man questioning Mum sharply. We never knew how those bad people got in to take the money, or how they managed to break into the meter without Mum knowing.

We had no fridge when I was a child. Perishable foods, meat, fish tended to be bought on the day they were going to be used, or certainly not long before that. Items such as eggs, cheese and milk would be stored in the huge larder, which was built into the wall next to the front door. It had stone walls and was very dark with just a tiny ventilation grill at the back. Food did keep quite well for most of the year but in the summer Mum would try to keep the milk cool by putting it in a bowl of cold water. When Isobel came to live at our house the occupants of the larder slowly began to change. The smells were different now. Strange-looking sausages appeared and were hung in there. These added a new aroma, rich and spicy. Isobel showed Margaret and I how to eat melon, even sucking the seeds, splitting them with our teeth to chew out the insides. She also made tortilla with potatoes and eggs, turning these simple ingredients into a feast of flavour, which we devoured with relish.