Baking Day

This months featured story

“Are you sure you can't ask anyone else?” I whined down the phone at my sister. I shouldn't have picked up, I should have let it ring. “Siobhan, its my day off. I've made plans.”

She knew me better than that. “No you haven't. You were just going to slob around all day in your PJs watching daytime TV,” came the calm reply. “And its only for a couple of hours this afternoon while we go across town to meet the new bank manager, sans enfants.”

“You must have a dozen other people you can ask?”

Siobhan rattled off a list of baby sitters who were otherwise engaged this school holiday afternoon. “And before you think of it, I know you are in rude health and just dying for quality time with your lovely little God-daughters.”

I was indignant. “I spend plenty of quality time with them.” This was true; I saw them most Saturdays when I thrashed them at snakes and ladders or we went to the park to feed the ducks. I rather enjoyed the company of six-year-olds, although Siobhan was right, I'd planned on lazing around on my own for the whole of my day off. I wasn't really reluctant to mind them, I was was just peeved at being caught out by my sister.

“I've told the twins you'll do some baking with them like Granny used to. We'll be there at 2.30, OK?” and Siobhan rang off.

“Now,” I said when the door had closed on my sister and the girls were standing in my kitchen with a look of expectancy on each of their cloned faces. “In this house, we always start a baking session with a trip to the garage.” They followed me out and I lifted the freezer lid. Beside me, Niamh wobbled on top of an upturned log basket, while Claire balanced on a battered old ladderback chair. We peered inside as a puff of frosty mist blew up to meet us. I rummaged around. “Now girls, don't be falling in will you?” I said in a silly voice. “Last time that happened was when next door's cat came a-looking and we didn't find him for three days.”

The girls gasped and pulled back a little. “What happened?” asked Claire. She was always the inquisitive one, wanting to know more.

“Well...” I stood up straight and looked from one to the other, managing to keep a straight face. “Poor old Ginger was too nosey for his own good. He leaned too far over looking for tasty morsels and fell in. No-one realised for three whole days – I don't use this freezer that often. And when we pulled him out, he was as stiff as a board and his whiskers fell off!”

The girls sniggered; I imagined a cartoon image of the story running through their heads.

“Actually,” I said, as Claire opened her mouth to ask another question. “That's just a tall story. The truth is that Ginger came in here, nosing about, but I couldn't get him into the freezer, it was too full, and he was too fat. I tried to squash him down, but the lid wouldn't close properly and he scarpered.”

They grinned at me. “I thought you liked cats, Auntie Sarah?” Niamh was accusing.

“Well yes I do, of course. But not frozen ones with broken whiskers,” and I reached back down into the freezer, so they couldn't see me smile. This old chest freezer was where we kept the long term stuff, things we wouldn't need for ages, like apples for pies and blackcurrants for jam. The girls watched as curious packets and parcels surfaced; they were learning to read and could manage some of the labels. “Ice cubes!” announced Niamh, but when we took the lid off, the carton was full of individually wrapped slices of fruit cake, neatly sealed and marked with the date and ingredients.

They put that box back and I gave them one marked 'broccoli'. They struggled to read the word, so I helped them. They didn't seem impressed until I opened the box to reveal iced buns.

“But it says 'broccoli', doesn't it?” said Claire, confused.

“I hope they don't taste like broccoli,” Niamh was gazing at the cakes.

“I think we'd better take some inside and try them, don't you?” and they nodded in agreement.

“Actually, you musn't tell Uncle Donal about this,” I said, reducing my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. I made a show of looking over my shoulder to make sure there was no-one else around before I continued, even though Donal wouldn't be home for hours. “You see, last Christmas, the doctor told Uncle Donal that he needs to lose a bit of weight and he should only be having cakes and biscuits as an occasional treat. So when I make a batch of buns, I just leave half a dozen out for him, and I freeze the rest.”

I could see that they didn't get it yet. “Now, Uncle Donal is not averse to coming into the garage for a forage around in the freezer by himself, when I'm not around. But he would never think of opening a box marked 'broccoli'. He'd be looking for a box marked 'iced buns', wouldn't he?” The girls laughed as I delved down for something else.

“Here we are, this is what I'm looking for,” and I retrieved a plastic-wrapped package.

Niamh looked at the label. 'Stewed apples for a pie,' she read carefully. I tried not to notice that the writing was in my mother's small neat script; she'd been dead for 18 months, so the apples were probably past their best, but I stayed quiet.

By the time we got back to the kitchen, our hands were so cold that we needed a reviving cup of hot chocolate to thaw them. “Mind you, you're supposed to have very cold hands when you're making pastry,” I told the girls, as we sat at the kitchen table blowing on the chocolately foam of our drinks, waiting for the iced buns to thaw.

“Why?” asked Jody. I should have expected this one.

“Well, I would have thought that was obvious,” I said, starting to pull baking tins and bowls from the cupboards. I enjoyed making up outlandish stories for them; they were of an age to believe in magic and monsters, but they were also smart enough to know that their Auntie Sarah could spin a yarn or two.

“The lightest, most delicious pastry is made by polar bears in the frozen waste lands of Alaska.” They gave me a knowing look as I added: “From recipes handed down through generations of Emperor Penguins,” and they sniggered.

We found aprons and clean tea towels and I wrapped them up against the inevitable mess, and we started baking.

“You know, when I was your age microwaves had only just been invented,” I said, setting the apples to de-frost.

“So how did you manage then?” Claire and her enquiring mind.

“Well, not everyone had freezers, then, either,” but I could tell this was so farfetched, they didn't believe me. “In my day, we used to make apple pies from scratch, with fresh apples. And they were called tarts, then as well.” Thankfully, that was lost on two six-year-olds, so I ploughed on.

“When I wasn't much older than you are now, Granny used to send me round to Widow Cooney to buy apples from her orchard.”

I watched for their response at the mention of Granny, but they were too busy running their fingers through the flour and were hardly listening. The twins had been barely four when my mother died, and they hadn't really grasped the notion that death was permanent, that once you were dead, you wouldn't be back for tea. Ever. Granny was just a vague memory to them now.

I swallowed, and picked up the plastic bag from the stewed apples and began to tear off the label. I stuffed it into my pocket without comment; Siobhan once told me she'd been the same, hardly ever able to throw anything away that had Mum's writing on it, even old envelopes and shopping lists. I turned away from the children for a moment, not wanting them to see me in maudlin mood, then the microwave pinged.

We ploughed through the pastry-making with me making suggestions and helping with the tricky bits until we had two passable looking plated pies ready for the oven. All the while, I regaled them with stories of the old days. When we had to use apples from Widow Cooney, and we had to take them home and peel them. Mum treasured her time-honoured ways of doing things; she preferred her apples  whole, straight from the tree, just as nature had intended.

“Granny used to give Widow Cooney a few coins for the apples, I remember. The bag would be so huge we could hardly lift it. Then we'd be eating apple pies every day for a year.” Claire looked up and fixed me with a quizzical look. “OK, apple pies for a whole week then, not a year,” I conceded, and she smiled back down into the remains of the pastry. I was pleased they were listening. “Granny used to send me round with a few extra coins every now and then, because she felt sorry for poor old Widow Cooney.”

“Why? What was wrong with her?” Niamh was listening, too.

“Well, Widow Cooney lived all on her own in this tatty little falling-down cottage where she'd lived all her life and -”

“How old was she?” Claire always wanted the details.

“Oh, she was about a hundred and seventy two, I think,” I gazed up at the ceiling and screwed up my eyes, as if trying to remember.

I glanced at the twins and they were looking at each other with the same disbelieving wrinkled-brow expression.

“She used to sit on the doorstep and call to passersby, trying to get them to buy apples from the trees in her garden. Granny always used to feel sorry for Widow Cooney because there was never anyone else around, and she looked very frail and lonely.” The girls were writing their names in the white dust on the table.

“Of course, Grandad always thought she was a secret millionaire because the land they'd built our housing estate on used to be a cherry orchard owned by the Cooney family.”

The girls were streetwise enough to understand that a millionaire had plenty of money. “So why did she sell the apples?” asked Claire. “Didn't she like them herself?”

I added my name to theirs in the flour, and drew an apple for good measure.

“Oh, she loved them, but I think she was saving up some cash to have a bathroom installed in the house. You see, they had no running water or electricity in that little cottage and I think she was fed up with living like that.”

I could see that the concept was beyond two modern six-year-olds, so I decided to elaborate a bit. “Poor old Widow Cooney had to use the toilet in the garden because there wasn't one in the house. Every time she wanted to go, she'd have to go to the bottom of the garden, out in all weathers.”

Now I had their attention. Anything to do with bodily functions seems to be a hit with children. “Why didn't she just use the en-suite?” asked Claire, clearly puzzled.

We spent the next few minutes discussing earth closets and other primitive toilet arrangements that were common not that long ago, in living memory. Even Granny, as a child, had lived in a house without an indoor toilet.

“They called it a thunder box, for obvious reasons,” I explained and watched as Claire whispered something in Niamh's ear and they began to giggle.

“And old-fashioned chamber pots, which once held - well, you can guess what was once in them - they are now highly sought after as containers for potted plants.” I told them about Granny and Grandad's  arguments about the money she spent on apples from Widow Cooney. My father had been convinced the old lady wasa coniving old fraudster with a mattress stuffed full of other people's (including his) hard-earned cash. My mother had believed the opposite, that this was a poor old lady: lonely, broke and in need of help. They both turned out to be wrong in the end. When Widow Cooney died, it emerged that it was her brother who'd owned the land where our house stood, along with hundreds of others, behind her old house – and he'd owned her place, too. But word was that when she'd gone, they found hidden under her bed, a large biscuit box full of small change, with instructions that it was to be donated to the donkey sanctuary.

I hadn't thought about my parents squabbling about the fortunes or otherwise of Widow Cooney for ages. I glanced at the label in my pocket bearing my mother's handwriting and I wondered where these particular apples had come from. My mother loved cooking and was always turning up with home made dishes and cakes for us, especially after my father died and she'd no-one at home to eat her fare.

Now, the twins had flour in their hair and smudges of pastry on their lips; I remembered raw pastry only tastes delicious if you've had a hand in making it yourself and you're still six-years-old.

I fetched the camera and made them pose with their pies as we slid them out of the oven. I let them roll the left over pastry into gingerbread men shapes and I found currants for eyes, and then we baked them too.

When Siobhan came to collect them, the girls were snuggled up with me on the sofa, the remains of too many iced buns on the coffee table, and we were watching cartoons.

I packed them into the car with the apple pies and their grey pastry men, and I handed Siobhan the freezer bag label, just as she was through the door.

She looked at the writing and smiled. “Mum's stewed apples,” she said. “Do you ever remember that old lady we used to get the apples from when we were kids?”

I returned the smile. “Old Widow Cooney and her apples? Now there's a story for Claire and Niamh,” I said.