Granny's Garden

by Alison Hammer Winans

My maternal grandmother lived in a quiet suburb west of London, where she had a small semi-detached house with a long narrow garden. It was 1965, the year that I and my sister, Liz, also called this house our home. There was the privet hedge and wrought iron gate in the front, and a handkerchief-sized lawn flanked with beds of fuchsias, marigolds, roses and purple daisies. This was where Granny showed me how to squeeze the purple-red fuchsias so that they popped open. Here were the pale pink and white roses that she nurtured with manure, collected with a shovel every time the rag-and-bone man went by with his horse and cart. The outside of the house had, instead of brick, a façade of tiny pebbles stuck into cement like a cake covered with sprinkles. The pebbles beckoned to be picked off, but most of the time I restrained myself, just prying off a few here and there in hidden places. Around the side of the house a paved walk led into the back garden.

Way behind the house, I stood under the branches of the Victoria plum tree surrounded by honey bees and ripe plums like huge swollen raindrops about to fall. I plucked one, heavy with nectar that oozed out and hardened into a blob, rubbed it against my cotton frock and took a bite. The pale amber flesh melted sweetly in my mouth, juice running down my chin. I broke the large plum in half, sharing with Liz, who was on her knees looking for snails amongst the strawberries and rhubarb.

“Cooeee! Where are you scallywags?”

“Come on Liz, Granny’s calling us. We’re supposed to be picking plums. It’s crumble for lunch today.” I was eleven and admittedly rather bossy with my nearly nine-year-old sister. Lunch was always our main meal of the day, but today was Sunday, making it even more special. We filled the colander with dusky mauve fruit, then hugging it to my chest I traipsed back to the house past two of the four apple trees—tart green Bramleys for cooking and fragrant reddish-yellow Coxes for eating—past the small lawn and rockery made with chunks of the concrete air raid shelter that my mother and her parents had to sleep in during the war, when she was only thirteen and the Nazis were dropping bombs on London. My mother never talked about it though. I pestered her to find out that her father worked at the EMI factory before he died of a stroke, and Granny sewed shirts for a department store, and they kept rabbits down at the bottom of the garden to eat when they couldn’t buy meat. For sure the memories of that time were buried, even as tiny star-like flowers cascaded over the rocks, belying the trauma they represented.

Granny, with a cigarette hanging out her mouth and glasses perched on her thin nose, stuck her head out of the French doors asking, “Pick some mint for the potatoes, will you?” I put down the colander, kneeled and stuck my face into the clump of spearmint, breathing deeply, my mouth watering as I thought of new potatoes dripping with butter and the other dish that went with fresh mint—roast leg of lamb with mint sauce.

We burst into the matchbox of a kitchen with our offerings. The aroma of roast chicken and Yorkshire pudding was coming from the oven. Our family was probably the only one in all of England who ate Yorkshire pud with chicken instead of beef. I loved the way that the thin batter, when poured into a hot, greased baking tin and cooked perfectly, would puff up into a brown crispy surface surrounding the soft pancake-like center. We didn’t have expensive roast beef too often, so with our family custom we could eat Yorkshire pud once a week.

*****
Earlier the three of us had gone down the garden to the vegetable patch past the second Bramley apple tree. Granny dug up the tiny new potatoes with paper-thin skin that came off when she scrubbed them. We picked rough-skinned runner beans, carefully avoiding the red blossoms, reaching high to the top of the poles, looking under the leaves to make sure they didn’t hide and grow big and tough. Granny would slice them on a diagonal and boil them lightly, so that they squeaked when I chewed them. Then we gathered our supper salad makings—frilly lettuce, pale orange baby carrots, ruby-like radishes, green onions, beets to be boiled and dressed with vinegar, small firm cardinal-red tomatoes—and raspberries blushing like a glass of claret, to have with cream for dessert.

The raspberry canes grew way down at the bottom of the garden, where Granny’s big compost pile sat under the branches of the Russet apple tree, which had sweet fruit with coarse brownish skins. The shed where the next door neighbor kept chickens was the other side of the fence. I remembered the day when I stole two of Granny’s cigarettes, fags we called them, and hid behind that shed with my friend for our first smoke. They were Woodbine plain, the same at both ends, so we put one end between our lips trying not to make it soggy and then realizing that we had to suck at the same time as holding a lighted match to the other end. The hot harsh smoke made me cough, grabbing at the inside of my throat like a scouring pad, and I didn’t even try to inhale. Neither did my friend. We just let the fags burn down, practiced being cool holding them between our fingers, gesturing and trying not to breathe in the smoke. I never took any more of Granny’s fags, but now I understood why she was always coughing.

Nine months ago we returned from Japan to settle in England, so while our parents found jobs and a home, Liz and I stayed with Granny to attend my mother’s old school and finish out the academic year. We had hardly seen our parents during this time, only at Christmas and when they picked us up for boarding school entrance exams and mostly, I had to admit, I didn’t miss them. With my mother being sickly and my father working so hard, Liz and I were used to fending for ourselves, cooking and helping around the house when we had to and providing our own entertainment. Later in July, we would join them in Birmingham to get ready for boarding school. My mother, struggling with an undefined illness, said she could be a better mother if we were only at home during the holidays. I’d been reading all of Enid Blyton’s boarding school books, and they were so much fun with such jolly midnight feasts and high jinks, but I didn’t know what life at Walthamstow Hall was going to be like.

But mucking around in Granny’s garden made me feel so content. I loved doing anything with her, walking to the shops, going swimming, cooking and playing card games like German Whist, Old Maid and Beat Your Neighbor Out of Doors. I liked watching her do her hair, rolling up long strands with a gadget and fastening them with hair grips. She ended up looking like she had little grey sausage rolls above her ears and round the back of her head. She was always thinking of ways to delight us, like picking us up from school laden with bags holding our towels, swimsuits and a picnic of fresh rolls filled with ham and cucumber, peaches and slices of her Victoria sponge cake, for a surprise trip to the pool. Living with her was like being fed ambrosia.

*****
Liz and I set the table for lunch in the back room, putting out cork placemats and cloth napkins, knives on the right with the blade turned in, forks on the left and dessert spoons above with the handle to the right. Granny called me from the kitchen, “Alison, you mix up the custard powder, while I dish up.” I ran out, eager to do one of my favorite jobs. We hardly ate any packet foods, but I adored custard. My mother used to make it for me before she was ill. I sat down on the back step with a mixing bowl containing a heaped tablespoon of Bird’s custard powder, white with a pinkish sheen, a little sugar and enough milk for mixing taken from a pint, the rest of which was heating on the stove. I stirred, pressing out the lumps, dissolving the sugar and marveling at the transformation in color from white to deep egg-yolk yellow.

Meanwhile, Granny was in the kitchen filling the tiny drop-leaf table with food, carving the tender chicken, making sure to prevent fights by giving us equal amounts of golden crispy skin, dishing up bright green beans and minty new potatoes. “Quick, the milk’s coming up to the boil.” I jumped up, set my bowl on the counter and let her pour in the frothy milk, while I diligently stirred the thickening custard. Then the custard, now pale yellow, smooth and creamy, went back in the pan to stay warm. The plum crumble was baking in the oven, and Granny was cutting the Yorkshire pudding into large squares. We begged in unison, “Can I have a corner piece?” Gravy made from a Bisto mix was the final touch, the plates were full, and we were more than ready.

Granny took off her apron, uncovering her pretty flowered dress (she never wore pants). “We’d better say ‘grace’ seeing as it’s Sunday, and I didn’t take you to church. I don’t want to get into trouble with Daddy.” Momentarily I wondered if there had been times when she got into trouble with my father, and what she had done wrong.

As if we were racing in the Derby we chanted, “Thank you for the world so sweet, thank you for the food we eat, thank you for the birds that sing, thank you God for everything. Amen.” Then silence, save for small sounds of knives and forks clattering against the plates. Plum crumble was next, smelling toasty and fruity, drowning in silky custard. I never had any trouble cleaning my plate when I was with Granny. A thought crossed my mind—next month we would leave this oasis. What made leaving bearable was looking forward to visiting Granny for half-term, a long weekend halfway through each school term. I was relying on her to be here until I finished school.

For now, I simply sighed with contentment and a full belly.