Grandfather’s Cake
Grandfather used to put warm cake paper out on the concrete path. Crispy crumbs clung to it, the odd burnt currant, sometimes a small triangle of cake that broke away with a fold of greaseproof. The birds swooped down on it, always ready for titbits as he thought of them daily. And then they’d flee half fed as the dog smelt food on the horizon, pounced on the paper with its massive paws, tore into it with its pointed teeth, held it down and demolished it paper and all. Then it licked the ground for the last morsels and went and scratched on the kitchen door whimpering in the hope of more. That was recycling fifties style.
The cake sat on a stand in the middle of the table. Sugar glistened on the top and plump sultanas tempted us children to pick them from the sides.
‘Wait,’ he’d say. ‘Patience is a virtue.’
‘Patience is a virtue, Patience is a grace, Patience is a little girl with a dirty face,’ we chanted back. It was a ritual we always said every tea time with him before we ate his scones or his gingerbread or his cake.
First there were boiled eggs and slices of bloomer with real butter. Sometimes the eggs were stale and sometimes the butter was rancid. My mother would ask when he’d bought them. Off eggs were a fact of life. Gone too far and the dog would be in luck. We’d get rid of the taste by a slice of cake, wonderful scrumptious cake which never disappointed. A bit of old butter and eggs got lost in a cake, the fruit and the sugar absorbed it and made chemical magic of the ingredients.
Grandfather didn’t wear an apron, he let the flour sift over his clothes. His rough hands stained from gardening were softened. His pullover decorated with currants that had gone astray, he’d peer over his glasses at the receipt book which had come with him from his childhood home and had his mother’s notes in the margins. This fruit cake was an heirloom. All those years of rationing and shortages were over. Now he collected stores as if the war would start again. In his larder a dozen packets of sugar, a dozen of raisons and currants. In his wardrobe more. Under the sink jars of home made jam and pickle. In the airing cupboard tins and packets as if his whole house was a shop and he was stocked up for life, there would never be want again. Except that food did have a life and sometimes the weevils and ants found the stores before he did. Still we learnt on the farm that fruit had caterpillars in them sometimes but as they ate nothing but fruit they were made of fruit so if you ate one accidentally no harm could come to you. And if there were weevils in the flour and ants in the raisons we would come to no harm, it was added protein. That was nutrition fifties style. You had to eat a peck of dirt before you died.
We were sometimes allowed to help him cook. We could measure on the precarious scales with the brass dish that wobbled over a needle that wobbled too. We could spoon in the fruit or wash them in a colander. We could beat eggs or whip butter and sugar. We didn’t cut the greaseproof paper that was an art but we held it round the tins while he tied the string. Parcels for the oven like birthday presents in the post. And afterwards the string was carefully untied and the knots undone and it went back in the string bag on the back of the larder door with the aprons that never got used. They were Granny’s and she’d been gone so long I could hardly remember her. And we could put the paper out for the birds and watch from the window to see how long before the dog noticed and came gallumphing across the garden to whoosh the birds into the trees.
My cakes don’t turn out the same as his. I use Flora instead of butter and Splendor instead of sugar. My eggs are never old and my flour and currants are well within their sell by dates. Everything is fresh and fluffy. The cake paper goes into the recycling box, crumbs and all. The dog has a diet of vegetarian biscuits and isn’t allowed human food. The birds get bird seed bought as such. My wardrobes and cupboards hold no stores and I am always running out of ingredients. But I have aprons that never get worn. And I still say Patience is a virtue.
Panforte of… Buy This at Allposters.com
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