Autobiography of My Mother (6 page)

Through the front door was the hall, eight to ten feet wide, with a cedar hallstand. Grandma's house was full of cedar furniture. The hallstand held walking sticks, Grandma's ebony cane and men's hats. These were mainly made of felt, though occasionally Dad or Uncle Luke wore a straw hat.

The drawing room was off to the right of the hall. Past the drawing room door was a long cedar sofa covered with stiff, black horsehair. If visitors arrived at The House, instead of showing them into the drawing room, Annie would ask them to sit on the sofa while she fetched whomever they wanted to see. The hall was a kind of waiting room.

Dad's brother, Frank Coen, had been a champion rower for St John's College at the University of Sydney, and his oars were hung up along the hall. Perched on top of the oars was a little doll, a mascot, ten inches high, dressed in a tartan skirt. It maddened me that I couldn't have this doll, but
Frank's name was sacred and I knew there was no way I would ever be able to have it.

The walls were painted white and there was linoleum covered with mats on the floor. Carpet wasn't laid through the house until much later.

The drawing room was used constantly. Afternoon tea was served there, carried in by Annie on a tray from the kitchen. Cards were played there every night after the family rosary had been said. The room was full of different-sized chairs: large grandfather chairs for the men, smaller grandmother chairs for the women and assorted other armchairs. Over the fireplace was a print by Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun which I adored, a self-portrait of the artist with her small daughter.

Auntie Mollie's piano was in one corner of the drawing room and the other held a large rosewood cabinet, Frank's special present to his mother before he went off to war – a wind-up gramophone. This miraculous invention delighted everyone. Records of Caruso, Melba, the Irish tenor John McCormack and Italian singer Galli-Curci would be played over and over. ‘Lo, Hear the Gentle Lark' sang their favourite, Galli-Curci, her high voice soaring like a bird. I entertained Annie for hours in the kitchen with my own rendition of ‘Lo, Hear the Gentle Lark'.

On the other side of the hall was Grandma's bedroom. It had a dressing table with a bracket on either side to hold candles at night and a marble-topped washstand with a jug and basin on it. The bed was heavy with white linen. The bedspread was beautifully embroidered with white thread and the two pillow cases had ‘M' on one and ‘C' on the other: her husband Michael Coen's initials. Grandma did the embroidery herself.

Her children were born in this bed and Grandpa Coen died in it. Gentle Auntie Mollie was so upset when her father died that she couldn't bear to walk past the bedroom and had to go out by the back of the house.

The next room to the left down the hall was the dining room. A portrait of Napoleon hung at one end and at the other was an oval-shaped, life-sized photograph of Father Alphonsus, Dad's half-brother, the Passionist priest. Alphonsus had a reputation for speaking powerful sermons. Dressed in the black robes of the Passionists with the Sacred Heart attached, even his photograph was intimidating enough. The dining room was dominated by the portraits of these men.

The cedar sideboard in the dining room was the one from which I stole the Lent chocolates. It had a design of oak leaves and acorns carved across the back.

Three meals a day were served in the dining room. The dining room table had so many leaves it could easily sit sixteen and there never seemed to be fewer than twelve at the table. When everyone was assembled, Annie would be summoned from the kitchen by the sound of a gong. If Annie didn't hear the gong, Auntie Linda wildly rang a little brass bell until Annie appeared with the food.

The tablecloth and serviettes were of white Irish linen, the serviettes kept in rings with our numbers on them, one, two, three, round the table, like a school. One of my jobs was to help set the table for Annie before each meal. I had to get the salt and pepper shakers out of the cedar sideboard, then put them back again when the meal was over. They could never be left out between meals. The dinner service was white French china. I remember Grandma sitting at the head of the table carving a roast on a large plate with a saucer on the side
into which the gravy ran. I loved the gravy from roast beef and Grandma always gave me a spoonful as she was carving.

An apparatus for making soda water called a gasogene stood on the window ledge in the dining room; because the pisé walls were so thick, the window ledges were very wide. The gasogene consisted of two circular-shaped vessels on top of each other with metallic crisscrossing; it produced a week's supply of soda water at a time. Annie used to make delicious lemon squash from real lemons. The squash went at the bottom of the glass and then it was filled up with soda water from the gasogene.

Auntie Lizzie made wine from the mulberries on the trees out the back. The mulberry wine was alcoholic with quite a kick to it but, in keeping with the rest of her secretiveness, Lizzie wouldn't say how she made it.

Leading off the dining room to the left was Kathleen's bedroom which she shared with Mollie until Mollie entered the convent. This was the room with the painting of the lady and the lily which I had copied. I slept in Kath's room sometimes. Kathleen divided the double bed into two with pillows down the middle. I was not on any account to roll over the pillows onto Kathleen's side of the bed.

Mostly, however, I slept in one of the two bedrooms off the drawing room. These bedrooms could be entered from the drawing room or from the hall and they opened onto the back verandah that ran along two sides of the house. The shop made up the third side of the house and a second dining room the fourth side, so a courtyard was formed. A narrow staircase led from the courtyard up to the storeroom.

The kitchen was down the end of the verandah. It had wooden cupboards along the wall – the top half of the
cupboards had sliding glass doors – a large wooden table on which Annie prepared the food and which she scrubbed down spotless every night with sand soap, and another table next to the black fuel stove.

Washing up was enormous and never-ending. Annie's hands were always red. She washed and we children helped by drying. First she had to fill the tin basin with cold water to rinse the dishes, then they were washed in water heated on the stove and put to drain on the wooden sink before we dried them.

Every spring, the courtyard was filled with a warm, sweet smell and a mass of mauve flowers. An old wisteria vine that must have been forty feet long grew up a pole and twined the length of the verandah under the eaves. Snapdragons, columbines and other annuals grew in the garden beds.

A swing had been put in the courtyard when my father and his sisters and brothers were children. It was shaped like a boat and two children could climb and sit facing each other as they swung; an infinite delight.

The courtyard had wooden seats with wrought-iron ends and a white, marble-topped round table on a wrought-iron base. There was also a cage full of native finches and canaries. Linda bred canaries. She would put the birds and their nest into cages that she hung up high, near the roof. I had to climb onto a chair to see the canaries sitting on a hatch of eggs.

On special occasions, afternoon tea was served in the garden. Often Grandma was too busy in the shop to attend, so one of the aunts would preside. Tea was poured from a tall silver pot with another little one under it to keep hot water in.

An amazing orange tree grew in the courtyard. It was
amazing because no one ever grew orange trees in Yass; they never survived the winter. My grandfather had sunk a well in the courtyard as a water supply for the house and to have extra water on hand if the shop caught fire. After he died, Grandma decided to fill the well in, being worried that young children would fall into it. One of my uncles planted an orange pip in the soil where the well had been. The courtyard was protected, no frosts reached it and so the orange tree grew.

On full-moon summer nights I used to sit out in the courtyard reading. The stars and the moon were bright in the country anyway, but moonlight seemed to specially congregate in the protected square of the courtyard. I would read a whole book by moonlight some nights.

A long passageway led from the courtyard through to the laundries and past the mangle where I once caught my hand, a painful experience, and on past the big bathroom with the oversized tub to the outside toilet. Chamber pots were kept under the beds during the night. In the morning Annie had to empty them all into the slop bucket, then lug the bucket down to the outside toilet; the passageway ended in the back yard that ran down to a creek.

All summer long, the back yard was full of pungent-smelling yellow broom and the gnarled, dark-stemmed Isabella grapevine, its fresh green leaves twining everywhere, was covered with smallish black grapes that had a blue bloom on them. Whenever I smell yellow broom, I think of Isabella grapes.

A persimmon tree grew in the back yard. The luscious orange fruits squirted over my face when I bit into them and I'd lick up the stray orange drops from my chin with my tongue.

I loved climbing the mulberry tree when the mulberries were ripe; somehow the fruit managed to stain not just my teeth, but my arms, my legs and even my clothes. The mulberry tree was also good for feeding silkworms, fat white grubs I kept in a box, waiting patiently until they turned into cocoons that could be spun into real silk.

In the netted fowl run lived a turkey gobbler, a ferocious bird that fascinated and terrified me at the same time. I would edge up to watch the turkey spread its wings like a peacock, then flee from the awful, gobbling noise that suddenly issued from its swelling throat, with the flaps of red, coarse skin hanging off, as if its neck was inside out. Besides, if I lingered too long, the turkey would peck.

At the bottom of the back yard, on the other side of the fence, lived a woman and her brother. The woman was not quite right in the head, everyone said. Her days were spent endlessly raking up leaves. She wasn't gardening; there was no garden, their yard was a wilderness. If I sneaked along the fence I could hear her talking to herself. Sometimes she had a scythe and was cutting the grass. One day I crept as close as I could to hear what she was saying. As she swung furiously at the grass, she was singing to herself, ‘Old Mother Coen and her college-bred brats.'

The food was one of the things I liked best about The House. I thought it was much better at Grandma's than at home. Annie did a lot of the cooking, but on special occasions Grandma either supervised or cooked herself.

There was always a huge soup tureen on the stove, which held broth made with everything. The beef soup was
particularly good. It was made from shins of beef, which the butcher saved specially for Grandma.

Auntie Lizzie made French pastry; it was the only thing she ever cooked. I used to beg her for the recipe, but it was another of Lizzie's secrets. I think it came out of
The Goulburn Cookery Book
. After the pastry was made it was placed in the safe on the verandah to cool; there was never a refrigerator in The House. Then it was taken out, rolled, folded up and put back in the safe again before being shaped into small and large tartlets or cheese straws with cayenne pepper sprinkled on them. Lizzie's pastries were delicious.

At Christmas time, Grandma made cakes and puddings which she sent to members of the family. The mixture was stirred in the tin baths used for washing children. Grandma made her puddings twelve at a time. The baker put them in his oven for her after the bread was done, as the bakery was only a few doors down the street.

Grandma also made trifle at Christmas, New Year, Easter and any other celebrations. I haven't tasted trifle like it since. The sponge cake was kept until it reached the right degree of staleness, then soaked overnight in sherry. Next morning, a layer of apricot jam was spread over it. A thick, creamy custard made with eggs and a peach leaf for flavour was cooked in a double boiler; when it had cooled the custard was poured over the cake.

Brilliant red and green jelly for the top of the trifle was prepared next. I had the job of peeling the Jordan almonds. They had been allowed to stand in hot water first, so the skins came off easily. Whipped cream covered the custard and the jelly was placed in a pattern over the top of that. The almonds, cut in half lengthways, were put all over the whipped cream and jelly.

Pauline was staying with us one Christmas. When Annie went to bring in the trifle for dessert, commotion came from the kitchen. Someone, Annie said, had eaten the jelly off the top of the trifle. I can't remember if Pauline confessed voluntarily or if Annie forced it out of her, but a lengthy scene with copious tears followed in the kitchen after dinner.

Grandma worked in the store every day except Sunday. She loved holding court there, sitting up in the dress materials department with her crocheting. Grandma's crocheting was never out of her hands.

Linda did tatting, making little lace edgings to go around handkerchiefs and collars. Lizzie didn't sew. She preferred tending her chrysanthemums.