Susan Eames
lemon squash
I must
have been about ten when I realised there was something odd about my Gran. Up
until then she was simply my cuddly Gran with a roly-poly smile and waddly
walk.
We lived in a seaside town. Summer was
the best time of year. Not just because of the weather, but because there was an
endless supply of holiday children to make friends with. And if a new friend
turned out not so nice after all, it didn’t matter because they’d be gone soon
enough.
When Gran wasn’t at home, you could
find her on the pier, feeding the seagulls. She would make up little bags of
stale bread to distribute to the holiday children who always seemed to think
feeding seagulls was a good game. We local kids knew better. Seagulls were
nothing but greedy, smelly, noisy birds who’d peck your hand and draw blood if
you weren't careful.
Gran’s house and garden was open to all
the neighbourhood children and she always invited the holiday children too.
Summertime at her cottage was brilliant. There’d be kids swarming everywhere and
with so many new faces I could never keep track of them. Sometimes when a mum or
dad came to collect a holiday child it would turn out they weren’t even there. I
couldn’t tell you how many children must have visited her over the years. It was
a place everyone loved to come and play because she had a massive garden with
loads to do and she served endless supplies of lemon squash and home-made
cake.
I was lucky because Gran allowed me to
help her bake the cakes. None of the other children were allowed anywhere near
her kitchen.
Most mornings during the summer
holidays, I would walk round to Gran’s cottage after breakfast. She always kept
her backdoor open. I only had to lift the latch on the side gate and walk around
the back.
The backdoor opened into a small
utility area and I would shout, ‘it’s only Karen!’
I had learnt to shout out to Gran
before I went into the kitchen because once, when I didn’t, I gave her a huge
fright and she got angry with me for startling her. She had just come out of the
walk-in larder and I had never seen her so mad before – her eyes rolled in their
sockets so that I could only see the whites.
She slammed and locked the larder door.
‘Karen, you must never, ever just walk in without warning. What if I’d been
holding a hot kettle – or a bowl of cake mixture? Well, I might have dropped it!
Now you just promise me you’ll always call out to me first, you understand?’
‘Yes, Gran. I’m sorry I frightened
you.’
She took one look at my contrite
expression and straight away went back to her sunny self.
‘Just so long as you understand,
poppet. Never walk in without warning.’
And she hugged me so that I was crushed
against her pillowy bosom. She kissed my cheek and nibbled my ear until it
almost hurt before she pushed me away with a chuckle.
Gran was a farmer’s daughter and the
walk-in larder was where she hung rabbits and game birds that she turned into
delicious pies, casseroles and stuff she called ‘terrines’ which I thought
looked horrible. The locked larder was strictly off limits and I had never set
foot inside it. Not that I wanted to. All the really interesting stuff was in
her pantry. I loved the pantry. It smelled of cinnamon, vanilla and honey. All
Gran’s baking ingredients were in the pantry and every Saturday I would trot in
and out, fetching and carrying the ingredients that she needed to make her
magical cakes. Mounds of flour, butter and sugar were weighed by nothing more
complicated than Gran’s practised eye. I was in charge of the eggs. I had to
break them into a bowl without getting any shell in it and ‘beat them like Old
Mother Hubbard’ until they were frothy. Once Gran poured the mixture into the
cake tins she would give me the bowl to lick.
By ten o’clock we’d hear children
arriving. It always coincided with the first batch of cake to come out of the
oven. Gran would go out into the garden and warn them that the cake had to cool
down first, so they might as well find a little job to do. The jobs were easy
and fun, especially when you knew the reward was freshly baked cake. Soon
there’d be kids all over the garden, picking flowers, or weeding or planting
seeds in Gran’s vegetable patch, or feeding the rabbits and chickens in the pens
at the end of the garden. She had even a hung a tyre from the oak tree, so we
could play on that too.
When I started hearing the rumours I
knew they were rubbish. Just stupid kids’ talk, you know? But they made me
notice oddities I’d never questioned before, like how Gran would lick a child’s
grazed knee before applying Savlon; stuff like that. There was only one way to
lay my doubts to rest. I would have to investigate.
It took over a week to find where she
kept the larder door key and several days more to find my courage.
While Gran was busy digging up potatoes
in the vegetable patch I unlocked the door. A putrid smell slammed me back.
Racks of rabbits and pheasants hung from the ceiling. I gagged, gulped a breath
and walked in. Beyond the game, right at the back, larger bundles hung from
hooks.
The rumours weren’t rubbish after
all.
About the author
Susan A. Eames left England over twenty five years ago to explore the world and
dive its oceans. She has had travel articles and short fiction published on
three continents. After several fascinating years living in Fiji she has
relocated to West Cork in Ireland .
Susan
blogs at: http://susan-a-eamestravelfictionandphotos.blogspot.ie
