Chapter 5: The BBQ

It is a lovely sunny afternoon after so much rain on Friday, that it is warm and humid and too nice a summer day to cook indoors, so I offer to do a BBQ in the evening.

Caoimhe always enjoys BBQ food and Etain says she loves food cooked outside. I get steaks and sausages out of the freezer and put them in the frig, intending to completely defrost them in boiling water in five or six hours’ time. I have the fixings for salad and I make a mental note to get some ice cream before the evening.

However, Etain offers to make hot apple hand pies with Caoimhe’s help.

“We don’t have any cooking apples,” I point out.

“True,” Etain replies, “but I have dessert apple trees with small unripe fruits in the garden, slow cooked in a pie which will soften the fruit, which can be sweetened with cinnamon sugar and honey in a simple short crust pastry. I’ll cook them in an oven over an open fire. They’ll be delicious.”

“Daddy, they sound perfect,” Caoimhe says, “can I help make them?”

“Of course you can,” Etain replies, squeezing Caoimhe with a hug, “you can help me pick, peel and slice them, then soak them in water with some lemon juice to prevent browning. We’ll make and roll the pastry, fill up the pies with scoops of apple, fold over the pastry and crimp them. That’s 14 crimps per pie for luck. We’ll make and cook six pies, one each for tonight which we’ll eat hot, and one each cold for tomorrow lunch.”

“Mmm, sounds great,” I say.

I remove the still-frozen steaks from the frig. They’ve been supplied individually cello-wrapped, bought from farmer Carrick Cormack some months ago. He often slaughters a couple of cows every few months and offers various cuts to the neighbours beforehand at prices far too good to pass up. I’ve always found the ruddy-faced farmer, a solid built man about my age, rather taciturn, but his meat distribution was a tradition and everyone around benefited. I’ve known him, very slightly, for a decade but never exchanged more than a dozen words maybe six times a year in all that time and didn’t know his first name until Etain met him this morning. Maybe I’m too much of a self-centred computer nerd for my own good and, by extension, to Caoimhe too, who clearly misses female company. That’s probably why she has hung out with Etain most of the day.

I guess you’re wondering whether I’m missing female company too? Sure, I miss Ella, my wife, I miss her like mad. At High School and College I was a complete nerd, and a little overweight most of my teen years, so I wasn’t in demand when it came to dating. The only sports I indulged in was softball and wrestling, but never made the college team at baseball and although, I did letter through the wrestling team for two years I never set any records or any co-eds’ pulses race. Ella was my one shining light, we just connected almost as soon as we started our courses at Cork, me in computers, she majored in clothes design. When she was gone, I had my hands full with Caoimhe and work. If it wasn’t for Katie, Etain’s aunt, living next door I would have been lost. I really miss her and I know Caoimhe does.

Katie may have been in her 70s or 80s (I’m hopeless guessing ages, especially regarding women) but she did babysit for the few dates I went on, starting about two years after I lost Ella. Katie encouraged me to go out with girls I met on the road visiting clients’ facilities, but my heart wasn’t in it and I knew it would have to be someone really special to take on Caoimhe as a stand-in Mom, even though my daughter had never experienced having a mother around her before. Maybe, I used to think, once Caoimhe went to college, I could find some divorcee or widow prepared to settle down with someone set in their bachelor ways. I was in no hurry.

Back to thinking about dinner. Normally I would defrost frozen steaks in the frig overnight, but there isn’t time for that, with me intending to start cooking at about 6pm, in about four hours’ time, so I soak the wrapped steaks spread out in a pan of hot water to start them off on a gentle defrost.

I have a very good marinade recipe for steaks, that my father’s always used on our BBQs back home, which involves some hot chilies. We used to have a lot of BBQs at home and all-year round. Here in Ireland the window of opportunity, or rather my personal primeval urge to cook outdoors, is restricted to a couple of months a year. I make up my Dad’s marinade from ingredients I have at hand and set it to one side. Once I was sure the steaks were defrosted I would soak them in the marinade and pop them back in the frig.

I made sure we had the makings of a salad and selected three potatoes that I would part-cook in the microwave and finish off in the oven nearer the time, aiming for a 6pm dinner.

I said BBQs are rare for my little family of two and the inconsistency of the weather means that the table and half a dozen folding chairs were never left out in the elements but stored in the garden shed, so I look the table and three chairs out and give them a dusting over to remove the many cobwebs. Was it really that long ago that we last ate outside? Come to think of it, this was certainly the first time this year.

We have a stock of glasses stored in the shed, ones with candles inside that when lit help keep the insects away, so I look those out too, polish off the dust and replace the candles that are burned down too low to reuse. We get a lot more insects in the evening than we ever used to get at home, where we have BBQs all year round on permanent and more substantial garden furniture.

The fence between our two properties is low enough to see over, between three or four feet high. It is an ancient fence of woven osier sticks and each panel seems a different age, as it the fence had been there forever and each panel regularly replaced or repaired as it rotten away from the bottom up. The uprights are a different beast, thick and solid wrought iron bars, not steel or wood as we tend to use back home. These sturdy posts are set in concrete and I do paint them with black exterior paint every couple of years and so they look pretty solid; again they look as though a blacksmith hammered them into shape when the cottages were originally built.

From where I prep in the kitchen, I can look across to the girls, and they are happily sitting together on a blanket spread on a sunny patch of lawn. They seem happily occupied, playing and laughing at whatever they are interacting with together on Caoimhe’s school tablet. Seeing them so happy together makes me miss Ella more. How she would have loved to have known her daughter, she didn’t even see her, hold her even. I can’t help but wipe away a tear that had nothing to do with the onions for the salad.

“These hand-made apple pies are fantastic,” I say, the pie in my hand still steaming the sweetness of the honey and sharp, fruity acid of the firm chunks of apples perfectly balanced within, “Etain and Caoimhe, you’ve outdone yourselves.”

“Thank you, Richard, but those steaks were really very nice,” Etain smiled, “I’m not sure if I’ll need another mouthful for a week.”

“Ha! There’s nothing of yah,” I say, and it is true, I can’t believe how much she had put away, without appearing like one of pythons that swallowed a baby hippo.

Caoimhe just sticks a thumb up, her sweet face occupied shuffling the hot pie filling around her mouth without burning her tongue or cheeks.

I relax into the slightly uncomfortable folding chair as the night begins to draw in and I feel a sudden chill.

“Look, why don’t we retire to the lounge and I put the kettle on for a cup of tea?”

“Not for me, Dad,” Caoimhe stretched one arm above her head and yawned, “I’m knackered. I’m gonna finish this brill pie and then shower and bed. Can we leave the dishes until tomorrow?”

“Get away to bed with you,” I smile, “I’ll sort the dishes after tea and clean up the grill when it’s cool in the morning.”

Two or three weekends a month I used to play golf on a Sunday morning, usually while Caoimhe sleeps in, but since Katie next door departed for her mysterious care home that she didn’t want us to visit some five months ago, I’ve had to cancel my usual 7am spring and summertime tee slot with three friends, because I refuse to leave Caoimhe without someone nearby to keep an eye out for her. Katie was pretty active for an old woman and she was always up and about early every morning. I thought that if Etain was an early riser and amenable the the idea, I could start playing again. To keep fit, I was indulging myself in an hour’s run most Saturdays and Sundays. I probably needed a runout tomorrow, those steaks were huge!

I tidy up after Caoimhe hugs and kisses Etain and me and goes to bed. She’s 10 and and a ball of energy most of the time, but we rarely have guests and none at all since Covid struck, and when tiredness sets in, she collapses like a pricked balloon.

Etain helps bring in the leftovers while the electric kettle boils. Then we retire to the lounge. I take to my recliner and she perches herself on the sofa. Ah, that first sip of tea! I feel most of the time I’m still a stranger in a strange land and I drink coffee most of the time, but there are some instances where sitting with a cup of tea just seems right and this is Etain’s own blend that emerged from her cavernous bag when the kettle boiled and she took charge of the little-used 2-cup earthenware teapot that Ella had brought to the marriage from her dorm room.

I started the conversation, well, I am supposedly the host and, out of practice I may be, but I felt relaxed, fat and happy ... comfortable after subtlety undoing the top button of my jeans for relief.

“Thank you for entertaining Caoimhe today,” I smile in thanks to Etain, “I had some remote work to do and she seemed very happy playing with you on her tablet.”

‘Oh, we weren’t playing, Richard, she was using an ‘ap’ I think she called it to learn how to read English.”

“What?!” I exclaim, somewhat shocked, “but surely...”

“There’s no surety about anything, except everything but the exceptions. I can read runes, I was taught my futhark—”

“Your what?”

“Like your alphabet, named after the first two sounds in your order of letters, the futhark are the first five letters in the list of runes,” she clicks her tongue in a ‘tsk!’ sound, clearly critical of my ignorance, “Caoimhe explained the alphabet to me very clearly, as did the educational lessons on the tablet, designed for 5 and 6 year olds, so I am able to advance quickly. I already knew place names from road signs by recognising the overall shape, even if I was unable to break the words down to individual sounds before. Now it all makes sense.”

She smiles a little too smugly, like I imagine a demon might might pretending to be an Angel in disguise.

I wonder if she’s escaped from an institution or a Traveller family or from some commune hangover from the swinging sixties/seventies/eighties hidden away in some rural backwater in the west of Ireland. Somewhere remote that doesn’t have access to online kindergarten lessons, and no-one qualified to show her how to use them. I think I better ensure Caoimhe’s room’s locked when I go up to bed. I might do that now, as soon as I’ve wound this weird conversation to a close, without making her angry or even vaguely psychotic.