Zwetschgenknödel (Plum Dumplings)
Packing our trunks for the holidays was so much easier than packing for the start of a new term. All we had to do was throw stuff in, with no need to check the inventory carefully. However, there always seemed to be more to take home than we had initially brought.
“I can’t get it to shut,” I said. “Snort, come and sit on this side.”
Snort obliged and the trunk snapped shut.
“Well, that’s it,” I said. “I’m not opening it again. If I’ve forgotten anything, I’ll just have to collect it next term.”
“Ach, well, that’s the thing,” said my mother. “We’ve decided that as your sister is no longer here, it would be better for us all if you went to day school closer to home.”
My jaw dropped and I sat heavily on the trunk beside Snort.
“Dusty’s leaving?” asked Snort.
“Yes, Helen, she is. But of course you two must see each other during the holidays, lots of times…”
I was heartbroken, and so was Snort, but the decision had been made. Looking back on it now, I imagine it was probably more of a financial decision as my father had just retired from the army.
I never saw Snort again. Her parents lived in Singapore, so we couldn’t meet in the holidays. We wrote letters for a while, but as our lives progressed, the letters faded and finally died away.
I tried to put the thought of starting at a new school behind me and concentrated on enjoying my summer break. The first week was always tricky as my parents opened our end of term reports. As usual, my sister’s positively glowed, while mine was a little worse than mediocre.
* * *
School Report
English: Victoria may have ability but this is not evident as she is disorganised, untidy and rarely produces homework.
Mathematics: Victoria’s defeatist attitude and daydreaming do not assist her progress in this subject.
It would seem that Victoria has made very little progress this term. Unless her overall attitude improves, it is unlikely that Victoria will succeed in her new school. However, we wish her well.
Mrs Driver (Housemistress)
* * *
It was fortunate for me that my younger brother’s school report was even worse than mine. The comments from his teachers were so appalling that my parents decided to send him to a ‘crammer’ the next term. A crammer is a school that prepares pupils for examinations. I felt sorry for him, but pleased that my report was marginally better than his.
It wasn’t my happiest time. I felt settled at boarding school and I missed Snort already. I was thirteen and I couldn’t even imagine going to a new school and having to start all over again. At one point, I even considered running away, although I’m not sure how I thought that would help the situation. What I actually did was pretend to run away, just to see if anybody cared. I shut myself in the outside toilet, a place nobody used as it was a home for spiders.
“Ach, where has Victoria gone?” I heard my mother say on her way down the garden to visit her beloved compost heap.
“Probably gone round to see Annabel,” said my brother.
I held my breath, waiting. Were they worried? Would they go round to Auntie Jean’s and check? Nobody did, and I got very bored waiting in the toilet. Eventually, I shuffled out. Nobody commented because nobody had realised I’d gone missing. It was a huge non-event.
Of course my pride was dented, but I soon forgot about it as I helped make Crispy Crunchy Crackly Crack with Auntie Jean and Annabel in their kitchen. Oh, the pleasure of that first bite and taste with a glass of milk! It was enough to make anybody forget all about running away.
Auntie Jean was a wonderful cook, unlike my mother. I think my mother could have been, but her plants interested her far more. However, sometimes a glut in the garden would spur her into making slightly crazy dishes, her Eastern European heritage making a rare appearance.
“Ach, the plums are nearly ripe. Next week we will make Zwetschgenknödel.”
“Hooray!”
The damson plums ripened, and the day was set aside for Zwetschgenknödel, or plum dumplings.
On these days, we all lent a hand. My brother and I rushed out into the garden and picked the plums from the tree, dodging the wasps that were just as keen to get to the fruit as we were. Then we washed the plums, but, unlike most recipes, left the stones in. My sister was on dough duty, and my mother supervised and dropped the dumplings into boiling water. The result was a mountain of fragrant dumplings. On Zwetschgenknödel days, there was nothing else on the menu; we just guzzled Zwetschgenknödel, eating them with our hands, juice running down our faces. We ate until we could eat no more.
My mother’s gardening skills ensured we had fresh vegetables and fruit nearly all year round. The only thing she failed dismally at was corn on the cob. The cobs never reached their full size, and never ripened to that glorious yellow. This was a big disappointment, particularly as my parents had named the house Kukuruz, meaning corn on the cob. I really don’t know why it was named that. When the subject came up, my parents would steal secret glances at each other and my mother would blush.
Along with gardening, history was another of my mother’s passions.
“Come along!” she would shout up the stairs. “Today we are visiting Sherborne Castle. It was built by Sir Walter Raleigh, you know, and it has 40 acres of grounds.”
We climbed into Ivy, and she ground the gears and bucked all the way to Sherborne, some 40 miles away.
My mother adored visiting castles and country estates, all steeped in history, then touring the grounds, always on the lookout for gardening ideas. Dorset has numerous stately homes, and we probably visited most of them. I don’t remember many individually; they blur together in a haze of suits of armour, portraits, mazes and kitchen gardens.
I remember visiting Athelhampton House, a fine example of a 15th century manor house surrounded by one of the great architectural gardens of England. Of course, my mother almost drooled as she spotted rare plants, and her sleight of hand, as she stole cuttings and stashed them in her enormous handbag, was legendary.
I also recall Kingston Lacy, an elegant Italian-inspired country residence in Wimborne Minster. I don’t remember it because of its lavish interior, or because of its splendid gardens. I remember it because of the rather incongruous Egyptian obelisk, sculpted from pink granite, which stands in the gardens.
In 1820, adventurer William John Bankes found the toppled 2nd century BC obelisk on the Nile island of Philae. Being a collector, he arranged to have the granite artefact transported to his family home in Dorset. The inscriptions on this obelisk, along with the famous Rosetta Stone, helped crack open the mystery of the ancient Egyptian symbols.
And the story didn’t finish there. Very recently, in 2014 to be precise, the inscriptions were inspected again. Modern imaging techniques allowed for areas to be deciphered that had gradually been rubbed away by centuries of Egyptian sun and 200 years of English weather. The result has revealed startling new insights into ancient Egyptian history. Fifty years later, Joe and I visited the island of Philae on the Nile, the birthplace of the Kingston Lacy obelisk I had stared at as a child.
Back home, my mother nurtured and nursed the cuttings and seeds she had stolen. It was common to overhear this typical conversation as she walked visitors round our garden.
“Ach, this rather unusual azalea comes from Athelhampton House, and this shrub here is a very fine hebe I found in the grounds of Lulworth Castle.”
Another of my mother’s ideas of a good time was visiting old churches, of which there were hundreds within easy reach of Ivy. Old churches abound in Dorset, and we visited many. Some were within walking distance of our house, like the Saxon St Martin’s Church, which is one thousand years old and holds a priceless effigy of Lawrence of Arabia.
Why Wareham for such a valuable effigy? Because it was sculpted for St Paul’s Cathedral but was refused because of the controversy surrounding T.E. Lawrence’s death. Neither would Westminster Abbey or Salisbury Cathedral take it. So it ended up in the tiny Wareham church which, at a stretch, seats just 40. The effigy didn’t interest me much, but I stared with horrified fascination at the crude red stars daubed on one wall, each star representing yet another death in the parish due to the Great Plague.
I confess, as a child, I didn’t always enjoy these trips. The churches were dark and cold inside, and smelled musty. Even the sun shining through the stained-glass windows didn’t brighten things up much. I did quite enjoy exploring the graveyards, reading the headstones with ghoulish interest, but even that palled after a while.
So my mother came up with an idea she thought might keep us amused. She bought thick wax crayons and rolls of shelf-lining paper, and showed us how to lay the paper on a headstone or brass plaque. When we rubbed the wax crayon over the surface of the paper, the inscriptions magically appeared on the paper. Brass-rubbing, as this was called, is no longer permitted as it is very damaging, but it was common in those days.
My mother’s latest money-making venture, painting little salt boxes my father made with edelweiss flowers, (I will sell hundreds! I can’t understand why nobody has thought of it before!) hadn’t taken off, so she was trying something completely different. She became a market researcher, working for a big company. Now she knocked on doors asking to interview people from specific age groups, or lurked on street corners ready to pounce on unsuspecting members of the public. More and more of her time was taken up by her new job.
“Ach, you should take the children away somewhere,” she suggested to my father, “then I can catch up with my paperwork.”
Discussion followed, and a decision was made. My father would take us camping in the New Forest that weekend.
“Can Annabel come, too?”
“Not this time, we haven’t got room in the tent. Now go and get your stuff together.”
The tent was new, we hadn’t taken it on its maiden voyage yet. Ivy was packed up with great excitement. The drive, with my father at the helm, was surprisingly smooth, with no kangaroo jumps.
The New Forest was decreed a royal forest by King William I in about 1079. Used for the royal hunt, it consisted mainly of deer, and is mentioned in the Domesday Book. Wild ponies are plentiful having been allowed to roam free and breed for centuries. In fact, as Wikipedia states:
Grazing of commoners’ ponies and cattle is an essential part of the management of the Forest, helping to maintain the internationally important heathland, bog, grassland and wood-pasture habitats and their associated wildlife.
“First person to see a pony wins!” shouted my sister.
That didn’t take long as the wild ponies, although unbroken, are very accustomed to humans. Not only did we see ponies, but also foals born that spring. I hugged myself in anticipation. That night, I so hoped to see deer, maybe badgers, and foxes, too. I also knew that there were still some red squirrels in the New Forest. These did finally vanish in the 1970s, chased out by their grey cousins, and only survived in cut off, managed areas like Brownsea Island.
We put the tent up eventually, although it wasn’t easy. It was the type that had a separate inner bedroom. My sister and I were going to sleep in there, while my father and brother slept in the outer part. We pumped up our inflatable mattresses and laid out our sleeping bags; it all looked very cosy and inviting. The New Forest ponies watched our activities and swished their tails.
“Let’s explore,” I said, my notebook in hand. “I want to see some wildlife!”