Scones with Grandpa Lenin

Always in the same place, a culinary Gibraltar at the top of the cellar steps, was a large, gold-coloured National Dried Milk tin full of alchemical items: raisins and sultanas; glace cherries and nibbled blocks of marzipan; tubs of baking powder; blanched almonds and little bottles of vanilla essence. These were the ingredients my Grandma Jenkins used in her magic. My mum baked very well but Grandma Jenkins was a magician. It was the early nineteen-fifties and we were betwixt and between: betwixt the influence and memory of the war with its Dig-for-Victory and make-do-and-mend still fresh in our minds and between being free from austerity and able to move into the sunny uplands of a post-war revival. There was something singular about those days when Lady Docker was a journalistic sensation and yellow sulphur-smelling smog (from industry and domestic coal-fires) dictated travel and when you could hang your washing out on the line. And through all this Grandma Jenkins baked her scones and bread and cakes and muffins and pikelets relying upon her black-leaded kitchen range that had been installed while Victoria was on the throne.
Grandma Jenkins stood just over five feet tall in her nineteen-thirty-eight lace-up, Northampton-made and locally mended shoes. She always wore an all-over pinafore of a floral cotton material (as did everyone back then) and tended to roll from side to side as she walked. Her grey-white hair was tightly curled close to her head and through it you could see her skull. Her eyes were myopic and glazed when she looked at you with her gold-rimmed glasses slipping down her nose. Then there were the hairs growing on her top lip. When I was younger I would stare at them not being used to facial hairs on any of the other women I knew. My Granny Wilkins (my mum's mother and known to us all as Granny smokes for obvious reasons) had wax-like skin and the only hair that dare grow on her head was the crown of long, thinning, white hair that she wore in a tight bun.
But it was Grandma Jenkins' baking, a finger-tip talent, that became the most important of my abiding olfactory memories of this time; and coming in a close second would be home perms, coal-fires and the smell of damp washing drying on a clothes-horse in front of the fire. Grandma had a way with dough that was out of this world and to a pre-teenager like me her bread and cakes and buns and biscuits were nothing short of miraculous. As for her pastry and the apple-pies that she made I have never tasted better, ever. My Grandpa would eat no other food but hers and as he rarely left the house for any length of time ("I've never spent a night in any other bed but my own," he'd say) this meant that Grandma had to bake almost every day. These were the years before the tidal wave of convenience foods and all-year availability of what were then seasonal produce. Granted we had fish and chips fried in unhealthy (but delicious) fats but even a town like Castleford with its two Co-ops had no frozen foods. In 1953 no one had neard of Captain Birds Eye and his frozen peas.
As well as baking Grandma Jenkins kept the tiny terraced house spotless. Every corner of the small back room-cum-kitchen was dusted and swept weekly (if not daily) and the large cast-iron range was always shiny and blacked. The front step was scoured and stoned brighter than any other in the street though the glow would last little more than to the end of the day before it became smudged by the coal-dust permeated air.
The front-room was just as well-maintained though it was hardly ever used. It was cold and dark and opened only on special occasions and for Grandpa's political meetings. I went in there once but it impressed me with its sepulchral feel: the heavy, dark-green chenille curtains; the aspidistra in the large copper bowl that stood on the bamboo-legged table by the window; an old sofa with its rotund little barrel legs and embroidered antimacassar and the large picture of the bearded man over the fireplace. There were other pictures but they struck me as nothing more than vague conglomerations of people in various poses holding flags and standing in the snow. Back then winters seemed to be so bitterly cold and white that I hardly took any notice. The pictures could have been taken down the road for all I cared but I seem to remember Grandpa telling me that they were taken in Russia.
The bit that served as a kitchen was little more than a square, pottery sink under the window and a chopping board all squashed into a space by the back door. When doing a job that demanded more space Grandma would use the do-everything deal table.
The back door opened onto the small, walled yard which contained the coal shed where Grandpa hung his pit things to keep them away from Grandma. She would not tolerate his clogs or his helmet or his kneeling pads in the house: "James Jenkins, you can leave those evil-smelling, dirt-ridden articles outside where they belong! I'll not have them in here, not after the hours I've spent keeping this house clean!" So there they hung, above the little mountain of coal.
Next to the coal shed was the toilet. At home we had both of ours inside (two being a great luxury back then in the 1950s though they were bot cold and frightening places) but Grandma and Grandpa had only one; and it was outside. In winter, Grandpa would light a paraffin stove to warm the narrow, brick cell and to stop the pipes from freezing. That was always the fear: the weather would be so cold that the pipes would freeze and you wouldn't be able to flush the toilet and come the thaw they'd spring leaks so you'd have to turn the water off. If this did happen Grandma would curse Grandpa for not taking precautions and Grandpa would curse the bosses and the ruling classes for being heartless and deliberate in their trampling underfoot of the honest, working man. "Just you wait till the Revolution comes Mother!" he'd say. "Then you'll see the workers' paradise in all its glory!"
"And will this revolution of yours give me an inside toilet, a proper bath (theirs being a galvanised tin that hung on the wall in the yard to be brought in and place in front of the fire when needed) and a modern gas cooker?" asked Grandma.
"All with gold taps," Grandpa would say and Grandma would smile and suck in a great big breath before she had the final word:
"And that'll be when hell freezes over James Jenkins," and Grandpa would turn to me and wink.

Grandpa was my dad's dad and he was know to everyone as Grandpa Lenin. There were pictures of his Revolutionary hero all over the house along with those of Marx (the man over the front-room fire) and Engels and Trotsky but none of Joseph Stalin that I can recall. Stacks of old copies of the "Daily Worker" newspaper occupied most of the stone steps down to the cellar and Grandma was forbidden to touch them. "I've got them all sorted in order and cross-referenced by article so leave then alone mother," said Grandpa Lenin.
My mum's dad, known as Grandpa Smokes because of his pipe, was a retired farm foreman who had worked with draught horses all his life. Something of their stoical calmness had rubbed off on him and he always had great patience and a gentle spirit. There was none of Grandpa Lenin's fire in Grandpa Smokes but he was a walking encyclopedia of the countryside. In very different ways I loved them both.
Granny (Smokes), my mum's mother, was a little sparrow of a woman around whom everything revolved and this was just how she wanted it. There was never a time when she was well and if not confined to bed because of some relapse she would sit by the chimney breast smoking her Player's cigarettes and spitting phlegm into the heart of the fire. Visits to Granny and Grandpa Smokes were always something of a mixed blessing. Grandpa Smokes would greet me like a long-lost brother and we'd go for a walk (more like an expedition) across the fields but with Granny I always had two jobs to do. First of all I'd have to roll torn strips of newspaper (always the Yorkshire Skyrack Express) into spills for Granny to light her cigarettes with and secondly I had to check the needle on the old gramophone, then wind it up and play one of her crackly Harry Lauder records. Just over half-way through it would start to run down and the singing would sound funny and I'd laugh while I wound it up some more but Granny would glare at me and I'd shut up. Granny coughed a lot and after she'd spat out the phlegm she'd dive into her capacious handbag to retrieve her half-bottle of Martell Brandy from which she'd take a swig, always for medicinal purposes. I grew up believing that Martell was a pharmaceutical company.
Grandpa Lenin, on the other hand, could not abide smoking which was just as well as he'd worked down the pit nearly all his life and his lungs were choked full of coal dust. Even my dad, his one and only son, wasn't allowed to smoke in his presence. About this and other things Grandpa Lenin's obduracy was puritanical. The only alcohol he tolerated was beer because it was the drink of the working man though he rarely drank himself. Spirits and wines were bourgeois said Grandpa Lenin and, therefore, not permitted. Even Christmas was taboo as was Easter, which became May Day. I told Grandpa that vodka was a Russian drink favoured by the masses so he made that an exception but never, ever, bought a bottle. Later, when I lied and told him I'd see a photograph of his hero, Lenin, with a cigarette in his hand he told me it was all propaganda by the tobacco companies and not to be silly enough as to believe it.
On Friday, after school, dad and I would often go up to the little terraced house in Kippax where Grandma and Grandpa Lenin lived. This Yorkshire pit village straddled a sandstone outcrop overlooking the valley where the river Aire and Calder met, and when the wind blew it was wonderfully free of that sulphurous smoke-smell of burning coal.
Grandma would have the fire blazing in the range regardless of the weather or the season and her mother's copper kettle would be sat there on the fire heating water for tea. There's be buns and a cake and probably scones though Grandpa Lenin thought these were bourgeois as well. "Too fancy for the likes of us," he'd say. I wasn't sure what bourgeois meant but it sounded grand so I went around telling everyone much to my mum's consternation.
Usually, though not always, there would be several of his friends gathered to talk about what they saw as the inevitable revolution to come, but mainly (I suspect) to share in the bounty of Grandma's baking. There would be four or five sitting in a semi-circle with Grandpa Lenin somewhere in the middle. He made an innocuous sight for, while Grandma was robust, Grandpa Lenin was elfin with a hollow chest and a shiny, bald head.
With me there they'd start bemoaning the state of the nation and how we were all doomed if we had to rely upon the younger generation. They'd jokingly bring me into the discussion and tease me until it inevitably turned serious and someone would mention the younger workers at the pit. "Don't know their born, they don't," Sam Langley would say. "They've only ever worked for the NCB not like in our day. None of 'em know what it's like wi' a private boss." There were nods of agreement from the others and mutterings.
"Parasites the lot of 'em," said Arthur Hailey with his long beard wagging up and down. "Them capitalists cared nowt for their workers and only wanted profit from the sweat of the labour of others. Remember when they'd weigh the dust and deduct the weight from the piece-rate payment?" More nods and mutterings of agreement.
"Capitalist parasites and war-mongers, enemies of the workers that what they were!" chorused Tom Fisher who agreed with everything. Eventually, the talk would turn to some article that Grandpa Lenin had read in the "Daily Worker" and I'd be forgotten and it was then that I could focus my attention on Grandma and the cooling rack of cakes.

In the early summer of 1953 my father bought Grandma and Grandpa Lenin a television. It was a Bush and looked more like a wooden box than anything else. The screen was tiny and tinted everything green. It was delivered from Mercer's of Castleford and set up properly by their technician. Grandpa Lenin was furious. "What do I want wi' one of them damned things for?" Nowt but time wasters I'll have thee know! I've heard all about them. Thee can take it away!"
"Bit it's for the Coronation dad," said my father and that only made things worse.
"What do I want wi' pictures of blood-suckin' royals? They're parasites feedin' off the honest toil of the working man, it's obscene I tell thee and I won't have it in this house!"
I was sat next to Grandma eating a scone topped off with home-made strawberry jam and, sin of all sins, fresh clotted cream. I'd been sworn to secrecy over the cream just in case Grandpa Lenin found out. Grandma rose to her feet and seemed to grow a good six inches.
"James Jenkins, what's all this about YOU not wanting the television and YOU not wanting to see the Coronation! I'll have you know that I've been looking forward to that! You refused to take me to London to see it for real so our Harry's brought London up to us. You leave that television set just where it is!" There was so much menace in Grandma's voice that I quaked and felt like hiding.
Grandpa Lenin didn't say a word. If he had planned to say something he lost his chance when, a few moments later, Sam Langley's wife came to borrow a cup of sugar and then, not more than two minutes later Tom Fisher's wife popped in to return some hair curlers she'd borrowed for VE Night back in nineteen forty-five. Within the next fifteen minutes several more neighbours discovered that they had a pressing reason to speak to Grandma and before long the tiny kitchen-cum-back room was full of women all silently watching the television.

For some reason I can't remember now it was several weeks later before I next went to see Grandma and Grandpa Lenin. I wasn't sure what to expect but there was every chance that the television might not be there. At that time we didn't have one at home so Grandma and Grandpa's was the only place where I could watch one.
It was still there, exactly where the technician from Mercer's had left it. There were, however, changes. From on top of the wardrobe in the back bedroom Grandpa had found a bust of Lenin (one he'd bought off a comrade who had actually been to Russia) and, no doubt deaf to Grandma's protests, he'd placed the bust on top of the television. Now anyone watching the set would be glared at by Comrade Lenin who also pointed an accusatory finger at his new audience ("It keeps the old women away," he whispered to me later).
From the Co-op (where else) Grandpa had bought a couple of comfortable easy chairs which he'd arranged in front of the screen. In between these two chairs stood the bamboo-legged table from the front room and on this stood a plate of fresh scones and some macaroons. "They're for tonight," said Grandma. "Your Grandpa likes a nibble while he's watching 'What's my Line?' not that he eats the macaroons; the coconut gets under his dentures." One the seat of one of the chairs was a copy of the Radio Times open at that night's programmes. "Your Grandpa has a soft spot for that young Jennifer Gay but he can't abide Gilbert Harding and you'll never guess what he did when Professor Quatermass was on the other night?"
"Thar's not going' to tell the lad are thee Mother? It were nowt but a momentary laps." Grandpa was standing at the top of the cellar steps. "I'll tell thee what our Michael; I don't see owt special about that there Muffin the mule. He need a bit of young man about him and give that blessed plutocratic penguin a kick up his backside!"
The next time I visited them I had cause to go down the cellar to fetch a piece of cold mutton for Grandma to mince for a shepherd's pie and I noticed that on one of the stone steps was a fresh collection but this time they were of old Radio Times magazines arranged in date order and cross-referenced by subject.