This is a photo of my parents, Hansi and Bill Barrett, taken outside their home in Leeds. Our mother always waved goodbye to family and friends, whether they had just popped in or had been to stay. In about 1985, their good friend Val decided to record this ritual, including my father, who must have been cajoled into joining in.
To Hansi, saying goodbye was as important as saying hello. Her welcomes were warm and engaging and her farewells were an extension of that welcome, sending us off with love and support. Yet they were also tinged with a little sadness. My mother was born in Vienna and came to Britain as a Jewish refugee in 1939, aged 17. By then she had already witnessed the disappearance of friends, who had either escaped over the border in secret or had been taken to prison. She never knew which. Her parents were not practising Jews and their nanny often took Hansi and her sister, Trude, to the local Catholic church. That was irrelevant to the authorities. As antisemitism in Vienna grew throughout the 30s, they began to ask each morning, “Shall we be together tonight? Or will one of us disappear?”
Saying goodbye was even harder when they came to leave Austria. Cousins begged them for help to get out, but war was declared and for the rest of her life, my mother held a trace of guilt. Our family has photos of little girls who perished. Fortunately, Hansi, Trude and their mother all received sponsorship as servants in London.
But my grandfather, with thousands of others, found himself in Shanghai, where he spent the war in a refugee camp, having been offered a job in northern China that fell through. He never saw my grandmother again because, despite my mother’s efforts, he came to Britain too late to see her. She died of cancer in 1946.
My mother was fortunate to be taken in as an au pair in a family of Quakers who helped set up a club for refugees at their local meeting house. There, she met, and later married, Bill Barrett who was a conscientious objector working as a farm labourer. Among Quakers, she found a circle of support and a way of being that transcended religious affiliation, where the silent worship and acceptance of all, was balm amid the confusion and fear of war. The essence of Quaker belief is that each person is precious and unique, and to deliberately kill anyone is absolute cruelty. She became a campaigner for peace and justice, read the Guardian almost every day till she died aged 90, often referring to it as “my Guardian”.
Recently, my sister and I went to Vienna to retrace some of her steps. We discovered that the family leather business is a shoe shop and the cafe near their flat still serves delicious Viennese tarts and cakes. At the opera house, we heard Beethoven’s Fidelio, which is about love overcoming cruelty and, as we sat in the Gods, where she used to go, I wondered how people could hate one another and yet listen to this sublime music together.
At the Quaker memorial meeting after Hansi’s funeral, friends of all ages spoke, one after the other, about her capacity for deep and lasting friendship. With humility, kindness, humour and warmth, she saw our foibles and our gifts. One person summed up what everyone felt, when he said, “Hansi would open the door and I would immediately feel special, just the person she wanted most to see at that moment. She remembered what we had been talking about last time, what we were doing and what might be on my mind now.”
Through her life experience, she had learned to treasure each friendship. Her farewells were an extension of her welcomes, sending us off with a sense of continuing connection that we could carry with us till we met again.
Ruth Tod
We love to eat: Mum’s delicious apple crumble
Ingredients
3oz (85g) vegan margarine (plus extra to grease dish
2lb (900g) cooking apples
2 tbsp sugar (any kind, but demerara works well)
1 tsp cinnamon
6oz (170g) plain flour
6oz (170g) dark brown sugar (such as muscovado)
1 good pinch of salt
Grease a large casserole dish, then peel, core and slice the apples into the dish; the slices should be about the size of chunky thumbnails. Mix in the two tablespoons of sugar and the cinnamon.
To make the crumble, sieve the flour into a mixing bowl and rub in the margarine until you get a flaky consistency. Mix in the dark brown sugar and salt, and spoon the mixture evenly over the apples. Bake in a preheated oven at 190C/375F/gas mark 5 for an hour. Serve hot with custard, cream or ice-cream (or vegan equivalent). In the unlikely event of leftovers, these can be enjoyed cold the following day.
Growing up in the 1960s, I don’t remember Sunday lunch being a big deal in our house. My hard-working Communist parents were too busy with other activities, or ferrying us three kids around to music lessons and other weekend pursuits, and our grandparents were absent because of death or distance. But this favourite dessert, often served at the weekend, carries special memories.
The original recipe came from The Olio Cookery Book that my mum got free with her new electric cooker on marrying my dad in 1952; the cooker lasted them for at least 30 years. The page with this recipe on was the most used, stained and torn, and covered in Mum’s handwritten notes. She made so many changes over the years to quantities and ingredients that this recipe is really her own (my only addition is the cinnamon). As a child, I loved helping to peel and slice the sour Bramley cooking apples (bought in the greengrocer in the high street), and rubbing the margarine and flour between my fingers to make the crumble. The sweet smell of it baking would fill the house as we ate the boring main course, and when it was taken out and placed sizzling on the dining table, my brothers and I would vie for the best bits: the sticky toffee formed by the dark brown sugar that melted around the edges. Dark, soft, moist muscovado sugar was definitely the secret of Mum’s delicious crumble.
Her version of the recipe has survived because, aged 11, I copied it into the special notebook in which I recorded all my favourite recipes for sweets, cakes and puddings (including one from Blue Peter). After Mum’s death in 2001, I was pleased to find this notebook among her things, preserving her special apple crumble recipe. I’m not much of a cook myself, but I love to make this for visiting friends and family. I recently made one with the help of my young niece, happily crumbling the flour and margarine in her messy fingers just like I used to. It always goes down well – especially the toffee bits.
Stevie Russell
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