Aunty Lily Read online

  Aunty Lily

  and other delightfully perverse stories

  Jennifer Munro

  Parkhurst Brothers Publishers

  MARION, MICHIGAN

  © Text copyright 2016 by Jennifer Munro. All rights reserved under the laws and treaties of the United States of America and all international copyright conventions and treaties. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief passages quoted within news or blog features about the book, reviews, etc., without the express prior written consent of Permissions Director, Parkhurst Brothers, Inc., Publishers, Inc.

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  Printed in the United States of America

  First Edition, 2016

  2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 . . . 6 . . . 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Munro, Jennifer, author.

  Title: Aunty Lily : and other delightfully perverse stories / Jennifer Munro.

  Description: First hardback edition. |

  Marion, Michigan : Parkhurst Brothers Publishers, 2016.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015049221 (print) | LCCN 2016001183 (ebook) | ISBN 9781624910722 (hardcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781624910739 (ebook) |

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Humorous. | FICTION / Literary. | FICTION /Contemporary Women.

  Classification: LCC PR6113.U67 A6 2016 (print) | LCC PR6113.U67 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92--dc23

  LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049221

  Parkhurst Brothers Publishers believes that the free and open exchange of ideas is essential for the maintenance of our freedoms. We support the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and encourage all citizens to study all sides of public policy questions, making up their own minds. Closed minds cost a society dearly.

  Cover and interior design by Linda D. Parkhurst, Ph.D.

  Proofread by T. Percival Lamont

  Acquired for Parkhurst Brothers Inc., Publishers by: Ted Parkhurst

  062016

  This book is dedicated to my mother and father,

  Barbara and Albert Blount,

  who taught me to laugh and love in equal measure.

  Contents

  Preface

  Map of Thurmaston

  The Wicket Gate

  A Real Friend

  Gone Fishing

  Aunty Lily

  The Revenge of Stuart Smith

  The Arrival

  The Adventure

  Sundays

  Home Delivery

  Paying Homage

  Earnest

  Read My Lips

  The Fisher King

  Acknowledgements

  Reading Group Extras

  Author’s Essay

  Biography

  Q&A with Jennifer Munro

  Preface

  AUNTY LILY AND OTHER DELIGHTFULLY PERVERSE STORIES is a collection of fictional stories harvested from childhood memories, adult experiences, and the general flotsam and jetsam of family folklore. They are based on oral performance pieces: stories I tell before live audiences; therefore, their construction and form differ in nature from literary tales. The stories are written in the first person and are an artful blend of fact and truth, memoir and autobiography.

  In looking back, memories and the family stories we traded as oral currency leap vividly to life in my mind. I remember them all in exacting detail, and it is from a combination of these real and retold events that my stories spring. The truths I am trying to share are not earth-shattering; they are straightforward insights, which I hope confirm what it means simply to be human.

  As you read these stories, may you find yourself pausing to say, “Oh, that reminds me of when. . . .” Stories trigger stories; I hope the memories they evoke bring an occasional tear and an abundance of smiles.

  The Wicket Gate

  I WAS TO BE IN MISS TURNER’S FIRST FORM CLASS at Thurmaston Church of England Primary School. Miss Turner was tall, imposing, and brown. Her brown hair was cut in two perfectly straight lines: one at the front and one at the back. What’s more, it never moved. Whenever she turned her head, it moved with her like an obedient helmet. Her eyes were probably brown too, but we could never tell because she wore thick-lensed glasses that reflected the light, bringing to her face a look of constant, sightless surprise. She wore brown sweaters, brown tweed skirts, thick brown woolen stockings, and sensible brown walking shoes.

  But the things that fascinated us about Miss Turner were her bosoms. At first glance Miss Turner appeared to be flat-chested. This was because many years since, her generous bosoms had dropped down to waist level where they were prevented from further descent by a sturdy, brown leather belt. Just as her hair stayed still so it was that her bosoms, at the slightest provocation, delighted to roll and romp around her middle like two joyful, Jell-O® filled balloons.

  I arrived at school that first morning breathless with anticipation. I was in the first form and I was going to learn to read. My debut in infant school the year before had not been an impressive one. I had not yet learned all of the letters of the alphabet and those I did know came out backwards, upside down and—despite all my efforts—insisted on working their way from the right hand side of the page to the left. But I had will power, I had determination, and I had Miss Turner. I decided she’d have me sorted out by lunch time.

  When the bell rang, we formed a line and filed into the dark, cavernous stairway that led to the assembly hall. We trod upon the wooden steps, which were buckled like so many sway-backed horses by the countless generations of children who had trodden before us. We marched into the hall where after prayers and hymns and a speech of welcome from Mr. “Pop” Precious, the headmaster, we, the chosen few, followed Miss Turner’s bouncing balloons from the hall. Miss Turner stopped at the classroom door and folded her arms above her bosoms, trapping them into a brief moment of stillness and waited while we stood behind our desks. I stood next to Sylvia Simpson. Sylvia was a tall, pale, quiet girl who liked to faint . . . a lot.

  Smiling, Miss Turner bounced into the room—her bosoms released into an agitated state of excitement. “Sit down, my Pilgrims, sit down.” Miss Turner sat down in a large, comfortable chair at the front of the class, took out a huge book and began to read.

  So I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where there was a den, and laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold, I saw a man clothed with rags standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled; and not being able longer to contain; he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, “What shall I do?”1

  Miss Turner paused and looked at each one of us pointedly. There was no doubt in my mind she saw each of us as that poor wretch standing before her with the burden of our own ignorance heaped upon our backs. I wriggled uncomfortably in my seat wondering if she could see at a glance that my burden was larger and heavier than most. . . . She did! She turned directly to me, pointed through the window, and said, “Pilgrim, do
you see yonder wicket gate?” Her thick-lensed glasses directed her gaze straight into my heart, and I knew she was really asking, “Do you see yourself learning to read?”

  I tried to imagine myself picking up a book. I tried to imagine the letters on the page behaving long enough to reveal their mystery to me, but I could see no such wicket gate. My face flushed an uncomfortable throbbing red. Not being able to contain myself any longer, I broke out with a lamentable cry saying, “What shall I do? Oh, what shall I do?” In answer, she looked out of the window and pointed across the fields. “Pilgrim, do you see yonder shining light?” The sunlight reflected off her glasses, two beams of light stretching into the distance. Too awed to speak, I nodded dumbly. Miss Turner threw her arms and bosoms around me and cried, “Keep that light in your eye, and go directly thereto, so shalt thou see the wicket gate.”

  Just as I had expected! All this and it wasn’t even lunch time yet!

  After lunch, Miss Turner wrote in a beautifully neat hand all the letters of the alphabet, which we had to copy. It was then that the enormity of my burden was revealed. Miss Turner took one look at the delinquent efforts of my pencil, and her response was immediate. “Pencils down!” she roared. Everyone quickly obeyed except for Sylvia who did so, but slowly. She did everything slowly . . . she even fainted slowly.

  “Line up by the door.”

  We did so and Miss Turner took us outside and through the boy’s playground. I’d never been in the boy’s playground before; Sylvia almost fainted. Ms. Turner turned to me and said, “Jennifer, you’re a fine sturdy girl.”

  “Yes Miss Turner.”

  “You will be the Sylvia Catcher. When Sylvia faints, you will catch her.”

  My first position of responsibility! “Yes, Miss Turner,” I beamed. Steven Pringle glared. He was in love with Sylvia and wanted desperately to catch her himself. Ignoring him, I moved over to Sylvia protectively, and we continued out of the playground and into the field beyond.

  “Run, Pilgrims, run,” yelled Miss Turner. “Look for that which begins with the letter ‘A’.”

  We ran off squealing with delight. I kept close to Sylvia, steering her away from the cow pies. Cow pies made Sylvia faint. We found an ant’s nest. I squished two and put them into my pocket. Sylvia was far too sensitive to have dead ants in her pocket.

  “Now look for something beginning with the letter ‘B’,” shouted Miss Turner. In this way we hunted for objects beginning with as many letters of the alphabet as we could. When we got back to class, we spread our treasures on our desks and Miss Turner gave us each a piece of paper and a pot of glue. Working from the top of the page and from left to right, we had to stick our treasures in alphabetical order in rows across the page. When everyone was busy, Miss Turner came over to my desk and wrote in indelible ink on the nails of my index fingers an “L” for left and an “R” for right. She watched while I worked, her glasses shining two beams of light onto the page.

  And so it was that every day we went on pilgrimages down to the river to catch sticklebacks and frogspawn, leaves, wild flowers, and unusual fungi. When we returned to the classroom, sometimes Miss Turner would choose three items and we had to make up a story involving all three objects, which we told to one anther or we’d act them out. Miss Turner put me in charge of the nature table, and I had to display the things we found always in the same way, starting at the top of the table and working from the left to the right, from the left to the right. Since everything was placed thus in neat rows, Miss Turner showed us an easy way to keep a count of our treasures—multiplication she called it.

  And all the time we were engaged in these activities, Miss Turner sat in her easy chair and read to us from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. Christian had fallen in with Obstinate and Pliable and as a result of their counsel was now floundering around in the Slough of Despond. I knew just how he felt. These pilgrimages were all very well and good, but I was no closer to the wicket gate than I was at the beginning of the year. Everyday when we passed the other first form window, we saw the other kids, brows wrinkled, laboring over their first reading books sounding out letters and words.

  It was almost the end of October and we hadn’t even opened a book yet! I began to suspect that Miss Turner didn’t really know what she was doing. I began to think the scores of children who had gone before us loved Miss Turner precisely because she liked pilgrimages more than she liked forcing children to read. The fears and doubts engulfed me and I floundered around in a Slough of Despond of my own creation.

  My spirits revived a little with the onset of winter. Now that it was too cold to go out, maybe she would actually teach us to read, but no such luck! Instead, we learned how to sew! Both boys and girls were given small square table mats which we dutifully embroidered in rows working from the top and from the left to the right, from the left to the right. I was sick of left to right—even I knew my left from my right and no longer needed the indelible reminders on the nails of my index fingers!

  And still Miss Turner read to us. Poor Christian had no sooner crawled out of the Slough of Despond but had fallen in with Mr. Worldly Wise. Could it be that Miss Turner was Ms. Worldly Wise, I thought, leading us all like Christian toward the Village of Morality and toward destruction?

  Our destruction took the form of large lumps of wet clay, which were dished out to every pilgrim. While the other first form class was well into its second reader, we made animals, cars, and trucks. Stephen Pringle made a heart for Sylvia. He was the son of the local butcher. It looked like a real heart with valves and ventricles and blood. Sylvia took one look at it and fainted in slow motion at Stephen’s feet. He was thrilled! After that Miss Turner put her foot down and insisted that we all make long skinny worms, which we had to shape into the letters of the alphabet. We painted them back and front and hung them up to dry. Then, some of the pilgrims made them into words and put them under the things we had made.

  I tried! Every day, I tried to remember which way round the letters needed to go to form words, but some still insisted on coming out upside down or backwards. One day when I arrived at school, Miss Turner had made me my very own set of letters out of sandpaper. Since they were rough on one side and smooth on the other, I knew which way round they went. Miss Turner divided us into two teams, and we had to form words out of the sandpaper letters. The other team, blindfolded, had to guess what the words were. Stephen Pringle made the word F-A-R-T. FART! I guessed what it was, and Miss Turner wasn’t even angry one bit.

  And still Ms Turner read to us. Good news for Christian, too. At last, he had been rescued from the Village of Morality by Evangelist and was back on the straight and narrow path where Interpreter took him firmly by the hand and led him the last few treacherous steps leading to the wicket gate, which flew open immediately allowing Christian to pass through. He stood before the cross where a golden light shone round about him. Suddenly, his great burden fell from his back. Then dressed in fine raiment, Christian set his face toward the Celestial City.

  And just like Christian, many Pilgrims in the class had also found the wicket gate. They were able to go to the book shelf, select a book, and read with an ease that I could only envy. Miss Turner no longer referred to them as Pilgrim but proudly called them Christian. Oh, but when would I see the wicket gate? When would I start to read? That’s what I wanted to know!

  “Soon, my Pilgrim,” said Miss Turner—her bosoms drooping even more in sympathy—“When you are least expecting it, Interpreter will thunder into your path and lead you directly to the wicket gate. It will fly open without the slightest effort on your part, and you will find that you are able to read. That’s how it happens, my pilgrim. That’s how it always happens.” Well, I knew Miss Turner was a woman of her word, and so all I had to do was to keep my wits about me and my eyes wide open.

  However, it was the springtime. The year was winding down and I knew being able to read the word “fart” was not sufficient to get me to the wicket gate. I realized
that I might still be a pilgrim going into second form. Undaunted by this failure, one bright day Miss Turner went to the window and announced that the weather was perfect for a pilgrimage. We gathered up our fishing nets and jam jars and—like Christian soldiers—marched out of the school and into the main street. This was unusual. Usually we set off across the fields, but today we were going to Johnson’s bridge to the waterfall, and through the village was the quickest way to get there.

  When we arrived, the Christians threw off their shoes, scattering their socks like flakes of snow, and splashed into the icy water. Miss Turner disappeared behind a bush and peeled off her stockings. Her white cod fish feet doubled in size as she paddled into the river, her bosoms settling themselves into a ready made, inflatable rubber ring should flotation become necessary.

  I wanted to join in, but my heart just wasn’t in it. The burden of my ignorance rested too heavily upon my back. As I sat idly watching the Christians having boat races down the waterfall and working out complicated sums involving time and speed, a sudden fear gripped me. Without realizing it, I was allowing sloth and idleness to engulf me; a pilgrim needed always to be on her guard. I lifted up my burden and scanned the horizon searching for the ever elusive wicket gate, but all I could see was the constant flicker of sunlight flashing off Miss Turner’s glasses.

  Then, I took off my shoes and socks and splashed into the water towards Sylvia. She had caught a fish—she could catch them, but she couldn’t touch them or she fainted. I plopped it into the jam jar. By this time, however, the Christians’ feet had turned blue, and it was time to go. We sat on the river bank, dried our feet as best we could, and put on our shoes and socks. We made drawings of the fish we had caught before we released them, and then lined up ready for the march back to school. We filed over Johnson’s bridge and along the fence by Farmer Johnson’s field. Something was going on. On the far side of the field, Mr. Johnson was standing by a horse box that belonged to the veterinarian. The farmer and the veterinarian were locked in animated conversation. In the field there was a lone cow.