Aunty Lily Read online

  “It’s beautiful,” he murmured, brushing the cereal dust from its surface.

  “It belonged to my grandfather who passed it down to my father who passed it down to me.” He stopped for a moment, as if the next words were lodged in his throat. At length he continued, “Someday, I should like to pass it along to our boy.” At this, the tears flowed in a steady stream down his cheeks.

  For once, BS could find no words of comfort. In the silence that followed, the membrane between myth and reality dissolved. We gazed reverently upon the Holy Grail in BS’s hands. Slowly, he returned it to the old man who held it close to his heart before he buried it once more inside the cereal box.

  When we packed up for the day and left, the Reagans sat on their porch. They waved but didn’t have the heart to smile and neither did we.

  The next day, as if by magic, we galloped along with our projects: the ramp grew at an amazing rate and the plumber Lemon-Drop had managed to find was busy installing the new polyurethane sewer pipe. At this rate, we might be able to turn the water back on, which was what we wanted more than anything. Toward the end of the week, the plumber had finished installing the sewer pipes, Lemon-Drop had hooked up the new water heater, and the ramp was nearly completed. Now all we needed was a new toilet, which was the only stumbling block to our plans to turn on the water. The tiny building supply store in town had one cracked toilet in stock. They assured us they were expecting a delivery any day and failed to understand our impatience.

  On our last morning, which promised to be another scorching day, we absorbed the fact that we had failed in our mission and the next team would have the privilege of turning on the water. The Reagans, who had not complained once about the absence of a toilet, seemed content to use whatever they had devised in its stead. Despite our disappointment, we finished the ramp and sanded the rails before cleaning up the yard and the house.

  At last, our work was done. We were amazed at the transformation. It was not quite as dramatic as the one at the Fisher King’s castle, which was mythical in scale. Nonetheless, as we looked around at the house, clean and tidy, and the yard, free of debris, we were pleased with the magic we had wrought. We said our goodbyes and promised to return at four o’clock to pick them up for the celebratory picnic to be held at the school.

  As promised, we arrived a little before four behind the handicapped-accessible van, which would transport the Reagans. The couple waited on the porch. Their smiling faces shone and they wore their Sunday best. We, too, had changed into the one good outfit we each had brought for this occasion.

  To our surprise, another van arrived. It was the plumber! He stuck his head out of the window. “Open the back!” he shouted excitedly. The kids did so and to their immense delight discovered a toilet. “Just don’t ask where I got it!” he shouted with a laugh. With a great cheer, the kids carried it aloft—as if it were a golden throne.

  “It won’t take long to connect,” the plumber announced, as he and Lemon-Drop disappeared into the house. Soon, they reappeared, “All set.”

  “A ceremonial flush!” yelled BS, grabbing the handles of the old man’s wheel chair. Laughing, everyone followed and crowded into the small bathroom. The old man looked at his wife. “Go on, then!” he cried.

  As if she were about to take hold of the Holy Grail itself, she leaned forward reverently and depressed the lever. We held our collective breath. After a momentary burble and gurgle of air bubbles and spitting water, a swollen stream swirled around and around, ending in a satisfying gulp and burp. In our minds, we could see the green fields sweeping across the king’s barren landscape, the trees bursting into their green foliaged finery, the birds flying through the sunlit sky, and the fish leaping in the sparking blue waters of the river.

  Moved by the moment, our small band broke into song, Lemon-Drop’s favorite, and we didn’t mind singing it three times!

  Shall we gather at the river,

  Where bright angel feet have trod,

  With its crystal tide forever

  Flowing by the throne of God?

  Yes, we will gather at the river,

  The beautiful, the beautiful river;

  Gather with the saints at the river

  That flows by the throne of God.13

  Laughing and singing, we assembled on the porch and watched the van driver push the old man in his wheelchair down the ramp. His wife walked beside him. When they reached the bottom, the old man looked back at us—and like a prize fighter—clasped his hands above his head in a victory salute.

  BS cupped his mouth with his hands and shouted, “Now you can go fishing again!”

  Whether the old man had ever fished before in his life, we didn’t know, but he took hold of an imaginary fishing rod and cast it expertly into the air. Then, he clasped his wife’s hands, kissed them, and whispered hoarsely, “We’ll go fishing for our boy, Mother.”

  We all had tears in our eyes as—before he disappeared into the van—the Fisher King once more cast his imaginary line into the healing waters of mystical time.

  * * *

  13 From the hymn “Shall We Gather at the River?” By Robert Lowry, 1864.

  Acknowledgements

  I WOULD FIRST LIKE TO THANK BILL NAUGHTON whose collection of short stories about ordinary, working class people called The Goal Keeper’s Revenge inspired me to write my own family and childhood stories.

  Carol Birch has also earned my gratitude for her unswerving friendship, for generously sharing her considerable expertise, and for listening so profoundly and deeply to my work. Most of all, however, I wish to thank her for her support in getting these stories published. Without her, this would not have happened.

  I would also like to thank Odds Bodkin, that magical storyteller described by Billboard magazine as being “a modern day Orpheus,” for giving me permission to use his name and his story “Percival and the Fisher King,” which informed and inspired my short story, “The Fisher King.”

  I owe a debt of gratitude to Doug Lipman for his perceptive insights and constructive advice. Like a gentle-hearted mentor, he praised the triumphs; like an eagle-eyed teacher, he honed in on the weaknesses and then never failed to cheer the revisions.

  Finally, last but by no means least, I would like to thank my husband, Eric, for his sharp editorial eye and his unfailing love, and my two sons, Benjamin and Andrew, for their enthusiastic support and love.

  Reading Group Extras

  Author’s Essay

  MY STORIES HAVE EMERGED from the fragmented moments of my personal history. When my mother related to me that a Romany gypsy had prophesized her life would come to an end when she was forty-three, all the magical moments of my childhood came into sharp focus. Suddenly, I understood why she had told us play is children’s work, why we didn’t have to do any chores around the house—a fact I have never revealed to my own children—and why she devoted herself so tirelessly to loving my father and her four children. It provided the perfect frame for the story “Sundays,” which is a story about loss and love and prophecy.

  Placing my father at the center of this story, I then brought to mind all the anecdotes I could remember about him and realized that many of them took place on a Sunday. In looking back, I discovered there was a ritualistic quality to our Sundays, which had an underlying rhythm that allowed me to thread the different anecdotes together so that they form the arc of a satisfying narrative.

  This raises the interesting question of what makes a story. In school, we are told that all stories introduce a conflict, a problem to be solved, which sets in motion a number of actions that lead to a climax in which the problem is resolved and then the story concludes with the denouement. Donald Davis, in his book Telling Your Own Stories, adds an additional element, which I think is crucial—it corresponds to the idea of theme. Davis says that the “crisis14” or climax must lead to what he calls a moment of “insight” in which the main character learns something important about himself, someone else, or the world. It is
critical to the creation of a satisfactory story and it must resonate with our audience.

  In “Sundays” the moment of insight occurs when we four children discover the source of strength that will give us the resilience to go on with our lives despite the loss of my father.

  The lovely thing about writing stories as opposed to writing memoir is that one is not tied to the relentless constraints of linear time. One can play fast and loose with chronology. It’s more important to find connection: how do anecdotes relate thematically rather than when they happened in relation to one another. This was the case with “Aunty Lily.” On Sunday afternoons, Aunty Lily and Uncle Harry came over for tea. On one such Sunday, she related the fact that she had been waiting at the bus stop when the elastic in her underwear had broken. We all thought this was hilarious and it became part of our family folklore.

  On another Sunday, my mum and Aunty Lily went for a walk and were caught in a downpour. On their return, Aunty Lily proceeded to repair the damage wrought by the storm. As she took herself apart, we four children sat at the kitchen table watching her. When the deconstruction was complete, she turned and gave us the benefits of her succinct distillation of what is important in life, a lesson we never forgot. In creating the story “Aunty Lily,” it seemed natural to me to put these two memorable anecdotes together and to put myself in the story. Does the story suffer because it does not adhere rigidly to the “facts”? No! On the contrary, it is improved—or at least—I think so, because it provides such important insight into the human condition. It’s a lovely story on so many levels.

  So, finding thematic connection among anecdotes is one way I create story. Another method I use is the journey motif as described by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Simply put, the hero receives the call to adventure—she must go on a journey to solve a problem that only she can solve. She has help in the form of a protective figure and is given an amulet to use to overcome the obstacles in her quest. Such is the case with “The Wicket Gate,” which chronicles my difficulties learning to read. The structure of this story not only includes elements of the hero journey but also follows the journey motif implicit in the allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, which Miss Turner reads to us daily. It is in its own right a hero journey. Just as Christian’s call to adventure is to follow the straight and narrow path leading to the wicket gate, a portal through which he must pass in order to reach the Celestial City, so I, too, set out as Pilgrim toward my own wicket gate of learning to read. Only then will I find the Celestial City—the whole world of books that suddenly becomes available together with a future that now has infinitely more potential.

  So the journey motif provided the structure for this story; however, the motivation to write it came from a simple desire to honor a beloved teacher and capture the magic of my primary school experience. I attended a public school whose curriculum was based on the educational theories of Pestalozzi, a Swiss educational reformer. His motto was “Learning by head, hand, and heart.” Our classroom held large sand and water trays, huge wooden building blocks, a play house, a table for modeling clay, and a nature table. Though many of these features do not appear in my story; nonetheless, they lend their magic to the tone of the story and Miss Turner certainly supplies the loving application of Pestalozzi’s philosophy. Above all else, Miss Turner devoted herself to the supreme task of developing our imaginations.

  I think there is really only one motivation behind many of my stories: I set out trying to capture the magic of things, especially my childhood, a childhood in which we were free to roam, explore, fight and settle our own arguments, and play. I loved the games we played—we never played organized sports, neither did we play sports out in the street. We played the traditional games that generations of kids had played before us—tin-tin-ta-lurky, British Bulldog, conkers, stilts, snobs, winter warmers. It’s where I learned the inviolate code of fair play. I also wanted to capture the magic of living in a large family in a small house, the magic of living with my granddad, the joy of having two funny, loving parents, who rarely spoke the words “I love you,” which were never necessary. All this, I hope, comes out in my stories.

  Since my stories are created for performance, there must of necessity be a simplicity about them: I do not dwell too much on developing characters’ internal emotional landscapes. My descriptions cannot be too long or detailed. However, in the storytelling community, my stories are probably considered a little too literary when compared to the oral style of other tellers. I think there is a reason for this: I grew up listening to BBC radio where I heard short stories, plays, the Goon Show, Round the Horn, and a rich variety of panel shows in which story and clever word play, puns, and limericks were standard fare. They were a treasure trove of rich, complex language, which I unconsciously absorbed. And because there were no visuals, I fell in love with the spoken word. (I was also significantly deaf as a young child, and when this problem was corrected, the impact of being able to hear language easily totally transfixed me.)

  One of my early influences was Joyce Grenfell, a sophisticated comedian who performed a series of humorous monologues. Her characterizations of both upper and lower class people were poignantly accurate and provided little slices of life that revealed broad insights into the British character. I especially loved her language, which was complex and rich and bold. She appeared on television as well as radio, so she spanned these two media and united them for me. However, even on television her performances were storytelling at its finest.

  I like to think that my language also has a richness to it—I love description and feel it’s important to convey setting and action as vividly as possible. I especially like the description of Miss Hacket—the Hatchet! This image of a hatchet is continued throughout the scene in which she is introduced and combines with images of ice: “She sliced into the room and eyed us suspiciously.” “Her eyes were slits, her nose a meat cleaver.” “The words fell out of her mouth like shards of ice.” I think they help bring the scene and the Hatchet into sharp focus.

  Finally, writing for me is a mystical process. When I have an idea for a story, I let it sit with me for a while; I mull over the ideas and when I am performing a mindless task such as doing the ironing or the laundry, images leap fully formed from the subconscious. I “see” the story as it unfolds in my mind. I do not judge, but simply watch as it unfolds. Writing then becomes so much easier because all I need to do is write what I have seen. When I am stuck and cannot see the way to end a story or fashion a scene, I surrender the problem to the universe. I let it sit in my subconscious, and soon the solution arrives in a series of vivid mental images.

  All this sounds deceptively easy and effortless, but it isn’t. A great deal of fear and many questions accompany the process: Will the images come? Will the universe finally desert me? Will everyone eventually discover I have no talent? In answer, I can only say that a significant amount of trust and patience are required and so far it hasn’t let me down.

  * * *

  14. A crisis, according to Donald Davis, is “any happening which takes a part of our lives with which we are comfortable and turns it upside down so that we have to adjust to a world that is shaped differently than before.”

  Biography

  JENNIFER MUNRO WAS BORN IN THURMASTON, a small English village just outside the busy industrial town of Leicester. Thurmaston is filled with working class people who have generous hearts, a grammatically incorrect and discordantly musical accent, and a gift for storytelling. This is where she fell in love with the spoken word.

  She attended Bangor Normal College, North Wales, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in education, her main subjects being dramatic art and English literature. Steeped in the musical language of Wales, she unconsciously absorbed a love of Celtic music, spoken word, and the rich folklore of this mythical land.

  After graduating, she taught English Literature and drama in a London high school before marrying her husband Er
ic and immigrating to the United States in 1976. They settled in Illinois where they raised two boys. Jennifer taught seventh and eighth grade English for a while, and then she discovered storytelling. She was invited into her son’s second grade classroom to read a story, but Jennifer opted to learn the story and tell it orally. The effect on the children was dramatic: they listened so intently and so profoundly it was quite clear that something very magical was happening.

  In that moment, the seed of storytelling had been sown! Jennifer began searching collections of fairy and folktales, picture books, and legends to find stories for her incipient repertoire and began telling stories professionally in schools and libraries.

  When Jennifer discovered that storytelling was undergoing a renaissance in the United States, she attended festivals all over the country and fell in love with the personal story. However, it took a while before she found the courage to create and write her own stories. The various influences of living in a large, chaotic family in a working class village combined with the magical experience of living in Wales translated into a repertoire of personal and mythical stories that resonate with the frailty and resilience of the human experience. Populated with memorable characters that spring vividly to life, her stories take the reader on a roller coaster ride of emotions that elicits both laughter and tears. Syd Lieberman wrote of her work: “A good storyteller should move you emotionally and be able to transport you to another time and place. Jennifer’s stories do just that.”

  Jennifer moved to Connecticut in 2002 where she taught eighth grade English in Madison, the town where she now lives with her husband, Eric. Joseph Campbell’s book The Hero with a Thousand Faces formed the basis of the curriculum and this allowed Jennifer to apply her storytelling skills in the classroom. During this time she earned a master’s degree in Oral Traditions from the Graduate Institute. She also continued with her storytelling career, especially creating and writing stories.