Aunty Lily Read online

  Granddad had never been so animated. His excitement infected everyone and we all got into the swing of preparation. We helped Mother make sausage rolls, trifles, and mince pies. We boiled hams and Christmas puddings, and we decorated the house with crepe paper streamers. Granddad loved it, but every now and then we found him peering anxiously out of the window. “Just looking for snow,” he said, but we all knew he was looking for the red-faced lady so he could invite her.

  At last, everything had been baked, brewed, and boiled. The day of the party arrived and at six o’clock the guests began to arrive. They poured in through the door, a never-ending stream of happy humanity. There was Aunty Cis’ and Uncle Ted. Aunty Cis’ was six feet tall and had a huge bosom like twin mountain peaks. Uncle Ted at five foot four hardly looking the intrepid mountaineer! There was Aunty Lily and Uncle Harry. Aunty Lily was beautiful but she had a glass eye—which was a great tragedy according to my mother, who was of the opinion that three good eyes at the very least were necessary to keep Uncle Harry in line. Then, there was straight-laced Aunty Flo’. She was married to Uncle Jack who loved to tell us dirty stories. There was Uncle Vern’ and Aunty Kath. There were friends and relatives, and last, but by no means least, the red-faced lady. She wore purple and looked like a plum!

  Mother made sure the guests had something to eat and Father gave everyone a glass of homemade dandelion or elderberry wine. Then, Mother began to play the piano and the “plum” began to sing. Ethel, that was her real name, had a beautiful voice that was as thick and rich as Guinness stout. She began to sing “Ain’t she sweet?”

  Drooling, Granddad joined in, and in greater detail than my mother thought necessary, pointed out Ethel’s finer features to the entire company.

  Mother played “Knees up Mother Brown” and skirts were lifted dangerously high to reveal pink knees and white bloomers. The plum wore knee length purple bloomers. We were thrilled. Nice women, we were led to believe, always wore white! Aunty Cis and Uncle Ted started dancing cheek to bosom, Aunty Lily and Uncle Harry were doing a complicated jitterbug, and Aunty Flo’ sat thin lipped and tight knee’d, restraining Uncle Jack with a stare.

  At last, Mother stopped playing. “Time for trifle. Dad,” she said looking around, “will you help me serve the pudding? Dad?” She scanned the room again. “Ethel, have you seen Walter?”

  “He went to get his pipe, luv. He’s been gone for a long time.”

  Mother sent us to look for him. Richard and John went upstairs and Katherine and I looked downstairs. We checked in his room first but there was no sign of him or his pipe. We ran into the hallway and noticed that the front door was open. We ran to tell Mother.

  “Oh, Al, do you think he’s wandered off? He’ll catch his death of cold. He doesn’t have his hat or his top coat.”

  “Don’t worry,” said my father. “He can’t be far away.” The men threw on their coats and disappeared into the cold night to search the streets. Not knowing what else to do, we children started clearing away the dirty plates while the women made pots of tea, which is the automatic response to any British emergency. They were on their second pot when we heard my father and the men outside. They were laughing. “It’s all right, Barbara, we’ve found him.”

  Granddad came in the back door and glared at everyone grumpily.

  “Oh, Dad,” Mother cried, “are you all right?”

  “Course I’m all right! Can’t an old man go to the lavatory without a search party being launched?”

  “The lavatory? But what took you so long?”

  “Well, if you must know, when I undid my suspenders, I threw them over my head a bit too hard and they got stuck on a nail up in the rafters. I was hanging there all this time like a sack of old potatoes.”

  We all began to laugh, which Granddad didn’t appreciate at first, but he brightened considerably when Ethel sidled up to him and gave him a wet, noisy kiss on the cheek. Then, she began to sing—quietly at first, “Oh dear, what can the matter be? One old man got stuck in the lavat’ry. He was there from Monday to Saturday. Nobody knew he was there.”

  Everyone joined in and soon Granddad was laughing and singing along with the rest of us.

  The party broke up in the early hours of the morning with Ethel singing “Silent Night” while we ate more of Mother’s trifle and mince pies. Ethel became a regular visitor after that, which pleased Mother to no end. Ethel was more than enough to keep Granddad occupied, but he surprised me one day when he asked me if I wanted to play a game of draughts.

  “I’d love to, Granddad,” I said suddenly realizing how much I had missed playing the game with him. We settled down at the table. He made his move and then he took the pipe out of his mouth and pointed the stem at me. “And no more letting me win!” I was about to argue but he waved his pipe to silence me. “Nobody likes to lose,” he said, “but I expect I shall get used to it.”

  We didn’t get to finish the game, however. Halfway through, Granddad’s pipe fell out of his mouth. His mouth hung open and was pulled down at one side. I knew what was happening but I didn’t rush. I retrieved the pipe, which had fallen between the arm of the chair and Granddad’s leg. I didn’t want him to get burnt. His pale blue eyes filled with unshed tears and he tried to speak. I knew what he wanted to say. “Just when you were winning fair and square, eh, Granddad?” The good side of his mouth smiled weakly.

  Mother came in. I thought she would be angry because I didn’t call her right away, but she wasn’t. She smiled gently and told me to run to the phone box and call Dr. Whitelaw. The doctor came and made Granddad comfortable. “He’s got a couple of days, Missus.” The doctor was Irish and believed in simple remedies. “Give him one shot of Irish whiskey twice a day. It’ll do him a power of good!”

  Just as the doctor predicted, Granddad died two days later. I got up early on that second morning and as I went by Granddad’s room, I peeped in. The head was thrown back, his mouth was wide open, and the beautiful white, walrus mustache had disappeared. But I knew no matter how long I waited, there would be no honk and no mustache would come shooting out like a great puff of white smoke.

  At the funeral party, we remembered all the things that had happened since Granddad had come to live with us. Father reminded us of the time he had lost us children. Katherine remembered the time he had lost John, Aunty Cis’ wiped her eyes remembering the time we had lost him in the lavatory, and Mother proudly recalled how with Granddad’s help, I had single-handedly lost our family’s unblemished reputation. But all those losses were memories we had won, and each one had been an adventure. We had known when Granddad first came to live with us that our lives would never be quite the same again. It was only now when we had lost him for good that we realized how impoverished our lives would be without him. Slowly absorbing this truth, we said our goodbyes and wished him well as he embarked upon his last adventure, which we hoped would be the greatest adventure of all.

  * * *

  5. Stroller

  6 Letter slots

  7 Checkers

  Sundays

  SUNDAY AT OUR HOUSE WAS THE MOST MAGICAL day of the week. It was a day filled with rituals lovingly performed week after week until they took on the magnitude of religious observances. It was the only day of the week when Father didn’t have to go to work, and it was his presence that created the beat that gave the day its rhythm.

  The first ritual began at the crack of dawn when, one by one, we crawled into bed with Mother and Father. There were four of us: Richard, Katherine, myself and John. I have to point out that—at the time—having any children at all was difficult for most English people to understand. Having more than the allotted 2.5 was inconceivable and an indication at the very worst that you demonstrated a total lack of self control or at best you were eccentric. Anyway, the four of us found a niche for ourselves in between, on top, or alongside the warm lumpy bodies of our eccentric parents. This bed was the inner sanctum where we breathed in the wonderful mixture of warm smells, which w
as the incense, the balm of our existence. After cups of tea and biscuits8, we were evicted from this Garden of Eden so that Mother could have some peace and quiet while Father went downstairs to begin the next ritual of the day.

  It was Father’s job to cook the breakfast on Sundays. He called it “the works:” eggs, bacon, sausage, tomatoes, and fried bread. When breakfast was ready, he came to the bottom of the stairs and yelled, “Eh up! Grub’s up,” and we’d all come galloping down to the kitchen table. If the bed was our inner sanctum, this table was our sacred altar. Father sat at the head, and Mother sat at the tail. Just before we started to eat, they looked at one another and smiled. And for a moment time itself was suspended. My parents loved one another passionately and above all things. There was never any doubt in our minds that if the entire family were in a lake drowning, Mother and Father would rescue one another first and then, if we were still alive, they might come back and rescue us. The smile that passed between them, though never directed toward us, was the cornerstone upon which our existence rested. It was our blessing.

  After breakfast, father indulged in the third ritual of the day. “Right oh, you lot. I’m about to read the Sunday paper, and I don’t expect to be interrupted for any reason, not unless of course, you’re in the process of choking to death.” This was a proviso Father added one Sunday when John actually turned blue in the face before any one of us dared interrupt the sacred ritual of reading the paper.

  After the paper had been read, it was time for Katherine and me to go to church. We were the only members of our family who attended a regular church. Father—a raging socialist with definite communist leanings—was of the opinion that organized religion was responsible for many, if not all, the social ills of the world. Mother, on the other hand, was an ardent spiritualist who kept up a continual dialogue with the deceased members of our family every Wednesday night via the medium at the Leicester City Spiritualist Church. So, when it came to deciding whether or where to send their children for spiritual guidance, my parents had a bit of a problem. Father, not entirely opposed to democracy, agreed with Mother that we should be allowed to decide for ourselves, and so it was that one Sunday afternoon we all set off dutifully for the Church of England Sunday School, which was led by Reverend Bottrel. After attending only one time, my brothers agreed with Father that the church was indeed responsible for many social ills, boredom in their opinion being the most unforgivable. Katherine and I were far more dogged than they, and we transferred our allegiance to the local Primitive Bethel Methodist Chapel, which so impressed us with its clamorous singing that we attended three times every Sunday.

  If we loved the riotous singing, it was really Miss Taylor’s stories that kept us coming back week after week. One particular Sunday, she told the story about an old woman who had a grocery shop, and every Monday morning when Joe, the delivery man, brought the fresh bread, he asked the same question, “Well, what was the sermon about this week, ma’ duck?”

  And she always answered in the same way. “Oh, you know me, Joe, I can never remember.”

  Joe laughed, “Waste o’ time goin’ then ain’t it luv?” Eventually, she had enough and one Monday when he asked the same question, she didn’t answer. Instead, she reached underneath the counter and took out a dirty, dusty, old basket. “Do me a favor, Joe, and fill this basket with water from the stream outside.” Joe scratched his head doubtfully, but he said, “All right ma’ duck. I’ll try.” Of course no matter how many times he tried, the water always leaked out. At length he gave up, came back into the shop, and threw the basket onto the counter in disgust.

  The old woman pointed at the basket and said, “That’s just what I’m like, Joe. Every Sunday I go to church, but I can’t hold the sermon in my head. But just like that old basket when I come home, I’m all clean and fresh!”

  Oh, we loved that story. After Sunday school, we ran up the back alley feeling all clean and fresh, dodging the dog turds liberally strewn along the path, singing and believing, “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam to shine for him each day.” When we reached home, we burst into the kitchen, and dived into a sea of sumptuous smells: roast leg of lamb, tangy mint sauce, Yorkshire pudding, and when we surfaced, it was in a hot cloud of potato steam. In the middle, we found mother. “Hello, my little chickens,” she cried.

  “We’re not chickens. We’re sunbeams.”

  “Of course you are! Hungry ones! Sit down. Dinner won’t be long.”

  We sat and watched while she set the table, made the gravy, and drained the vegetables. We never volunteered to help—we weren’t expected to. In fact, we never did any chores around the house. We never washed a dish, we never peeled a potato, and we never even made our own beds. “Play is children’s work,” Mother declared and we believed her! It was a conviction she had held fervently ever since before she was married.

  A Romany gypsy came to her house selling lavender, Mother bought some and the gypsy told her fortune. She told Mother that her life would come to an end when she was forty-three. So great was my mother’s respect for Romany prophecy that she never doubted the truth of this prediction for one moment. And so, when she married and had us children, she devoted herself to loving her husband and to preserving the magic of our childhood for as long as she was allowed. We never worried about the prophecy, because forty-three meant you were ancient and Mother never ever could be ancient!

  After gathering around the altar to enjoy our delicious Sunday dinner, Father indulged in the most sacred ritual of all: after dinner nap time. He settled down in his easy chair and allowed one of us to stand behind him in the chair so that we could comb his long, silvery gray hair and massage his scalp until he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. Of course, this meant that we were trapped for the duration of the nap, which—oddly enough—none of us seemed to mind.

  The last ritual of the day was observed in the evening when we settled down in front of the television to eat cheese sandwiches with pickled onions, and watch Sunday Night at the London Palladium. The variety show always ended in the same way with a circle of sequined, feathered ladies going around and around on a revolving stage, waving goodbye in time to the dreary signature tune. Then, with a click, the television set was turned off. The last magical beat had been played, and there was nothing to look forward to but the bleak despair of Monday morning with its inevitable threat of school.

  Thus was the passing of our time measured. We wanted it to go on like this for ever. The only problem with rituals and with the rhythms that sustain them is that they can be so easily disturbed. This disturbance came for us in the form of a Mrs. Whistlebotham, who in our village was the leader of the conservative moral right. She took it upon herself to protect the village from the threat of moral decay she decided my father presented. Her campaign started shortly after Father registered John, the youngest, for school. Whenever Father registered us children for school where it said, “Religious Affiliation,” he conscientiously wrote in the block capitals: I.S.T.S.. Mrs. Peg, who had been registering children for years, was far too sensible to ask any awkward questions. But when Father went to register John, Mrs. Peg had retired and had been replaced by none other than Mrs. Whistlebotham’s daughter, who was anything but sensible. “I say, Mr. Blount, is that some obscure branch Islam?”

  “No, it bloomin’ well isn’t! We’re Ists! I’m a socialist, my wife’s a spiritualist. My two daughters are Methodists, and,” he added with a proud flourish, “my two sons are downright anarchists!”

  According to Father, it was mention of the two Methodists that pushed Mrs. Whistlebotham over the Church of England edge and forced her to the rescue. At first she just spied on us, which she could do quite easily since her daughter had just moved into the house across the street from us. Every morning when Father left for work, he made sure that Mrs. Whistlebotham was at her post. Next, he grabbed Mother in a passionate embrace and kissed her full on the lips for one minute and thirty seconds. Then, he leaped onto his bicycle yelling, “Be read
y to make more babies later, Barbara!”

  The situation was obviously worse than Mrs. Whistlebotham had anticipated, and so she began her attacks immediately, posting into our letter box religious leaflets, pamphlets, and booklets in enormous quantities. When these failed to have the desired effect, she decided to get at “the heart of the problem” when “the heart of the problem” was at home. And so on Sundays, on this sacred day of the week, she launched her main attack. This took the form of strategic interruptions which she was able to time with a military precision of which Field Marshal Montgomery himself would have been proud, for they coincided with the most sacred moments in Father’s blessed day.

  While we were in the “inner sanctum” having our tea and biscuits, Mrs. Whistlebotham threw open the front windows of her daughter’s house and played the early morning church program shamefully loud, turning up the volume for such stirring hymns as “Onward Christian Soldiers.” Or just as we sat, basking in the golden glow of the smile before breakfast, there would be a knock at the back door. Mrs. Whistlebotham would be standing there with a cup in her hand, “Good morning, Mrs. Blount. I was wondering if you would be so kind as to loan us a cup of sugar? She wormed her way into the kitchen. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry I seem to have interrupted your breakfast.” She didn’t look sorry at all. “But food for the soul, Mr. Blount, is just as important as sausages!” Just as Father was about to put a succulent piece of sausage into his mouth, Mrs. Whistlebotham thrust a note card right under Father’s nose bearing the times of all the Church of England Sunday services.

  Mother hastily placed the cup of sugar into Mrs. Whistlebotham’s hand and hustled her out the door, all the time Father muttering under his breath, “Put a drop of arsenic in it, Barbara, and let’s have an end to it.”