My cousin Nan is two years older than
me, two years cleverer, two years more musical, and two years prettier. At
least, that is what Aunt Aggie claims. And Nan already has a bosom, which makes
me quite worried at times. Do I want one? Do I have a choice?
Despite herself,
Mama stands in awe of Aunt Aggie.
To add insult to injury, I am handed down articles
of Nan’s clothing, which either no longer fit her because of the bosom, or
which have been replaced by newer, more exclusive items. I quite
like some of these things, but I am repulsed by the idea that Nan has worn
them, and in my childish mind no amount of washing and ironing can remove the
shape and feel of her body from them. So I don’t wear them unless I am forced
to, and Mama seems strangely gratified by my stubbornness.
Aunt Aggie specializes in the brand
of maliciousness not uncommon to Mama’s side of the family. I will never
understand how Mama tolerates the treatment she receives at the hands of her
relations, unless it is some kind of masochism which befalls her at regular
intervals. Or maybe it’s just a habit, a quirk of character.
Today we are once more seated in the
over-heated, over-furnished kitchen at a table indecently over-laden with rich
food, for Aunt Aggie is a frenzied and incredibly good cook. I don’t know why
we go there, but Mama insists on cultivating her brother as though he were not
worthless. There is little to talk about, unless you count the detailed
accounts of the tenants’ shortcomings Aunt Aggie regales us with, not even noticing
that she is droning on uninterrupted. The tenants live in the long rows of
terraced houses lining the road to the farm and Aunt Aggie despises them, but
not that much that she won’t pocket their weekly rent. Mama is invariably
speechless when confronted by Aunt Aggie’s loud-mouthed sagas, so the
monologues drone on until someone else interrupts her, like when people come to
the door for eggs and milk. Aunt Aggie never visits us and I have a feeling
that our visits there are designed to avoid this ever happening.
The cake on the table is not just in
our honour. Not that it would be. There is always a freshly made cake on the
table, whatever time of day you call. Aunt Aggie sees herself as a matriarch
and that entails plying all and sundry with victuals while prising their
secrets out of them. These secrets are subsequently bandied around and are the
main content of the conversation with whoever comes next.
Today I am the subject of her
scrutiny as I defiantly eat a slice of bread and butter instead of a slice of
her cream-cake. She has darting, black, beady eyes, a florid complexion, a huge
bosom, and a coarse, raucous voice which tends to exacerbate the sharp,
invariably tactless comments in which
she specializes.
"I expect sugar hurts Faith’s
front teeth," she tells Mama. She can’t understand how anyone can refuse
her cake. But I never eat cake, because it might have almond flavouring in it,
which I hate and loathe. Auntie Phoebe, Mama’s elder sister, always uses almond
flavouring, and she once tricked me into eating it by denying it was in the
cake. Since then I have stuck to bread and butter.
"There’s nothing wrong with her
teeth," argues Mama, who has interpreted this comment rightly or wrongly
as criticism of her inadequacies as a mother.
"She’ll have that right front one
going black in no time," Aunt Aggie persists.
This kind of deprecatory comment is,
as I said before, part of Aunt Aggie’s stock in trade.
I sit quietly at the table and roll
my tongue round my teeth. I can’t feel anything different and this morning when
I looked in the mirror they were all the same shade of ivory.
"Nonsense," replies Mama,
in a voice sterner than usual. I can see that she is getting angry, so I decide
to speak up for myself.
"You mean like hers," I
ask, pointing at my cousin, who is pushing cream-cake into the far back of her
greedy mouth.
Nan doesn’t like that one little bit,
because I have hit the nail on the head, which is what Mama never dares do in
that company. Nan’s teeth are really, really crooked and not very clean. Aunt
Aggie has large gaps where you can see them, and Uncle Joe has no teeth at all,
unless you count his dentures, which bob up and down all the time and prevent
him from talking properly.
"You’ll get a punch in the gob
in a minute and then all your teeth will fall out and turn black and good
riddance," shouts Nan through the cream-cake. There’s no doubt about it,
Nan has already learnt a lot from Aunt Aggie.
Nan is already on her way round the
table when Mama gets up, takes me by the arm and announces "We’re leaving.
Don’t bother to see us out."
This is one of the rare moments when
Mama and I are in perfect harmony.
"I won’t," shouts Aunt
Aggie.
I risk a quick look over my shoulder.
Nan is helping herself to more cake.
“Greedy guts,” I shout.
“Clear off,” shouts Aunt Aggie.
I think she really meant me, but Mama
takes that to heart. I don’t remember us ever going there again.
Seconds later we are marching down
the long crescent hill that leads from the farm to the main road and the
bus-stop.
"Remind me to send those hand-me-downs
back," Mama says in a tight little voice, and somehow I think Aunt Aggie
has unknowingly fought and won a battle for me.
I only have two more memorable
brushes with Nan after that. One is a year later, when we are both sent to
Auntie Phoebe for a week’s holiday, and – horror of horrors – are obliged to
share a bed. That week is probably the worst week’s holiday I have ever been
forced to endure, infiltrated as it is with Nan’s endless accounts of torrid
sexual encounters with an ‘older man’, which I am not to reveal to anyone.
The burden of
keeping Nan’s secret is not particularly heavy, not least because I don’t know
anyone I would have wanted to tell, and anyway, I don’t know what she’s talking
about. But sitting up in bed at dead of night listening to her rambling on
instead of getting a good night’s sleep completely ruins all my own plans. I am
still a little girl with a flat chest and I want to do things like playing
tennis or eating ice-cream, and she is grownup, her bosom has grown and grown
to what seem to me inordinate proportions, though she is and remains a head
shorter than me, and she treats me like dirt when she is not confiding in me.
She seems to have adopted her mother’s attitude to anyone she considers her
inferior, which includes me, of course. No wonder that I detest her.
The other encounter is when I visit
her many years later in a house she has bought herself, which is packed with
begged, borrowed and otherwise acquired family heirlooms. She tries to talk me
out of the few bits I have inherited from Auntie Sylvia via Mama, saying they
would look better in her surroundings. The house has patently cost a fortune. I
discover that she is pathologically devoted to keeping it spotless, which
involves a non-stop round of heavy-duty cleaning. The cleaning continues
unabated throughout my short visit in the form of wiping everything I touch.
The kitchen is never used except for snacks, as cooking makes a mess. She is
painfully thin, which is probably a symptom of this phobia. Even the garden is
subjected to her neurosis. The flower beds are severely regimented, weeds don’t
stand a chance. She apparently weeds the neighbouring gardens, too, to stop any
weeds from infiltrating hers, and there isn’t a leaf out of place on the
bushes. I am not offered anything to drink because she doesn’t want to have to
clean the kitchen again today, I am told, and as I am leaving she is already on
her hands and knees cleaning the floor where I have had the audacity to walk
and doesn’t even look up to return my goodbye. Anorexic for most of her adult life,
she has never married, lives in lonely splendour on her inheritance, and what
is more, her teeth are now so straight and white that they can’t be hers! She
is jealous, vicious and pathetic. Her greed and envy of the few small souvenirs
in my possession leave me unmoved.
She is the daughter of her mother and
I have long since written her off.
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