LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘Where’s she coming from, then?’

      ‘She’s in St Justin’s. Her housekeeper will take whatever clothes she needs to the hospital and an ambulance will bring her here.’ Mary gave a very small sigh. ‘Tomorrow.’

      ‘You’ll want more spuds,’ said Mrs Blackett. ‘Going ter get a nice bit of ’am?’

      ‘Well, I’m afraid that Mrs Winton is a vegetarian...’

      ‘I don’t ’old with them,’ said Mrs Blackett darkly.

      Nor did Mary, although she sympathised with their views.

      She took a basket from the hook behind the kitchen door and went down the garden to pick beans, pull new carrots and cut spinach. Thank heaven it was early summer and her small kitchen garden was flourishing, although she would have to go to the greengrocer presently and get more vegetables, as well as beans and lentils and spaghetti. She hoped that Great Aunt Thirza would like that, though she was doubtful if anyone else would.

      Before going back into the house she stopped to look around her. The house was on the edge of Hampstead Heath, with Golders Green not far away, and the garden offered a pleasant view and she stood admiring it. It would be nice to spend a day in the country, she reflected, and thought of her childhood, spent in a rambling cottage in Gloucestershire.

      They might still be there but for the fact that her father had needed to be nearer the British Museum so that he could do his research and her mother had wanted a closer contact with the agent who sold her cards. Polly hadn’t been born then, and although it hadn’t mattered much to the boys, who had been at boarding-school anyway, Mary had taken some time to settle down at her new school and make new friends.

      She went back indoors and presently out to the butcher, where, since it was likely to be the last meat they would have for a while, she bought steak and kidney in a generous amount and bore it home. It was a warm day for steak and kidney pudding but she was rewarded that evening by the pleasure with which it was received.

      ‘Everything all right, dear?’ asked her mother, and before she could reply added, ‘I’ve had a letter from Mr Thorne—the agent—he’s got me a splendid commission. I shall have to work at it, though—you’ll be quite happy with Great Aunt Thirza?’

      Mary assured her that she would. She wasn’t surprised to hear from her father that he would be away all day at the British Museum. ‘But I’ll be home in time to welcome Thirza,’ he said. ‘Make her comfortable, won’t you, my dear?’

      ‘I’ll play her “Greensleeves”,’ offered Polly.

      ‘That’ll be lovely, darling,’ said Mrs Pagett. ‘It’s so nice that you’re musical.’

      Mrs Winton arrived the next day in nice time for tea. She was tall and thin with a high-bridged nose, upon which rested her pince-nez, and she wore a beautifully cut coat and skirt of the style fashionable in the early decades of the century, and crowned this with a wide-brimmed straw hat. She had the same kind of hat, only in felt, during the winter months.

      Mary had gone to the door to meet her and watched while the ambulancemen settled her into a chair and trundled her over.

      ‘That will do, thank you,’ said Great Aunt Thirza. ‘My niece will help me into the sitting-room.’ She turned to look at her. ‘Well, Mary, here I am.’

      Mary kissed the offered cheek. ‘We are delighted to have you to stay, Aunt.’ She stopped as the men turned away. ‘If you’d like to go to the kitchen—the door over there—there’s tea and sandwiches. Thank you both so much.’

      She had a lovely smile and they beamed back at her. ‘If that’s not troubling you, miss, we could do with a cuppa.’

      ‘Would you like tea, Aunt Thirza? It’s all ready in the sitting-room.’ She gave the old lady an arm and settled her in an armchair by the small tea-table. ‘Father’s at the British Museum; he’ll be back at any moment. Mother’s very busy; she’s just had an order for Christmas cards.’

      ‘Ridiculous,’ said Mrs Winton. ‘Christmas cards, indeed—child’s play.’

      ‘Actually they need a great deal of skill, and Mother’s very good at them.’

      Her aunt sipped her tea. ‘Why aren’t you married, Mary?’

      ‘Well, I don’t think I’ve met anyone I want to marry yet. There’s Arthur, of course...’

      ‘A girl should marry.’ She pronounced it ‘gel’. ‘I don’t hold with this independence. My generation had more sense; we married and settled down to be good wives and mothers.’

      Aunt Thirza was in her eighties. Mary wondered what it had been like to be young then—corsets and hats and gloves, not just on Sundays and occasions but even to go shopping, and not to be able to drive a car or wear trousers...

      On the other hand there had been no television and there had been dances—not the leaping around that was the fashion now, but foxtrotting and waltzing. Waltzing with a man you loved or even liked must have been delightful. The clothes had been pretty awful, but they were pretty awful nowadays among the young. Mary, who sometimes felt older than her years, sighed.

      Great Aunt Thirza was quite a handful. She had brought a good deal of luggage with her which had to be unpacked and disposed around the house according to her fancy. She poked her nose into the kitchen and made scathing remarks about Mrs Blackett’s terrible old slippers with the nicks cut out for the comfort of her bunions; she inspected the fridge, lectured Polly on her untidiness, interrupted her nephew in his study and swept down to the hut to see her niece-in-law, where she passed so many critical remarks that that lady was unable to pick up her brush for the rest of the day.

      It didn’t matter how ingenious Mary was with the lentils, dried peas and beans, her elderly relation always found something wrong with them.

      At the end of a week, having escorted her to her room, shut the windows, refreshed the water jug, gone downstairs again for warm milk, found another blanket, run a bath and listened to her aunt giving her opinion of the drawbacks of the house, Mary went downstairs to where her mother and father were sitting in the drawing-room—a room seldom used since it was large, draughty and, despite Mary’s polishing, shabby.

      ‘When is Great Aunt Thirza going home?’ she asked her father, sounding cross.

      He looked up from the book he was reading, peered over his glasses at her and said mildly, ‘I really don’t know, my dear. She’s no trouble, is she?’

      Mary sat down. ‘Yes, Father, she is. She has made Mrs Blackett even more bad-tempered than usual—she’s threatened to leave—and Polly is rebellious and I can’t blame her. I haven’t cooked a square meal for more than a week; I don’t expect that you’ve noticed but there’s not been an ounce of meat in the house for days and I, for one, am sick of spinach and lettuce leaves.’

      Her mother looked up from the sketches she was making. ‘A nice steak with mushrooms, and those French fries you do so well, darling.’ She added hopefully, ‘Could we go out for a meal?’

      ‘It would cost too much,’ said Mary, who knew more about the housekeeping money than her mother. ‘We need a miracle...’

      It came with the postman in the morning. Great Aunt Thirza was bidden to attend at St Justin’s in Central London where she had been treated for a heart condition—nine o’clock on the following morning. Should her examination prove satisfactory she could make arrangements to return to her home and resume a normal life.

      ‘I shall, of course, abide by the specialist’s advice,’ said Great Aunt Thirza. ‘He may consider it more beneficial to my health for me to return here for a further few weeks.’ She poured herself another cup of tea—the special herbal one that she preferred. ‘You can drive me there, Mary. It will save the expense of a taxi.’

      Mary didn’t answer.

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