Aunt Clara

by Noel Streatfeild

  Spectacles on nose, his eyebrows rising and falling, Simon spat out:

  “Here’s one from me great nephew Ronnie. He says he hopes July will suit because if he can find somewhere cheap he plans to take Mrs. Ethel, Pansy and Peter to the sea. Pansy! Pansy! Damn fancy name! This is from Mrs. Brain. She says, ‘I hope July will suit, because in August I am taking little Frank to Holland to see his daddy’s grave.’ Disgustin’! Draggin’ a small boy half across Europe to look at a grave. Miss Alison and Miss Marjorie, me parson-nephew’s girls, are goin’ to help with the harvest in August. They say it’s the only holiday they can afford. That’s a nasty one meant for me.” Simon tossed the letter down and picked up another. “Me great-niece Rita writes that in August she’s drivin’ her husband and the boy to some place I can’t read in Scotland to fish. She writes: ‘Fishin’ is one of the few things Tim enjoys and I can’t disappoint Derek.’” Simon looked at Henry. “I daresay, with a couple of false legs, fishin’ is one of the few thin’s Mr. Tim can manage, but you can fish at other times than August. As for young Derek bein’ disappointed, that’s a lot of poppycock. How long ago was it Miss Rita got married?”

  Henry thought for a moment.

  “It was after your influenza, but you was still in bed for you couldn’t come down and the young gentleman ’ad a shockin’ time gettin’ those spare legs of ’is up the apples and pears to see you. Near enough four an’ a ’alf years I should say.”

  “That’s what I thought, so unless they cheated the starter young Derek isn’t four yet. Can’t disappoint a child of three of his fishin’! Poppycock!”

  Henry saw Simon was working himself up again. Each letter he re-read fanned his temper to a brighter flame. He laid a hand on them.

  “Pack it up. No need to read ’em all again. They don’t want no party in August. You won’t ’ave one in July. So what? There ain’t goin’ to be no party and a good job too.”

  Simon’s eyes blazed.

  “Take your hand off my letters. Pass them here. You’re gettin’ altogether above yourself, Henry.”

  Simon sorted his letters, his lips pouting, while he muttered under his breath. Presently a line from a letter caught his eye.

  “This is from Mrs. Hind. Whinin’, miserable letter it is too. But I warned her. ‘Don’t marry the feller,’ I said, ‘he’s a cad.’ Smelt it the moment he came into the room. Listen to this. ‘I haven’t been well lately, and the doctor said I simply must get away. I could not manage much of course because of the expense, but it is by the sea for the children. I would put off my holiday because of your birthday, but I think it would be wrong for Ursula and Gordon don’t have much fun since their Daddy deserted them.’ If she’d written because their mother couldn’t recognise a wrong-un there’d be more to it.” He picked out a sheet of grey paper with the address engraved in scarlet. “This is from me great-nephew Claud. He’s goin’ to Spain. Never cared for Spaniards, just the sort of long-haired types he would go mincin’ about with. This last letter is from me great-niece Freda. Married that fellow Basil Pickering. Breeds like a rabbit, that girl. Says she’s spendin’ August in Bognor, which will be nice for Poppet and Noel. She isn’t feelin’ well, but she doesn’t think she ought to let the new little brother or sister, who is expected in the autumn, spoil their summer holiday.” Simon tossed the letters to Henry. “Whatever’s turnin’ up in the autumn let’s hope she doesn’t give it a disgustin’ nickname like Poppet. Poppet! That child was christened Constance after me brother William’s wife. I never cared for Constance, but it’s a good, plain name, and damned disrespectful to the dead turnin’ it into Poppet.”

  Henry gathered up the letters and put them on a table out of Simon’s reach and laid the sporting papers near his hand.

  “Now you’re through with that lot, ’ow about our bettin’?”

  Simon did not hear what Henry said. An idea had come to him. A joke, a glorious turning of the tables. As he thought of it he began to shake; a rumbling laugh started in the pit of him, and rolled round until it left him in gusts and gales.

  “Give me paper and pen. July indeed! I’ll show ’em. Henry, we’ll give a party. It’ll be on me birthday and no other damn day. I’m going to invite the whole bang shootin’, babies and all.”

  “But they can’t come in August. That’s why they wrote.”

  “I’ll lay you five pounds they’ll all turn up. They think there’s pickin’s when I’ve gone.” Another gust of laughter shook Simon. “I’m not havin’ me eightieth birthday pushed around. They want a luncheon. Very well, they shall have a luncheon, but it will be in August, and it will be here.”

  Henry gaped at Simon.

  “’ere! ’ave you gone crackers?”

  “I said here and I meant here. Why not? Get one of those caterin’ fellers along. Tell him to fix up the drawin’-room for a luncheon, but, mind you, I choose the menu. None of that breast of chicken, steamed fish nonsense. It’s me eightieth birthday, and I’ll do the thin’ in slap-up style.”

  Henry saw Simon meant to give this luncheon, and when Simon decided to do something he did it. He gave him notepaper and a pen and carried the breakfast tray down to the kitchen. Over the washing up he thought of what Simon had said. Fix up the drawin’-room for a luncheon! Get in a caterer! This was a nice how-d’you-do, this was, and the old B was set on it. No turning his mind to other things when it was set on something. Presently he dried his hands and fumbled in the corner of the kitchen cabinet and found a key.

  He had never considered the front room as part of his and Simon’s home. Since that night in 1940, when he first came to the house, he had never had a real look at it. He had unlocked the door in case of incendiaries, peered in, noted the windows were shuttered and everything covered in dust-sheets, and shut the door again. When he tidied Simon’s room there were things Simon was not likely to use, and for which he could not find a place, so he put them in the unused front room. As time went by rubbish collected not suited to the pig-bucket or dustbin, and that went in the front room. When Peterson was killed there were belongings Clara Hilton had not considered worth sending to his mother, which she had told Henry to throw away. Henry had thrown them in the front room. When the war finished other people found it difficult to get rid of gas masks, tin hats, stirrup pumps, sandbags and other such paraphernalia, but not Henry, to him it was merely a matter of opening the front-room door and pushing it in. As the years passed the rubbish dump in the front room became of considerable size, and the people who lived on the top floors and the caretakers who lived in the basement became inquiring and inquisitive, and asked with much meaning in their voices: “It’s terrible the trouble we have with moths. Is Mr. Hilton much bothered with them too?” “I never see anybody cleaning that big drawing-room, I suppose there aren’t moths in there, are there?” “I can’t think why we have so many mice; are you doing anything to keep them down?” Henry had seen moths of incredible size lurching around in the air, gorged with meals eaten in the front room. He knew all about the mice, and wasted no time on them; what was the good of killing the odd one when vast colonies lived unmolested in your front room? But your moths and your mice and anything else you might have in your home were your concern, and he was allowing no busybodies to nose round interfering. He kept the door locked, and hid the key, but he had an uneasy feeling that sooner or later one or other of the tenants would say something to one of the old man’s relatives. To prevent this he planned ahead. It was before Simon had become tied to his room, but already Henry was his confidant and handled certain of his affairs. Simon had made a considerable sum of money gambling, and was discussing what he would do with it, and this gave Henry his idea.

  “You know what? I wouldn’t buy anythin’ with it. I’d pay the rent. You’ve enough there to pay the rent for seven years.” Simon had argued. What was the point of paying rent in advance, before you were asked for it? He would thank Henry to mind his own business. Henry waited until Simon had said his say. “You neve
r know what’s comin’, there’s a lot of nasty types about what are tryin’ to get ’old of ’ouse property. I’ve kep’ me meat pies on ’o comes in and out, but you can’t be too careful.”

  Henry’s words had the effect on Simon that he had calculated that they would. The hint of insecurity was enough. He had given Henry the money and told him to negotiate a seven years’ lease.

  The landlords, who were always short of money, had received Henry’s offer of seven years’ rent paid in cash with rapture, and Henry came home with a present of ten pounds in his pocket, and the comfortable feeling that the nosey parkers could be as nosey as they liked, for no matter what they thought, they could do nothing, nobody could turn them out.

  Since the tenants shared the staircase Henry had never risked the door of the front room being wide open, so what he had to put away he had tossed quickly through the half-open door. Now that he had to get into the room he found himself pushing his way through a jungle of rubbish. He was not helped by the fact that there was no light. Choked by dust and blinded by cobwebs he at last arrived at one of the windows, and after a lengthy fight succeeded in opening the shutters.

  Not much light came through the dirt-coated window, but enough for Henry to see the state of the room in which, in two months’ time, Simon intended giving his party. The walls had once been cream, the elaborate mouldings on the ceiling picked out in gold. The cream was now grey and the mouldings almost hidden under festoons of cobwebs. The curtains had been tapestry, but moths had eaten so much of the material away that what was left crumbled as Henry touched it. Under dust-sheets were a sofa and chairs that had also had tapestry covers. The moths had thrived on the material, and what they had left mice had used for nests. Signs that mice lived in the room were everywhere. It also seemed a mouse burial parlour, for there were mice skeletons about, and a decomposing mouse under the dust-sheet that covered the sofa. The electric lighting had fused, but the room had been lit by a vast chandelier. Henry had never seen a chandelier at close quarters, and was puzzled by what seemed to him a collection of dirty glass held together by cobwebs. He kicked at the carpet and found it too had fed moths, and whatever it might once have been, it was now a mass of rotting threads. There were a few good things left, tables, pictures and ornaments, that had not appealed to moths and mice, and time had not ruined, but they were tiny oases in a desert of decayed rubbish. Henry spoke out loud.

  “Fix up the drawin’-room for a luncheon! Don’t make me laugh!”

  It was at that moment that someone rang Simon’s front door bell.

  * * * * *

  Clara Hilton was sixty-two. She had never owned a good figure, and as she had aged she had spread. Spreading was to her something that happened, like your hair growing grey or wrinkles; it never crossed her mind that she might need stronger and better quality corsets; she had always bought the same sort of corsets and saw no reason to change her habits; the result was that sideways she was reminiscent of a cottage loaf. Clara had never been well-dressed. All her life clothes had been to her coverings, not adornments. She liked loose, comfortable things. While her mother lived she had seldom had them, for Constance Hilton had believed in an upholstered look. After her mother’s death the change from the upholstered to the comfortable had been slow, for the clothes chosen by Constance had been of good quality and had taken a long time to wear out, and Clara had not been able to get rid of them, for that was waste, and waste was wrong. But at last they had worn out and comfortable clothes took their place. It puzzled strangers where Clara got her plum, maroon or grey dresses with roomy bodices, voluminous skirts and old-fashioned trimmings. They did not know that there were shops which catered for Claras, and that the old-fashioned trimmings were leavings from Constance’s day, patiently sewn on by Clara because it was such waste not to use them up. Her nephews and nieces did not think Clara’s clothes odd; they were part of her, just as pince-nez spectacles were part of her. Nobody else they knew wore pince-nez, and nobody else they knew wore clothes like that. That was in fact the way she ought to look, and they would have been resentful, in the way they would have resented furniture moved without permission, if she had made any alteration in her appearance.

  It had been convenient for George, Alice, Maurice and Sybil that Clara had not been what they called “the marrying sort.” That Clara had small opportunity to marry had she wished was not discussed. She was the eldest daughter, and as their mother was not strong somebody had to stay at home. It was very nice for her, they told Clara; it was no joke being married and bringing up babies; in her sheltered life, with nothing to do all day and servants to wait on her, she did not realise how fortunate she was. Clara, rushing about the house for things her mother had mislaid, bicycling into the village for something her father wanted, pacifying the latest cook, whom Constance had, as usual, offended by petty criticism, or busy on one of the hundred and one tiny jobs which completely filled her day, had no time to think about herself. She was doing her duty in the way she supposed God intended, and that was as far as her inner probings went.

  Not that Clara’s life was spent wholly in Somerset. It was an understood thing in the family that in an emergency she must be lent, and emergencies arose frequently. Maurice, struggling along with his Doris, first as curate and later parish priest, in ungetatable spots in Essex, was constantly crying out for assistance. There was no telephone in Clara’s home and the telegraph boy was a common sight. The messages from Maurice had a familiar ring. “Come at once children measles.” “Come at once Alison mumps.” “Come at once Doris influenza.” Alice did not really need Clara, for her Frederick was well off and could pay nurses when there was illness, but Frederick was not to be deprived of a right on that account. Because someone might mention nurses, Alice’s telegrams gave nothing away. “Great trouble come immediately.” George always wrote when help was needed, firm solicitor’s letters, which permitted no hedging or excuses. “The children have whooping cough. Vera is over-tired and must rest. I shall meet your train on Wednesday. It arrives at Brighton at 6.25 precisely.” Sybil cried for help down the chemist’s telephone, and the chemist’s boy brought the messages to Clara. Sybil’s Paul was head of the advertising department of a metal firm. His taste, which was reflected in his advertisements, was for ultra-modern pictures. The rest of the family disliked Paul, and said his house with its startling colour schemes and weird pictures gave them the horrors. Clara never wondered if she liked Paul or not. Sybil had married him, he was her brother-in-law. That was that. She did not think much about the house either. It was Sybil’s home, and though not what she cared for herself, presumably Sybil liked it, and that was all that mattered. Besides, she saw very little of it. Claud was a fretful child, difficult to please when he was ill, and Clara was only in the house when he was ill, so she spent most of her time in his bedroom.

  When their mother died, Clara’s brothers and sisters had grudgingly to admit that Clara’s place was looking after her father. For years she never left Somerset. She was contented. Her father was less demanding than her mother had been, and she was able to give time to other things. She taught in Sunday School. She was a pillar of the Women’s Institute. She was the backbone of the women’s branch of the British Legion. She looked after the books in the village lending library. She cleaned the church brass. She arranged and provided the flowers in the altar vases, unless the coming Sunday was an occasion, when someone who considered themselves important took over. She did all the little tiresome jobs in the parish the Vicar had no time for; leaving parish magazines, seeing the parish nurse, seeing the school mistress. Her reward, though she wanted none for she considered she was doing no more than her duty, was that nobody called her Miss Hilton, she was just Miss Clara. But that this was so, and that it was a sign of affection, escaped her, for she never thought about it.

  When in 1940 George brought Simon to Somerset, he had explained to Clara that of course the old man could not be left in London without Peterson, and with air-raids e
very night. He had explained too that he had pretended the arrangement was only temporary as a means of getting him away, but that actually Vera had packed everything in Simon’s flat, and put it under dust-sheets for the duration. Clara had asked: “But will he be happy here?” The question had infuriated George. It was past bearing when you had done more than your duty to an elderly uncle to be asked about happiness. Sharply he told Clara that he failed to see that happiness had anything to do with the matter under discussion, it was safety not happiness they were considering. Clara, who had been dealing with evacuees since the beginning of the war, had answered: “It won’t work, you know. People of his sort like bombs and being uncomfortable better than being bored. You’ll find he’ll drift back.”

  When Clara had proved right about the drifting back, George blamed her. Blaming inwardly is annoying when the one blamed is ignorant that blaming is taking place. George would not have admitted it even to himself, but he was pleased when, after his father’s death, it was found there was no special provision for Clara in the will. There was a pittance through a marriage settlement, but the pittance without house or furniture would not be enough. George felt Clara had received her deserts. Naturally, as he said to Vera, something must be done for her, a room in the village perhaps; he would think it over and discuss the matter with the rest of the family. In the middle of the passing of letters round the family Clara wrote to George. The postmark, he was surprised to see, was London. The heading on the paper, he was startled to read, was “The Mission House.” Clara wrote as casually as though she were writing a Christmas or birthday letter. She said through the Vicar she had joined the mission. She was not being paid, but she was kept and fed, which was splendid, because it meant that with what dear father had left she was quite comfortably off. That was when George used the expression “I wash my hands of Clara.” He did more than wash his own hands, he wrote suggesting a family hand washing. Clara, he pointed out, was middle-aged, it was not for ever that missions would wish to keep her. Had she waited until her family had planned for her it would have been different. In return for rent paid she could have found many little ways of saying thank you, for times were difficult and extra hands needed. But if she imagined she could give her best years to a mission and then expect charity from her family she was mistaken. They must be careful and watch the situation; it would be more than trying if, in ten or fifteen years’ time, they found themselves landed with an impoverished dependant.