The Aunts’ House

by Elizabeth Stead

  ‘I’ll have to check the book.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Winifred. ‘But before you do would you be kind enough to tell me what food you are serving tonight?’

  ‘Shanks.’

  ‘From what animal, Missus Potts?’

  ‘Cows! And let me tell you they’re nothing to turn your nose up to.’ But the teeth of every inmate within hearing distance cringed.

  ‘I was thinking of making a curry, Missus Potts. There will be enough for the table and I won’t charge you a penny. I will, of course, be delighted if you and Mister Potts would join us.’

  ‘Boarders in the kitchen’s not allowed.’

  ‘I do understand, Missus Potts, but this is something of a special occasion.’

  ‘All very well but what about the shanks already cooked? What am I supposed to do with them? I went to a lot of trouble (ho! ho!) to get those. Shanks don’t grow on trees, you know – there’s a war on!’

  Angel laughed this time and made Missus Potts angry.

  ‘If you will allow me the use of the kitchen for a short time I will be grateful,’ said Winifred Varnham. ‘Leave the shanks on a back burner to cook a little longer. They will be all the better for it tomorrow. Tonight is a special one for Angel. She had not met her uncle before today and he fancied a curry. I presume you have potatoes?’

  ‘Of course there’s spuds but they’re not peeled. That’s her job.’ Pointing a stubby, red finger at Angel. ‘And that’ll be extra.’

  ‘Missus Potts, with respect, you cannot charge at all for a few potatoes to add to the curry I am going to cook for all of your guests. Where is Mister Potts?’

  ‘Well out of the way of things needing to be done, Miss Varnham. Follow the smell of gin and tobacco and you might catch him.’ Poor Missus Potts looked in that moment tired and rough and as defeated as the milk horse hoping to be put down. Sad.

  ‘And for that matter, Angel, where is your uncle?’ asked Winifred from the kitchen.

  ‘He’s in Barnaby’s room. He’s helping to get the prickles off Barnaby’s clothes.’

  ‘Well, my Angel, if peeling spuds is your job, you’d better get on with it, darling, while I start the rest of it. I think I will need six. Large.’

  ‘This is all so fantastic! I can’t wait to see the look on everyone’s faces.’

  ‘I’m rather looking forward to it, too, darling.’ Winifred flowed around the kitchen in her power red that she’d had no time to change and the kitchen was delighted. It sniffed and blew and radiated unfamiliar aromas and could not have been more pleased. ‘I remember a Mister Joseph offering his hand in marriage, sight unseen, no questions asked when I first came here and brought a curry with me in a billy can. It was very funny.’

  ‘I remember that. I thought it was very romantic in a way. Do you want me to get the plates down?’

  ‘Yes, please, and put them close to the stove to warm up. I think we’ll need twelve.’

  ‘It’s also my job to set the table, Miss Varnham.’

  ‘Try to find a clean sheet, darling.’

  The whole of Missus Potts’s boarding house, from its wood-wormed top, down to its rising damp, was so dense with exotic aromas unfamiliar to the bottom of Duffy Street that it brought Mister Potts out of his lair with his ‘baccy’ tin and an empty bottle and a loud knock on the door from the local blacksmith who lived across the road wanting to know if Missus Potts was harbouring foreigners and who said he would call the police but for a bowl of whatever she was cooking he might forget about it.

  Angel had found a clean sheet, slightly damp and, like a seasoned servant, shook it across the table – Elsa would have been proud of her. Angel had learned a great deal about domestic service from Elsa and she hoped one day to become as good at it as her aunt. Just imagine, she thought – a music and colour and art gallery expert with the domestic skills of Elsa. Miss Varnham could teach her to cook and she might, Angel thought, one day be good enough to open a cafe … Wouldn’t that be something? said Angel to herself.

  Somewhere in her private concert hall a fanfare played and she whispered, not for the first time, Come out and see this, Mother – it’s all right now.

  The boarding house inmates, as Winifred Varnham thought of them, came to their table spots like a flock, earlier than usual, twitching their noses, chatting to each other and not one dragging feet in the usual mournful apprehension. There was, in the aromatic air, an atmosphere of celebration, of sorts.

  Mister Joseph, still head-over-heels, prepared and ready, had ripped a curtain ring from the drape over his window, given it a quick rinse and polish with his towel, put it in a cotton-wooled matchbox and had it on hand for another proposal to the Duchess of Nullabri. Mister Potts and Missus Potts brought butter boxes to sit on, there being no chairs left. Mister Potts’s breath could have lit a lamp but he had slicked oil through his hair in honour of the occasion and Missus Potts had run a wet comb through hers and taken off her apron. She sat straight, sour-faced and somewhat put-out by the abnormality of it all.

  ‘Come on, Pottsy,’ said Mister Joseph. ‘You look like a two-hour sermon – somebody get her a beer.’

  ‘All this food – there’s a war on in case you haven’t noticed and don’t think for a minute you’re getting this foreign stuff every night. There’s nothing wrong with mine and who’s going to clean this lot up afterwards and—’

  ‘O, do be quiet,’ said a casual. ‘Decent is what we pay for here and decent is rarely on the table, Missus Potts, so do be quiet.’

  Another casual – a thin lady, grey all over, who had been to India – kept dabbing at the dribbling corners of her mouth with what served as paper napkins.

  Barnaby Grange came in his own time and sat in the chair that was always Barnaby Grange’s, he being a permanent and paying more than the others.

  ‘It’s going to be all lights and party – like a Charles Dickens Christmas,’ said Angel. ‘I have never seen them so happy.’

  ‘There is certainly a different air to the room. The table looks very nice, darling.’

  Angel had decorated the clean sheet (still damp) with young bracken fern right down the centre of the table. Winifred had found mint growing under the tap near the laundry and had thrown a bunch of it with a little sugar into the tea urn and then, when Winifred asked her to, Angel brought her uncle from his spare, front broom cupboard (that’ll be extra!) and introduced him to everyone.

  ‘This is my Uncle George,’ she said, holding his hand. ‘He’s come all the way from Melbourne in the train to see me and maybe I can’t remember all your names but here he is and Miss Varnham is cooking a curry to celebrate and isn’t this the night!’

  ‘How do you do,’ said Uncle George. ‘Delighted to be here.’ Winifred had arranged to be near him at dinner.

  ‘I didn’t catch your name,’ said Mister Joseph. ‘I can’t be calling you Uncle George.’

  ‘My name is George Wolf.’

  ‘Ho, ho,’ remarked a casual. ‘Then pork’s off tonight, eh?’

  The tea table that evening could have been a painting Angel had seen a long time ago in a library book, a book much too big to borrow. In fact, the print of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper was so beautiful that Angel, in addition to all the other fine arts she’d determined to accomplish, wished, and not for the first time, that she could paint. The Last Supper in the book and its story intrigued her. The painting’s table could be as long as Missus Potts’s table and was covered with what looked like a white sheet but there were no signs of stains.

  Angel thought that the table that evening could be Australia’s version of The Last Supper, with people, heads together, chatting, some serious and some laughing, and drinking mint tea instead of wine. There was bracken fern all over the place and butter boxes, hair oil, a whiff of gin and sweat, and a huge bowl of help-yourself curry, rice and potatoes at the
centre under a halo of blowflies.

  ‘I saw a painting in an art book once called The Last Supper,’ Angel remarked to anyone interested. ‘And this table looks just like it in a way but I think Barnaby Grange should be the Christ figure because of the shine of his hair when the light’s on it.’

  ‘Number twelve,’ said Barnaby Grange.

  ‘That used to be Mister Canning’s place but he’s still in the morgue costing a fortune.’ Missus Potts’s finger pointed in a haphazard way. Her face flashed on and off like a beacon because of the curry powder. Mister Potts had nodded off with food still on his plate and someone asked if she could have it.

  ‘Well, come on, Barnaby – come down and sit here and be Christ.’ Mister Joseph had the others move their places and not once did he take his eyes off the Duchess of Nullabri who had changed, at the last minute, into a robe of virginal white. He’d put the matchbox with its curtain ring in a pocket so that it could be produced in a split second at the right time. ‘There’s a Brownie in my room and when Angel says we’re all settled right I could take a photograph.’

  ‘But who’ll be Judas?’ asked the grey woman who’d been to India. Everyone glanced at a new boarder who was staying a week. He had a very thin moustache as though he’d used a pencil and a certain look in his eyes that moved quick as a ferret’s.

  ‘You’ll do,’ said Mister Joseph, frightening the man.

  ‘What about me?’ asked George Wolf. ‘Where would you like me to sit?’

  ‘Well, Mister Wolf – anywhere you like. The Last Supper is not really your kind of thing, if you know what I mean – no disrespect …’

  ‘O, utter rubbish!’ said Winifred Varnham. ‘Jewish people have great respect for Jesus Christ. Good heavens, just think of Christmas and Easter and birthdays. They manufacture everything we buy—’

  ‘Well said!’ Uncle George laughed.

  ‘What about Mary Magdalene – was she there?’ asked a man whose only reading matter was about horse racing.

  ‘No,’ said Mister Joseph who’d suddenly become breathless. ‘But if Mary was there it’d have to be the Duchess.’ And he rushed to her chair, knelt on one knee in the small space available, whipped out the matchbox, opened it upside down so that the curtain ring rolled all over the floor, handed her the matchbox anyway and proposed.

  ‘O, go away, you silly man.’ The blowflies were fearfully disturbed when she stood. ‘It is not men I like – but women! I prefer my own kind, Mister Joseph.’ Winifred glanced at Angel. ‘I’ll explain it all later, darling,’ and again focused on Mister Joseph. ‘I’d have thought you, Mister Joseph, intelligent enough to realise this by now.’ Ears were suddenly burning from one end of the table to the other.

  ‘I don’t care. I’ll keep myself tucked away. All you’ll have to do is a bit of cooking and I’ll bring women by the trolley full – anything you want. I’ll even get a job.’

  ‘Poor Mister Joseph,’ said Angel, not quite understanding. There were anxious glances, nervous, exchanged looks from the diners but when Angel laughed everyone laughed, even Mister Joseph, who absolutely denied the meaning of defeat, chuckled and said, ‘I’ll just wait ’til she gets sick of them. Everyone gets sick of women.’

  ‘Too bloody right they do,’ Mister Potts shouted louder than necessary, having recently recovered quietly from his doze, and Missus Potts clipped him over the ear.

  Several guests yawned. One asked if there was any tea left and Winifred Varnham told the Potts they could go to their broom cupboard and have the night off and she, Angel, Barnaby and Uncle George would clear everything away.

  ‘That’s more like it – come on, girl.’ Harry Potts burped curry and gin fumes on his way to the stairs. ‘We be up and over the moon and back by tomorrow, eh? Never thought to see the day them be paying here do the washing up – strewth almighty!’

  Persia Potts was flushed. She was guiltily silent for the private ill feelings, and sometimes the right-out-in-the open feelings, she had for the Duchess of Nullabri. All she could think to say was, ‘Out of the blue, that came, I have to tell you – and I have to thank you, Miss Varnham – and well, I’m sorry.’

  ‘O, now then, off you go – go!’ Miss Varnham said in the tone of a manor-born giving the servants a few hours off to catch their breath. Missus Potts had, for that moment, to hide her usual ill feelings.

  It was Angel who took charge of the deserted room. She had her duchess help clear the table, Uncle George up to his elbows at the sink and Barnaby Grange wiping and stacking. Like a trained domestic she passed on advice Elsa had shared with her: ‘Concentrate on one job at a time and do it well.’

  ‘Don’t count anything, Mister Grange, just wipe and stack.’

  ‘Yes, Cookie.’ In words, perhaps thinking of another kitchen where he’d been allowed to play.

  ‘Well done!’ declared Uncle George. ‘All that’s left are stains on the tablecloth ready for breakfast.’

  Winifred had not one spot on her white robe and yawned politely behind her hand.

  Barnaby Grange looked particularly pleased with himself. He wished his friends a ‘good night’ in words and went to his room.

  ‘You go to bed now, darling,’ said Winifred Varnham to Angel. ‘It’s school tomorrow.’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you? I’m not going to school. I’m showing Uncle George the gully.’

  ‘Early, Angel – before school.’

  ‘I’ve arranged it all with Mister Daisyfield,’ she lied.

  ‘Then, if I may, I will escort my niece to her room.’ Uncle George frowned a little but offered his hand.

  Charles Dickens would have said that and Angel smiled. Uncle George should have been holding a candle for the stairs, she thought.

  ‘Kind of you, George.’ And Winifred Varnham swept out of the servants’ quarters. ‘I thought that was all good fun!’

  ‘You won’t like the room, Uncle George. It’s upstairs and right at the back. It’s just a broom cupboard like the rest but I don’t mind because I can see the gully from the window.’

  ‘I’d like to look at it, Angel. I might be able to get you a better room overlooking the gully.’

  ‘I don’t want another room!’ Feeling a sudden mood change, click click.

  ‘Well, all right but you don’t mind an escort, Angel, do you? We have so little time left to get to know each other.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Angel Martin’s broom cupboard was not particularly tidy and had not been dusted for a very long time.

  ‘I don’t mind dust, do you?’

  ‘No, not really,’ said Uncle George looking around. ‘I’ve never thought about it.’

  ‘I have. It’s my dust. I think it’s part of me – it’s part of everyone in their dusty rooms and I think it’s unlucky to wipe it away.’

  ‘That’s an interesting thought. I’ll remember that. It’s a very small window you have, Angel.’

  ‘I like it. I can see the honeysuckle on the fence and down to the gully and a possum comes at night and taps the glass. It’s too dark to see now but you’re going to love it tomorrow, Uncle George. We’ll have to get up early – I’ll pack us a picnic breakfast if you like.’

  ‘Angel, I really don’t like you staying away from school.’

  ‘No one cares, especially Mister Daisyfield, and I don’t learn anything there anyway.’

  Uncle George Wolf made no comment. He looked around the room that was barely larger than the broom cupboard Angel had described. It was, however, decorated in a very special way.

  ‘What’s this?’ Taking a shell from a shelf.

  ‘That’s the first shell I brought here from the Bay. It’s an orphan. It was on a rock all by itself.’

  ‘And this?’

  ‘A king parrot’s feather – I found it near the creek.’

  ‘And this?’


  ‘That’s my cupboard. It’s for my clothes. It’s private. I don’t want you to … go in there!’

  But Uncle George had already opened it.

  ‘I’m sorry, Angel. I didn’t think to ask. Sorry.’

  ‘No one touches my things!’ Click. Her fists were by her side, stiff as starch.

  ‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘You’ve caught me out.’ He shook his hand as though it’d been caught in the biscuit tin and smiled. ‘You wanted an uncle with brains and you landed a stunned mullet. Your mother used to say I was the stupid one. Sorry again. Forgive me?’ He did a little dance, turned his back and shut the cupboard door behind him. He did not remark upon what he’d seen inside of the cupboard door and his niece made no mention of it.

  ‘All right.’ Angel laughed. Uncle George made her laugh. He laughed, too, and her mood and its music conducted themselves back to normal.

  ‘Now, to get back to the secret cupboard – a bigger one is what you need, Angel. I could buy a nice cupboard and—’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘A good pine cupboard to match the gully?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And some pretty clothes to put into the good pine cupboard to match the gully?’

  ‘No.’ With difficulty, Angel suppressed a giggle.

  ‘New sandals, at least. I want to go shopping.’

  ‘All right. I need sandals but I can sew. Miss Varnham is teaching me.’

  ‘O, yes – your duchess. I imagine she could teach anyone anything at all – but would you be offended if I gave you a few pounds before I go back to Melbourne just in case you see something you need – or like?’

  ‘No. Okay.’

  Uncle George Wolf had not been aware at the time of the slick of a tear in his eyes. When he’d opened the small cupboard, he saw, pasted on the inside of the door, a collage of families cut with care from newspapers and magazines. Somewhere near the centre of each family picture was an amateur’s sketch of what George Wolf thought was some likeness of his niece, Angel Martin, and he assumed she must have been collecting and adopting families for a very long time. It was a sadly beautiful sight. Then he was aware of the slick of tears that had briefly blurred his vision.