Auntie Hester Comes to Call

I usually find it quite easy to at least MAKE a New Year’s Resolution about spending less money on magazines. Keeping it’s another matter. But pre-Christmas magazines get on my nerves. I was about to say that if you’re a bloke you won’t know what I’m talking about, but that’s shameful stereotyping, and after all, they do regularly print photos of their male readers, often, admittedly, on the same page as the dogs and cats that appear to be fans of them.

     All the same – and no point to denying it – it is more a female thing. Might as well get it out of my system. To start with there’s the double issues business. They might charge twice as much, but do you get twice as much? Do you heck! Okay, so TV listings magazines have double issues, too, but at least they have to print double listings.

     Passing over the tips about not breaking your diet over Christmas (anyone who thinks I’m going to have a bowl of fresh fruit salad instead of a slice of Yule Log has another think coming!) and staying with the matter of food, what about the do not waste your leftovers recipes? Now, of course, I’m all for not wasting food. But in the first place, why buy a turkey the size of an albatross if there’s only two of you anyway, and in the second place, you actually end up having to buy more food to make sure you have the means to cook up a tasty (possibly) and quick (arguably) meal from the ample remains of said mammoth bird.

     But you know what gets my goat the most? And this is going to sound horribly mean and anti-social – the “last minute present” ideas for “unexpected visitors”. Unless you’re a contender for the Turner Prize it really isn’t a great idea to stick a collection of “interesting pebbles” in a shoe box and to cover it with leftover foil, or to hastily paint flowers on the side of a jam jar. I might as well be honest. My beef had always been with the “unexpected visitors” rather than the “last minute presents”. It’s the same with those infomercials about the latest wonder airbed. 

     Look, I’m not the soul-sister of the Grinch. If anyone has been banished from their home by fire, flood, volcano or tsunami, then I wouldn’t slam the door in their faces and proclaim “No Room at the Inn”. There’s such a thing as basic human decency (that and the fear of an article about you in the magazines). But I like my own space – and that also applies to the good folk who are probably far kinder than I am who want to invite me round on Christmas Day. If I find my “forever significant other” (as Alice at work insists on calling the current man in her life, Leon, who to be fair IS a totally good egg) then I’m by no means averse to the thought of snuggling in front of an open fire with him listening to carols. But otherwise – recharging my batteries is one of the joys of Christmas. I even secretly hope there won’t be any carol singers, though I don’t go as far as turning the light off to make them think I’m out – well, at least, not most of the time.

     I wished I had switched the light off when the door-bell rang. I’d been meaning for the last six years to replace the door-bell left by the previous owner, not liking its sibilant buzz that sounded as if it wanted to be a fire alarm when it grew up.

     Sighing, I dragged my feet down the hallway and opened the door. I would almost have welcomed Jehovah’s Witnesses – I mean, they don’t “do” Christmas, do they? But there was no earnest couple (why do they always hunt in pairs?) clutching the new Technicolor incarnation of The Watchtower – just one old lady. I was about to say one very old lady, but to be honest, it was hard to tell. I once read that after people reach a certain age they stop visibly ageing, well, I’m not sure if that’s always true, but she could have been in her seventies or her nineties. She had that strange combination of robustness and fragility that often seems manifest in old people, as if a long life had both tired and tempered her. She was well-dressed, in a brown wool coat and sturdy boots, but I suspected they had been bought some time ago “to last” and that she had lost weight since buying them. “May I come in for a minute?” she asked, and I couldn’t help but feel pity and annoyance at the same time. I was about to tell her that she must be mistaken, that I wasn’t one of those who had signed up for the “Adopt a Granny at Christmas” (or whatever) scheme. 

     “I won’t trouble you for long. I promise.” Her tone, I told myself, was polite, but not pleading. Not exactly with a bad grace, but not exactly overbrimming with the milk of human kindness either, I said, “Of course.”

     I gestured for her to sit down on an armchair, and offered her a cup of coffee, suspecting she may well have preferred tea, but having my limits.

     “Thank you, my dear. You always did have a kind heart, no matter what people said.”

     That simple sentence was loaded, to put it mildly. How did she know I always did have a kind heart (of course, I hoped I had, I hurriedly told myself) and what had people been saying, and what did she know about THAT?

     “You really don’t know me, do you?” There was no reproach in her voice, which had, I realised, a rather papery sound, but like good quality paper, not the thin, easily torn kind. “Well, it’s no wonder. It’s been a very long time, and both of us have changed over the years. I’ll put you out of your misery. I’m your Auntie Hester.”

     For a couple of seconds I was still in self-imposed ignorance, then it all came back in a flood that was limpid and jumbled. She wasn’t technically my Auntie, or even my Great Auntie – she was my Grandma’s cousin. Grandma passed away quite young, and one of those family legends had developed, perhaps with a grain of truth in it, that she and Hester had been more like sisters, and that she would have wanted us to make sure she wasn’t alone at Christmas. So she certainly wouldn’t be allowed to be that first Christmas after Grandma had died.

     “Perhaps she wants to be,” I had said, and there was one of those silences that often ensued when I said something I “shouldn’t” – which I apparently had a habit of doing.

     “Don’t be silly, Evelyn,” Mum said, in the crisp voice she adapted when she was determined she wasn’t going to nag but couldn’t let something pass. “Nobody wants to be alone at Christmas.”

     “Nobody NORMAL, anyway,” my older brother David said.

     “That’ll be enough, Dave,” Mum said, but I knew perfectly well which one of us had displeased her most. I had been “Evelyn” instead of “Evie” and he had been “Dave” instead of “David” and that was a sure signal as to who was in favour.

     I may have given the impression we were a massive family – in fact, there was just Mum, Dad, David and me, so, as Dad liked to joke (it was funny the first dozen times) we hadn’t even achieved the average of 2.2 children. But Mum and Dad were firm believers in having people round. If there was not at least one extra child at tea every night, then according to them, we were “rattling” in the kitchen. Mum was an only child, and Dad only had a sister who was ten years older so in many ways more like an auntie, and they firmly believed in the “only child, lonely child” maxim. Work colleagues were always “more than welcome” and neighbours free to “drop in any time they liked”. 

     I loved my parents, and they loved me, don’t think otherwise, but often, even when I was a little girl, I realised that we frequently didn’t understand each other. 

     And so Auntie Hester appeared at the Sullivan family Christmas, and was duly seated at the table (Mum always had the extra leaf open “just in case”) and a party hat plonked on her head, and she was part of the merry throng, which, this year, also included Tina from across the road, whose husband was in the forces and overseas, and Dad’s work colleague Robert, who sat next to me, and whose laugh and booming voice made my ears hurt.

     Another ritual of the Sullivan Christmas was collapsing on the sofa (after the men and children had dutifully seen to the washing up) and watching the sort of film that, as Mum said, “You only did at Christmas!” – and I could see why.

     “I could do with a walk after all that lovely food, Anna,” Auntie Hester said.

     “Oh, leave that until later, Auntie Hester! And there’s always room for another mince pie, isn’t there?”

     Auntie Hester then did something that surprised me beyond measure – she defied Mum! She did it very quietly, very graciously, but very determinedly. “No, I really do need a walk. A bit of fresh air.”

     “Are you feeling well?” Mum asked, anxiously.

     “Perfectly. Does anyone know a nice walk round here?”

     “I do, Auntie Hester!” I piped up. “The arboretum in the park!”

     “The trees, she means,” Dad said, “But young Evelyn seems to have taken a fancy to that silly name the council gave it.”

     “Oh well, if you must,” Mum said, evidently deciding that it wouldn’t “do” to continue defiance of a senior member of the family in front of a junior one. 

     It wasn’t that long a walk to the park. I had been half-afraid that the wrought iron gates would be closed over the Christmas break, but they were open.

     “It really is an arboretum, Auntie Hester,” I told her, worried now that she might be disappointed.

     “It certainly is,” she said, as we wandered among the trees that were tall and stark against the colours of a gathering winter sunset, and the conifers that sent sweet, pungent smells into the cold air, and the holly bushes. “I love that word, too. I collect words!”

     “So do I!” I exclaimed. I remember she taught me two lovely new words that day, and both of them to do with nature and weather – Petrichor – the scent of damp grass after refreshing rain, and Crepuscular, which meant all about the twilight. But for much of the time we walked in silence, hand in hand, glad to be away from the chattering and the stuffiness and the film that nobody really liked but didn’t like to say they didn’t.

     “You saved my sanity that Christmas,” I said, suddenly grasping Auntie Hester’s hand, and remembering being a little girl walking hand in hand with her in the Arboretum. She squeezed it back, “Now that’s exaggerating a bit. And your Mum and Dad did mean well, you know.”

     “That was the trouble!” I exclaimed, “And they still do! Not just Mum and Dad but – oh, I sound like a real misery-guts.”

     “If you are, then so am I,” she said, “But we’re not, are we? I’m so glad I found you. I’ve brought you a present – but don’t open it until tomorrow!” I minded when most people said that, but not when Auntie Hester did. 

     I was also beginning to wish I had bought one of those airbeds I had derided, but Auntie Hester said, “For the moment – this is just a flying visit, Evie. I’m staying with an old friend in –“ she named the next town. 

     “But you will come and see me again!” 

     “We will see each other again, I promise.”

     “Can I at least drive you to your friend’s house?” But I was speaking to empty air. 

     The thing is, I was not surprised, any more than I was surprised, when I drove to the next town on Christmas morning, that it was quite easy to find Auntie Hester’s grave in the quiet churchyard – and her name on it was not Hester Amies, as she had been, but Hester Maynard – and she rested with Tobias Maynard. He had died five years ago, and she had died three years ago. I wished I had thought to bring some boughs of holly and pine to put on their resting place, but told myself I could come back another day – they wouldn’t mind.

     I hadn’t opened my present before leaving for the next town, but I did when I came back. It was a bottle of perfume – and as I sprayed it on, I breathed in freshness and the promise of springtime in winter.

     It was called Petrichor.

.