What Aunties who aren't Aunties Know

“There’s a little patch of snow that never melts,” Auntie Millie, who wasn’t really my Auntie, said. She was babysitting me, though, of course, being seven, I wasn’t at all taken with the term babysitting. “You mark my words, Stephanie. You can’t always find it, or course, though sometimes you find it quite by accident, but it’s there, all through the spring and the summer and into the autumn, and no matter how hot it is or how much rain falls, that patch of snow is there.”

     That sounded promisingly like the start of a story, and though I’d been a precocious reader, I loved to be told stories. But it wasn’t. It was more in the nature of a piece of information; something it was important for me to know.

     It wasn’t the only time she told me that, but it didn’t become one of those tedious trite things trolled out at every meeting, even after I had long outgrown the need for babysitting, and undertook that task myself.

     It was a nice idea, of course, but I think even when I was seven, I didn’t really believe it. Auntie Millie was generally a practical sort of person, but she did have a few strange notions as my Mother put it. If she accidentally spilt some salt, she would toss a few grains over her shoulder to ward off the devil. I subsequently discovered that though she did, broadly speaking, believe in God, she didn’t believe in the Devil, and that the business with the salt (this was something of a disappointment) was a belief others shared. She also thought that pointing in someone was unlucky. Not rude (though not necessarily polite) but unlucky. I never did quite fathom whether the ill luck game to the pointer or the pointed at or both. 

     Well, fast forward, as the saying goes.  Have you ever seen that TV commercial for Werthers’ Candies, where there’s a flashback that feels sepia-toned, even thought it isn’t, and then – (FAST FORWARD!)  segues to a rosy-cheeked old gentleman who says that he’s the grandfather now, and offers the self-same candies to his adored and adoring grandchild?

     I was intermittently reminded of that when I was looking after Ruby. She was my neighbour Larry’s little girl, and he was bringing her up single-handed and making an incredibly good job of it. She insisted on calling me Auntie Steffi, even though I wasn’t her aunt, and would, in fact, have much preferred to have just been called Steffi or Stephanie. But I wasn’t going to make an issue of it. If calling me Auntie Steffi made her feel better, it was fine with me.

    I’m the Auntie who isn’t really the Auntie now, I thought. Ruby was a lovely child, though I sometimes wondered if I only thought that because she reminded me so much of myself at her age. But no, that’s indulging in self-flattery. We both loved books and cats and thunderstorms, and though we had both been brought up to be polite, found it hard to understand people who didn’t, and the same applied to not liking peas and the noise of motorbikes (though Ruby confessed she would quite like to ride on one) and people who were condescending – or, as Ruby put it – knew better  and found it hard to understand folk who did like such things. But I was my own person, and Ruby, most definitely, was hers. 

     One thing we did both like was walking through the park. Not that the park in our home town was anything to write home about. When Ruby is a bit older, I thought, I will tell her that even when we sent emails as a matter of course, those of us could remember a time before them (and that would pique her curious little head-tilted smile) would still refer to writing home, and not just as a metaphor. 

     But back to that park. It was nothing to write or email or text or twitter or instgaram home about. But was within easy walking distance of my home and Ruby’s, and the fish-pond at least had some living, and, apparently, well-tended fish in it, and the sundial in the rose-garden still bore that quote about being nearer to God’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth. Oh, and there were swings and a slide and a see-saw and a little carousel in a section of the park bordered by the rose-garden and the fish-pond, and even though Ruby was at pains to point out she had outgrown them, she was still glad they were there, and looked at children who were probably, at most, a year younger than her, with an air of indulgence and superiority.

     Ruby’s favourite part of the park, or the one she would admit to being her favourite was – was, well, WHAT?

     It was a grassy incline that descended from the outer limits of the park to the edges of the rose garden, and, so local historians said, incorporated the natural landscape that pre-dated the park, though the park itself had only been established in the 1940s, so it was hardly ancient history, and still within living memory.

    But some folk called it the Mound, and some folk called it the Knoll, and some even, though probably aware it was fanciful wish-fulfilment, even in a flat county, called it the Hill.

     Still, Ruby was a fan of it, even though, unlike many of the local children, she never saw any especial attraction in rolling down it, in doing what was called roly-polies, head over heels or just on your backside. I didn’t blame her. I’d never seen the attraction either. I wasn’t an especially fastidious child nor one with a fixation on cleanliness – and didn’t change much as I grew up – but failed to see the appeal of getting my pants or skirt dirty just for the sake of feeling giddy and conforming. Ruby was much of the same opinion, and when I said, because one DOES say such things, “Go on, have a roly-poly if you feel like it, Ruby”, she gave me one of those patient  looks children are so good at and said that she didn’t want to, not at the moment thanks. But Ruby still loved the Mound or the Knoll, or whatever. She liked to sit on the wall at the top of it, or to walk down it, and was very taken with the thought that it was there long before the park was.

     She was like me in that respect, too. 

     I had left her (or at least she thought I had, I kept an intermittent eye on her even though I sat on the bench reading my book) to her own devices as she cheerfully gathered daisies on the Mound. Perhaps because the shape made it awkward to mow, the grass wasn’t that well manicured, and a good thing too, I thought.

     “Auntie Steffi!” Ruby called. I interpreted the note in her voice as meaning that she wanted attention, preferably pretty quickly, but nothing was wrong.

     “Coming!” I replied, not entirely sorry to put my book aside – it had been one that promised more than it delivered. She had a clear and carrying voice, though not with that irritating shrill note you sometimes here, and even as I approached she called out, “Auntie Steffi, there’s some snow here!” 

     Well, I wasn’t expecting that! Not that I believed her of course – oh, she was an honest child, but an imaginative one, and quite capable of thinking a discarded tissue was a patch of snow. It had been quite a mild winter and now it was April, so of course she couldn’t be right. There was something both off-putting and comforting about it. And it definitely set my mind cogs whirring. I had never told her that story, and, sadly, Auntie Millie had passed away when she was only 2 and didn’t live nearby by that time, anyway. So she couldn’t have passed it on. 

     Maybe that was another of those notions that wasn’t as family-specific as I thought! 

     And as I was thinking that, I saw that she was absolutely right. There was, indeed, a little rough-edged hexagon of snow on the Mound. I couldn’t delude myself it was frost (though there had been no frost) nor hailstones (though no hail had fallen). It was snow. White, crisp snow looking as if only one cake in a batch had been iced.

     “You’re right!” I said, “Oh, I wish Auntie Millie had seen this!”

     “Of course I’m right,” she said, with that childish complacency that isn’t meant as boasting. “And who’s Auntie Millie?”

     I was on the point of gently correcting her to “Who WAS Auntie Millie,” but decided that though I would break that sad news, it could wait. “A lovely lady who used to look after me when I was about your age,” I said, “And she always said there was a patch of snow that never melted, you just had to find it.”

     Ruby was dipping her finger into the snow, and I decided I could do worse than follow suit. 

     “Not enough to build a snowman,” she said, but it was a simple statement of fact rather than one of any particular regret.

     A daisy was poking through the snow. But it was a strange sort of daisy, I thought, and that was because it wasn’t a daisy at all. It was a little dainty creature wearing a sunny yellow hat, and looking none too please. “Kindly don’t poke at our roof!” it – though in fact I knew it was a she said. I could hear that slightly peremptory fluting voice perfectly clearly, but somehow knew that if I moved even the slightest distance from the patch of snow I would not.

     “Very sorry,” I said, as contrite as one could be to a talking daisy. 

     “I thought we were doing well! Camped here for a whole day without anyone disturbing us.” I knew sarcasm when I heard it, from any source.

     “She said we were sorry,” Ruby pointed out. 

     “Okay, well, fair enough. But we only want to be left in peace!”

     “Then why choose here, a park?” Ruby asked, “There must be – squillions of places were nobody would find you or at any rate were less – prodigal to!”

     Well, it was plain what Bible story she’d most recently studied at Sunday school. “I think you mean probable,” I pointed out, almost feeling as if I were looking down on some bizarre scene where I was working on Ruby’s vocabulary while we were having a conversation with a talking daisy (except she wasn’t a daisy) that lived under the patch of snow in springtime. 

     “Whatever,” and I think for once she did just mean that, whatever, and wasn’t provoking me by using an expression she knew I didn’t like!

     She had a good point though. Auntie Millie did sometimes say that the relevant patch of snow might be under an overgrown hedge, or on a lonely moorland, and that was why it was so rarely seen. 

     “We – well, we liked it here!”

     “So do we,” I admitted. 

     “Sorry we I was picking you,” Ruby said.

     “Oh, don’t fret about that! We’re using them as a kind of camouflage, they don’t feel a thing and grow back soon enough.”

     “But what about if you’re under a hedge or on the moors?” asked Ruby, “There won’t be daisies there, I shouldn’t think.”

     I was duly impressed and thought that she was destined to be a lawyer, but that opinion obviously wasn’t shared, though that fluting voice was studiedly sugar-coated with a veneer of patience. “I keep forgetting that we’re so much more advanced than you are. We adapt to our environment, of course!”

     “Of course,” I echoed, lamely. “You said that was your – er – roof …..”

     “You want a look inside? You can’t help yourselves, can you?” But the tone was more one of a parent frustrated at a troublesome but not unendearing child. “Fair enough. But leave that roof alone! Look down that little hole in the grass if you must. You’ll have to take it in turns. At first you might not think you see anything, but your eyes will get used to it.”

     “You go first,” I said to Ruby.

     She lay down on the mound, and put her eye to the hole. For a couple of seconds, she was silent then she muttered, “Wow,” and Ruby wasn’t the kind of child who said “Wow”, even for effect. I was impressed by her unselfishness as she stood up and said “Your turn now, Auntie Steffi.”

     I was considerably more ungainly as I lay on the mound than Ruby, but I managed to find a viewing angle and waited for my eye to get used to it. Wow, indeed. I don’t know what I’d expected, but this surpassed it. I was about to say there was a whole town but there were not just buildings, there were fields and roads and trees, and little yellow-hatted beings who suddenly didn’t seem little at all, but exactly the right size, and at first I was vaguely reminded of wildlife films I’d seen about ant colonies, but with every regard for the wonderful ways of the ant, this was a different matter altogether. This was not some pooled consciousness acting at the prompt of evolution and nature, but a plethora and plurality of minds and thought and intent. 

     “That’s what you might call the panoramic view,” our companion (for want of something else to call her!) said. “I’m afraid I’m not going to let you have a view inside our dwellings – we have some regard for our privacy.” I was disappointed but realised there was no point in arguing, and supposed I could see her point. “I imagine it would be – quite frightening,” I said.

     “No, merely intrusive. Now you’ve had your look, and with no offence, please would you leave us be?” 

     We knew there was no point to arguing. In silence we walked down the mound and past the pond and past the rose garden with the sundial. “Well, I can’t wait to tell folk about this,” Ruby said, but then we looked at each other, and didn’t need to say anything, and knew that neither of us could ever tell anyone. Not because some terrible curse would come down on us, but because if you said things like that people thought you were odd, and not just pleasantly eccentric and quirky.

     We had to keep it to ourselves, and that was that.

     But I knew that one day Ruby would be the Auntie, even if she wasn’t really the Auntie, and she would tell a child about the patch of snow that never melted, and perhaps, if that child were very lucky, they would find it.