A Conspiracy of Aunts

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Not as such.’

  ‘In that case, I’ll leave it,’ the woman says awkwardly.

  ‘Please yourself,’ Aunt Peggy replies, with a show of indifference.

  ****

  My aunt is probably coming across as a very stupid woman, and indeed she was. She should have learned from her sister Catherine’s example – and what she should have learned is that if you are playing a part in order to hide what you’re actually doing, then you must play the part up to the hilt. Catherine was every inch the crazed evangelist, but anyone who got close to Peggy soon realised she was no Cat Lady. That said, Peggy still had a good run for her money, and even I – living in the middle of it – didn’t work out exactly what was going on until a few days before Peggy’s tragic accident.

  6

  In Sussex, I had been no more than average height for my age, but once in Cheshire I began to sprout up, some months gaining nearly an inch. My voice grew deeper, too, and my face was losing some of its childish chubbiness.

  For the first time in my life, I found myself drawn to mirrors. Never a day went by without my spending a few minutes gazing at my reflection which, with equal confusion in its eyes, stared back at me. It was partly an exercise in vanity, I suppose, but I had a deeper purpose beyond that. I was trying, with all the desperation of a rootless, unloved orphan, to read my family history in a face which was rapidly becoming more adult.

  Did I look like Mother? I wondered, looking critically at the image in the silvered glass. Was I carrying her legacy anywhere other than in my mind?

  Search as I might, I could find little resemblance. The eyes were undoubtedly the same – a deep enigmatic blue – but that was as far as it went. Her nose was petite: mine had been borrowed from Michael Douglas. Her jaw was as delicate as china: mine the kind that strong men clench when surrounded by spear-waving natives.

  Nor was I the only one to notice my maturing features. Examining myself in the hallway mirror one frosty December morning before setting off for school, I sensed that someone was watching me, and turned to find Aunt Peggy standing in the living room doorway.

  ‘Did I forget to do something?’ I asked, thinking that could be the only reason my aunt would have gone to the trouble of raising her fat rump from her comfortable chair.

  Aunt Peggy made no reply, but instead stood perfectly still, her eyes fixed on my face.

  ‘More logs for the fire?’ I suggested.

  Still my aunt said nothing. For perhaps a minute we were frozen, she apparently mesmerised by my face, me by the intensity of her scrutiny.

  ‘I have to go, Auntie,’ I said finally. ‘I’ll be late for school, otherwise.’

  ‘You’ve got his looks, all right,’ Aunt Peggy said, as if she hadn’t heard me.

  It was so unusual for my aunt to speak to me – other than to issue instructions – that, for a moment, I was pole-axed.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Aunt Peggy continued dreamily, ‘you’ve got his looks. And you’ll break a few hearts before you’re finished – just like he did.’

  He?

  Him?

  My father! She was talking about my father!

  Mother had never felt called upon to mention him, and I’d felt no curiosity myself at the time. But circumstances had changed. My father was no longer someone who could be defined simply in negative terms – the man who hadn’t played football with me, who hadn’t carried me on his shoulders or taught me how to swim. I had his nose and his jaw – it was time to find out something about him.

  ‘What was my father like, Auntie Peggy?’ I asked.

  The dreamy expression was wiped from my aunt’s face, and was replaced by a look which was half-defensive, half-confused.

  ‘I … I think there are some things we shouldn’t go into, don’t you?’ Aunt Peggy stuttered. ‘I mean, you might not like the truth when you hear it.’

  ‘I’ve got a right to know,’ I protested.

  ‘Besides,’ Aunt Peggy said, twisting the left cuff of her pink cardigan nervously in her right hand, ‘I couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to. We had an agreement, Catherine, Jacqueline, Sadie and me – a sort of pact of silence.’

  ‘You only promised you’d never talk about Mother’s death,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s my father I’m asking about now.’

  The cuff of the pink cardigan was now twisted so tightly that it had begun to function as a tourniquet. Or perhaps there were other reasons why the blood had drained from my aunt’s face.

  ‘My father,’ I persisted. ‘Not Mother’s death – my father.’

  ‘You can’t separate the two,’ my aunt said. She laughed – almost hysterically. ‘Yes, that was the problem – you couldn’t separate the one from the other.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It would have different if they’d been cats, wouldn’t it?’ Aunt Peggy said. Her eyes had glazed over and her voice was dull – mechanical. Though her plump little body was still in the hallway, her mind was somewhere else entirely. ‘Cats don’t know any better, do they?’ she continued as if she’d been programmed. ‘They don’t mean any harm – it’s just the way they are.’

  ‘You’re not making any sense!’ I shouted at her.

  My words seemed to penetrate whatever world of memories my aunt had been floating in and burst the bubble of fantasy which had enveloped her. Her eyes cleared and she was once again the lazy, greedy Aunt Peggy I had come to know so well.

  ‘You’re going to be late for school,’ she said shakily.

  ‘Tell me about my father before I go,’ I demanded, folding my arms across my chest.

  My aunt wobbled up the hall with a speed close to that of a charging rhino, and grabbed the blue and white vase which lived on the hall table.

  ‘Go to school!’ she screamed, brandishing the vase in front of me. ‘Go to school or, so help me, I’ll break this over your head.’

  She meant it. I backed along the hallway, groping behind me for the door handle.

  ‘And don’t you dare ask me about him again,’ Aunt Peggy shrieked after me. ‘Don’t you ever dare!’

  7

  Had the electoral boundaries not been changed just prior to its completion, the school entrusted with my education would have been called Councillor Albert Arkwright High, in honour of the Red Alderman who once attempted to have the town declared a socialist republic. Judicious gerrymandering, however, had swept the Tories into power locally, so it was to the Margaret Thatcher High School – known locally as Snatchers – that I dragged myself reluctantly each morning.

  Actually, I soon found there were compensations in going to school – or one compensation, at least. Half-way through my first year, I discovered an interest in girls – and from their shy glances and giggles, I could tell that some of them had discovered an interest in me, too.

  It was a liberating experience, but it was also a confusing one. Mother and I had discussed women at great length, but never girls, and when I considered the advice she’d given me on women, I found it totally inadequate for dealing with my new situation.

  ‘Always be a little gentleman,’ Mother had told me again and again. ‘I know it’s not fashionable these days, but I’ve never been one to follow fashion.’

  But the simple truth was that girls didn’t expect you to open doors for them, or offer them your seat on the bus. Believe me, I know – because I tried it. What girls liked was being punched – as long as the blow was light. What girls really appreciated were hastily scribbled notes which, when smuggled across the classroom to them, would make them blush.

  After the way Mother had brought me up, I didn’t think I could bring myself to hit a girl, even lightly. And as for the letters passed across the classroom, I simply had no idea what to put in one.

  Even if I did get over the first hurdle – the courtship dance – what was I expected to do when I went out on a real date? Still more important than what I was expected to do, what would Mother have th
ought I should do.

  I desperately needed someone to confide in.

  But who?

  There was only really my aunt, and she’d been absolutely no use on the question of my father. Besides, how could I bring myself to put my faith in someone who pretended to love cats, but, in fact, had no time for them? And if that particular slice of hypocrisy were not enough to make me distrust her, there were also the Night Callers.

  ****

  The Night Callers never arrived before midnight, by which time my aunt assumed that I, exhausted by waiting on her hand and foot, must have fallen asleep. And maybe sometimes I did miss a visit, but I saw enough of them to realise that these unsavoury-looking men who kept Aunt Peggy company during the hours of darkness were not exactly model citizens.

  I’m not quite sure how many of them there were – it could have been up to a dozen – but they always followed the same pattern. However dark the night, they always drove their battered Ford Cortinas and coughing Metros up the dirt track which led to Cuddles Farm with their headlights switched off. They would be met at the door by Aunt Peggy, and taken into the living room where – from the evidence of the mess I invariably found in the morning – many cigarettes were smoked and much whisky drunk.

  Occasionally voices would be raised, and the sound of an argument would drift upstairs.

  ‘Two hundred and fifty quid, lady! You’ve got to be joking.’

  ‘That’s the market price. Take it or leave it.’

  ‘I’ll bloody leave it.’

  ‘Then pick up your cat and get out.’

  His cat?

  Yes, that was the point! Each of the Night Callers brought a cat with him – and left without it!

  And what happened to these little moggies once the business downstairs was completed? Were they given the freedom of the sanctuary? No, they were locked in a windowless storeroom at the back of the house – a storeroom, moreover, to which only Aunt Peggy had a key.

  ‘I’m keeping it there until it settles in,’ my aunt explained when the first cat turned up shortly after my arrival at the farm.

  ‘But how will keeping it in a dark room, all by itself, help it to settle in?’ I asked.

  ‘Mind your own business,’ Aunt Peggy said.

  ‘It’ll make a mess.’

  ‘If it does, I’ll clean it up.’

  If I had learned that the cats had organised a Turtles tribute band called the Purrtles, I would have been more shocked than I was at that moment – but not a lot!

  Aunt Peggy? Cleaning up?

  Doing an unpleasant task herself, when it could so easily have been handed on to me?

  I wanted to know the reason behind this strange behaviour – but an orphan dependent on the charity of others soon learns not to ask unwelcome questions.

  ****

  Not all Aunt Peggy’s nocturnal visitors left cats – some took them away. These Night Collectors, as I came to call them, were a better class of unsavoury than the depositors. They drove BMWs and Rovers, and wore suits which were gaudy but expensive.

  I remember leaning from my bedroom window, and listening to Aunt Peggy talking to one of them at the front door.

  ‘Since you’re new at this game, I’ll give a few tips,’ my aunt said. ‘Best thing is to lock it up by itself for a while. A day’s usually enough. Oh, and if I was you, I’d deal with it yourself, rather than leaving it up to one of your lads.’

  ‘I will,’ the man replied. ‘I don’t trust my lads as far as I can throw ’em – they’re all a bunch of crooks.’

  My aunt chuckled.

  Why? I wondered, from my position on the windowsill.

  ‘It’s not too messy if you use rubber gloves,’ Aunt Peggy informed the collector.

  ‘What if I’m in a hurry?’ the man asked.

  Aunt Peggy laughed, nastily. ‘If you’re in a hurry, you can always use the knife,’ she told him. ‘I do, sometimes.’

  The knife? Rubber gloves? It was all beyond me then. But I knew enough not to trust the delicate problem of my adolescent yearnings to someone who could laugh as nastily as my aunt.

  8

  I had just turned thirteen when these adolescent yearnings of mine transformed themselves into something harder, and sex began to raise my ugly head – and the ugly shaft to which it was attached.

  It would happen at the most inconvenient moments. On the school corridor, in the High Street, while pushing a trolley around the supermarket, I would suddenly feel the limp little thing in my underpants take on a life of its own.

  I wasn’t safe anywhere. I had an erection in the Religious Knowledge class once. In the Religious Knowledge class, for God’s sake – right in the middle of the teacher’s explanation of one of the bloodier parts of the Old Testament.

  There was only one place I was sure to be safe from the serpent in my loins, and that was at the bridge table. Yes, after four long years of playing the game in my head, I had finally found my way to a game with real players.

  I started modestly enough as a reserve for the school team, which was otherwise made up entirely of Sixth Formers, but it wasn’t long before my obvious ability shone through, and I was universally acknowledged to be the best player the school had ever had. And from there it was but a small step to the town’s most prestigious bridge club – and into the arms of Mrs Cynthia Harrap.

  Mrs Harrap was in her late thirties, which, in my eyes, made her approximately as old as God’s grandmother. Yet despite her great age, she was still a stunning woman. She was a blonde – though not a natural one, as I was later to find out – with big, sensuous eyes and a wide, inviting mouth. Her legs were long, her waist only slightly thickening as middle age set in, and her breasts, while not the huge mounds of some of my adolescent wet dreams, were firm and rounded. She was charming and witty and kind, and, on looks alone, deserved to be married to a Paul Newman or a Steve McQueen.

  Archie Harrap, her husband, had none of the Hollywood star qualities, but had probably been quite a good-looking man in his youth. In middle age, however, he had allowed his stomach to bulge and his chins to multiply, and his hair – perhaps in protest at the way he had treated the rest of his body – was already starting to desert him. None of which mattered of course – ‘You must never judge anyone by their appearance, Bobby,’ Mother used to say – and I’m sure we could have got on well together if he hadn’t been such a crashing, insensitive bore.

  ‘Find a gap in the market, and plug it – that’s what you have to do, Bobby,’ he advised me, one night at the bridge club, when, despite my best efforts to avoid him, he had managed to force me into a corner. ‘I’ve got a boat on Lake Windermere and a cottage in Wales – both of them paid for – and how do you think I managed that?’

  ‘By finding a gap in the market, and plugging it?’ I asked.

  ‘By finding a gap in the market, and plugging it,’ he repeated. ‘When I started out with my luxury customised brass knockers and door handles, most of my business associates thought I’d gone off my chump. ‘You’ll never sell them,’ they said. But let me tell you, those are the very people who are queuing for my knockers now – and there’s an eighteen-month waiting list.’

  ‘How interesting,’ I said, hoping my tone would be enough of a hint that I was lying.

  ‘Clem Watkins, who owns the chain of Watkins’ Butchers, has got all his handles shaped like pork chops. Tompkins, the long distance haulier, has his shaped like wagons. Even my own wife is one of my customers – and what do you think she commissioned?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ I confessed.

  ‘What’s the first think you think of when you think of Cynthia?’ Harrap demanded.

  Breasts that could smother you! I thought. Long wonderful legs that could lock behind your back and nearly break your spine!

  ‘I don’t know,’ I told him.

  ‘You’re a bit thick, aren’t you, lad?’ Harrap said. ‘Hers are made to look like playing ca
rds, spread out like a bridge hand.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ I said, as the thought of Cynthia’s breasts and legs did its work on the beast within my underpants.

  ‘So what do you do to earn a crust?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m still at school,’ I replied wearily.

  ‘You may well be, but it’s never too early to start thinking about earning your first million,’ Harrap said. ‘Why, when I was your age, I was already breeding rabbits and selling them to the local butcher.’ He paused. ‘You’ve got that cat sanctuary, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, there you are then – you should sell a few of the moggies off for scientific research.’

  ‘I couldn’t do that,’ I told him.

  ‘There’s no room for sentimentality in this world,’ Harrap said. ‘It’s dog eat dog, and if you don’t watch yourself—’

  I don’t know what exactly I might have said next – though I’d probably have broken Mother’s cardinal rule about being polite to everybody – but fortunately, at that very moment, Mrs Harrap appeared on the scene.

  ‘I’m ready to go home now,’ she said.

  ‘Right-ho,’ her husband agreed.

  She smiled at me. ‘Good night, Bobby.’

  Then, in a movement that was so quick I almost missed it, she glanced down at my crotch and her smile became much wider – and much more amused.

  ‘Good night, Mrs Harrap,’ I said, feeling myself reddening.

  The Harraps turned towards the door, then Mrs Harrap turned back.

  ‘I’ve just had an idea,’ she said.

  Archie Harrap chuckled. ‘You’re always in trouble when a woman starts having ideas, Bobby,’ he said. ‘And what is this idea of yours, my love?’

  ‘You’re away next week, aren’t you?’ Mrs Harrap asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ Harrap confirmed. ‘I’m attending the biggest brass novelty trade fair in Europe, Bobby – and not just as a delegate, but as a keynote speaker.’

  ‘So I was thinking of having a bridge evening at home on – say – Wednesday,’ Mrs Harrap continued. ‘Would you be free to partner me, Bobby?’