by Kate Morton
I don’t know much about siblings, but I’m quite sure no two sisters have ever been less alike. Mum is reserved, Rita is not; Mum favours neat-as-a-pin court shoes, Rita serves breakfast in heels; Mum is a locked vault when it comes to family stories, Rita is the willing font of all knowledge. I know this firsthand. When I was nine and Mum went to hospital to have her gallstones removed, Dad packed me a bag and sent me to Rita’s. I’m not sure whether my aunt somehow intuited that the sapling in the doorway was way out of touch with her roots, or whether I besieged her with questions, or whether she just saw it as a chance to aggravate Mum and strike a blow in an ancient war, but she took it upon herself that week to fill in many blanks.
She showed me yellowed photographs on the wall, told me funny stories of the way things had been when she was my age, and painted a vivid picture with colours and smells and long-ago voices that made me starkly aware of something I’d already opaquely known. The house where I lived, the family in which I was growing up, was a sanitary, lonely place. I remember lying on the small spare mattress at Rita’s house as my four cousins filled the room with their soft snores and fidgety sleep noises, wishing she were my mother instead; that I lived in a warm, cluttered house stretching at the seams with siblings and old stories. I remember, too, the instant rush of liquid guilt as the thought formed in my mind; screwing my eyes tight shut and picturing my disloyal wish as a piece of knotted silk, untying it in my mind then conjuring a wind to blow it away as if it had never been.
But it had.
Anyway. It was early July and hot the day I reported in; the sort of hot you carry in your lungs. I knocked on the glass door and, as I did so, caught a glimpse of my own tired reflection. Let me just say, carving out sofa real-estate with a flatulent dog does nothing for one’s complexion. I peered beyond the ‘Closed’ sign and saw Auntie Rita sitting at a card table in the back, cigarette dangling from her bottom lip as she examined something small and white in her hands. She waved me in. ‘Edie, luvvie,’ she said over the welcome bell and The Supremes, ‘lend me your eyes, will you, poppet?’
It’s a little like stepping back in time, visiting Auntie Rita’s shop. The black and white chessboard tiles, the bank of leather-look lounge chairs with lime-green cushions, the pearly eggcup hairdriers on retractable arms. Posters of Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross and The Temptations framed behind glass. The unchanging smell of peroxide and next-door’s chip grease, locked in mortal combat.
‘I’ve been trying to thread this blasted thing through there and there,’ Rita said around her cigarette, ‘but as if it’s not bad enough that my fingers have turned to thumbs, the bloody ribbon’s upped and grown a mind of its own.’
She thrust it towards me and with a bit of squinting I realized it was a small lacy bag with holes in the top where a drawstring should be.
‘They’re favours for Sam’s hens,’ Auntie Rita said, nodding at a box of identical bags by her feet. ‘Well, they will be once we’ve made ’em up and filled ’em with goodies.’ She dumped the ash from her cigarette. ‘Kettle’s just boiled, but I’ve got some lemonade in the fridge if you’d rather?’
My throat contracted at the mere suggestion. ‘I’d love one.’
It’s not a word you’d normally think to associate with your mother’s sister, but it’s true so I’ll say it: she’s saucy, my auntie Rita. Watching her as she poured our lemonades, rounded bottom stretching her skirt in all the right places, waist still small despite four babies more than thirty years ago, I could well believe the few anecdotes I’d gleaned from Mum over the years. Without exception these had been delivered in the form of warnings about the things good girls didn’t do, however they’d had a rather unintended effect: cementing for me the admirable legend of Auntie Rita, rabble-rouser.
‘Here you are then, luvvie.’ She handed me a martini glass spitting bubbles and harrumphed into her own chair, prodding at her beehive with both sets of fingers. ‘Phew,’ she said, ‘what a day. Lord – you look as tired as I feel!’
I swallowed a glorious lemon sip, fierce bubbles singeing my throat. The Tempations started crooning ‘My Girl’ and I said, ‘I didn’t think you opened Sundays?’
‘I don’t, not as a habit, but one of my old dears needed a rinse and set for a funeral – not her own, mercifully – and I didn’t have the heart to turn her away. You do what you must, don’t you? Like family some of them.’ She inspected the bag I’d threaded, tightened the drawstring, loosened it again, long pink fingernails clacking together. ‘Good girl. Only twenty more to go.’
I saluted as she handed me another.
‘Anyway, gives me a chance to get a bit of work in for the wedding: away from prying eyes.’ She widened her own briefly before narrowing them like shutters. ‘That Sam of mine’s a nosey one, always was, even as a girl. Used to scale the cupboards looking for where I’d stashed the Christmas goodies, then she’d dazzle her brothers and sisters by guessing what was wrapped beneath the tree.’ She drew a fresh cigarette from the packet on the table, said; ‘Little beggar,’ and struck a match. The cigarette tip flared hopefully then settled. ‘How about you then? Young girl like you oughta have better things to be doing with her Sunday.’
‘Better than this?’ I held up my second little white bag, ribbon in place. ‘What could be better than this?’
‘Cheeky mare,’ she said, and her smile reminded me of Gran in a way that Mum’s never does. I’d adored Gran with a might that belied any suspicions I’d had growing up that I must surely be adopted. She’d lived alone for as long as I’d known her, and though, as she was quick to point out, she’d had her share of offers, she refused to remarry and be an old man’s slave when she knew what it was to be a young man’s darling. There was a lid for each pot, she’d told me often and soberly, and she thanked God she’d found her lid in my grandfather. I never met Gran’s husband, Mum’s father, not that I remembered: he died when I was three and on the few occasions I thought to ask about him, Mum, with her distaste for rehashing the past, had always been quick to skim the subject’s surface. Rita, thank goodness, had been more forthcoming. ‘So,’ she said, ‘how’d you get on then?’
‘I got on very well.’ I fossicked inside my bag for my notes, unfolded them and read out the name Sarah had given me: ‘The Roxy Club. Phone number’s on here, too.’ Auntie Rita wriggled her fingers at me and I handed her the paper. She puckered her lips as tight as the top of the little drawstring bags. ‘The Roxy Club,’ she repeated. ‘And it’s a nice place? Classy?’
‘According to my sources.’
‘Good girl.’ She refolded the paper, tucked it into her bra strap and winked at me. ‘Your turn next, eh, Edie?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Down the aisle.’
I smiled weakly, lifted a shoulder to flick away the comment.
‘How long’s it been now, you and your fellow – six, is it?’
‘Seven.’
‘Seven years.’ She cocked her head. ‘He’d be wanting to make an honest woman of you soon else you’ll be getting the itch and moving on. Doesn’t he know what a fine catch he’s got? You want me to have a good talk to him?’
Even if not for the fact that I was trying to conceal a break-up, it was a scary thought. ‘Actually, Auntie Rita – ’ I wondered how best to put her off without revealing too much – ‘I’m not sure either one of us is the marrying kind.’
She drew on her cigarette, one eye narrowing slightly as she considered me. ‘That right?’
‘Afraid so.’ This was a lie. Partly. I was, and remain, most definitely the marrying kind. My acceptance, throughout our relationship, of Jamie’s sneering scepticism towards wedded bliss was at complete odds with my naturally romantic sensibilities. I offer no defence other than to say that, in my experiences when you love someone you’ll do just about anything to keep them.
On the back of a slow exhalation Rita’s gaze seemed to shift gears, from disbelief, through perplexity, arriving finally at weary acceptan
ce. ‘Well, maybe you’ve got the right idea. It just happens to you, life, you know; happens while you’re not watching. You meet someone, you go riding in his car, you marry him and have a batch of children. Then one day you realize you’ve got nothing in common. You know you used to, you must have – why else would you have married the fellow? – but the sleepless nights, the disappointments, the worry. The shock of having more life behind than in front. Well – ’ she smiled at me as if she’d given me a recipe for pie rather than the desire to stick my head in an oven – ‘that’s life, isn’t it?’
‘That’s glorious, Auntie Rita. Make sure you put that in your wedding speech.’
‘Cheeky thing.’
With Auntie Rita’s pep talk still hanging in the smoky haze, we each engaged in private struggle with a tiny white bag. The record player kept spinning, Rita hummed as a man with a molten voice urged us to take a good look at his smile, and finally I could stand it no longer. Much as I enjoy seeing Rita, I’d come with an ulterior motive. Mum and I had barely spoken since our meeting at the patisserie; I’d cancelled our next scheduled coffee date, pleading a backlog at work, and even found myself screening her phone calls when she rang my machine. I suppose my feelings were hurt. Does it sound hopelessly juvenile to say so? I hope not because it’s true. Mum’s continued refusal to trust me, her adamant denial that we’d visited the castle gates, her insistence that it was I who had invented the whole thing, caused a small spot inside my chest to ache, and made me more determined than ever to learn the truth. And now I’d skipped the family roast again, put Mum’s nose even further out of joint, ventured across town in shoe-melting heat: I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, I mustn’t leave without some gold. ‘Auntie Rita?’ I said.
‘Hmm?’ She scowled at the ribbon that had knotted itself in her fingers.
‘There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.’
‘Hmm?’
‘About Mum.’
A look so sharp it scratched. ‘She all right?’
‘Oh yes, fine. It’s nothing like that. I’ve just been thinking a bit about the past.’
‘Ah. That’s different then, isn’t it, the past. Which particular bit of the past were you thinking of?’
‘The war.’
She set down her little bag. ‘Well now.’
I proceeded with caution. Auntie Rita loves to talk but this, I knew, was a touchy subject. ‘You were evacuated, you and Mum and Uncle Ed.’
‘We were. Briefly. Ghastly experience it was, too. All that talk of clean air? Load of bollocks. No one tells you about the stink of the countryside, the piles of steaming shite every place you care to tread. And they called us dirty! I’ve never been able to look at cows or country folk the same way since; couldn’t wait to get back and take my chances with the bombs.’
‘How about Mum? Did she feel the same way?’
A swift, suspicious flicker. ‘Why? What’s she told you?’
‘Nothing. She’s told me nothing.’
Rita returned her attention to the little white bag, but there was a self-consciousness in her downturned eyes. I could almost see her biting her tongue to stop the flow of things she wanted to say but suspected she shouldn’t.
Disloyalty burned in my veins but I knew it was my best chance. Each of my next words singed a little: ‘You know what she’s like.’
Auntie Rita sniffed sharply and caught the whiff of allegiance. She pursed her lips and regarded me a sidelong moment before inclining her head towards mine. ‘She loved it, your mum. Didn’t want to come home again.’ Bewilderment glistened in her eyes and I knew I’d struck an old and aching nerve. ‘What kind of a child doesn’t want to be with her own parents, her own people? What kind of a child would rather stay with another family?’
A child who felt out of place, I thought, remembering my own guilty whispers into the dark corners of my cousins’ bedroom. A child who felt as if they were stuck somewhere they didn’t belong. But I didn’t say anything. I had a feeling that for someone like my aunt who’d had the good fortune to find herself exactly where she fitted, no explanation would make sense. ‘Maybe she was frightened of the bombs,’ I said eventually. My voice was rocky and I coughed a little to clear the gravel. ‘The Blitz?’
‘Pah. She wasn’t frightened, no more than the rest of us. Other kids wanted to be back in the thick of things. All the kids in our street came home, went down into the shelters together. Your uncle?’ Rita’s eyes took on a reverence befitting the mention of my feted Uncle Ed. ‘Thumbed his way back from Kent, he did; he was that keen to get home once the action started. Arrived on the doorstep in the middle of a raid, just in time to shepherd the simple lad from next door to safety. But not Merry, oh no. She was the opposite. Wouldn’t come home until our dad went down there himself and dragged her back. Our mum, your gran, she never got over it. Never said as much, that wasn’t her way, she pretended like she was glad Merry was safe and sound in the countryside, but we knew. We weren’t blind.’
I couldn’t meet my aunt’s fierce gaze: I felt tarred by the brush of disloyalty, guilty by association. Mum’s betrayal of Rita was real still, an enmity that burned across the fifty-year gulf between then and now. ‘When was that?’ I said, starting on a new white bag, innocent as you please. ‘How long had she been away?’
Auntie Rita drilled her bottom lip with a long baby-pink talon, a butterfly painted on the tip. ‘Let me see now, the bombs had been going a while but it wasn’t winter because my dad brought primroses back with him; he was that keen to soften your gran up, make everything go as easy as it could. That was Dad.’ The fingernail tapped a thinking rhythm. ‘Must’ve been sometime in 1941. March, April, thereabouts.’
She’d been honest in that, then. Mum had been gone for just over a year and had come home from Milderhurst six months before Juniper Blythe suffered the heartbreak that destroyed her, before Thomas Cavill promised to marry her then left her stranded. ‘Did she ever—’
A blast of ‘Hot Shoe Shuffle’ drowned me out. Auntie Rita’s novelty stiletto telephone jittered away on the counter.
Don’t answer it, I pleaded silently, desperate that nothing be allowed to disturb our conversation now that it was finally up and flying.
‘That’s as like to be Sam,’ said Rita, ‘spying on me.’
I nodded and the two of us sat out the last few bars, after which I wasted no time steering us back on track. ‘Did Mum ever talk about her time at Milderhurst? About the people she’d been staying with? The Blythe sisters?’
Rita’s eyes rolled like a pair of marbles. ‘It was all she’d talk about at first. Gave us the pip, I can tell you. Only time I saw her looking happy was when a letter arrived from that place. All secretive she was; refused to open them until she was alone.’
I remembered Mum’s account of being left by Rita in the evacuation line at the hall in Kent. ‘You and she weren’t close as kids.’
‘We were sisters – there’d have been something wrong if we didn’t fight now and then, living on top of each other like we did in Mum and Dad’s little house . . . We got on all right, though. Until the war, that is, until she met that lot.’ Rita speared the last cigarette from the packet, lit up and shot a jet of smoke doorwards. ‘She was different after she got back and not just the way she spoke. She’d got all sorts of ideas, up there in her castle.’
‘What kind of ideas?’ I asked, but I already knew. A defensiveness had crept into Rita’s voice that I recognized: the hurt of a person who feels themselves to have suffered by unfair comparison.
‘Ideas.’ The pink fingernails of one hand frisked the air near her beehive and I feared she’d said all she was going to. She contemplated the door, lips moving as they chewed over the various answers she could give. After what seemed an age, she met my eyes again. The cassette had finished and the salon was unusually quiet; rather, the absence of music gave the building space to hiss and creak, to complain wearily about the heat, the smell, the slow toll of the passing years.
Auntie Rita set her chin and spoke in a slow, clear voice: ‘She came back a snob. There, I’ve said it. She went away one of us and she came back a snob.’
Something I’d always sensed was made solid: my dad, the way he felt about my aunt and cousins and even my gran, hushed conversations between him and Mum, my own observations of the different ways things were done at our place and at Rita’s. Mum and Dad were snobs and I felt embarrassed for them and embarrassed for me, and then, confusingly, angry with Rita for saying it and ashamed of myself for encouraging her to do so. My vision blurred as I pretended to focus on the white bag I was threading.
Auntie Rita, conversely, was lightened. Relief spilled across her face and seemed to radiate beyond. The untold truth was a wound that had waited decades for someone to lance. ‘Book learning,’ Rita spat, crushing her cigarette butt, ‘that’s all she wanted to talk about once she got back. Walked into our house, turned her nose up at the small rooms and our dad’s labouring songs, and took up residence at the lending library. Hid in corners with one book or another when she should’ve been helping out. Talked a lot of bosh about writing for the newspapers, too. Sent things off and all! Can you imagine?’
My mouth actually fell open. Meredith Burchill did not write; she certainly did not send things off to the newspapers. I’d have assumed Rita was embellishing, only the news was so perfectly confounding it simply had to be true. ‘Were they published?’
‘Of course not! And that’s just what I’m saying: that’s the sort of mumbo-jumbo they put in her head. Gave her ideas above her station, they did, and there’s only one place those ideas take you.’
‘What were they like, the things she wrote? What were they about?’
‘I wouldn’t know. She never showed them to me. Probably thought I wouldn’t understand. Anyway, I wouldn’t have had the time: I’d met Bill by then, and I’d started here. There was a war on, you know.’ Rita laughed, but sourness deepened the lines around her mouth; I’d never noticed them before.
