Travels with my aunt / Путешествие с тетушкой. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“I have kept mine. I can still sit upon it,” She added surprisingly, “‘Rapunzel[13], Rapunzel, let down your hair’. Not that I could have ever let it down from a second-floor flat.”

“Aren’t you disturbed by the noise from the bar?”

“Oh no. And the bar is very convenient if I suddenly run short. I just send Wordsworth[14] down”.

“Who is Wordsworth?”

“I call him Wordsworth because I can’t bring myself to call him Zachary. All the eldest sons in his family have been called Zachary for generations – after Zachary Macaulay, who did so much for them on Clapham Common. The surname was adopted from the bishop not the poet.”

“He’s your valet?”

“Let us say he attends to my wants. A very gentle sweet strong person. But don’t let him ask you for a CTC. He receives quite enough from me.”

“What is a CTC?”

“That is what they called any tip or gift in Sierra Leone when he was a boy during the war. The initials belonged to Cape to Cairo cigarettes, which all the sailors handed out generously.”

My aunt’s conversation went too quickly for my understanding, so that I was not really prepared for the very large middle-aged Negro wearing a striped butcher’s apron who opened the door when my aunt rang.

“Why, Wordsworth,” she said with a touch of coquetry, “you’ve been washing up breakfast without waiting for me.” He stood there glaring at me, and I wondered whether he expected a CTC before he would let me pass.

“This is my nephew, Wordsworth,” my aunt said.

“You be telling me whole truth, woman?”

“Of course I am. Oh, Wordsworth, Wordsworth!” she added with tender banter.

He let us in. The lights were on in the living-room, now that the day had darkened, and my eyes were dazzled for a moment by rays from the glass ornaments which flashed back from every open space. There were angels on the buffet wearing robes striped like peppermint rock; and in an alcove there was a Madonna with a gold face and a gold halo and a blue robe. On a sideboard on a gold stand stood a navy-blue goblet, large enough to hold at least four bottles of wine, with a gold trellis curled around the bowl on which pink roses grew and green ivy. There were mauve storks on the bookshelves and red swans and blue fish. Black girls in scarlet dresses held green candle sconces, and shining down on all this was a chandelier which might have been made out of sugar icing hung with pale-blue, pink, and yellow blossoms.

“Venice once meant a lot to me[15]”, my aunt said rather unnecessarily.

I don’t pretend to be a judge of these things, but I thought the effect exaggerated and not in the best of taste.

“Such wonderful craftsmanship,” my aunt said. “Wordsworth, be a dear and fetch us two whiskies. Augusta feels a teeny bit sad after the sad sad ceremony.” She spoke to him as though he were a child – or a lover, but that relationship I was reluctant to accept.

“Everything go O.K.?” Wordsworth asked. “No bad medicine?”

“There was no contretemps[16]”, my aunt said. “Oh gracious, Henry, you haven’t forgotten your parcel?”

“No, no, I have it here.”

“I think perhaps Wordsworth had better put it in the refrigerator.”

“Quite unnecessary, Aunt Augusta. Ashes don’t deteriorate.”

“No, I suppose not. How silly of me. But let Wordsworth put it in the kitchen just the same. We don’t want to be reminded all the time of my poor sister. Now let me show you my room. I have more of my Venice treasures there.”

She had indeed. Her dressing-table gleamed with them: mirrors and powder-jars and ash-trays and bowls for safety pins. “They brighten the darkest day,” she said. There was a very large double-bed as curlicued as the glass. “I am especially attached to Venice,” she explained, “because I began my real career there, and my travels. I have always been very fond of travel. It’s a great grief to me that my travels now are curtailed.”

“Age strikes us all before we know it,” I said.

“Age? I was not referring to age. I hope I don’t look all that decrepit, Henry, but I like having a companion and Wordsworth is very occupied now because he’s studying to enter the London School of Economics. This is Wordsworth’s snuggery,” and she opened the door of an adjoining room. It was crowded with glass Disney figures and worse – all the grinning mice and cats and hares from inferior American cartoon films, blown with as much care as the chandelier.

“From Venice too,” my aunt said, “clever but not so pretty. I thought them suitable, however, for a man’s room.”

“Does he like them?”

“He spends very little time there,” my aunt said, “what with his studies and everything else…”

“I wouldn’t like to wake up to them,” I said.

“He seldom does.”