Aunt Sass Read online

  A houseful of servants revolved about Aunt Sass, forming a sort of inner circle within the larger one of the family. In spite of these she always insisted on washing the best china herself after tea. ‘In order to preserve it!’ she explained, though she never failed to chip off a handle or crack a saucer. She also made her own marmalade for no better reason than that her mother had done so before her. Shrouded in an enormous apron, she would stand over the pan stirring the yellow mess, spilling it over the stove and blaming the cook for the stove being there to be spilt on. It was a nauseous concoction, tasting of burnt peel and, oddly enough, carrots. But as an honour Aunt Sass classed it with the V.C. or the Ribbon of the Garter and nobody, except herself (she never touched marmalade!), was game to refuse it at breakfast. Her friends, also, were presumed to have received something in the nature of a knighthood when a pot was presented to them. Time and again I have sat with Aunt Sass when she opened her letters and heard her remark ‘Mrs Belmore thanks me for my delicious marmalade,’ or ‘Such satisfying conserve, says Colonel Whyte-Thompson.’ I used to wonder what Mrs Belmore and the Colonel did with it, and where they would go when they died.

  Aunt Sass could never forgive a tale-telling child. Yet she herself was one of the greatest gossips that ever breathed. Nobody’s affairs were safe from her. She could keep an essential secret royally but could never resist speeding a rumour on its way. It was a point of honour with her to do so, rather as one redirects carrier pigeons that land on one’s lawn. I once heard her telephone twenty-five people in one evening to acquaint them with the news of a distant relative’s runaway marriage.

  ‘Marry in haste and repent at leisure–that’s what I say!’ she remarked gleefully at the end of each conversation, having left the reputation of the couple in shreds. The next day, however, I was ordered to pack up a dozen pots of marmalade to be despatched to them special delivery and was nearly disinherited for discovering under the smallest pot a large cheque made out to the lovers.

  When it came to argument, particularly argument between the sexes, Aunt Sass had a profound conviction that all women–with the single exception of herself–were wrong and all men splendidly right. If anybody had charged her with the incontrovertible fact that her greatest and most subtle kindnesses were to women, she would have snorted and made the excuse that women, being lesser creatures, needed it more. I remember coming back from one of my grim walks with Elizabeth and remarking inadvertently that three verses of ‘God Save the King’ were played as we passed the church.

  ‘Stuff!’ said Aunt Sass. ‘Don’t stand there like an idiot talking such stupid nonsense. They never play three verses of “God Save the King”.’

  ‘But they did today, Miss Sass!’ Elizabeth supplemented inexorably.

  ‘Hold your tongue, Elizabeth! You and the child are a pair of silly females. There’s the doorbell. It’s probably Major Caraway.’

  And Major Caraway it was, cautiously tottering in on his withered old legs.

  ‘Miss Saraset, Miss Saraset,’ he quavered eagerly, ‘I’ve just dropped in on my way from church and—’

  ‘Major! Did they or did they not play three verses of “God Save the King”?’ Aunt Sass looked at Elizabeth and me triumphantly, ready to confound us.

  ‘Oh, indeed they did, Miss Saraset. And so beautifully, so moving, so—’

  ‘I quite agree, Major! Very beautiful. Especially the second verse!’ Aunt Sass’s volte-face was almost girlishly gay, though privately she flashed me a warning glare that defied me to say ‘I told you so!’

  ‘But tell me, Major,’ she went on archly, ‘why did they play three verses?’

  ‘Why? But haven’t you heard, Miss Saraset? Why–peace has been declared!’

  Peace! The two pairs of old eyes gazed at each other and the old mouths stiffened to hide their trembling. Peace! Now with childhood behind me I can imagine their thoughts. The silent communications of Miss Saraset and Major Caraway. ‘For the little time that is left,’ said their eyes, ‘we can sit in the sun without fear. No more sons and nephews will be taken from us, no more beautiful, bright young men. We will sit quietly, healing ourselves of the ones we have lost, watching the grandchildren growing and life settling again into a pattern we can understand.’ I am part of that pattern now and can look back over its jagged bitter shapes to the hope they had for it. But at that time their emotion was quite incomprehensible. To the children the war was a place rather than an activity, the place towards which handsome young men with feathers in their hats marched through the streets and went aboard waiting ships. What could be the matter with Aunt Sass and the Major? Look–tears in their eyes!

  ‘Elizabeth!’ growled Aunt Sass. ‘A bottle of wine and four glasses!’

  When the wine came she filled three goblets, one for the Major, one for Elizabeth and one for herself. Then she poured a red trickle into the fourth. ‘Drink, child,’ she said gruffly, her eyes gentle with tears, ‘drink, for the peace is for you!’ And then, lest that glance should have been perceived or, worse still, comprehended, she added fiercely, ‘And kindly do not spill it on that frock!’

  A casual observer, meeting Aunt Sass for the first time, might have been excused for assuming that such a grim bulldog of an old lady could have hardly a friend to her name. But the fact was that she was surrounded by literally hundreds of people to whom she was, though she seemed quite unaware of it, an object of adoration. When she came downstairs for the first time after breaking her hip she had to slash her way with a stick through a thick jungle of flowers. Her old postman was reported to have put in a yearly application for a larger pension because of the extra labour of carrying Aunt Sass’s correspondence. Once, at a race meeting, I saw part of the crowd suddenly leave the rails in the middle of a race and rush towards the green. Thinking it was either royalty or an accident, I rushed too. But it was only a very old lady stalking across the grass on the arm of a Jockey Club steward, growling out greetings as she came. Miss Christina Saraset had decided, after twenty years of seclusion, to go to the Races!

  None of these people, perhaps, could have explained why they loved her. She had no imagination in the accepted sense, no graceful phrases. The best she could say of a beautiful person or a lovely object was ‘Pretty!’ Yet the sleepless humanity hidden behind that crusty exterior reached out to every heart that came in contact with her. The gruff words were immediately discounted by the smile that lit the grim face with a radiance more moving than beauty.

  Her reaction to suffering and sorrow was direct and complete. Inarticulate in words, she was richly articulate when it came to deeds. When my father died suddenly, leaving a nursery full of young children, she travelled seven hundred miles through scorching sub-tropical country to my mother, that beloved niece whom she herself had brought up from babyhood.

  ‘Meg!’ she said. It was all she knew how to say but I saw her face as the two women tenderly embraced. The little chestnut head went down on the gaunt square shoulder. Above it bent the sparse grey head and the face ravaged with sorrow and compassion. In the cool shadowy hall, smelling of sunlight and flowers, that look of hers told me what perhaps I already knew–that in the face of death there is nothing to be said. Perhaps, indeed, there is nothing to be said about anything.

  ‘You and the children will come to me!’ She shook herself and gave the order like a sergeant on parade. And my mother merely nodded obediently and began to pack. A week later we were all in Aunt Sass’s front hall being warned against knocking over the marble bust of Sir Walter Scott (‘given by him to your great-grandfather’), to refrain from picking at the wallpaper (‘one of the best you’re ever likely to see!’) and on no account to startle or annoy the reigning Tinker and Badger. The next thing we knew we were all sitting around the luncheon table hearing Aunt Sass descant unfavourably on our table manners, upbringing, personal appearance and ghastly futures. One after another the children melted into tears and were ordered from the table. Eventually, my mother could bear it no longe
r and left the room, weeping. I alone remained. She glared at me and through a maddening haze of tears I glared back.

  ‘And now, I suppose, you’ll break down and go, too!’ she said jeeringly, taking the last handful of cherries.

  ‘I will not, you old Beast!’ I shouted to her. ‘I’m not crying, it’s only my eyes!’

  At that I saw the light kindle in the fierce old face, a leaping joy at finding an adversary that would stand up to her and not give one inch of ground.

  ‘Here,’ she said, ‘take the cherries to the little ones and tell your mother Aunt Sass is a bitter old woman and that she didn’t mean a word of it.’

  ‘I will take the cherries,’ I said, ‘but I will never forgive you, ever!’

  The light flickered again. After that it never went out between us. For the rest of her life we fought with all the bitterness of true affection.

  ‘I’ll not go out with you in that hat!’

  ‘Very well, Aunt Sass. I’ll go by myself!’ A pause.

  ‘Why do you have to turn yourself into a monstrosity? I’m ashamed to be seen with you. Get into the car!’

  And later: ‘Writing? Faugh! Why can’t you leave that to journalists!’ And then, grudgingly, ‘You probably get it from my great-uncle Edward. He wrote a book of religious sonnets, privately printed at his own expense.’

  I spurned Great-great-great-uncle Edward. If it had to come from somewhere, though I could not see why, I was in favour of my father.

  ‘Don’t be an idiot!’ she spluttered. ‘Ireland! Nothing but rain and rebels and a gabble of Gaelic. You couldn’t have got it from there!’ Then, with unwilling interest, ‘Will you do it by hand or shall I give you a typing machine?’

  Later still: ‘What’s all this I hear about you going to England? Ridiculous nonsense! You were always a fool. Well, how much is the fare–I’ll send you a cheque for it!’

  It was in England that I saw her for the last time. She took her last sea-voyage for the wedding of a great-niece. She was then ninety and I was shocked to find that the tall dominating woman had shrunk to the level of my shoulder. She looked like a little old witch. Where was the giantess, the frightening fairy-tale figure who in my childhood had seemed immense enough to knock against the stars and hold counsel with God? Gone for ever, down the hill towards death. Her native quality, however, was unshrinkable, and the family had to use force to prevent her cutting the cake herself with the bridegroom’s sword.

  It was on this occasion that I took her the first results of her gift of a ‘typing machine’. She took the book in her hand and regarded it long and silently, smoothing it over and over with her stiff straight fingers. Then she opened it and looked at the dedication–in memory of my mother–and turned away sharply so that I should not see her face. ‘She would have been pleased. My Meg would have been pleased,’ she said gruffly. Then, facing me with all her old fierceness, ‘The cover’s pretty enough. I trust the inside is as good!’

  (Oh, Aunt Sass, do you think you can fool me still? Sitting there glaring, defying me to the end? I know you, Christina Saraset–you naked and vulnerable inside the horny armour! You small and desolate in the straight-backed chair, shaken by the movement of life. You are not crying, are you, Christina–it is only your eyes!)

  She took the book and put it aside to read in private, away from my searching gaze. I never saw her again. She set out next day for Australia. Something must have happened to her on that voyage; for it was when she arrived at her home-land that the change came. For the first time in her life she fell ill. It was not a real illness, merely old age. But it stretched her on her bed and drew a curtain of unconsciousness over her. We waited for news of the end.

  Then, as suddenly and irrelevantly, she rallied. Death itself was no match for Aunt Sass. She woke up, saw the sunlight and began life again.

  ‘She’ll top the century after all!’ said a hopeful great-nephew.

  But the Aunt Sass who woke up was a new one on us all. The old gruffness, the fierce egotism were gone. She was concerned and anxious now to reveal the heart that had hidden so long behind it. It was as if, knowing her time to be short, she must hasten to let the light appear through the thinning crust of flesh. We had always been aware of the light but now it was she, the secret one, who was anxious to reveal it. That stretch of dark unconsciousness had taught her how not to be self-conscious. Her defences were down at last.

  Letter after letter came to England, passionate in pride and tenderness, more like the notes of a lover than the usual communications of a great-aunt. They were the eager, stumbling phrases of one who having long been dumb, at length finds his voice. We shared them among us, marvelling. What would Aunt Sass do next?

  The last was written to that sister ‘your Great-aunt Jane’ whom of all people in the world she had most tenderly loved. It said in closing—

  The moon is coming up behind the wattle trees. Spreading and beautiful. It is almost as bright as the sun. Soon it will fill the whole harbour with its light. I love you all. I have had a long and happy life. God bless you. Goodnight.

  The writing trailed away at the end in a waving line like the path of a comet. She died as her hand left the paper. And with her died something that the world will not gladly lose, something strong and faithful and tender. A human being that had cast off its rough outer skin to stand forth at last in beauty. A mind that was proud and incorruptible and a heart compact of love.

  When I heard of it, I thought to myself, ‘Some day, in spite of her, I shall commit the “disrespectful vulgarity” of putting Aunt Sass in a book.’

  And then it occurred to me that this had already been done, though unconsciously and without intent. We write more than we know we are writing. We do not guess at the roots that made our fruit. I suddenly realised that there is a book through which Aunt Sass, stern and tender, secret and proud, anonymous and loving, stalks with her silent feet.

  You will find her occasionally in the pages of Mary Poppins.

  To these children for Christmas

  Greg and Susanna Coward,

  Pamela and William Russell,

  Richard and Ann Orage,

  Miranda, Jane and Julian Mackintosh,

  Eric and Anthony Reynal,

  Joan and John Hitchcock,

  Judith and Simon Stanton,

  Angela Reeves

  and

  John Camillus Travers

  I was ten when I first met him. The place was a sugar plantation in the tropics of Australia, and the day juts out like a promontory from the level lands of memory. It is linked with another important occasion, the day when Sam Foo dropped the pan of boiling fat on his foot. That, too, was something to remember. For it meant the end of tapioca pudding.

  But I must begin at the beginning. At that time it was customary to have Chinese cooks on the plantations, and for a year we had suffered from the ministrations of Sam Foo. We never knew whether he thought white children really throve on an almost daily diet of tapioca or whether he was just plain lazy. Whichever it was, justice was at last meted out to him. An invisible avenging angel tipped the pan sideways one day and the next thing we knew Sam Foo, recumbent on a stretcher, was being carried through the cane-fields to an ambulance. Amid general acclamation he departed, shrieking with anguish.

  But the loss of a cook in those outlying parts is fun only for the children. The cane was ready for cutting and not a man could be spared from the fields. The lubras (aboriginal women) shied away from the cook-stove as though its flames were the tongues of the devil. That left only our mother and Kate Clancy, the Irish nurse–both of them as temperamental, as far as cooking went, as any Hollywood star. After a succession of meals cooked by them it was possible to think of Sam Foo with kindness–even nostalgia.

  Then one day, apparently out of nowhere, Ah Wong walked in. He was thin, where Sam had been fat; he was old and wrinkled where Sam had been young and moon-faced. Sam had waddled; Ah Wong had a light tripping step that was almost a run. But th
e distinctions did not end there. The most wonderful difference was that from under Ah Wong’s hat there swung, long and black and shiny, a pigtail. Sam Foo had been short-haired, a modern Chinese. But here was a Chinese out of a fairy story.

  ‘Melly Clismus!’ he remarked in greeting, though Christmas was long past. ‘Me Ah Wong. Me sit-down this place, bake-im, cook-im.’

  The family stared at him as if he were a mirage. He tripped past it into the kitchen, put on one of Sam’s aprons, and began to scramble eggs.

  We watched him greedily. ‘Do you believe in tapioca?’ some child asked anxiously.

  Ah Wong blinked his eyelids in delicate disdain. ‘Tapiokee? What for? Him bin plenty bellyache. No tapiokee!’

  Thus it was that Ah Wong walked into our lives and hearts. Within a week he had become the centre of the household, the small, high-powered dynamo that set us all in motion. For Ah Wong did not merely cook for the family. It soon became apparent that he owned the family. He darted like lightning about the house, dusting, making beds, sweeping and polishing. Ornaments and furniture were reshuffled and arranged according to Ah Wong’s taste, and his tidiness in our sprawling, untidy house was very like a miracle.

  ‘Missus bin leave flower-hat on floor, flower-hat bin plenty no good no more!’ he would remark sternly, popping the hat into its box. And our mother would make earnest efforts to be tidy and please him.

  If a baby cried, Ah Wong was always first at the crib. ‘Now, now!’ he would say. ‘What you want, you bad-fellow small infant!’ Then would follow a string of threats delivered in such soothing accents that the child immediately went to sleep again.