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

“It has made me so happy meeting you, Aunt Augusta. You are my only close relative now.”

“As far as you know,” she said. “Your father had spells of activity.”

“My poor stepmother… I shall never be able to think of anyone else as my mother.”

“Better so.[23 - Better so. – (зд.) Оно и к лучшему.]”

“In a new block under construction my father was always very careful about furnishing the specimen flat. I used to think that sometimes he went to sleep in it in the afternoon. I suppose it might have been in one of those I was…” I checked the word “conceived” in deference to my aunt.

“Better not to speculate,” she said.

“You will come one day and see my dahlias, won’t you? They are in full bloom.”

“Of course, Henry, now that I have found you again I shan’t easily let you go. Do you enjoy travel?”

“I’ve never had the opportunity.”

“With Wordsworth so occupied we might make a little trip or two together.”

“Gladly, Aunt Augusta.” It never occurred to me that she meant farther than the seaside.

“I will telephone you,” my aunt said.

Wordsworth showed me to the door, and it was only outside, when I passed the Crown and Anchor, that I remembered I had left behind my little package. I wouldn’t have remembered at all if the girl in the jodhpurs had not said angrily as I pushed past the open window, “Peter can talk about nothing but cricket. All the summer it went on. Nothing but the fucking Ashes[24 - Ashes – разговорное название соревнований по крикету между командами Англии и Австралии].”

I don’t like to hear such adjectives on the lips of an attractive young girl, but her words reminded me sharply that I had left all that remained of my mother in Aunt Augusta’s kitchen. I went back to the street door. There was a row of bells with a kind of microphone above each of them. I touched the right one and heard Wordsworth’s voice. “Who be there?”

I said, “It’s Henry Pulling.”

“Don know anyone called that name.”

“I’ve only just left you. I’m Aunt Augusta’s nephew.”

“Oh, that guy,” the voice said.

“I left a parcel with you in the kitchen.”

“You wan it back?”

“Please, if it’s not too much trouble…”

Human communication, it sometimes seems to me, involves an exaggerated amount of time. How briefly and to the point people always seem to speak on the stage or on the screen, while in real life we stumble from phrase to phrase with endless repetition.

“A brown-paper parcel?” Wordsworth’s voice asked.

“Yes.”

“You wan me bring it down right away?”

“Yes, if it’s not too much…”

“It’s a bloody lot of trouble,” Wordsworth said. “Stay there.”

I was prepared to be very cold to him when he brought the parcel, but he opened the street door wearing a friendly grin[25 - wearing a friendly grin – (разг.) добродушно ухмыляясь].

“Thank you,” I said, with as much coldness as I could muster, “for the great trouble you have taken.”

I noticed that the parcel was no longer sealed. “Has somebody opened this?”

“Ar jus wan to see what you got there.”

“You might have asked me.”

“Why, man,” he said, “you not offended at Wordsworth?”

“I didn’t like the way you spoke just now.”

“Man, it’s jus that little mike there. Ar wan to make it say all kind of rude things. There ar am up there, and down there ma voice is, popping out into the street where no one see it’s only old Wordsworth. It’s a sort of power, man. Like the burning bush when he spoke to old Moses.

One day it was the parson come from Saint George’s in the square. An he says in a dear brethren sort of voice, ‘I wonder, Miss Bertram, if I could come up and have a little chat about our bazaar.’ ‘Sure, man,’ ar say, ‘you wearing your dog collar?’ ‘Why, yes,’ he say, ‘of course, who is that?’ ‘Man,’ ar say, ‘you better put on a muzzle too before you go come up here.’”

“What did he say?”

“He wen away and never come back. Your auntie laugh like hell when ar told her. But ar didn’t mean him harm. It was just old Wordsworth tempted by that little old mike.”

“Are you really studying for the London School of Economics?” I asked.

“Oh, tha’s a joke your auntie makes. Ar was workin at the Grenada Palace. Ar had a uniform. Jus lak a general. She lak ma uniform. She stop an say, ‘Are you the Emperor Jones?’ ‘No, ma’am,’ I say, ‘arm only old Wordsworth.’ ‘Oh,’ she say, ‘thou child of joy, shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy shepherd boy.’ ‘You write that down for me,’ ar say ‘it sound good. Ar like it.’ Ar say it over and over. Ar know it now good lack a hymn.”

I was a little confused by his garrulity. “Well, Wordsworth,” I said, “thank you for all your trouble and I hope one day I shall see you again.”

“This here mighty important parcel?”

“Yes. I suppose it is.”

“Then ar think you owe a dash to old Wordsworth,” he said.

“A dash?”

“A CTC.”

Remembering what my aunt had told me, I went quickly away.

Just as I had expected, my new lawn-mower was wet all over: I dried it carefully and oiled the blades before I did anything else. Then I boiled myself two eggs and made a cup of tea for lunch. I had much to think about. Could I accept my aunt’s story and in that case who was my mother? I tried to remember the friends my mother had of her own age, but what was the good of that? The friendship would have been broken before my birth. If indeed she had been only a stepmother to me, did I still want to place her ashes among my dahlias? While I washed up my lunch I was sorely tempted to wash out the urn as well into the sink. It would serve very well for the home-made jam which I was promising myself to make next year – a man in retirement must have his hobbies if he is not to age too fast[26 - if he is not to age too fast – (разг.) если не хочет быстро стареть] – and the urn would have looked quite handsome on the tea table. It was a little sombre, but a sombre jar was well suited for damson jelly or for blackberry-and-apple jam. I was seriously tempted, but I remembered how kind my stepmother had been to me in her rather stern way when I was a child, and how could I tell that my aunt was speaking the truth? So I went out into the garden and chose a spot among the dahlias where the plinth could be built.

Chapter 4

I was weeding the dahlias, the Polar Beauties and the Golden Leaders and the Requiems, when my telephone began to ring.