Travels With My Aunt Read online

‘You were not bugged, I suppose, in the suburbs.’

  The man who came to see her was not my idea of a banker at all. He was tall and elegant with black side-burns and he would have fitted very well into a matador’s uniform. My aunt asked me to bring her the red suitcase, and I then left them alone, but looking back from the doorway I saw that the lid was already open and the case seemed to be stacked with ten-pound notes.

  I sat down in my bedroom and read a copy of Punch to reassure myself. The sight of all the smuggled money had been a shock, and the suitcase was one of those fibre ones which are as vulnerable as cardboard. It is true that no experienced loader at Heathrow would have expected it to contain a small fortune, but surely it was the height of rashness to trust in a bluff which depended for its success on the experience of a thief. She might easily have tumbled on a novice.

  My aunt had obviously spent many years abroad and this had affected her character as well as her morality. I couldn’t really judge her as I would an ordinary Englishwoman, and I comforted myself, as I read Punch, that the English character was unchangeable. True, Punch once passed through a distressing period, when even Winston Churchill was a subject of mockery, but the good sense of the proprietors and of the advertisers drew it safely back into the old paths. Even the admiral had begun to subscribe again, and the editor had, quite correctly in my opinion, been relegated to television, which is at its best a vulgar medium. If the ten-pound notes, I thought, were tied in bundles of twenty, there could easily be as much as three thousand pounds in the suitcase, or even six, for surely bundles of forty would not be too thick … Then I remembered the case was a Revelation. Twelve thousand was not an impossible total. I felt a little comforted by that idea. Smuggling on such a large scale seemed more like a business coup than a crime.

  The telephone rang. It was my aunt. ‘Which would you advise?’ she asked. ‘Union Carbide, Genesco, Deutsche Texaco? Or even General Electric?’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to advise you at all,’ I said. ‘I am not competent. My clients never went in for American bonds. The dollar premium is too high.’

  ‘There’s no question of a dollar premium in France,’ Aunt Augusta said with impatience. ‘Your customers seem to have been singularly unimaginative.’ The line went dead. Did she expect the admiral to smuggle notes?

  I went restlessly out and crossed the little garden where an American couple (from the St James or the Albany) were having tea. One of them was raising a little bag, like a drowned animal, from his cup at the end of a cord. At that distressing sight I felt very far away from England, and it was with a pang that I realized how much I was likely to miss Southwood and the dahlias in the company of Aunt Augusta. I walked up to the Place Vendôme and then by the Rue Daunou to the Boulevard des Capucines. Outside a bar on the corner two women spoke to me, and suddenly I saw, bearing down on me with a happy grin of welcome, a man whom I recognized with apprehension.

  ‘Mr Pullen?’ he exclaimed. ‘Praise to the Holiest in the height.’

  ‘Wordsworth!’

  ‘In all His works most wonderful. You wan those two gels?’

  ‘I was just taking a stroll,’ I said.

  ‘Women lak that they humbug you,’ Wordsworth said. ‘They just short-timers. They do jig-jig, one two three, out you go. If you wan a gel you come along with Wordsworth.’

  ‘But I don’t want a girl, Wordsworth. I am here with my aunt. I am taking a little walk because she has business to transact.’

  ‘Your auntie here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where you live?’

  I didn’t want to give our address without my aunt’s permission. I had a vision of Wordsworth moving in, to the room next door. Suppose Wordsworth began to smoke marijuana in the St James and Albany … I was uncertain of French laws on the subject.

  ‘We are staying with friends,’ I said vaguely.

  ‘With a man?’ Wordsworth asked with instant savagery. It seemed incredible that anyone could be jealous of a woman of seventy-five, but jealous Wordsworth undoubtedly was, and now I saw the banker with side-burns in a different light.

  ‘My dear Wordsworth,’ I said, ‘you are imagining things,’ and I allowed myself a white lie. ‘We are staying with an elderly married couple.’ I felt it was hardly suitable to discuss my aunt like this at a street corner, and I began to move down the boulevard, but Wordsworth kept pace with me. ‘You got CTC for Wordsworth?’ he asked. ‘Ar find you lovely gel, school-teacher.’

  ‘I don’t want a girl, Wordsworth,’ I repeated, but I gave him a ten-franc note to keep him quiet.

  ‘Then you have one drink with old Wordsworth. Ar know A.1 first-class joint right here.’

  I agreed to a drink, and he led the way into the entrance of what seemed to be a theatre, the Comédie des Capucines. A gramophone was howling below, as we descended under the theatre.

  ‘I’d rather go somewhere more quiet,’ I said.

  ‘You jus wait. This A.1 racket.’ It was very hot in the cellar. A number of unaccompanied young women were sitting at the bar, and turning towards the music I saw an almost naked woman passing between the tables where a number of men, wearing shabby macintoshes like uniforms, sat before untasted drinks.

  ‘Wordsworth,’ I said crossly, ‘if this is what you call jig-jig I don’t want it.’

  ‘No jig-jig here,’ Wordsworth said. ‘If you wan jig-jig you take her to hotel.’

  ‘Take who?’

  ‘These gels – you wan one?’

  Two of the girls at the bar came and sat down, one on either side of me. I felt imprisoned. Wordsworth, I noticed, had already ordered four whiskies which he obviously couldn’t pay for with the ten francs I had given him.

  ‘Zak, chéri,’ one of the girls said, ‘present your friend please.’

  ‘Mr Pullen, you meet Rita. Lovely gel. School-teacher.’

  ‘Where does she teach?’

  Wordsworth laughed. I realized I had made a fool of myself, and I watched Wordsworth with dismay as he entered into what seemed a long business negotiation with the girls.

  ‘Wordsworth,’ I said, ‘what are you doing?’

  ‘They wan two hundred francs. I say no. I tell em we got British passports.’

  ‘What on earth has that got to do with it?’

  ‘They know British people very poor, can’t afford good dash.’ He began to talk to them again in a kind of French which I couldn’t follow at all, though they seemed to understand him well enough.

  ‘What are you talking, Wordsworth?’

  ‘French.’

  ‘I don’t understand a word.’

  ‘Good Coast French. This lady she know Dakar well. Ar tell her ar work in Conakry one time. They say hundred and fifty francs.’

  ‘You can thank them very much, Wordsworth, but say I’m not interested. I have to return to my aunt.’

  One of the women laughed. I suppose she recognized the word ‘aunt’, though I couldn’t for the life of me see why a rendezvous with an aunt should be funnier than a rendezvous with a cousin, an uncle, or even one’s mother. The girl repeated ‘tante’ and both laughed.

  ‘Tomorrow?’ Wordsworth asked.

  ‘I am going with my aunt to Versailles and in the evening we take the Orient Express to Istanbul.’

  ‘Istanbul,’ Wordsworth exclaimed. ‘What she do there? Who she go for see?’

  ‘I imagine we shall see the Blue Mosque, Santa Sophia, the Golden Horn, the Topkapi Museum.’

  ‘You be careful, Mr Pullen.’

  ‘Please call me by my right name, Pulling.’ I tried to temper my rebuke with humour. ‘You would not like it if I continually called you Coleridge.’

  ‘Coleridge?’

  ‘Coleridge was a poet and a friend of Wordsworth.’

  ‘Ar never met that man. If he say ar did he humbug you.’

  I said firmly, ‘Now I really must be off, Wordsworth. Get the bill or I shall leave you to pay.’

  ‘You waste good White Horse?’ />
  ‘You can drink it yourself or share it with these ladies.’ I paid the bill – it seemed an exorbitant one, but I suppose the floor show was thrown in. A naked black girl was dancing with a white feather boa. I wondered what all the men here did for a living. It seemed extraordinary that one could watch such a scene during banking hours.

  Wordsworth said, ‘You give three hunded francs to these ladies for private show.’

  ‘The price seems to be going up.’

  ‘Maybe ar make them say two hunded francs. You lef it to Wordsworth, okay?’

  It was no use appealing to Wordsworth’s sense of morality. I said, ‘As you have a British passport, you should know that an Englishman is only allowed to take fifteen pounds in currency out of the country. Two hundred francs would exhaust the whole amount.’

  This was a reason Wordsworth could understand. He looked down at me from his great height with melancholy and commiseration. ‘Governments all the same no good,’ he said.

  ‘One must make sacrifices. The cost of defence and the social services is very high.’

  ‘Traveller’s cheques,’ Wordsworth suggested quickly.

  ‘They can only be exchanged at a bank, an official exchange or a registered hotel. In any case I shall need them in Istanbul.’

  ‘Your auntie got plenty.’

  ‘She has only a travel allowance too,’ I said.

  I felt the weakness of this last argument, for Wordsworth cannot have lived for very long with my aunt before learning that she resorted to ways and means. I changed the subject by attacking him. ‘What on earth did you mean, Wordsworth, by sending me away with cannabis in my mother’s urn?’

  His mind was elsewhere, brooding perhaps on the travel allowance.

  ‘No cannibals,’ he said, ‘in England. No cannibals in Sierra Leone.’

  ‘I’m talking about the ashes.’

  ‘Cannibals in Liberia, not Sierra Leone.’

  ‘I didn’t say cannibals.’

  ‘Leopard Society in Sierra Leone. They kill plenty people but not chop them.’

  ‘Pot, Wordsworth, pot.’ I hated the vulgar word which reminded me of childhood. ‘You mixed pot with my mother’s ashes.’

  At last I had embarrassed him. He drank the whisky quickly. ‘You come away,’ he said, ‘ar show you much better damned place. Rue de Douai.’

  I harried him all the way up the stairs. ‘You had no business to do such a thing, Wordsworth. The police came and took the urn.’

  ‘They give it you back?’ he asked.

  ‘Only the urn. The ashes were inextricably mixed with the pot.’

  ‘Old Wordsworth meant no harm, man,’ he said, halting on the pavement. ‘Those bloody police.’

  I was glad to see there was a taxi rank close by. I was afraid he might try to follow me and discover the whereabouts of Aunt Augusta.

  ‘In Mendeland,’ he said, ‘you bury food with your ma. You bury pot. All the same thing.’

  ‘My mother didn’t even smoke cigarettes.’

  ‘With your pa you bury best hatchet.’

  ‘Why not food with him too?’

  ‘He go hunt food with hatchet. He kill bush chicken.’

  I got into the taxi and drove away. Looking through the rear window, I could see Wordsworth standing bewildered on the pavement edge, like a man on a river bank waiting for a ferry. He raised his hand tentatively, as though he were uncertain of my response, whether I had left him in friendship or anger, as the traffic swept between us. I wished then that I had given him a bigger CTC. After all he meant no harm. Even in his size he exhibited a clumsy innocence.

  10

  I FOUND Aunt Augusta sitting alone in the centre of the large and shabby salon, filled with green velvet chairs and marble mantelpieces. She had not bothered to remove the suitcase, which lay open and empty on the floor. There were traces of tears in her eyes. I turned on the dim lights of the dusty chandelier, and my aunt gave me an uncertain smile.

  ‘Has something happened, Aunt Augusta?’ I asked. It occurred to me that she might have been robbed by the man with side-burns and I regretted having left her alone with such a large amount of cash.

  ‘Nothing, Henry,’ she said in a voice surprisingly gentle and wavery. ‘I decided after all on a deposit account in Berne. What banalities they drive us to with their rules and regulations.’ At this moment she had all the weary manner I would have expected of an old lady of seventy-five.

  ‘You are upset.’

  ‘Only by memories,’ Aunt Augusta said. ‘For me this hotel has many memories, and very old ones at that. You would have been only a boy …’

  Suddenly I felt a real affection for my aunt. Perhaps a hint of weakness is required to waken our affections, and I remembered Miss Keene’s fingers faltering over her tatting as she spoke of unknown South Africa – it had been then that I came nearest to a proposal.

  ‘What kind of memories, Aunt Augusta?’

  ‘Of a love affair, Henry. A very happy one while it lasted.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  I was moved, as I had sometimes been at the theatre, at the sight of old age remembering. The faded luxury of the room seemed like a stage set at the Haymarket. It brought to my mind photographs of Doris Keene in Romance and who was it in Milestones? Having very few memories of my own to linger over, I appreciate sentiment all the more in others.

  She dabbed at her eyes. ‘You’d be bored, Henry. An unfinished bottle of champagne found in an old cupboard with all the sparkle gone …’ The jaded phrase was worthy of a Haymarket author.

  I drew up a chair and took her small hand in mine: it was creamy to the touch and I was much moved by a small brown grave-mark which she had failed to cover with powder. ‘Tell me,’ I repeated. We were both silent thinking of very different things. I felt as though I were on the stage taking part in a revival of The Second Mrs Tanqueray. My aunt had led a very mixed-up life – that was certain – but she had loved deeply in her time, in the hotel St James and Albany, and who knew what excuses in her past there might be for her relations with poor Wordsworth? This sitting-room of the hotel reminded me of that other Albany in London where Captain Tanqueray had lived.

  ‘Dear Aunt Augusta,’ I said and put my arm around her shoulders. ‘It helps sometimes to speak to another person. I know I belong to a different generation – perhaps a more conventional generation …’

  ‘It’s a rather disgraceful story,’ my aunt said and she looked down in her lap with an air of modesty which I had never seen before.

  I found myself kneeling uncomfortably beside her, one knee in the empty suitcase, holding her hand. ‘Trust me,’ I said.

  ‘It’s your sense of humour, Henry, that I don’t fully trust. I don’t think we find the same things funny.’

  ‘I was expecting a sad story,’ I said rather sharply, climbing out of the suitcase.

  ‘It is a very sad story in its special way,’ my aunt said, ‘but it’s rather funny too.’ I had let go her hand and now she turned it this way and that like a glove in a bargain basement. ‘I must really have a manicure tomorrow,’ she said.

  I felt some irritation at her quick change of mood. I had been betrayed into a feeling of sentiment which was not natural to me. I said, ‘I saw Wordsworth just now,’ thinking to embarass her.

  ‘What? Here?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I am sorry to disappoint you, no. Not here in the hotel. In the street.’

  ‘Where is he living?’

  ‘I didn’t ask. Nor did I give him your address. I hadn’t realized that you would be so anxious to see him again.’

  ‘You are a hard man, Henry.’

  ‘Not hard, Aunt Augusta. Prudent.’

  ‘I don’t know from which side of the family you inherited prudence. Your father was lazy but never, never prudent.’

  ‘And my mother?’ I asked in the hope of trapping her.

  ‘If she had been prudent you would not be here now.’ She went to the window and looked across the R
ue de Rivoli into the Tuileries gardens. ‘So many nursemaids and perambulators,’ she said and sighed. Against the hard afternoon light she looked old and vulnerable.

  ‘Would you have liked a child, Aunt Augusta?’

  ‘At most times it would have been inconvenient,’ she said. ‘Curran was not to be trusted as a father and by the time I knew Mr Visconti the hour was really getting late – not too late of course, but a child belongs to the dawn hours, and with Mr Visconti one was already past the blaze of noon. In any case I would have made a very unsatisfactory mother. God knows where I would have dragged the poor child after me, and suppose he had turned out completely respectable …’

  ‘Like myself,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t yet despair of you,’ my aunt said. ‘You were reasonably kind about poor Wordsworth. And you were quite right not to give him my address. He wouldn’t fit in with the St James and Albany. What a pity that the days of slavery are passed, for then I could have pretended that he served some utilitarian purpose. I might have lodged him in the St James across the garden.’ She gave a reminiscent smile. ‘I really think I ought to tell you about Monsieur Dambreuse. I loved him a lot, and if we didn’t have a child together, it was purely owing to the fact that it was a late love. I took no precautions, none at all.’

  ‘Were you thinking about him when I came in?’

  ‘I was. They were six of the happiest months of my life, those which we shared, and they were all spent here in the Albany. I met him first one Monday evening outside Fouquet’s. He asked me to join him in a coffee, and by Thursday we were installed here, a genuine couple on good terms with the porter and the maid. The fact that he was a married man didn’t worry me at all, for I am not in the least a jealous woman, and anyway I had far the larger slice of him, or so I thought. He told me he had a house in the country where his wife lived with his six children, happy and occupied and requiring very little attention, somewhere near Toulouse. He would leave me on a Saturday morning after petit déjeuner and return in time for bed on Monday evening. Perhaps as a sign of his fidelity, he was always very loving on a Monday night, so much so that the middle of the week would often pass very quietly. That suited my temperament well – I have always preferred an occasional orgy to a nightly routine. I really loved Monsieur Dambreuse – perhaps not with the tenderness I felt for Curran but with more freedom from care than I had ever experienced with Mr Visconti. The deepest love is not the most carefree. How Monsieur Dambreuse and I used to laugh. Of course I realized later that he had a very good reason for laughter.’