Грэм Грин – Travels with my aunt / Путешествие с тетушкой. Книга для чтения на английском языке (страница 7)

“Surely you never worked in a circus, Aunt Augusta?”

“Oh no, but I happened to be there when the elephant trod on Curran’s toe, and we became very close friends. Poor man, he had to go to hospital, and when he came out, the circus had gone on without him to Weymouth. Hatty too, though she came back later when we were established.”

“Established at what?”

“I’ll tell you one day, but now we have to find Hatty.” She drained her port and brandy, and out we went into the cold blow of the wind. Just opposite was a stationer’s which sold comic postcards and she stopped there to inquire: the metal stands for the cards rattled and strained and turned like a windmill. I noticed a card with a bottle of Guinness on it, and a fat woman in a snorkel floating face down. The legend read Bottoms Up![49] I was looking at another of a man in hospital saying to a surgeon, “But I said circumcision, doctor,” when my aunt came out. “It’s just here,” she said. “I knew I wasn’t far wrong,” and in the window of the very next house a card in front of some net curtains read HATTY’s TEAPOT. BY APPOINTMENT ONLY. There were photographs by the door of Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra and the Duke of Edinburgh which seemed to have been signed by their subjects, although it seemed unlikely in the case of the Duke.

We rang the bell and an old lady answered it. She was wearing a black evening dress and a lot of jet objects jangled when she moved. “You’re too late,” she said sharply.

“Hatty,” said my aunt.

“I close at six-thirty sharp except by special appointment.”

“Hatty, it’s Augusta.”

“Augusta!”

“Hatty! You haven’t changed a bit.”

But remembering the young girl in tights carrying the whip and looking sideways at Curran, I thought there had been greater changes than my aunt made out.

“This is my nephew Henry, Hatty. You remember about him.” They exchanged a look which I found disturbing. Why should I have been discussed all those years ago? Had she let Hatty into the secret of my birth?

“Come on in, the two of you. I was just going to have a cup of tea – an unprofessional cup of tea,” Hatty added and giggled.

“In here?” my aunt asked, opening a door.

“No dear, that’s the waiting-room.” I just had time to see an engraving by Sir Alma-Tadema of a lot of tall naked ladies in a Roman bathhouse.

“Here’s my den, dear,” Hatty said, opening another door. It was a small overcrowded room, and everything seemed to be covered with fringed mauve shawls, the table, the backs of chairs, the mantel – there was even a shawl dangling from a studio portrait of a stout man whom I recognized as Mr. Curran.

“The Revered,” Aunt Augusta said, looking at it.

“The Revered,” Hatty repeated, and then they both laughed at some secret joke of their own.

“The Rev. for short,” Aunt Augusta said, “but that, of course, was only a coincidence. You remember how we explained it to the police. They’ve still got a photo of him, Hatty, stuck up in the Star and Garter.”

“I haven’t been there for years,” Hatty said. “I’m off the hard liquor.”

“You are there and the elephant too,” Aunt Augusta said. “Can you remember the elephant’s name?”

Hatty was putting out two more cups from a china cabinet. There was a fringed shawl over that too. She said, “It wasn’t a common name like Jumbo. Something classical. How one forgets things[50], Augusta, at our age”.

“Was it Caesar?”

“No, it wasn’t Caesar. Do you take sugar, Mr. – ?”

“Call him Henry, Hatty.”

“One lump,” I said.

“Oh dear, oh dear, I had such a good memory once.”

“The water’s boiling, dear.”

The kettle was on a spirit ring close to a big brown teapot. She began to pour out.

“Oh, I quite forgot the strainer,” she said.

“Never mind, Hatty.”

“It’s because of my clients. I never strain theirs, so I forget when I’m alone.”

There was a plate of ginger-snaps and I accepted one for politeness’ sake. “From the Old Steine,” Aunt Augusta told me. “Ye Olde Bunne Shoppe. You don’t get gingersnaps like that anywhere else in the world.”

“And now they have turned it into a betting shop,”

Hatty said. “Pluto, dear? Was it Pluto?”

“No, I’m sure it wasn’t Pluto. I think it began with a T.”

“I can’t think of anything classical beginning with T.”

“There was a point to his name.”

“There certainly was.”

“Historical.”

“Yes.”

“You remember the dogs, dear. They are in the photo too.”

“It was them gave Curran the idea.”

“The Revered,” Aunt Augusta repeated again, and they laughed in unison at their private memory. I felt very much alone, so I took another ginger-snap.

“The boy has a sweet tooth[51]”, Hatty remarked.

“To think that little shop in the Old Steine survived two great wars.”

“We’ve survived,” Hatty replied, “but they aren’t turning us into betting shops.”

“Oh, it will need an atom bomb to destroy us,” Aunt Augusta said.

I thought it was time to speak. “The situation in the Middle East is pretty serious,” I said, “judging from today’s Guardian.”

“You can never tell,” Hatty said, and they were both for a while buried in thought. Then my aunt picked out a tealeaf, put it on the back of her hand and slapped it with the other; it clung obstinately to a vein which was surrounded by what my mother used to call grave-marks.

“Can’t get rid of the fellow,” Aunt Augusta said. “I hope he’s tall and handsome.”

“That isn’t a stranger,” Hatty corrected her. “That’s the thought of a departed you can’t get out of your mind.”

“Living or dead?”

“It could be either. How stiff does he feel?”

“If he’s living I suppose it could be poor Wordsworth.”

“Wordsworth is dead, dear,” Hatty said, “a very long time ago.”

“Not my Wordsworth. It’s stiff as wood. I wonder who a dead one could be.”

“Poor Curran perhaps.”

“I have thought a lot about him since I came to Brighton.”

“Would you like me to do a professional cup, dear, for you and your friend?”

“Nephew,” Aunt Augusta corrected Hatty in her turn. “It would be fun, dear.”

“I’ll make another pot. The leaves have to be fresh and I use Lapsang Souchong[52] professionally, though I drink Ceylon – Lapsang gives big leaves and good results.”

When she came back after washing the pot and our cups my aunt said, “You must let us pay.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it, dear, not after all we’ve been through together.”

“With the Revered.” They giggled again.