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

The funeral of my mother went without a hitch[4 - went without a hitch – (разг.) пошло как по маслу; без сучка без задоринки]. The flowers were removed economically from the coffin, which at the touch of a button slid away from us out of sight. Afterwards in the troubled sunlight I shook hands with a number of nephews and nieces and cousins whom I hadn’t seen for years and could not identify. It was understood that I had to wait for the ashes and wait I did, while the chimney of the crematorium gently smoked overhead.

“You must be Henry,” Aunt Augusta said, gazing reflectively at me with her sea-deep blue eyes.

“Yes,” I said, “and you must be Aunt Augusta.”

“It’s a very long time since 1 saw anything of your mother,” Aunt Augusta told me. “I hope that her death was an easy one.”

“Oh yes, you know, at her time of life – her heart just stopped. She died of old age.”

“Old age? She was only twelve years older than I am,” Aunt Augusta said accusingly.

We took a little walk together in the garden of the crematorium. A crematorium garden resembles a real garden about as much as a golf links resembles a genuine landscape. The lawns are too well cultivated and the trees too stiffly on parade: the urns resemble the little boxes containing sand where one tees up.

“Tell me,” Aunt Augusta said, “are you still at the bank?”

“No, I retired two years ago.”

“Retired? A young man like you! For heaven’s sake, what do you do with your time?”

“I cultivate dahlias, Aunt Augusta.

“Dahlias! Whatever would your father have said!”

“He took no interest in flowers, I know that. He always thought a garden was a waste of good building space. He would calculate how many bedrooms one above the other he could have fitted in. He was a very sleepy man.”

“He needed bedrooms for more than sleep,” my aunt said with a coarseness which surprised me.

“He slept in the oddest places. I remember once in the bathroom…”

“In a bedroom he did other things than sleep,” she said. “You are the proof.”

I began to understand why my parents had seen so little of Aunt Augusta. She had a temperament my mother would not have liked. My mother was far from being a puritan, but she wanted everything to be done or said at a suitable time. At meals we would talk about meals.