Tuesday 16th August
The train chugged its’ way slowly through the west London suburbs, and more and more fields appeared between the houses, and then it was all fields, neat little pocket handkerchiefs of fields lined with high hedges, and copses, lots of copses everywhere. And in no time we had arrived in Cheltenham, with its’ white Georgian houses and narrow little streets. And the sun was shining where we had left the rain behind in London. The taxi drew up at Aunt Maud’s house; it was not Georgian at all, but Edwardian though still rather grand with a long drive and there must have been at least five bedrooms. Aunt Maud was terribly proper, and formal, and far more old-fashioned than Grandma herself. Her husband had died many years ago and her children all grown up and gone too. She lived with a lady’s companion, a sort of housekeeper and general servant, but who was on an almost equal standing to Aunt Maud. I was told to call her Miss Nicholls, but my aunt called her Mary. Mary (Miss Nicholls to me) accompanied Aunt Maud everywhere, and nowadays I suppose one would suspect them of some Sapphic connection, but I really don’t think that was the case at all. They weren’t even particularly friendly to each other, Miss Nichols rarely seemed to join in the conversation, so that although the pretence was otherwise, the relationship was quite clear; Miss Nicholls was a servant after all.
Aunt Maud’s house was even more of a time capsule than ours; real Persian carpets, where ours was an expensive copy, the sofas were straight backed, horse-hair filled and the sides were lashed to the back with gold braided ropes. The bedrooms were freezing, no heating at all, and we all had stone hot water bottles which were too hot to put your feet on, but at least warmed up the musty and damp sheets. I had to be on my best behaviour in front of Aunt Maud, not a particular difficult task, but I was lectured constantly by Grandma on what to say and how to behave at table. Despite all of this I really enjoyed our trips to Cheltenham, and it always seemed a special treat whenever Aunt Maud’s was mentioned. I suppose it was the acting, the putting on of a performance that I enjoyed the most, the complicity as we all conspired to pretend that life could really still be lived like this. I sometimes wonder if Aunt Maud was aware that she was acting too.