‘She was always active. Used to make me think of a dragonfly sometimes. Always darting off after some apparently absurd idea of her own and then we’d fred it wasn’t absurd.
Good fun!’ said the General, with approval. ‘Don’t like these earnest middle-aged women you meet nowadays, all got a Cause with a capital C. And as for the girls nowadays -‘ he shook his head. ‘Not what they used to be when I was a young man. Pretty as a picture, they used to be then. Their muslin frocks! Cloche hats, they used to wear at one time. Do you remember? No, I suppose you’d have been at school. Had to look right down underneath the brim before you could see the girl’s face. Tantalizing it was, and they knew it! I remember now – let me see – she was a relative of yours – an aunt wasn’t she? – Ada. Ada Fanshawe ‘ ‘Aunt Ada?’ ‘Prettiest girl I ever knew.’ Tommy managed to contain the surprise he felt. That his Aunt Ada could ever have been considered pretty seemed beyond belief. Old Josh was dithering on.
‘Yes, pretty as a picture. Sprightly, too! Gay! Regular tease.
Ah, I remember last time I saw her. I was a subaltern just off to India. We were at a moonlight picnic on the beach… She and I wandered away together and sat on a rock looking at the sea?
Tommy looked at him with great interest. At his double chins, his bald head, his bushy eyebrows and his enormous paunch. He thought of Aunt Ada, of her incipient moustache, her grim smile, her iron grey hair, her malicious glance. Time, he thought. What Time does to one! He tried to visualize a handsome young subaltern and a pretty girl in the moonlight.
He failed.
‘Romantic,’ said Sir Josiah Penn with a deep sigh. ‘Ah yes, romantic. I would have liked to propose to her that night, but you couldn’t propose if you were a subaltern. Not on your pay.
We’d have had to wait five years before we could be married.
That was too long an engagement to ask any girl to agree to. Ah well! you know how things happen. I went out to India and it was a long time before I came home on leave. We wrote to one another for a bit, then things slacked off. As it usually happens.
I never saw her again. And yet, you know, I never quite forgot her. Often thought of her. I remember I nearly wrote to her once, years later. I’d heard she was in the neighbourhood where I was staying with some people. I thought I’d go and see her, ask if I could call. Then I thought to myself “Don’t be a damn’ fool. She probably looks quite different by now.” ‘I heard a chap mention her some years later. Said she was one of the ugliest women he’d ever seen. I could hardly believe ‘it when I heard him say that, but I think now perhaps I was lucky I never did see her again. What’s she doing now? Alive still?’ ‘No. She died about two or three weeks ago, as a matter of fact,’ said Tommy.
‘Did she really, did she really? Yes, I suppose she’d be what now, she’d be seventy-five or seventy-six? Bit older than that perhaps.’ ‘She was eighty,’ said Tommy.
‘Fancy now. Dark-haired lively Ada. Where did she die?
Was she in a nursing home or did she live with a companion or – she never married, did she?’ ‘lqo,’ said Tommy, ‘she.never married. She was in an old ladies’ home. Rather a nice one, as a matter of fact. Sunny Ridge, it’s called.’ ‘Yes, I’ve heard of that. Sunny Ridge. Someone my sister knew was there, I believe. A Mrs – now what was the name a Mrs Carstairs? D’you ever come across her?’ ‘No. I didn’t come across anyone much there. One just used to go and visit one’s own particular relative.’ ‘Difficult business, too, I think. I mean, one never knows what to say to them.’ ‘Aunt Ada was particularly difficult,’ said Tommy. ‘She was a tartar, you know.’