Tuppence retired immech’ately.
‘Quite in one of her moods today,’ said Miss Packard, unruffled, as they went down the stairs. ‘Sometimes, you know,’ she added, ‘she can be quite pleasant. You would hardly believe it.’ Tommy sat down in the chair indicated to him by Aunt Ada and remarked mildly that he couldn’t tell her much about his mother as she had been dead now for nearly forty years. Aunt Ada was unperturbed by this statement.
‘Fancy,’ she said, ‘is it as long as that? Well, time does pass quickly.’ She looked him over in a considering manner. ‘Why don’t you get married?’ she said. ‘Get some nice capable woman to look after you. You’re getting on, you know. Save you taking up with all these loose women and bringing them round and speaking as though they were your wife.’ ‘I can see,’ said Tommy, ‘that I shall have to get Tuppence to bring her marriage lines along next time we come to see you.’ ‘Made an honest woman of her, have you?’ said Aunt Ada.
‘We’ve been married over thirty years,’ said Tommy, ‘and we’ve got a son and a daughter, and they’re both married too.’ ‘The trouble is,’ said Aunt Ada, shifting her ground with dexterity, ‘that nobody tells me anything. If you’d kept me properly up to date ‘ Tommy did not argue the point. Tuppence had once iaid upon him a serious injunction. ‘If anybody over the age of sixty-five finds fault with you,’ she said, ‘never argue. Never try to say you’re right. Apologize at once and say it was all your fault and you’re very sorry and you’ll never do it again.’ It occurred to Tommy at this moment with some force that that would certainly be the line to take with Aunt Ada, and indeed always had been.
‘I’m very sorry, Aunt Ada,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid, you know, one does tend to get forgetful as time goes on. It’s not everyone,’ he continued unblushingly, ‘who has your wonder ful memory for the past’.
Aunt Ada smirked. There was no other word for it. ‘You have something there,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry if I received you rather roughly, but I don’t care for being imposed upon. You never know in this place. They let in anyone to see you. Anyone at a11. If I accepted everyone for what they said they were, they might be intending to rob and murder me in my bed.’
‘Oh, I don’t think that’s very likely,’ said.T. ommy.
‘You never know,’ said Aunt Ada. ‘The things you read in the paper. And the things people come and tell you-. Not that I believe everything I’m told. But I keep a sharp lookout.
Would you believe it, they brought a strange man in the other day – never seen him before. Called himself Dr Williams. Said
Dr Murray was away on his holiday and this was his new partner. New partner! How was I to know he was his new partner? He just said he was, that’s all.’
‘Was he his new partner?’
‘Well, as a matter of fact,’ said Aunt Ada, slightly annoyed at losing ground, ‘he actually was. But nobody could have known it for sure. There he was, drove up in a car, had that little kind of black box with him, which doctors carry to do blood pressure – and all that sort of thing. It’s like the magic box they all used to talk about so much. Who was it, Joanna Southcott’s?’ ‘I rather different. A ‘No,’ said Tommy. think that was prophecy of some kind.’ ‘Oh, I see. Well, my point is anyone could come into a place like this and say he was a doctor, and immediately all the nurses would smirk and giggle and say yes, Doctor, of course, Doctor, and more or less stand to attention, silly girls! And if the patient swore she didn’t know the man, they’d only say she was forgetful and forgot people. I never forget a face,’ said Aunt Ada firmly. ‘I never have. How is your Aunt Caroline? I haven’t heard from her for some time. Have you seen anything of her?’ Tommy said, rather apologetically, that his Aunt Caroline had been dead for fifteen years. Aunt Ada did not take this demise with any signs of sorrow. Aunt Caroline had after all not been her sister, but merely her first cousin.