We got out of the car still laughing, as Jasper came scuttling along the pavement towards us, Auntie Snowdrop close behind him, her eyes full of welcoming tears. For her sake I made myself look as happy as I could to see her again too – and with Auntie Snowdrop, to be honest, that was not at all difficult. A bit ‘doolally’ she may have been, ‘away with the fairies’ – that was how Auntie Pish often described her – but she was always loving towards Maman and me, thoughtful and kind. To meet Auntie Pish though, I always had to steel myself, and I could see Maman did too. She was standing there now at the front door waiting for us as we came up the path. I bowed my head to avoid the bristly kiss.
“Pish, we thought you’d be here an hour ago,” she said. “What kept you?” We were usually met with a reprimand of one kind or another. “Well, you’re here now, I suppose,” she went on. “Better late than never. You’d better come along in. Just in time for elevenses. The rock cakes are waiting.” She tightened my tie and arranged my collar. “That’s better, Michael dear. Still not the tidiest of boys, are we? I made the rock cakes specially, you know. Plenty to go round.” Then she shouted to Auntie Snowdrop, “Martha, do make sure you shut that gate properly, won’t you! Pish, she’s always leaving it open. She’s so forgetful these days. Come along!”
Maman didn’t dare look at me and I didn’t dare look at her.
The chatter round the table echoed the last visit, and the one before, and the one before, as it always did. Auntie Pish did most of the talking, of course, and loudly because she was a bit deaf, peppering Maman and me with questions about my progress at school. She wanted only the good news – we knew that – so that’s what we told her: winning a prize for effort, singing a solo in the carol service again, being top scorer in the football team.
She interrupted her interrogation from time to time with critical observations about my upbringing. “He’s still not very big, is he?” she said to Maman. “Pish. I still don’t think you feed him enough, you know. That’s what we think, isn’t it, Martha?”
It always came as something of a surprise to me when she called Auntie Snowdrop by her proper name. I had to think twice. Their names were too alike anyway, Martha and Mary. Perhaps that was why Maman and I had given them nicknames in the first place. “We shall need more milk from the larder, Martha,” she went on, and then much louder, “I said, we want more milk, Martha.” Auntie Pish’s solution to her own deafness was to presume everyone else was deaf too.
Auntie Snowdrop was looking down at me adoringly, clearly not paying any attention to her elder sister. In all the years we’d visited, Auntie Snowdrop had said very little to me or to anyone – she let her sister do all the talking for both of them. But she’d always sit beside me, often with her arm around me, laying her hand gently on my hair from time to time. I think she just loved to touch it.
“Martha! The milk!”
Auntie Snowdrop got up and scuttled away apologetically. Auntie Pish reached out and chucked me under the chin, shaking her head sadly. “So like your father you are,” she said. “Bigger ears though. His ears didn’t stick out so much.” But her mind was soon on other things. “And don’t go helping yourself to my prune juice again,” she called out after Auntie Snowdrop. Then confidentially to us, “She does you know. Pish, Martha’s an awful thief when it comes to my prune juice. I have to keep my eye on these things. I have to keep my eye on everything.”
Maman and I had worked out over the years how not to look at one another whenever prune juice or rock cakes were mentioned. The giggles would well up inside of us, threatening to break out. It helped that I was a little bit frightened of Auntie Pish – Maman was wary too, I think. Auntie Pish could be cruel, with Auntie Snowdrop in particular. Maman and I both disliked the way she treated Auntie Snowdrop, putting her down all the time. We hated especially how she’d talk about her behind her back.
In the sitting room after ‘elevenses’, as the Aunties always called the mid-morning break for tea and rock cakes, Auntie Pish would preside grandly in her armchair by the fire in her voluminous dress – she was a big woman anyway and always wore dresses that seemed to overflow in every direction. She’d hold court while Auntie Snowdrop made the lunch out in the kitchen. Auntie Snowdrop would be humming away as she worked, tunes I often recognised, because they were songs she’d taught me too: ‘Down by the Sally Gardens’, maybe – which was my favourite – or ‘Danny Boy’, or ‘Speed Bonny Boat’. She was always humming or singing something. She had a very tuneful voice, sweet and soft and light, a voice that suited her.
Lunch was always the same on our visits: corned beef and bubble and squeak. And for pudding we had custard with brown sugar, because years before, when I was about three, Maman had told Auntie Snowdrop this was my favourite meal. Over lunch Auntie Snowdrop would fuss over me like a mother hen, making sure I had enough. The trouble was that I had very quickly had quite enough. At nine years old, I no longer liked corned beef and bubble and squeak, and I had gone off custard years ago. I hated the stuff, but I’d never had the nerve to tell her, and nor had Maman.
That lunchtime I had to work my way through three helpings of custard. Swallowing the last few spoonfuls was hard, so hard. I knew I mustn’t leave anything in my bowl, that it must be scraped clean, that it would upset Auntie Snowdrop if it wasn’t, and also invoke the wrath of Auntie Pish, whose favourite mantra at meal times was always, ‘Waste not, want not’.
After lunch we went down to the beach as usual, and as usual Auntie Snowdrop took a bunch of snowdrops with her, snowdrops I’d helped pick with her from the garden – they grew in a great white carpet all around the garden gnomes. Jasper hated gulls, all gulls. He chased them fruitlessly up and down the beach, yapping at every one of them, returning to us exhausted but happy, and still yapping. We tramped together along the beach until Auntie Pish decided she had found just the right place. She waved her walking stick imperiously out to sea. “This’ll do, Martha,” she said. “Get on with it then.”
Every year until now Auntie Snowdrop had performed the ceremony herself, but this time she turned to me. “I think maybe Michael should do it,” she said, and she handed me the flowers. “He’s old enough, don’t you think? And after all, he was your father. Would you like to do it, Michael?”
Auntie Pish was clearly surprised, as we were, at how Auntie Snowdrop had suddenly taken the initiative, and she didn’t like it one bit. She waved her stick at me impatiently. “Very well,” she snapped. “If you’re going to do it, then get on with it. But look out for the waves. Don’t go getting your feet wet, Michael.”
I took the flowers from Auntie Snowdrop and walked down to the water’s edge. I did it just as she had done it every year I could remember. I reached out and dropped the snowdrops into the sea one by one. Some the waves took away, others were washed at once back up onto the beach, and left stranded round my feet.
I felt Maman beside me, her arm around my shoulder. “Your Papa adored snowdrops, you know,” she whispered.
“Is he really out there, Maman?” I asked her then. “Is that where his Spitfire went down?”
“Somewhere in the Channel, chéri,” she replied. “No one quite knows where. But it doesn’t matter, does it? He’s