Aunt Maria Read Online Free PDF Page A

the tide is coming up over the sand, all transparent, with lacy edges.”
    I was saying how right she was, when Aunt Maria’s voice cut across everything. How can Elaine think Aunt Maria would rather die of shame than say anything?
    â€œOh, dear! I do apologize,” Aunt Maria shouted. “This is bought cake .”
    â€œOh, horrors!” Chris promptly said from the other side of the room. “Mum paid for it herself, too, so we’re all eating pound notes.”
    Poor Mum. She glared at Chris and then tried to apologize, but Selma Tidmarsh and the other Mrs. Urs all began shouting that it tasted very wholesome, it was very good for a bought cake, while Aunt Maria pushed her plate aside and turned her head away from it. And Hester Bailey said to me, “Or a wave, with green shadows and foam on it,” just as if nothing had happened at all. She gave me a book when she got up to go. “I brought it for you,” she said. “It’s the kind of pictures a little girl like you will love.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” Mum said to Aunt Maria after they’d all left.
    I think she was meaning she was sorry about Chris, but Aunt Maria said, “It’s all right, dear. I expect Lavinia has put the baking tins in an unexpected place. You’ll have found them by tomorrow.”
    For a moment I thought Mum was going to explode. But she took a deep breath and went out into the rain and the wind to garden. I could see her savagely pruning roses, snip-chop , as if each twig was one of Aunt Maria’s fingers, while I put Hester Bailey’s book on the table and started to look at it.
    Oh, dear. I think Hester Bailey may be as dotty as Zoe Green underneath. Or she doesn’t know better. Mostly the pictures were of fairies, little flittery ones, or sweet-faced maidens in bonnets, but there were some that were so queer and peculiar that they did things to my stomach. There was a street of people who looked as if their faces had melted, and two at least of woodlands, where the trees seemed to have leering faces and nightmare twiggy hands. And there was one called “A naughty little girl is punished” that was worst of all. It was all dark except for the girl, so you couldn’t quite see what was doing it to her, but her bright clear figure was being pushed underground by something on top of her, and something else had her long hair and was pulling her under, and there were these black whippy things, too. She looked terrified, and no wonder.
    â€œCharming!” Chris said, dropping crumbs over my shoulder as he ate the last of the pound-note cake. “Mum’s being told off again, look.”
    I looked out of the window into the dusk. Sure enough, Elaine was standing over Mum with her hands on the hips of her flapping black mac, and Mum was looking humble and flustered again. “Honestly—,” I began.
    But Aunt Maria was calling out, “What are you saying, dears? It’s rude to whisper. Is it that cat again? One of you call Betty in. It’s time she was cooking supper.”
    This is the sort of reason I never got to speak to Chris, and never got to write in my notebook, either. When I went to camp, it was more private than it is in Aunt Maria’s house. But I have made a Deep Religious Vow to write something every day now. I need to, to relieve my feelings.
    The next day was the same, only that morning I went out with Mum, and Chris obeyed Elaine’s orders and stayed with Aunt Maria. Would you believe this: I have still not seen the sea, except the day we came, when it was nearly dark and I was trying not to look at the piece of new fence on Cranbury Head. That morning we went round and round looking for cake tins, then up and down and out into the country behind, where it is farms and fields and woods, looking for the Laundromat. In the end Mum said she felt like a thief with loot and we had to bring the bundle of dirty sheets home