Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,36

time to time we peered cautiously out, only to see the same straggly bunch of children watching from a distance and the occasional trader slow down his laden donkey to throw her a quizzical look. I told Bea about Mum’s mother putting lipstick on on the top of a bus, and she agreed with me that it didn’t sound such a terrible thing to do.

‘She didn’t know how lucky she was,’ she said.

Finally Mum stood up and dusted down her clothes. We crept out from behind our wall and, punishing her with a vow of silence, kept our distance on the journey home.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It was a drizzly, warm grey afternoon when we met Aunty Rose. Bea and I were carrying fruit home from the market, and I was in the middle of a story about two sisters who get adopted by a kind old man in silver-and-gold waistcoasts, when we were stopped short by a large, laughing lady in a flowery dress.

‘And where are you off to in such a hurry?’ she said, looking into our basket of oranges. ‘Not running away, I hope?’

Her voice was happy at the end of every sentence and she talked as if she had known us for a long time. Her round cheeks were crossed with tiny pink lines that wrinkled up when she smiled and her soft, grey hair was piled high over her head and held in place by a multitude of pins.

‘Well and I haven’t even introduced myself,’ she said, placing her hands firmly on her hips and smiling. ‘Rose. But to you’ – she fixed us with a tiny frown – ‘Aunty Rose.’

‘Aunty Rose,’ we both mumbled obediently.

‘And now, I think you should both come back to my house and we’ll have a glass of lemonade.’

‘We could have a biscuit too,’ I added quickly, ‘because Mum says we don’t have to fast if we don’t want to.’

Bea kicked me.

Aunty Rose took my hand and said ‘I should think not too’ very indignantly and she marched us off down the street.

Aunty Rose lived in a house that had shrunk. It must once have been on the same level as the street, but now you had to climb down two steep steps to go through the front door. Aunty Rose bent her head and stooped low as she unlocked the door with an iron key, only straightening up once she was inside. All the rooms were white and small and the windows were arches through which you could see people’s legs up to the knee hurrying past in the courtyard outside.

Aunty Rose had furniture. In our house everything was on the floor but Aunty Rose had a wooden bed with legs and a table at which you could sit on high-backed chairs. There was a checked cloth on the table and a jug of yellow roses.

She made lemonade with white sugar and lemon juice. She poured us each a glass with a green sprig of mint floating on the top and set down a plate of wafer-thin biscuits. The biscuits tasted of almonds and melted in your mouth.

‘You never know when you’re going to have company,’ Aunty Rose smiled, smoothing her dress over her lap. She took a long drink of lemonade and asked, ‘Excited about tomorrow?’

We looked at her. ‘Tomorrow?’

‘Good grief, girls,’ Aunty Rose snorted with amusement, and then, softening, as if moved to pity by our state of ignorance said gently, ‘Christmas.’

‘Christmas? Tomorrow?’

We were stunned.

‘Cross your heart and hope to die,’ I tried to make her swear.

‘What… Christmas when Father Christmas comes?’

‘How do you know for definite?’

‘When you hang up stockings?’

‘But we haven’t even got a present for Mum.’ Bea was worried.

Aunty Rose convinced us with her tree in a bucket in the corner of the sitting-room. It was a baby pine with no decoration. By its side were arranged small clay figures and a brown clay cradle with a cow. ‘Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus,’ Aunty Rose explained. ‘I made them myself.’

I would have liked to stay and learn how to make things out of clay, especially the animals, but Bea was in a sudden hurry to be gone. Aunty Rose packed up the remaining biscuits and gave them to Bea to carry. ‘I’ll only eat them otherwise,’ she said, patting her stomach. She made us promise to visit her again so that we could collect our Christmas presents.

‘She didn’t say “present”,’ I pointed out to Bea once we were outside, ‘she said “presents”.’

Bea was preoccupied. ‘What are