Read Online Aunt Maria by Diana Wynne Jones - Free Book Online Page A

But Aunt Maria did her soulful low booming voice and said, “My friends love to see young people,” so Chris had to stay and help Elaine cut sandwiches. His face looked as if he was imagining cutting bread as sawing slowly through one of Aunt Maria’s legs.
    It was still beautifully sunny, with almost no wind. The sea was blue-gray and the tide was out. You’d have thought there would be somebody down on the sand at least, but Cranbury was like a ghost town. Not a soul was about.
    â€œPerhaps it’s early-closing day,” Mum said.
    But it wasn’t. The shops were open. Mum went sailing down the street with her load of cat food, talking in her merriest, most ringing way. “What an odd place this is,” she said. “There don’t seem to be any children.” The lace curtains all along the street jerked. I thought, except the clones, and walked a long way behind trying to look as if I didn’t belong to Mum. When she’s in that kind of mood she can be worse than Chris. It was Elaine’s fault she was.
    Sure enough, Mum fell into a long conversation in the clothes shop with the lady there, all about how quiet Cranbury was. I could see the lady was embarrassed from the awkward way she said, “Well, there’s a lot of retired people live here, you know.”
    â€œAnd no children at all?” Mum said. “There must be. You sell children’s clothes.”
    â€œWe don’t get much call for them,” the lady admitted, “except from tourists like yourself.”
    Then Mum explained at great embarrassing length that we were staying with Aunt Maria. I wish she wouldn’t. I do think people ought to be more mysterious about themselves. And the lady got eager and sympathetic and kept saying, “Difficult to live with, is she?” in a way that was obviously fishing. So then Mum told her about the time when Aunt Marion was alive, and not on speaking terms with Aunt Maria. They both insisted we should see them, but they would not admit the other one existed. So that whenever we visited Cranbury we had to have tea twice, once with Aunt Marion and once with Aunt Maria. I remember it hideously. I was always sick on the way home.
    The lady laughed and said, “Yes, she’s always been like that. Miss Phelps is the latest. I feel sorry for Miss Phelps. Your auntie’s friend Elaine used to do a lot for Miss Phelps—take her out in a wheelchair and so on—but since Miss Phelps and your auntie had words, I heard Mrs. Blackwell’s been under orders not to do anything for her anymore.”
    Then Mum got an attack of crusading zeal and asked the lady ringingly if Miss Phelps would appreciate a visit from us . And the lady said, “Yes. Number twelve, she is, just across the road from you.” Really, it is difficult having a martyred crusading saint for a mother sometimes. She forgot my skirt and had to go back for it. She only remembered when we’d walked right to the other end of town. Mum said it was such a fine day that she would let Elaine get on with the Mrs. Urs and get a bit of fresh air for a change. So we humped the cat food along the seafront, until we came to the concrete slope with the little boats pulled up on it. That was the first time we saw anyone. There were four or five men in big boots pottering about the boats.
    â€œAh! A rare sighting of the endangered human species,” Mum said, and called out, “Good afternoon!” very loudly. Only two of the men looked up and only one nodded. “What a hole this is!” Mum said. I saw her notice the cliff under Cranbury Head and look away quickly. “I never did find out what caused the row between Aunt Marion and Aunt Maria,” she said, with dreadful merriness. “I wonder what Miss Phelps said to her.” Then she remembered my skirt. First she said I could run and get it. Then she saw my face and relented. “I left it,” she said.