Read Online Great Granny Webster by Caroline Blackwood - Free Book Online Page B

she was in a funny mood today, that when she had lashed out at me she had really been lashing out at herself.
    â€œWhen I was your age,” she said, “—you will never believe it now—but I was so shy and silent and bottled-up I was generally considered to be retarded. I was over-intense as well. Then somehow all that went ...”
    Aunt Lavinia fed Poo Poo another charcoal biscuit, which he crunched up, dribbling more black saliva on to the white cover on her bed.
    â€œI suppose I shouldn’t worry about you,” she said. “As you get older no doubt you’ll change automatically, just like I did. You will learn all the tricks. You will dress much better, and talk much more, and listen much less. And you’ll start to realise that it never does one much good to take anything too seriously at all.”
    She took one of her poodle’s charcoal biscuits out of the packet and ate it herself. “Either these are quite delicious or quite disgusting. Like many things in life, it’s rather hard to tell which,” she said.
    Aunt Lavinia was silent for a moment and lay back on her bed smoking.
    â€œWhen you are my age, darling, shyness will no longer be your problem. As the years go by you will change dramatically. No one can predict anyone else’s future. I’ve no idea what will happen to you. But once you reach your early thirties I’ve always had the strong suspicion—and to this I must add, God help you—you’ll probably be very like me.”
    Aunt Lavinia’s house was very warm. She liked to have log-fires burning and her central-heating turned on even in the summer. Although her bedroom was rather like a hot-house and fragrant with the smell of her lilies, I had exactly the same feeling of chill I had experienced in the bleak, cold, flowerless drawing-room of Great Granny Webster when that old lady had predicted that eventually I would be very like her. Quite suddenly I felt much too uncomfortably aware of the nearness of Aunt Lavinia’s bathroom, of the fact that it directly adjoined this gay and scented bedroom into which the golden shafts of the sun still penetrated despite the drawn curtains.
    Aunt Lavinia was intensely aware of the effect she had on other people, and she immediately sensed that I was unhappy with the trend her conversation had been taking. She quickly switched to a different and lighter topic. In a while she planned to take me out and give me the most delicious lunch, she said. She had found a superb and “madly expensive” restaurant round the corner, where one could have the most succulent oysters she had yet found in London.
    â€œI always force Rodney to take me there, darling. You don’t know about Rodney yet. He’s my newest flame. You’ll love him. He’s very lean and bronzed and sexy. He’s slightly a bore, but not such a bad one that you could call him an ‘important bore.’ Rodney’s just not very intelligent. But then he’s not the kind of man who’s meant to be ...”
    Aunt Lavinia said she would love to offer me some morning coffee, but there was a problem: she hadn’t got the courage to ring for her maid, Agnes, and ask her to bring us up a pot from the kitchen.
    â€œI can’t quite face meeting her eye right at this moment. You see, Agnes was the one who found me. I still feel the humiliation too strongly. Can you imagine the terrible indignity of being discovered stark naked in a blood-drenched bath by one’s maid?”
    She was in the most frightful dilemma. She was uncertain whether she would ever again feel comfortable with Agnes. She felt she might actually have to get rid of her, because there was such a danger that their relationship might be forever tainted by deep and mutual embarrassment.
    â€œAnd she’s a gem, darling. So it’s a tragedy. She’s divine. The whole thing couldn’t be more maddening ...”
    As she was