Wordsworth said, You give three hunded francs to these ladies for private show.
The price seems to be going up.
Maybe ar make them say two hunded francs. You lef it to Wordsworth. O.K.?
It was no use appealing to Wordsworths sense of morality. I said, As you have a British passport, you should know that an Englishman is allowed to take only fifteen pounds in currency out of the country. Two hundred francs would exhaust the whole amount.
This was a reason Wordsworth could understand. He looked down at me from his great height with melancholy and commiseration. Governments all the same no good, he said.
One must make sacrifices. The cost of defence and the social services is very high.
Travellers cheques, Wordsworth suggested quickly.
They can only be exchanged at a bank, an official exchange or a registered hotel. In any case, I shall need them in Istanbul.
Your auntie got plenty.
She has only a travel allowance too, I said. I felt the weakness of this last argument, for Wordsworth cannot have lived for very long with my aunt before learning that she resorted to ways and means. I changed the subject by attacking him. What on earth did you mean, Wordsworth, by sending me away with Cannabis in my mothers urn?
His mind was elsewhere, brooding perhaps on the travel allowance.
No cannibals, he said, in England. No cannibals in Sierra Leone.
Im talking about the ashes.
Cannibals in Liberia, not Sierra Leone.
I didnt say cannibals.
Leopard Society in Sierra Leone. They kill plenty people but not chop them.
Pot, Wordsworth, pot. I hated the vulgar word which reminded me of childhood. You mixed pot with my mothers ashes.
At last I had embarrassed him. He drank the whisky quickly. You come away, he said, ar show you much better damned place. Rue de Douai.
I harried him all the way up the stairs. You had no business to do such a thing, Wordsworth. The police came and took the urn.
They give it you back? he asked.
Only the urn. The ashes were inextricably mixed with the pot.
Old Wordsworth meant no harm, man, he said, halting on the pavement. Those bloody police.
I was glad to see there was a taxi rank close by. I was afraid he might try to follow me and discover the whereabouts of Aunt Augusta.
In Mendeland, he said, you bury food with your ma. You bury pot. All the same thing.
My mother didnt even smoke cigarettes.
With your pa you bury best hatchet.
Why not food with him too?
He go hunt food with hatchet. He kill bush chicken.
I got into the taxi and drove away. Looking through the rear window, I could see Wordsworth standing bewildered on the pavement edge, like a man on a river bank waiting for a ferry. He raised his hand tentatively, as though he were uncertain of my response, whether I had left him in friendship or anger, as the traffic swept between us. I wished then that I had given him a bigger CTC. After all he meant no harm. Even in his size he exhibited a clumsy innocence.
Chapter 10
I found Aunt Augusta sitting alone in the centre of the large and shabby salon filled with green velvet chairs and marble mantelpieces. She had not bothered to remove the suitcase, which lay open and empty on the floor. There were traces of tears in her eyes. I turned on the dim lights of the dusty chandelier, and my aunt gave me an uncertain smile.
Has something happened, Aunt Augusta? I asked. It occurred to me that she might have been robbed by the man with sideburns and I regretted having left her alone with such a large amount of cash.
Nothing, Henry, she said in a voice surprisingly gentle and wavery. I decided after all on a deposit account in Berne. What banalities they drive us to with their rules and regulations. At this moment she had all the weary manner I would have expected of an old lady of seventy-five.
You are upset.
Only by memories, Aunt Augusta said. For me this hotel has many memories, and very old ones at that. You would have been only a boy
Suddenly I felt a real affection for my aunt. Perhaps a hint of weakness is required to waken our affections, and I remembered Miss Keenes fingers faltering over her tatting as she spoke of unknown South Africa it had been then that I came nearest to a proposal.
What kind of memories, Aunt Augusta?
Of a love affair, Henry. A very happy one while it lasted.
Tell me.
I was moved, as I had sometimes been at the theatre, at the sight of old age remembering. The faded luxury of the room seemed like a stage set at the Haymarket[100]. It brought to my mind photographs of Doris Keene in Romance, and who was it in Milestones? Having very few memories of my own to linger over, I appreciate sentiment all the more in others.
She dabbed at her eyes. Youd be bored, Henry. An unfinished bottle of champagne found in an old cupboard with all the sparkle gone The jaded phrase was worthy of a Haymarket author.
I drew up a chair and took her small hand in mine: it was creamy to the touch and I was much moved by a small brown grave-mark, which she had failed to cover with powder. Tell me, I repeated. We were both silent, thinking of very different things. I felt as though I were on the stage taking part in a revival of The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. My aunt had led a very mixed-up life that was certain but she had loved deeply in her time, in the Hotel Saint James and Albany, and who knew what excuses in her past there might be for her relations with poor Wordsworth? This sitting-room of the hotel reminded me of that other Albany in London where Captain Tanqueray had lived.