"Brian Lumley - Aunt Hester" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

AUNT HESTER



by




Brian Lumley


I suppose my Aunt Hester Lang might be best described as the ‘black sheep’ of the family. Certainly no
one ever spoke to her, or of her – none of the elders of the family, that is – if my own little friendship with
my aunt had been known I am sure that would have been stamped on too; but of course that friendship
was many years ago.

I remember it well: how I used to sneak round to Aunt Hester’s house in hoary Castle-Ilden, not far
from Harden on the coast, after school when my folks thought I was at Scouts, and Aunt Hester would
make me cups of cocoa and we would talk about newts (‘efts’, she called them), frogs, conkers and
other things – things of interest to small boys – until the local Scouts’ meeting was due to end, and then I
would hurry home.

We (father, mother and myself) left Harden when I was just twelve years old, moving down toLondon
where the Old Man had got himself a good job. I was twenty years old before I got to see my aunt again.
In the intervening years I had not sent her so much as a postcard (I’ve never been much of a
letter-writer) and I knew that during the same period of time my parents had neither written nor heard
from her; but still that did not stop my mother warning me before I set out for Harden not to ‘drop in’ on
Aunt Hester Lang.

No doubt about it, they were frightened of her, my parents – well, if not frightened, certainly they were
apprehensive.

Now to me a warning has always been something of a challenge. I had arranged to stay with a friend for
a week, a school pal from the good old days, but long before the northbound train stopped at Harden my
mind was made up to spend at least a fraction of my time at my aunt’s place. Why shouldn’t I? Hadn’t
we always got on famously? Whatever it was she had done to my parents in the past, I could see no
good reason whyI should shun her.

She would be getting on in years a bit now. How old, I wondered? Older than my mother, her sister, by
a couple of years – the same age (obviously) as her twin brother, George, in Australia – but of course I
was also ignorant of his age. In the end, making what calculations I could, I worked it out that Aunt
Hester and her distant brother must have seen at least one hundred and eight summers between them.
Yes, my aunt must be about fifty-four years old. It was about time someone took an interest in her.
 It was a bright Friday night, the first after my arrival in Harden, when the ideal opportunity presented
itself for visiting Aunt Hester. My school friend, Albert, had a date – one he did not really want to put off
– and though he had tried his best during the day it had early been apparent that his luck was out as
regards finding, on short notice, a second girl for me. It had been left too late. But in any case, I’m not
much on blind dates – and most dates are ‘blind’ unless you really know the girl – and I go even less on
doubles; the truth of the matter was that I had wanted the night for my own purposes. And so, when the