I guess it’s fair to say that Aunt Thecla is the kind of person who tends to have a considerable impact on those around her.
Dad always describes her as ‘a very formidable lady’, and it’s true that she does tend to make a lasting impression wherever she goes. She’s tall with broad shoulders and she has what Mum calls a ‘big-boned’ sort of build. She also has thick dark hair with white streaks through it, and Bella once joked that she looks like Cruella de Vil. She has these dark grey, almost-black eyes that turn really glinty and sharp if she doesn’t approve of something or someone. They’ve never got too glinty or sharp with me thank goodness, but I’ve seen it happen with other people, and she’s probably the only person alive who can make Dad squirm.
Bella says I’m her favourite and I think maybe she’s right. I’m not really sure why she gets on better with me than with my sisters, but I think it might be because they don’t have a lot to do with her when she visits, whereas I find all her stories about the past quite interesting and I don’t mind sitting and listening. I even ask questions, which Bella gets cross about because she says it just encourages her to talk even more.
Then there’s the fact that Aunt Thecla freely admits to not liking very many people. ‘I can’t help it if I’m not a people person,’ she’ll say with no embarrassment at all. And she’ll declare, ‘The trouble with most friends is that they are far too demanding of one’s time. That’s why I like to keep mine to a minimum. Quality not quantity – that’s the important thing.’
Dad says he can’t imagine too many people wanting to be Aunt Thecla’s friend in any case. ‘It’s all very well being rude and critical to your family, but you can’t get away with that with friends.’
Our aunt was fifty last year, and even though that’s actually only a couple of years older than Dad, she’s always seemed like his much older sister. She’s never married or had any children, but according to Dad she was engaged once when she was very young. I’ve tried to ask her about it a couple of times, but that’s the one thing she never seems to want to talk about.
A long time ago she worked as a history teacher at St Clara’s, but at some point she gave that up to look after our grandfather. I think she looked after him for quite a long time, until he died several years ago. Then she sold the family home (for an absolute fortune, according to Mum) and downsized to her current house in the village. I think she might have tried to give Dad some of the money from the house, but he refused because he hated his father so much. I remember hearing Mum and Dad arguing about it one time.
I don’t know much about my grandfather. Dad hadn’t spoken to him in years, and none of us – not even Mum – ever actually met him. It was after he died that we started to see more of Aunt Thecla. She always visited us rather than the other way round, and the first time we’d been to her house and seen the village where Dad grew up was when we came to look at our new school.
Every time our aunt came to stay with us Mum would start off being very polite to her, but she could never keep it up for more than the first twenty-four hours, after which time they’d begin snapping at each other because Aunt Thecla would start dishing out advice, which Dad can’t bear. He always seemed to have lots of work on whenever she came, and he’d disappear as much as he could, which then set Mum off snapping at him.
The atmosphere got particularly tense during Aunt Thecla’s visit to us last August. The year before she’d adopted a West Highland Terrier called Hughie, who was very boisterous, very yappy and very possessive of her. He was also quite smelly and had bits of dried poo stuck to the dirty white fur around his bottom, which our aunt never seemed to notice. Needless to say, none of my family were exactly wild about him, even though Dad, Bella, Grace and I really like most dogs (whereas Mum is more of a cat person).
Anyway, last summer our aunt had offered to pay for our elderly cat Trixie to stay in a cattery so that she could bring Hughie with her, and Mum had just about had a fit. She was pretty soppy about Trixie, who she’d had since she was a tiny kitten, a couple of years before Bella was born. ‘So poor Hughie can’t possibly stay in kennels, but it doesn’t matter if poor arthritic old Trixie pines away in the cattery!’ she exclaimed when Dad told her.
‘Don’t worry, Nina. I told her it was out of the question,’ he reassured her. ‘I said that Trixie can’t do without her home comforts now that she’s such an old lady.’
‘Good! And what did she say to that?’
‘She asked me how long cats live for,’ Dad said with a grin, which he quickly killed when he saw Mum’s face. He can sometimes see the funny side when it comes to our aunt. To be fair, so can Mum. I guess the trouble is that they never seem to see it at the same time.
Anyway, Aunt Thecla arrived the following week, and after she’d been chatting and drinking tea for half an hour she asked where Trixie was.
‘Oh, she’ll be outside somewhere, I expect,’ Mum said.
‘Good … now, Nina, there’s something I have to confess … I know I agreed not to bring Hughie, but he was so distressed when I tried to drop him at the kennels this morning that I just couldn’t do it … and, after all, if the cat is out most of the time she’s hardly going to even notice he’s here, is she?’
Mum’s mouth literally fell open as Aunt Thecla left the kitchen to go and fetch Hughie from the car.
So Hughie ended up sleeping on our aunt’s bed for the whole week, and poor Trixie nearly had a fit every time she caught sight of him or heard him barking. She hardly came inside for the entire week, and even after Aunt Thecla left it took Trixie a whole day to come in from the bottom of the garden. Once she did she started weeing in the house on a daily basis, which we all thought was her marking her territory, until Mum eventually took her to the vet, who discovered a big inoperable lump in her tummy. So a week later Mum was in floods of tears as she took her to be put down.
Mum said that she knew it was irrational to blame Aunt Thecla for Trixie’s death – and even more irrational to blame Hughie – but she couldn’t help holding them responsible for making the end of Trixie’s life so miserable.
‘The trouble with Thecla is that she only thinks about herself,’ Mum said. ‘Which is what comes of living on your own for so long, I suppose.’
But Dad shook his head. ‘She was born like it. Totally self-absorbed from day one, that’s her.’
Mum avoided talking to Aunt Thecla on the phone over the next few months and said there was no way Hughie was ever coming to our house again. In fact, it sounded like our aunt wouldn’t be welcome for the foreseeable future either.
It was only when Aunt Thecla phoned in tears six months later to tell us that Hughie had been run over by a car that Mum forgave her and started speaking to her again.