Hearts and Flowers

Aunty Marge,

Spinster of the parish, never had a boyfriend.

Never courted, never kissed.

A jerrybuilt dentist and a smashed jaw

Saw to that.

To her,

Life was a storm in a holy-water font

Across which she breezed

With all the grace and charm

Of a giraffe learning to windsurf.

But sweating

In the convent laundry, she would iron

Amices, albs and surplices

With such tenderness and care

You’d think priests were still inside.

Deep down,

She would like to have been a nun

And talked of missing her vocation

As if it were the last bus home:

‘It passed me by when I was looking the other way.’

‘Besides,’

She’d say, ‘What Order would have me?

The Little Daughters of the Woodbine?

The Holy Whist Sisters?’ A glance at the ceiling.

‘He’s not that hard up.’

We’d laugh

And protest, knowing in our hearts that He wasn’t.

But for the face she would have been out there,

Married, five kids, another on the way.

Celibacy a gift unearned, unasked for.

But though

A goose among grown-ups,

Let loose among kids

She was an exploding fireworks factory,

A runaway pantomime horse.

Everybody’s

Favourite aunt. A cuddly toy adult

That sang loud and out of tune.

That dropped, knocked over and bumped into things,

That got ticked off just like us.

Next to

A game of cards she liked babysitting best.

Once the parents were out of the way

It was every child for itself. In charge,

Aunt Marge, renegade toddler-in-chief.

Falling

Asleep over pontoon, my sister and I,

Red-eyed, would beg to be taken to bed.

‘Just one more game of snap,’ she’d plead,

And magic two toffees from behind an ear.

Then suddenly

Whooshed upstairs in the time it takes

To open the front door. Leaving us to possum,

She’d tiptoe down with the fortnightly fib:

‘Still fast asleep, not a murmur all night. Little angels.’

But angels

Unangelic, grew up and flew away. And fallen,

Looked for brighter toys. Each Christmas sent a card

With kisses, and wondered how she coped alone.

Up there in a council flat. No phone.

Her death

Was as quick as it was clumsy. Neighbours

Found the body, not us. Sitting there for days

Stiff in Sunday best. Coat half-buttoned, hat askew.

On her way to Mass. Late as usual.

Her rosary

Had snapped with the pain, the decades spilling,

Black beads trailing. The crucifix still

Clenched in her fist. Middle finger broken.

Branded into dead flesh, the sign of the cross.

From the missal

In her lap, holy pictures, like playing cards,

Lay scattered. Five were face-up:

A Full House of Sacred Hearts and Little Flowers.

Aunty Marge, lucky in cards.