How she hated Egypt! Yet it remained in her mind a vision of colour, of golden sun-kissed desert, of the blue and glittering Nile, of a sky hazy with heat and the distant shimmering of a mirage on the hot sand. She conjured up the shrill cries of the natives driving their camels, of the Arab boys fighting in the rising dust, of the call to prayer from the tall, slender minarets, and mixed with it all was a feeling of blank misery, a yearning for escape and a sense of interminable frustration. Mona shook herself and turned towards the window.
“Don’t let’s talk about the past,” she said, “it makes me depressed, and to anticipate the future is even worse. Shall we go for a walk?”
“It’s too late,” Michael replied. “Besides, there’s tea waiting for you in the hall and someone I want you to meet.”
“Who?” Mona asked curiously.
“My aunt,” Michael replied. “She’s come to stay with me for a little while. She’s closed her house in London and is making a tour of her nephews and nieces.”
“It sounds formidable. What’s she like?”
“What are aunts usually like?”
“Well, in that case I’d better go home and put on my lavender and lace.”
“You’ll do very well as you are,” Michael answered.
He looked at her checked skirt and short beaver-fur coat.
“Well, I shall be interested to meet her,” Mona said. “Somehow, I never think of you as a man with many relations.”
“Which, of course, implies something rude,” Michael retorted.
“How touchy you are! I think it’s a compliment really, I’ve usually hated all my relations.”
‘Except one,’ her heart whispered, ‘except one.’
Michael opened the door and they walked into the great sitting room. Tea was laid before the big open fire place, with its huge logs supported on steel dogs. Seated in front of the tea table was a woman. She was small, with grey hair beautifully arranged, and her hands, moving among the tea things, glittered with rings. The first impression was that she was old, and then one was not so certain. She might have been any age. She was distinguished, but from the moment she held out her hand in greeting, Mona was conscious of a twinkle in the bright eyes that looked her over and seemed to see more than was on the surface.
“Aunt Ada,” Michael said, “this is Lady Carsdale, about whom I’ve talked so much. Mona, my aunt, Mrs. Windlesham.”
“How do you do?” Michael’s aunt said. “I have heard a great deal about you and don’t look so startled, all nice things. How I loathe people who don’t say that at once! One always wonders what they have heard and if one should take steps at once to contradict everything that is likely to be untrue.”
Mona laughed.
“In this neighbourhood everything is certain to be untrue,” she said. “Except about me, and then it isn’t bad enough. Has Michael told you I am the black sheep of Little Cobble?”
“On the contrary,” Mrs. Windlesham said, “he told me that you were a great beauty and I must say for once I agree with every word he said.”
“Thank you,” Mona replied. “How nice you are to me. Michael, can I have a crumpet?”
“Yes, but I don’t think you need one after that tribute,” he said.
Then handing them to his aunt, added,
“Mona wondered if she ought to go home and put on her lavender and lace when she heard she was to meet you, Aunt Ada.”
Mrs. Windlesham chuckled.
“People always expect Michael’s aunt to be a staid old lady with lace-up corsets and a bustle,” she said. “I’m beginning to think there must be something wrong with Michael.”
Mona laughed and Michael said grumpily,
“This is really the end if both of you are going to set on me. It’s not fair! I thought at least I should have one person to be kind to me when you arrived, Aunt Ada.”
“Kind! Nobody’s ever asked me to be that,” Aunt Ada said. “Most people nowadays seem to want one to be amusing or daring – don’t you think so, Lady Carsdale?”
Mona had come to the quick conclusion that she liked Michael’s aunt. She had a sharp, amusing way of talking, but, although she appeared to know the world, there was also something wise and rather restful about her.
‘A really nice relation to have,’ she thought.
“Tell me all the excitements,” Mrs. Windlesham went on. “You know what men are like when you ask them to tell you about people in the neighbourhood. I’ve got as far as their names and addresses, their ages and the number of the children they have, but as for knowing their peculiarities Michael’s about as informative as Who’s Who, which I always thought was very dull reading.”
“My aunt likes inside information about people,” Michael explained. “She makes a hobby of collecting specimens of mankind, as other people collect stamps or odd bits of china. When I go to her house in London, I find all sorts of oddities there. One man, I’m certain, was a murderer.”
“Now who was that?” his aunt said with a puzzled face. “Oh, I know who you mean. No dear, he was never had up for anything worse than arson.”
She turned to Mona.
“I’m afraid it is rather a failing of mine to study people. I like knowing about them, watching for characteristic traits, it’s far more interesting than reading a book.”
“But often far more expensive,” Michael interrupted.
His aunt smiled at him.
“You are thinking of that young man who persuaded me to put money into a non-existent gold mine,” she said. “Oh well, we must all pay for our pleasures, and I don’t suppose that the gold mines in which I have speculated over my whole life would add up to more than you have expended giving young women orchids and taking them to the theatre.”
“Oh, but those are not Michael’s extravagances,” Mona laughed. “When he’s feeling reckless he indulges in a cow or a new tractor! But I’m on your side, Mrs. Windlesham, I think that one’s pleasures are worth paying for, but I can’t say I enjoy people as a whole. Some of them are too strange, too peculiar, to be anything but nauseating.”
