The Sugar Box

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Aunt Liz was now growing potatoes in the kitchen. She would cut up any wrinkled ones she found in the grubby bag under her sink and push a piece into some soil in a pot.

 

‘There you go,’ she’d say. ‘Grow nicely for me.’

 

She had dozens of pots around her kitchen, along the grease stained walls and strewn over the crusted window sills. It was an ignominious end to a life spent teaching mathematics to expat kids, travelling the world to exclusive schools in romantic places. Any town I’d never heard of she’d know it. Darjeeling, Kathmandu, Valparaiso, Ouagadougou. In my teens, when knowing the names of irrelevant towns was important because my teacher said they were, she’d be there for me bringing them to life and smiling with those round brown eyes that closed up when she laughed.

 

When she took me for day trips round London even the city’s grey monolithic buildings became interesting. I saw her get her masters degree in one but recall little except a cavernous medieval hall full of people set apart from mere mortals by their gowns of flashy reds and yellows.

 

I loved Aunt Liz when I was a kid because she was cleverer than me and now she was a confused, hunched, life lined old woman I still did. But in between those times, when I had grown up and knew better, I can’t remove the guilt about loving her too much.

 

She was thirty six when I had my twentieth birthday.

 

‘It’s about time you got married, Liz,’ said my mother. ‘Peter will be there before you at this rate.’

 

‘For God’s sake, it’s not a race, Marjorie’ she said. ‘And a good reason would be quite useful too.’

 

Looking back, I’m surprised they got on so well. Mum and dad were neat-hedged, householders with pretty curtains, obsessed by what the neighbours thought. But aunt Liz was never going to abide by some social rules she considered irrelevant. She saw me look at her, saw the admiration in my face. She scrunched up her shoulders and laughed, like a little girl. I’ve never known anyone so able to convey wisdom and innocence at the same time.

 

Aunt Liz had found the secret, getting things she wanted out of life. It was the sort of life I yearned for when all I’d done was womanise my way through university. Girls were good fun of course, had all the right things in the right places but, I don’t know, they just didn’t seem to meet expectations.  

 

A few days afterward, just before she flew to Accra, aunt Liz came round. I was with my mate Jimmy finishing off the few cans of beer that had mysteriously remained undrunk during the party.

 

‘Anyone fancy an art gallery?’ she asked.

‘I doubt if we could afford one,’ said Jimmy.

‘I wasn’t asking for an investment. I’ve got two tickets for an exhibition at the National next weekend. I can’t use them.’

 

We shrugged our shoulders.

 

‘So you may not like it,’ she said as she lowered herself on to the arm of a chair. I could detect teacher-mode. ‘But just think of the experience you’ll have learning why you don’t. In a few years you’ll look back and think of that terrible day when you saw some paintings you hated. You might even find out what you do like.’

 

Jimmy said nothing then turned to look at me.

 

‘Why not?’ I said. ‘A day in London. Could be a laugh.’

 

When she’d gone Jimmy said. ‘Your aunt’s all right isn’t she? Good company. Quite fanciable in a middle aged sort of way.’

 

‘Keep you hands off my aunt,’ I snapped back. ‘She’s too good for you.’

‘All right, Pete. Just a joke. Got her lined up for yourself have you?’

 

I said nothing. Protestation would have made it worse. But it was then I realised I adored her, there’s no other word for it, and it wasn’t the adoration nephews have for aunts. I know part of the attraction was that she was a jetsetter and I’m not saying she was more important than my mother. I loved my mum like any son does. But a love for one’s mother is special and incomparable. My love for my aunt was different but dangerously comparable.

A year later she told me she was going abroad once again. She’d asked me round to help tidy up her garage.

 

‘You were wrong about the paintings,’ I said. We were sitting in her lounge, me with a beer and she with a cup of tea. She looked puzzled for a moment then remembered our conversation.

 

‘Wrong?’

‘We had a really good day out. European masters. The Dutch stuff was brilliant.’

‘Yes, I assumed I’d be wrong. I had to dare you to go.’

I smiled and nodded. ‘How long are you away for this time?’

‘It’s a two year contract.’

‘Pretoria is a long way,’ I said but I don’t recall her answering. My head was full of her. Was she beautiful? I don’t know. I’ve never known. It doesn’t really matter.

‘It might be nice to stay home for a couple of years,’ I suggested.

 

She turned and took a sip of tea ‘There’s nothing here for me, is there?’

 

‘You might find a husband.’

‘Now don’t start on me like your mother.’ Then she said. ‘I’ve never found a man interesting enough. Too many still think they have sole rights to win the bread and demand slippers and hot meals when they get home.’ She looked into the distance and gave a silent snort. ‘Ex-pats are the worst.’

 

 I wondered what stress a man might be under knowing that at any moment she might show him who was the cleverer. That wouldn’t happen between me and aunt Liz. Neither of us had anything to prove.

 

‘Your family are here.’

 

Aunt Liz put her cup down on the side table. ‘Peter, my family are always here. I love my family but I enjoy travelling.’

 

‘Unlike mum and dad,’

‘They haven’t visited me once.’

‘Their loss I guess.’

‘Your mother’s always hated flying and your dad hasn’t got the nerve to negotiate airports on his own.’ She tried to hide a disparaging look but failed.

‘But I could come to see you.’

Aunt Liz’s face lit up. ‘Yes, that would be great. Would you?’

‘You couldn’t keep me away.’ I said and suddenly it seemed odd that I’d not visited her before even if accompanied as a minor. I finished my beer and we both stood up.

‘I can’t wait already,’ I said, put my arms around her and gave her a hug. She did the same and looked into my eyes.

‘You’re a lovely young man, Peter.’

 

Then we kissed. On the lips. We fell onto the sofa. Then it happened. I can’t say any more. It was a terrible thing we did. No… it was fantastic.

 

Besides potatoes, aunt Liz tries to grow carrots. It doesn’t work of course. She’s forgotten that carrots don’t have eyes, that you can’t stick a piece in a pot and grow another one. The potatoes work occasionally.

 

‘Look,’ she says with an excited grin and shows me a small round tuber she has just exposed. ‘That’s for my dinner.’

 

She saves a good fifty pence each year doing that. I go round a lot. She’s nearly eighty now and needs company. I make myself a cup of tea.

 

‘Don’t put the kettle on,’ she says. ‘There’s enough water in the flask.’

 

Each morning she makes herself some tea and pours the remnants of the kettle into a thermos flask. ‘Can’t waste hot water, can we?’ she says. It’s for her late morning cup but she doesn’t mind me having it. Because I’m special.

 

We sit at the kitchen table. In the winter it’s the only place that’s warm. Her hair is grey now, almost white. Her brown eyes have lost their lustre but still she smiles in the way she always did.

 

‘Do you remember Bombay?’ she asks. She always mentions Bombay. Yes, I remember Bombay, Liz. I don’t get angry because she doesn’t deserve that. Bombay was the last time. At the end of the two weeks I told her I was getting married. I was the same age then as she was when…when I tidied her garage. I could see the shock in her eyes.

 

‘Congratulations,’ she’d said but the word was hollow. ‘Does that mean you won’t visit me again?’

 

‘No, of course not. I can visit you whenever.’ But I knew that was untrue. To spend a holiday with my aunt and Carol was impossible to contemplate. And I could see she knew it was all over.

 

‘I’m sorry Liz. But I have a life to lead.’

‘I thought you already had two,’ she said and walked off the veranda into the living room.

 

She offers me sugar for my tea. It’s an opened sugar sachet from British Airways.

 

‘This one’s used,’ I say.

‘No it isn’t. It’s the one you had last time. You didn’t finish it.’

 

I tear open the sachet but the remaining few grains have now glued themselves to the paper. I go to the sugar box in the cupboard behind. It’s stuffed full of sachets maybe from every airline in the world and gets replenished from a stock hidden in one of her rattan chests. I drop a few sachets on the floor.

 

‘You must be more careful,’ she says. ‘I worked hard for those.’

 

My dear Aunt Liz. Holds on to every possession right down to sugar grains because they might disappear. That’s why I know it’s my fault. After all those years travelling the world, sharing her bed in the very places she told me about as a kid, those romantic, exotic names that I got to experience in a way undreamed of.

 

‘It’s twenty six years,’ she says.

‘What is?’

‘Since Bombay. Almost to the day, I believe.’

‘I remember it well,’ I say and mean it.

‘Have you told anyone yet?’ she asks.

‘Not a soul, promise.’

‘I would not like to die,’ she says as she flattens her hands against the table, ‘without having shared what we had with others.’

‘I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ I say. ‘You’re my mother’s sister. Think about it.’

 

But I believe the notion no longer fills her with horror. We both knew it was wrong but it got too important, our deadly untellable secret. It was like a drug, all my money going on flights around the world so we could indulge each other. And what better cover, visiting your aunt while researching and writing travelogues? I had to find a way out. It was insane. But I think perhaps I was the only man she took seriously and her downward spiral, her weakening hold on reality, began then. All that self possession, that self assuredness, seemed to dissipate over the years like wisps of cloud before a setting sun. Maybe it never existed.

 

Carol and I divorced a few years back but it’s too late now. Aunt Liz still keeps our secret but not for long I fear.

 

‘She’s getting worse,’ said my mother following one of her frequent visits. ‘When I walked in she asked where her husband Peter was.’

 

I gave one of those half chuckles that I hoped was meaningless but feared it conveyed every detail. Mum smiled and looked at me quizzically. I couldn’t work out what she believed at that point but if the box opens wide there’ll be a lot more than sugar sachets that spill out.