Maiden Aunts
These worn-smooth silver coins came to me
from my great aunt Marie – sterling
Victorians all, far from ‘the Old Country’.
Settled in Sumner Christchurch
near the sea with her sister Cecily –
two spinsters of their Catholic parish.
Marie of the loud elocutionary voice
and large hand-gestures taught the deaf,
pronouncing as if at public meetings.
Cecily keeping house spoke quietly.
They weren’t on the phone. Marie sometimes
came to Auckland, Cecily never.
But oh, Cecily rolled her own – rollie
in mouth, talked and cooked. Ash dropped
into the porridge and was stirred in.
Admired the parliamentarian
their non-catholic half-brother,
Labour’s ‘chief whip’ in Wellington,
but not his ‘bolshie’ politics;
seldom saw him, voted Tory,
deferred more to the parish priest.
They practiced economy: old
Christmas cards came back, newly
written on, in Marie’s manly hand.
Once I went by bus to Sumner, looking out
for postcard Cave Rock and its beach,
found their little wooden cottage
near the church, its school for the deaf
and convent nearby screened by trees.
In their bare kitchen Cecily fussed for me.
I doubt they had callers much, certainly
not male, or ever ate out. The house smelt
acrid sweet. My appetite for cold meat,
undressed lettuce salad and plain cheese,
vanished; I greedily brought away
these silver coins, mine now half a century.
Soon after, word came: Cecily
was dying at home of cancer.
Marie followed, both nursed by Verna,
her favourite niece, also ‘outspoken’;
the tiny estate which should have gone
to her, went to the Church.
I hear still Marie booming out: ‘Verna,
I could tell you, but little pigs have big ears.’
Big-eared kid, I ran from the room in tears.
It’s high time these coins moved on
to another Richards, my only son.
They lacked maiden aunts, his generation.
Max Richards
Doncaster, Victoria
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