‘Come and sit down, girls,’ Aunt Edna continued, tapping the chair beside her with a fleshy hand made heavy with jewellery. ‘We were just saying . . .’
‘Pas devant les enfants,’ Rose interjected warily, pouring herself another cup of tea.
‘Oh, do tell, Mummy,’ Isla pleaded, pulling a face at Aunt Edna who winked back. If she didn’t tell them now she would later.
‘There’s no harm in relating this tale, Rose,’ she said to her sister. ‘Don’t you agree, Hilda, it’s all part of their education?’ Hilda pursed her dry lips and fiddled with the string of pearls that hung about her scraggy neck.
‘Prevention is better than cure,’ she replied in a tight voice, for Aunt Hilda barely opened her mouth when she spoke. ‘I don’t see the harm in it, Rose.’
‘Very well,’ Rose conceded, sitting back in her chair with resignation. ‘But you tell, Edna, it makes me too distressed to speak of it.’
Aunt Edna’s blue eyes twinkled with mischief and she slowly lit a cigarette. Her two nieces waited with impatience as she inhaled deeply for dramatic effect. ‘A tragic though utterly romantic tale, my dears,’ she began, exhaling the smoke like a friendly dragon. ‘All the while poor Emma Townsend has been engaged to Thomas Letton she has been desperately in love with an Argentine boy.’
‘The worst is that this boy isn’t even from a good Argentine family,’ Aunt Hilda interrupted, raising her eyebrows to emphasize her disapproval. ‘He’s the son of a baker or something.’ She burrowed her skeletal fingers into her sister’s packet of cigarettes and lit up with indignation.
‘The poor parents,’ Rose lamented, shaking her head. ‘They must be so ashamed.’
‘Where did she meet him?’ Audrey asked, at once moved by the impossibility of the affair and eager to hear more.
‘No one knows. She won’t say,’ Aunt Edna replied, thrilled by the mysterious nature of the story. ‘But if you ask me he’s from the neighbourhood. How else would she have bumped into him? It must have been love at first sight. I’ve been told by a very reliable source that she would creep out of her bedroom window for midnight rendezvous. Imagine, the indecency of it!’ Isla wriggled in her chair with excitement. Aunt Edna’s eyes widened with the fervour of a frog who’s just spotted a fat fly. ‘Midnight rendezvous! It’s the stuff novels are made of!’ she gushed, recalling the secret meetings in the pavilion that she had enjoyed in her youth.
‘Do tell how they were discovered,’ Isla pleaded, ignoring her mother’s look of gentle disapproval.
‘They were spotted by her grandmother, old Mrs Featherfield, who has trouble sleeping and often wanders around the garden late at night. She saw a young couple kissing beneath the sycamore tree and presumed it was her granddaughter and her fiancé, Thomas Letton. You can imagine her horror when she failed to recognize the strange dark boy who had his arms wrapped around young Emma and was . . .’
‘That’s enough, Edna,’ Rose demanded suddenly, placing her teacup on its saucer with a loud clink.
‘Dear Thomas Letton must be devastated,’ Aunt Edna went on, tactfully digressing to satisfy her sister. ‘There’s no chance that he’ll marry her now.’
‘From what I hear, the silly girl claims she is in love and is begging her poor parents to allow her to marry the baker’s son,’ Aunt Hilda added tartly, stubbing out her cigarette.
‘Good gracious!’ Aunt Edna exclaimed, fanning her round face with the menu in agitation, but clearly savouring every detail of the affair.
‘Oh dear,’ Rose sighed sorrowfully.
‘How wonderful!’ Isla gasped with glee, wriggling in her chair. ‘What a delicious scandal. Do you think they’ll elope?’
‘Of course not, my darling,’ Rose replied, patting her daughter’s hand in order to calm her down. Isla always worked herself up into a lather of excitement over the smallest things. ‘She wouldn’t want to bring shame upon her dear family.’
‘How sad,’ breathed Audrey, feeling the full force of the lovers’ pain as if she were living it herself. ‘How desperately sad that they can’t be together. What will happen to them now?’ She blinked at her mother with her large, dreamy eyes.
‘I imagine she’ll come to her senses sooner or later and if she’s lucky, poor Thomas Letton may agree to marry her still. He’s so fond of her, I know.’
‘He’d be a saint,’ Aunt Hilda commented, dismissing the girl with a swift sweep of her knife as she spread jam onto her scone.