‘Well,’ Aunt Edna exploded in a loud hiss, ‘so unlike Arthur not to growl at us all.’
‘That’s enough, Edna,’ Henry chided, picking up a handful of nuts. ‘It isn’t our place to comment.’
‘I suppose not,’ she conceded with a smile, ‘the Crocodiles do enough of that for all of us.’
‘They’ll be furious they’re missing this.’ Isla giggled and nudged her sister with her elbow. But Audrey couldn’t join in the merriment. She felt desperately sorry for the family who all suffered so publicly along with their daughter.
Just when the Townsends’ shame threatened to suffocate them a gasp of astonishment hissed through the room like a sudden gust of wind. Audrey turned around to see Thomas Letton striding across the floor with his chin jutting out with resolution. Isla sat up with her mouth wide open as if she were about to scream with excitement. Albert, hating to miss an opportunity to pay his sister back for years of teasing, grabbed a peanut and flicked it down her throat. She stared at him in surprise before turning as red as a beet as the nut caught in her windpipe and prevented her from breathing. Pushing her chair out with a loud screech she swept the glasses off the table where they shattered onto the floorboards causing everyone to avert their attention from Thomas Letton and the Townsend family to see what the disturbance was. Isla’s bloodshot eyes rolled around in their sockets as she choked and waved her arms about in a frantic attempt to get help. Before Audrey knew what was happening her father had grabbed Isla from behind, pulling her off the ground and wrapping his strong arms around her stomach, thrusting his wrists into her lungs, again and again. She spluttered and gasped, all the time turning redder and redder until the whole lounge had formed a circle around their table like a herd of curious cows, anxiously willing Henry Garnet to save his daughter from a hideous death. Rose stood petrified with terror as the life seemed to leave her little girl’s body in agonizing spasms. Silently she prayed to God. Later she would praise Him for His intervention because with one enormous thrust the peanut was dislodged and the child gulped in a lungful of air. Albert collapsed into tears, throwing his arms around his mother with remorse. Aunt Edna rushed to embrace Isla as she lurched back from the brink of death and began to shake uncontrollably. The crowd of onlookers clapped and cheered. Only Audrey noticed Emma Townsend leave with Thomas Letton. It didn’t escape her notice, either, that they were holding hands.
‘Great Uncle Charlie died from choking,’ Aunt Edna remarked solemnly when the clapping had died down. ‘But it wasn’t a peanut. It was a piece of cheese, a plain piece of farmhouse cheddar, his favourite. After that we always referred to him as Cheddar Charlie, didn’t we, Rose? Dear Cheddar Charlie.’
Chapter 2
Much to the indignation of the Hurlingham Ladies, Thomas Letton and Emma Townsend were married in the autumn. Rose was delighted that at last the Townsend family could hold their heads up again but Aunt Hilda felt very strongly that the girl was undeserving of such a decent young man. Aunt Edna called her an ‘honorary Crocodile’ and made snapping noises with her tongue behind her back, which made Isla giggle and copy her. Though Isla was less tactful, she would buzz about her aunt like a dragonfly singing ‘snap snap’ with her eyes wide with naughtiness. ‘What’s got into the child, Rose? All this snap snapping, what on earth does it mean?’ Aunt Hilda complained. Even Rose found it hard to contain her amusement and reassured her sister that it was a game she had brought back from school.
‘Oh good,’ Aunt Hilda replied, ‘I thought it had something to do with me.’
‘Of course not, Hilda. Ignore her, she’ll move on to something else soon enough,’ she said. Of course she was right. Isla had a short attention span and soon the ‘honorary Crocodile’ bored her.
Emma Townsend’s love affair had made a deep impression on Audrey. She was unable to forget. She observed the wedding from a distance, imagining the bride’s passive resignation to her fate as she dutifully took her vows and embarked on a life without love. To Audrey such a bleak destiny was unspeakable, worse than death. But when the couple returned from their honeymoon, a fortnight later, the young wife seemed happy enough in her new role. The scandal was erased by time and the willingness on the part of the community to forget. Soon even the Hurlingham Ladies set aside their disapproval and received the new Mrs Letton with gracious smiles, delivering once again those little lilac envelopes with the same tedious regularity as before. But Audrey believed she heard muffled cries of pain in the light ripple of her laughter. She believed she saw suffering behind her eyes that revealed itself only in the rare moments when she would lose concentration and stare into space as if recalling those tender kisses beneath the sycamore tree. To Audrey, Emma was a tragic figure and her tragedy endowed her with a solemn beauty she hadn’t had before.