Aunty Maud

Maud. What’s in a name? The largest component of the word ‘maudlin’ is in her name - that’s what. I doubt it is a coincidence. Maud did not have a face, though not in a literal sense. In my child’s eye there is no face. She was not faceless as in ‘the faceless men who can’t be named’. She had a name, just no face, but was not faceless.

Maud did have a presence. It controlled and chilled rooms. She came with her own atmosphere – never pleasant and mostly intimidating. Maud didn’t like children, didn’t have children. I am a child. She didn’t like me or my sisters.

I can see Uncle Bill’s face. It smiles and he came with humor. He tried to see the good side of things – unlike Maud. He married her. They were old people when they married. Why would you do that – and why did he choose her?

She was suspicious and so was her dog. They say a dog can look like its owner. This little dog’s face is clear in my mind so that can’t be right. It is snarling and snapping as it leers at me from the armrest on those thick, drab green lounge chairs in that dark, musty lounge room. So in this case it did not look like its owner – but it sounded like her!

I wonder how they chose the dog. Maud must have said ‘Let’s pick the one that seems unhappy and dislikes people’ - a dog in her own image, minus the face. His was cute when he paused long enough not to give me the evil eye.

Staying in her lounge room longer than ten minutes was soul destroying. Never did I want to get outside and kick the footy more than when we had to visit Aunty Maud. Dad felt some kind of obligation because she had looked after him somehow during his childhood. I just felt sick at the thought of going there.

I should have written her a letter and left it in the letterbox so she would read it one day. I might have written:

‘Dear Aunty Maud,

My dad thinks you are OK.  I think you are mean. Please tell me what he has seen in you to make him think that because I haven’t seen anything that would change my mind.

I am sorry you are awful. Can you change and be more like Uncle Bill?

John’s boy (though you call him ‘Jack’)

Simon’