Auntie Mary

more from the pen of Auntie Margaret : -

Auntie Mary was the only one in the family not to be given a trade. Being the youngest she was expected to look after everyone as they aged. She never worked outside the home but did everything for everyone inside. Her passion was cooking and she would take hours beheading and deboning sprats before frying them. She taught me how to make sweets as gifts at Christmastime, things like truffles and marzipan fruits that had to be coloured and put in tiny paper cups. My favourites were hand rolled columns of peppermint fondant.

The last Saturday before Christmas the two of us always went shopping. This enabled me to buy presents for the family saved for from my meagre pocket money. (We spent much time in Woolworth’s – I remember trying to buy a single razor blade when the assistant expected me to buy the packet) She would take the opportunity to treat me to a slap up lunch at the old Mackworth Hotel in High Street. (Probably Mum paid, as I think it was a once a year treat for Auntie Mary too.) We would have the roast of the day and a hot pudding and she would always put a pinch of salt in her cup of coffee “to bring out the flavour.”

I found a lovely photo of her in one of Mum’s albums; it was of when she was a young woman when she had a wasp waist. She was with a girl friend and they were using stepping-stones to cross a stream. I wrote a short story about it. The was also a story about her having many suitors though none were considered good enough for her by her family (I guess Auntie Alice.) There seemed to be no men after that. The First World War would have taken many away. In her later years she had some friends I came to know; there was an Auntie Fanny, from Clydach, a little bird of a woman with white, flyaway hair, and a high pitched, tweety voice, and an Auntie Edie who looked like the rest of the Hopkins’s women, with a fleshy nose and a bust at waist level. They were both users of hairnets and wore brooches when they called every week for tea. Auntie Mary had one afternoon off a week and she went to the cinema, she said, on her own.

Her life was centred on caring for others. First her parents died, then Uncle Dick, then Alice, then Nana. Mary lived on her own for a while, but a pan of fat caught fire in about 1961 and Mum decided she wasn’t fit to live alone anymore and moved her in to “The Croft” to live with them. The house was sold. Dad wasn’t too pleased but Mum had taken action and he had to put up with it. It was like that at home. He got used to it, but every so often I would see a look of irritation passing over his normally placid face. They were, of course, still working in the shop by day. Mary was allocated my bedroom at the back of the house and as I was working in Aberystwyth I slept in Don’s old room when I returned for the weekend. At the beginning Mary used to help Mum prepare meals but she so often dropped things and made a mess that eventually Mum did everything for her. I was given a large mahogany wardrobe and a carpet sweeper when I married, as we had nothing to furnish our flat with. When Auntie Mary developed a leg ulcer and became bedridden she had to be attended by a district nurse, so Mum moved her into the breakfast room. By then she had become confused, calling me Win and Mum Margaret, not sleeping at night and falling out of bed. It must have been very hard for Mum then, but she was determined to do for Auntie Mary what Auntie Mary had done for all the family.