（外文电子版资料）ss - Aunt Hester.doc

AUNT HESTER PAGE PAGE 8 AUNT HESTER by Brian Lumley I suppose my Aunt Hester Lang might be best described as the ‘black sheep’ of the family. Certainly no one ever spoke to her, or of her – none of the elders of the family, that is – if my own little friendship with my aunt had been known I am sure that would have been stamped on too; but of course that friendship was many years ago. I remember it well: how I used to sneak round to Aunt Hester’s house in hoary Castle-Ilden, not far from Harden on the coast, after school when my folks thought I was at Scouts, and Aunt Hester would make me cups of cocoa and we would talk about newts (‘efts’, she called them), frogs, conkers and other things – things of interest to small boys – until the local Scouts’ meeting was due to end, and then I would hurry home. We (father, mother and myself) left Harden when I was just twelve years old, moving down to London where the Old Man had got himself a good job. I was twenty years old before I got to see my aunt again. In the intervening years I had not sent her so much as a postcard (I’ve never been much of a letter-writer) and I knew that during the same period of time my parents had neither written nor heard from her; but still that did not stop my mother warning me before I set out for Harden not to ‘drop in’ on Aunt Hester Lang. No doubt about it, they were frightened of her, my parents – well, if not frightened, certainly they were apprehensive. Now to me a warning has always been something of a challenge. I had arranged to stay with a friend for a week, a school pal from the good old days, but long before the northbound train stopped at Harden my mind was made up to spend at least a fraction of my time at my aunt’s place. Why shouldn’t I? Hadn’t we always got on famously? Whatever it was she had done to my parents in the past, I could see no good reason why I should shun her. She would be getting on in years a bit now. How old, I wondered? Older than my mother, her s