Travels with my aunt / Путешествие с тетушкой. Книга для чтения на английском языке

”

“He’s your valet?”

“Let us say he attends to my wants. A very gentle sweet strong person. But don’t let him ask you for a CTC. He receives quite enough from me.”

“What is a CTC?”

“That is what they called any tip or gift in Sierra Leone when he was a boy during the war. The initials belonged to Cape to Cairo cigarettes, which all the sailors handed out generously.”

My aunt’s conversation went too quickly for my understanding, so that I was not really prepared for the very large middle-aged Negro wearing a striped butcher’s apron who opened the door when my aunt rang.

“Why, Wordsworth,” she said with a touch of coquetry, “you’ve been washing up breakfast without waiting for me.” He stood there glaring at me, and I wondered whether he expected a CTC before he would let me pass.

“This is my nephew, Wordsworth,” my aunt said.

“You be telling me whole truth, woman?”

“Of course I am. Oh, Wordsworth, Wordsworth!” she added with tender banter.

He let us in. The lights were on in the living-room, now that the day had darkened, and my eyes were dazzled for a moment by rays from the glass ornaments which flashed back from every open space. There were angels on the buffet wearing robes striped like peppermint rock; and in an alcove there was a Madonna with a gold face and a gold halo and a blue robe. On a sideboard on a gold stand stood a navy-blue goblet, large enough to hold at least four bottles of wine, with a gold trellis curled around the bowl on which pink roses grew and green ivy.

There were mauve storks on the bookshelves and red swans and blue fish. Black girls in scarlet dresses held green candle sconces, and shining down on all this was a chandelier which might have been made out of sugar icing hung with pale-blue, pink, and yellow blossoms.

“Venice once meant a lot to me[15 - Venice once meant a lot to me – (зд.) когда-то я была просто влюблена в Венецию]”, my aunt said rather unnecessarily.

I don’t pretend to be a judge of these things, but I thought the effect exaggerated and not in the best of taste.

“Such wonderful craftsmanship,” my aunt said. “Wordsworth, be a dear and fetch us two whiskies. Augusta feels a teeny bit sad after the sad sad ceremony.” She spoke to him as though he were a child – or a lover, but that relationship I was reluctant to accept.

“Everything go O.K.?” Wordsworth asked.