The weather had turned wintry and Uncle Hobart and I were sitting by a roaring log fire, drinking beer from pewter tankards, while Aunt Martha sipped port from a small crystal glass.
Uncle Hobart leant forward to poke the fire, then sat back in his big, soft armchair. "Yer never did meet yer Uncle Fred, did yer?" he asked me.
I didn’t miss the sudden tilt of Aunt Martha's head as her eyes swivelled towards him. "No," I replied. "All that I know about him are the stories you've occasionally told me."
"Oh, so Hobart's told you stories about my Frederick has he?" Aunt Martha targeted me with her formidable proboscis, raising her eyebrows.
"Just about Fred's time at sea, that's all Martha," Uncle Hobart replied on my behalf. Then leaning towards Aunt Martha with a twinkle in his eye, he said hopefully, "I never did find out why yer two got divorced though."
Aunt Martha's nose twitched. "That's none of your business, Hobart."
Shrugging, Uncle Hobart settled back in his seat again. "Just curious is all."
"Well you know what they say about that, don't you?" Aunt Martha retorted.
Clicking his dentures, Uncle Hobart cocked his head to one side, as though he were giving the question some serious thought. Then snapping his fingers, he pointed a grubby digit at her. "It makes life exciting?" he suggested with a smile.
"It killed the cat," I stated, showing my usual sharp intellect.
"Correct," Aunt Martha agreed, giving me a teacherly smile.
Uncle Hobart hissed open another can of beer, pouring it into his tankard. I'd given up trying to match his consumption an hour ago. Taking a hefty swig, he looked about the room with apparent disinterest.
"You're not fooling me, Hobart," Aunt Martha told him. "Now pass me that bottle of port you've got hidden away down the side of your chair and I just might be persuaded to put you out of your misery as far as my divorce is concerned."
We settled ourselves more comfortably while Aunt Martha poured herself another stiff port and took a few quick sips.
"Me and Fred got on well, yer know," Uncle Hobart prompted. "'E were a real likeable bloke."
Aunt Martha nodded. "That was part of the trouble," she agreed, shrugging her shoulders before taking another darting sip of her drink. "Everybody liked him, especially the women. Oh I didn't mind too much really. So long as he was discrete about it. After all I knew he'd only married me to get his hands on my father's boat." Smiling sadly, Aunt Martha let her thoughts wander back through the years, a far away look in her eyes. "It certainly wasn't for my looks."
Uncle Hobart made a half-hearted attempt at a protest but Aunt Martha silenced him with a raised hand. "No Hobart, it's alright," she said, "I dealt with those feelings a long time ago." Taking another sip, she continued, "After all, when he lost the 'Wavy Loo' in that terrible storm, he had to replace it somehow or look for a different career. And of course the insurance refused to pay out, so I suppose marrying me was as good a way as any of getting himself another boat." She sighed heavily. "You know, for all that, we had some good years together."
"Didn't know yer knew about 'im marrying yer fer the boat," Uncle Hobart said quietly.
Aunt Martha chuckled at him. "When you look like I do Hobart, you're glad of any attention you can get, boat or no boat."
Clearing my throat, I noticed Aunt Martha's eyes glinting from the reflected firelight, but whether from emotion or something else was uncertain. "What happened, Aunt Martha?" I asked, suddenly realising how much turmoil she must have been through over the years.
"Well, you know how it is sometimes," she answered. "We grew apart. Turned into different people really. And in the end we agreed that it would be better if we went our separate ways. But before that things got a bit rough for awhile." Taking another sip of port, she nodded to herself. "Oh, your Uncle Frederick could be quite nasty when he didn't get his own way. Hurtful, like a small child can be hurtful if they don't get what they want. You know, I can still remember our final parting. Frederick insisted that he should have the house and all the furniture because my father could afford to replace them for me. He was always jealous of my father's money was Frederick." Aunt Martha shook her head sadly at the memory. "The fact that I might not want my father to help me never entered Frederick's head of course. Anyway, there we were, arguing ten to the dozen, Frederick wanting everything and me determined that he wasn't going to get it. Round and round we went." She giggled girlishly. "For the first time in our marriage I was standing up to him and he didn't like it, not one bit." Taking another sip of her port, Aunt Martha looked at the fire, her sharp nose catching its glow.
"So who got what in the end?" Uncle Hobart wanted to know.
"Well, it was a bit of a mishmash really," Aunt Martha admitted, leaning forward to emphasis her point. "You see, I came home one night and found that Frederick had taken a chain-saw to every piece of furniture that we possessed. He'd cut everything in half, even the carpets. If I wanted half, then that's exactly what I was going to get."
The room was silent as we tried to get our minds around the concept. Then I started to splutter and very soon Uncle Hobart had joined in, until pretty quickly the three of us were helpless with laughter.
"But I got my own back," Aunt Martha continued after we'd settled down again.
"And how did you do that, Aunt Martha?" I asked, topping up her port.
As Aunt Martha tilted her head to one side I could see the years dropping away from her hooded eyes. She leant back in the soft chair with a slight sigh and smiled. "Well," she said, "first I got a good solicitor and made sure that Frederick would have to pay me half the value of the house when we got divorced. I'd already decided I didn't want to live there anymore, not with the memories it held. We agreed that Frederick would stay in the house until it was sold, or he got a new mortgage to buy me out, and when all that was settled and I was ready to leave, I stuffed some fish into the hollow section of the lounge curtain pole. Frederick thought he was going to get away scot-free, you see," Aunt Martha leant forward again as the memories came flooding back, a dark glint in her eyes, "but I had other plans.
"Nothing happened for awhile of course and things settled down into a routine. But as the days passed, Frederick began to notice this smell. It got worse and worse, until he could hardly go into the lounge anymore. In desperation he called in the Council rodent exterminators, then the Health people, and finally the Sewage Department." She giggled. "Calling the Sewage Department wasn’t a very good idea though, because they left the house in a frightful mess, what with ripping up the floors in a search of a non-existent broken sewer pipe. In the end he got a local building firm to tackle the job, while he went to stay at a hotel. Over the next two weeks they proceeded to strip the wallpaper in all the rooms, remove all the skirting boards and clear the house of all the furniture. Why, I even heard they pulled down the hallway ceiling. But all to no avail of course, because try as they might, they just couldn't locate the source of that smell.
"Finally Frederick got so fed up with the mess that he put the house on the market at a really low price, just to get rid of it. And that's what I'd been waiting for. I got it at a bargain price and was able to sell it on at a tidy profit. Frederick didn't know that at the time, and I was all tea and sympathy of course." The tip of Aunt Martha's tongue flicked across her bottom lip as she sat up straighter. "Why when Frederick moved out, I even offered to do his packing for him." She paused and a slight smile touched her lips. "Just to make sure he took the curtain pole with him, you understand."
"So that's where that bleedin' smell came from," Uncle Hobart laughed. "It got so bad at one point that Fred almost convinced 'imself 'e'd caught some exotic form of BO. 'E spent ages trying ter persuade the doctor that 'e 'ad some’at wrong with 'im."
"Oh, but he did have something wrong with him, Hobart. Indeed he did." Aunt Martha looked over and gave me a slow wink.