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Agnes Sim Macintyre, Mitre Cottage
© Peter Adams 1964
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I remember my Spinster aunt and Mitre Cottage, where she lived with her Spinster companion. These days, we'd presume she was gay - assume they were both gay - but in those days, she was really just a crusty old woman from Wiltshire with a prickly chin, who gave prickly hugs.
I remember how difficult it was to get close enough to her powdered cheek to plant the obligatory plonker - the one my parents always insisted I plonk. The problem wasn't so much the prickles, but those Bodicea Battering-Ram Bosoms that preceded her by a good foot-and-a-half, as she came down the garden path to the Lavender hedge to greet us. Sensible brown brogues clattered on the limestone flags and a sensible tweed skirt concealed mysterious rustling's that came from within.
She would stand there, arms cosseted in one of her many 'sensible' starched white blouses, as one-by-one we would be enfolded into her prickles. I would be forgotten in the midst of all this - crushed by the rush of those eager to get it all over and done with. Meanwhile, her femininity would tower above me like a balcony, concealing everything above it - darkness seemed to close in around me.
At seven years old, I seldom saw her face.
I remember my Aunt's bosoms were heavily textured - like the swirling brocade wallpaper in her sitting room, and the Broidery Anglaise table cloth - which only came out on special occasions - and the Belgium lace anti-Macassar's on the arms of the Ottoman, in the hallway. At Mitre Cottage everything seemed to be embroidered with Dog Rose and Japonica, with Lily-of-the-Valley and Forget-me-Knots, all intertwined with festoons of Ivy.
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Agnes Sim Macintyre
© Vandyck 1932
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At seven years I believed that every bosom - on every woman - was as solidly upholstered as the leather arms of my Aunt's Ottoman - furthermore, they all seemed to radiate the same bouquet as the contents of the chest in her spare room - where she stored her surplus lavender in small muslin pouches tied with pink ribbon.
In a way, my Aunt's bosoms were like her garden - always in flower and always a vague trace of Lavender.
Some ten years later, I discovered that bosoms had mysteriously changed into boobs and that these were smooth not textured, and soft not hard, and nice to nuzzle up to - it has never ceased to amaze me how much such things had changed in a short span of ten years.
I remember too the sound of her garden.
The chink of old tin lids as they spun and clattered in the wind, against bamboo poles - in the belief they would to scare away the Blackbird and Thrush from the ripening peas. I remember too the harmony of the Thrush and Blackbird, as they took no notice what-so-ever and joined in competitive concert. I remember the repetitive whirr of a hand-pushed mower after the Sunday Roast - a sound long since gone - and the distant sound of bell-ringers crucifying the Angelus at St Michaels.
And the drip of summer rain from a cracked gutter.
