Maude

Not many people are called Maude these days, so when you have one in your family you treasure them.

Nobody really knows, or knew, how old Maude was, but she was definitely an auntie, a cousin, not so distant as to be a rumour and close enough to qualify for friends status on Facebook.

Maude looked old, when you were young. But when you turned 30 Maude looked 50, and when you were 50 she looked 55. If you thought about it, it seemed that she’d been around forever but nobody could remember first meeting her.

Maude, my sister said, once was married. But her love died in a fire, and now she doesn’t talk about it. My sister didn’t tell me how she knew, but I knew she was exactly correct. I never mentioned this to Maude when I saw Maude, which was often enough to update on college or work or kids but not often enough to hold hands.

You wouldn’t call her an old lady if you saw her up close, you just wouldn’t. But from afar, yes, in a certain light, from a certain angle, here was a weariness to her gait. And you wouldn’t want to, dare to, stare into her eyes for too long. My sister said she did it once, and she would never talk about what she saw there.

My sister says a lot of things like that.

What was undeniable about Maude was that she was probably the richest woman the world had ever known. Maude owned her house, never seemed to be troubled by gas or electric or petrol or utilities bills, meaning that all her money was always hers. The fact that she didn’t have any money to speak of didn’t seem to bother her. So she was rich.

Her house was warm, and she owned no television. Maude was one of those that said things like ‘nothing good will come of a word that is half Latin and half Greek,’ and then tell you who’d first said that. She liked the library, did Maude. Even these days. There, she could listen to music on a borrowed Walkman, CD, Minidisc, MP3, neural-implant, depending on which timeline she was in.

Her favourite bands included Mahler, All Time Low and Adam and the Ants. She didn’t care much for Mozart, who she always said was a twiddly-iddly little sop whose PR game was stolen from Saatchi and Saatchi down a wormhole.

But then, Maude could be obtuse.

My sister has gone to see Maude today. Maude, she says, is feeling low. I hope my sister phones soon, because I’d like to know the latest news. My sister came to my wedding and caught the bouquet from me when I married Severiano. Seve is a good man and works hard and wants six kids, four cats, a couple of dogs, but is against caging birds up and hooray to that say I. Life is full of these little compromises.

Seve doesn’t get on with Maude. He says she reminds him of his own aunt, or cousin, who he finds creepy because she lives in a cave-house in the south of Spain, and doesn’t seem to ever want to engage with the world all that much. Seve says he asked her once why she never married, but her eyes glazed over and he knew that was going to be the end of that conversation. He never brought it up again. His own aunt – Marisol was her name – just wanted to sit and watch the sun rise, the clouds cross the sky, and the sun set. She never seemed to have any food in the house, but she never seemed to be hungry either.

My Seve says that once he visited her and made sure he visited the Mercado, where he bought some beautiful, beautiful fresh fish and some fennel and herbs. He cooked them lunch, and they ate without speaking. Marisol didn’t touch the fish, though.

The next time he visited – maybe a month later, he thinks – Marisol had a pond, in which you could swear that you’d see hake swimming about which made no sense at all when you thought about it.

So Seve, being a practical chap, didn’t.

He has gone to visit Marisol this week too. I have sent her some of the flower seeds she so loves. I wonder if begonias will thrive in Clint Eastwood-land? That’s another favourite of Maude’s. Clint Eastwood. Not as an actor, just the way he stares beyond the horizon. My sister says that Maude says that Clint knows.

We don’t know what that means, but it seems to make sense if you don’t think about it too much.

I hope my sister rings soon.

I hope Seve travels safely. Before he gets back I need to find the wedding album - it's the only shots of him that I've got. He doesn't much care for Facebook and such. He says it's not real. Of course, I say, that's the point. But he doesn't bother and well, to each his own, and all that. He's a good man.

One day, we hope that Maude and Marisol will meet. We try and tell them both that they would be happy and have lots in common. Maude is prone to nodding just enough to make you believe she’s heard you, and enough to make you think that she’s on board. Marisol, I’m not so sure about. My Spanish isn’t so great and her English is.

Her English is.

Marisol told Seve once that there was a place in every town where you could stand and watch the world spin against the sky. He is trying to find it in our town. But he can’t. Marisol says that the trick is not to look too hard; everything is always moving, she says. All you have to do is move a little the other way. Cameras can see it, she says, but only until they have stolen enough parts of people’s souls away.

There aren’t any pictures of Marisol, anywhere.

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My sister rang. She says Maude has gone. There will be no funeral, at Maude’s request. My sister says it is all taken care of. She will be staying a while to sort it all out and there’s no need to come down. I could hear her voice was tired. She seemed a little intense, now I think about it. The line was bad; she was calling from afar. It was crackly. She sounded ancient with all the pressure.

I hope Seve travels safely.