That was what the book with the pictures of pop-eyes, hunch-backs, Siamese-twins, swollen-heads, web-fingers, lock-jaws, wry-necks said. The cover had a stain on it like snail slime. It made me feel sick, like the mad king’s signature in the Girl’s Own Annual of 1911.

(But the medical book lied — it was evil. It made me feel ashamed of Reece. It made me see her as a case-history, a circus freak; something to be petted, pitied, locked away for ever.)

The mongol is my great-aunt, who has been given three Christian names: Laurel Gwenda Reece — and is proud of them. She boasts of a boy friend called Reggie Aire. She sings ‘K-K-K-Katy’ and ‘Daisy, Daisy’ for me. She keeps her Christmas powders and perfumes and soaps in the drawer with her handkerchiefs; when she has a cold she smells of talcum powder, lily-of-the-valley, ashes of roses. She changes her dress in the afternoon; comes back from the bedroom with smudges of Pond’s Peach Powder on her cheeks, mouth touched discreetly with red, lavender-water behind her ears. She begs pardon politely when she farts and looks ashamed.

My great-aunt is a martinet whom I must obey. She flourishes her broom like some Old Testament prophet, crying ‘Cease!’ or ‘Holy Moses!’ when I talk too much. She spends her days at special tasks, carried out in a rigid, unchanging order. She sweeps the kitchen, polishes the floor, cleans the bath with Gumption, sets the table, shakes the tea-leaves onto the geraniums showing her garters, boils the handkerchiefs in salt, does the ironing.

She likes ironing. She unpegs the dry washing, collects it in the wicker basket; sprinkles a benediction over handkerchiefs, table-cloths, bloomers, petticoats, nightdresses — reduces them to the same tight sausage bundles. Her spit sizzles on the iron as she tests its heat. She toils happily, elbow sticking out, red in the face; turning the handkerchiefs into triangles, quartering the table-cloths, folding the bloomers to sexless halves; nosing her iron through petticoat shallows of pin-tucks and pleats, guiding it to safe harbour through virginal excesses of night-dress folds.

Reece wears lisle stockings she darns on a wooden mushroom, pleated skirts that stick out behind, aprons that bloom with flowers, faded winceyette nighties, a brassière Nan takes tucks in, felt slippers, patent leather shoes, a shell-stitch cocoon of cardigans. She dresses in bed on winter mornings: sits cross-legged between the sheets — an aged kewpie doll, skirts spread fanwise, mustering courage to climb into fleecy knickers.

She is at her ease in these familiar, slightly grubby garments — she looks ridiculous on special occasions, costumed in her best. Then, with her body strangely stiff, her face naked from the removal of the hair along her lip, ringlets round her brow, mouth prissily pursed, trying to look alert but succeeding only in looking stupid, she is Nan’s despair.

Reece had a succession of celluloid dolls called always Peggy. She had as well a sewing-box, a paint-box, families of coloured pencils in plastic envelopes, a pencil-sharpener shaped like the world, a budgerigar called Tony.