(12/20) No Holly for Miss Quinn (10 page)

"You're a bad boy," scolded Hazel, "to say that to Aunt Miriam when she's come all this way to look after you!"

Robin responded by blowing a mouthful of soapy water over his sister. Most of it went on Miriam's skirt.

Jenny improved the shining hour by telling the child about Father Christmas.

"And he'll creep into your room in a red coat," she began, but was interrupted by a fearful screeching from her brother.

"No want! No want!" he screamed, shaking his head violently.

Jenny looked resignedly at Miriam who was doing her best to soap his thrashing legs.

"You know, he's frightened, that's what! He's just
frightened
of Father Christmas. What'll we do?"

Hazel came to the rescue.

"Put his stocking on the banisters, then he'll be all right, won't he?"

She looked at Miriam with a conspiratorial glance.

"Good idea," said she hastily, praying that the secret would still be kept.

She hauled the boy out of the water, amidst more shrieking, and muffled his cries in a warm towel. The bathroom, steamy and damp, was the warmest place in the house, and she was loath to leave it to put the child into his cot in the chilly bedroom. What this place needs, she told herself, and will never get, is a thoroughly efficient central heating system.

The two little girls had climbed into the bath together, lured into an early bedtime by the promise of supper by the fire downstairs, and the happy prospect of hanging up stockings.

Miriam left them there while she warmed their milk in the kitchen. Outside, the rain lashed at the window, and the branches of the apple tree creaked and groaned. A particularly fierce draft under the larder door made a noise like a banshee wailing. This was Norfolk at its worst, thought Miriam, but at least the stove was warm, and the comforting smell of the steak casserole counteracted the bleakness outside.

The sitting room was snug with the curtains drawn and the fire blazing. The two little girls nursed their bowls of cornflakes liberally topped with brown sugar and raisins, and asked Miriam to tell them about Christmas when she was small.

"Well," began Miriam, "we used to hang up pillowcases, your Daddy and I."

"So do we. And stockings."

"And we left a mince pie and some milk for Father Christmas, in the hearth."

"So do we," they chorused.

"And after he'd been," said Miriam, looking squarely at Hazel, whose face remained rapt, "we took our pillowcases into grandma and grandpa's bed and undid all our parcels."

"And what did you have?"

Miriam suddenly remembered the agonizing night when she felt her parcels as the tears rolled down her cheeks. She could taste them now, salty and bitter, and feel the lump in her aching throat.

"Are you all right?" asked Hazel.

"Yes, just thinking," said Miriam. "Oh, a doll, and a tea set with little flowers on it, and, of course, a tangerine and nuts and sweets. Lots of lovely things." And heartbreak, she added silently. God, that heartbreak! Nothing had ever hurt so since!

"Can we bring our things into your bedroom?" asked Jenny, spooning up the last drop.

"Of course you can!" cried Miriam. "On Christmas Day you can do anything you like! Within reason," she added prudently.

They skipped upstairs before her, and accompanied her to the linen cupboard for two pillowcases. A pair of Eileen's stockings already hung over their bed rail.

"Do you think they'll be full?" asked Jenny.

"Positively brimming over," Miriam promised her, tucking them in, and praying that sleep would soon engulf them.

***

Later that evening, she and Lovell drowsed before the fire, before he went over to the church for his late service.

In her lap billowed the great black mass of Lovell's cassock.

"Must have caught my heel in the hem," he said apologetically, as he handed it over. "Do you mind?"

She now stitched languidly, thinking yet again how many varied tasks fell to the lot of a married woman.

"I wish I could have found someone else to do it—and to help you in the house," said Lovell. "But everyone's so busy at Christmas time. Looking back, I realize how lucky we were at home to have dear old Euphrosyne and her like, coping in the kitchen. It meant mother had the energy needed to cope with parish affairs."

"From what I hear," said Miriam, snipping black cotton, "Eileen does very well."

"She has to do far too much," sighed Lovell. "How did she look today?"

"Ravishing as ever," said Miriam, and told him about her visit, and Sister's kindness, and her remark about his own.

Lovell looked surprised.

"Really? I did nothing you know. Just called now and again."

"And she also said that Eileen was a marvelous patient and a great help in the ward."

His face softened.

"She's the bravest person I know. She's been so sweet with that poor woman in the next bed. A terminal case, they call it. She wasn't expected to live through the night."

Miriam remembered her niece's query, her own horror, and Eileen's courageous laughter. There was certainly more to this sister-in-law of hers than she had ever imagined.

"Well, there you are," she said, shaking out the cassock. "I shall wait up for you, and we'll have the fun of filling the pillowcases together."

"You shouldn't. You look whacked, so don't stay up just for me."

He shrugged into the cassock, threw his coat over his shoulders and made for the door.

"I shall be back soon after midnight," he shouted above the wind, waved, and was gone.

Miriam was about to return to the fireside when she remembered that she had intended to stuff the turkey and prepare some of the vegetables for the morrow.

Should she go into the kitchen and tackle these chores? Or should she give way to temptation and collapse into the arm chair?

Bravely, she made her way towards the larder, followed by Copper, ever-anxious for a meal.

"And to think," she told the dog, "that I'm known as a working woman. I wonder what Eileen is?"

Chapter 8

CHRISTMAS DAY

T
HE DAY BEGAN
, in pitch darkness, at five-thirty.

Miriam's door opened, and Hazel and Jenny entered dragging their spoils behind them.

"You said we could come," beamed Hazel.

"And you said we could do anything we liked on Christmas Day, so here we are!"

Miriam sat up and switched on the bedside lamp. Her head was heavy with sleep, her eyes felt as though they were full of biscuit crumbs. But this was Christmas morning, and although it had come far too soon for comfort, then Christian feelings must predominate.

"Happy Christmas, darlings," she said, between yawns. "Switch on the electric fire, Hazel, and both come into bed. You must be frozen."

They joyously flung their laden pillowcases onto their aunt's stomach, partially winding her. Their bare feet were like four ice-blocks pressed against her own warm legs. Their hands, diving for their treasures, were mottled with the cold.

"Where's Robin?" asked Miriam.

"Still asleep. So's Daddy. Shall we go and fetch them?"

"No, no. They'll come along later. Let's see all these gorgeous things."

She duly admired books, jigsaw puzzles, and a complicated board game which she feared would be beyond her when the time came for it to be played.

There were recorders, played with more enthusiasm than harmony, dolls and their clothes—remarkably sophisticated to Miriam's eye. No doll of hers ever had ski clothes, bathing dresses, or evening cloaks. These beauties even had handbags to match their different outfits. The girls were enchanted.

Miriam had given Hazel a toy sewing machine, and Jenny a little cooking stove. She was relieved to see how ecstatically these were received, and promised to help them when they started to use them.

"I shall make tiny, tiny, dear little chips and fry them in this frying pan," cried Jenny. "You can have some for supper."

Miriam lay back on her pillow and watched them affectionately. Everything enchanted them, even the two plain aprons sent by a distant great-aunt. It was good to see such unspoilt children. Lovell and Eileen had done a good job with these two, thought their aunt proudly.

She looked about the room, which was now beginning to get warm. The children had hung a red paper bell over the door when they had decorated the house with all the Christmas paper chains, folding fans, and other ornaments earlier in the week. It really looked rather pretty, thought Miriam, remembering how she and Lovell had always adored unfolding these showy decorations as children to deck the old Fenland vicarage. What would these children think of her own bare quarters at Holly Lodge, if they could see them?

But something indefinable was missing. Was it the smell of tangerines?

Before she could pin it down, Lovell came in carrying Robin with his stocking.

"Merry Christmas!" they all shouted.

"It's marvelously warm in here," said Lovell. "Reminds me of Christmas morning at home when we used to have the Valor Perfection stove alight in the bedroom."

"That's it!" cried Miriam. "I've been missing the smell of paraffin!"

"And a good thing too, I should think," said Lovell, helping his youngest to unwrap a furry panda.

"But it was heavenly in the dark," remembered Miriam, "making lovely patterns on the ceiling."

"And lovely smuts when it smoked," added Lovell.

The little girls were busily opening their brother's presents and urging him to admire them. Robin appeared to be as sleepy as Miriam felt herself, and greeted each discovery with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

"What we need," said Miriam, when the last parcel was undone and the bedroom floor was awash with Christmas wrappings, "is an early breakfast. And then you can play with your new toys before we go to church."

Lovell had a service at eight, and Miriam proposed to take the children to the eleven o'clock service, bringing them out before the sermon.

"But you can't leave the
turkey,
" protested Hazel, as though it were an invalid aunt in need of constant care.

"I can, you know," said Miriam. "You'll see."

"I could cook something on my stove," said Jenny. "Peas, say."

"There'd only be a mouthful," said Hazel.

"I could
keep on
cooking peas!" replied Jenny snappily. "Then there'd be enough. Fish shops
keep on cooking
, don't they, Aunt Miriam? Everyone has enough."

By mid-morning tempers were beginning to fray. After such an early awakening, and now that the toys had been inspected, the children started to quarrel.

It was the first time that Miriam had seen the two sisters at war, and she was staggered at the ferocity of the battle. She was at a loss, too, to know how best to quell this uprising.

Robin, more animated than he had yet appeared, looked on the scene with approval, clapping his hands as Jenny clutched her sister's long hair and attempted to haul it from her scalp.

Hazel retaliated with a resounding smack on Jenny's cheek. Screams rent the air, and Miriam rushed to part them. This was something entirely new to her. Once, she remembered, she had been called to a couple in the typing room at the office who had reduced each other to tears over some business about a boyfriend. That had been bad enough, but this was real commando stuff.

A sharp scratch from Hazel's finger nail caused her such sudden pain that involuntarily she smacked the child's arm, and Jenny's too. The maneuver worked like a charm, both fell apart, open-mouthed with astonishment.

"Mummy
never, never
hits us," exclaimed Hazel, much shocked.

"Nor Daddy," cried Jenny, coming to her late enemy's support.

The words: "More fool them," hovered on Miriam's lips, but she forbore to utter them. She was still suffering from pain, shock, and some shame at the violence of her reaction.

"You can go upstairs, and get ready for church," she said instead. "And no more nonsense!"

They went out quietly, but before they had reached the stairs Miriam heard them giggling together, all conflict over.

An ominous pattering noise attracted her attention. Robin was inspecting a growing puddle on the kitchen floor.

"Good boy!" he said approvingly. "Good boy, Robin."

Sighing, Miriam went in search of a bucket and floor cloth.

***

An hour later, she and her charges sat decorously in church awaiting Lovell's entrance.

The building was plain, with only a few mural tab lets bearing testimony to the virtues of the deceased and the grief of those mourning them. A threadbare banner hung from one wall, a reminder of the gallantry of an East Anglian regiment and

Old unhappy far-off things
And battles long ago.

The church was half-full, which Miriam rightly construed as a good congregation. She had attended a service here on one occasion with only three other worshipers.

The organ swelled into a recognizable tune, and the congregation rose as the choir entered, followed by Lovell.