Cynthia Manson (ed) (60 page)

Mrs. Fairlands lived in the ground
floor flat of a converted house in a once fashionable row of early Victorian
family homes. The house had been in her family for three generations before
her, and she herself had been born and brought up there. In those faroff days
of her childhood, the whole house was filled with a busy throng of people, from
the top floor where the nurseries housed the noisiest and liveliest group,
through the dignified, low-voiced activities of her parents and resident aunt
on the first and ground floors, to the basement haunts of the domestic staff,
the kitchens and the cellars.

Too many young men of the family had
died in two world wars and too many young women had married and left the house
to make its original use in the late 1940’s any longer possible. Mrs.
Fairlands, long a widow, had inherited the property when the last of her
brothers died.

She had let it for a while, but even
that failed. A conversion was the obvious answer. She was a vigorous seventy at
the time, fully determined, since her only child, a married daughter, lived in
the to her barbarous wastes of the Devon moors, to continue to live alone with
her much-loved familiar possessions about her.

The conversion was a great success
and was made without very much structural alteration to the house. The
basement, which had an entrance by the former back door, was shut off and was
let to a businessman who spent only three days a week in London and preferred
not to use an hotel. The original hall remained as a common entrance to the
other three flats. The ground floor provided Mrs. Fairlands with three large
rooms, one of which was divided into a kitchen and bathroom. Her own front door
was the original dining room door from the hall. It led now into a narrow
passage, also chopped off from the room that made the bathroom and kitchen. At
the end of the passage two new doors led into the former morning room, her
drawing room as she liked to call it, and her bedroom, which had been the study.

This drawing room of hers was at the
front of the house, overlooking the road. It had a square bay window that gave
her a good view of the main front door and the steps leading up to it, the
narrow front garden, now a paved forecourt, and from the opposite window of the
bay, the front door and steps of the house next door, divided from her by a low
wall.

Mrs. Fairlands, with characteristic
obstinacy, strength of character, integrity, or whatever other description her
forceful personality drew from those about her, had lived in her flat for
eleven years, telling everyone that it suited her perfectly and feeling, as the
years went by, progressively more lonely, more deeply bored, and more
consciously apprehensive. Her daily came for four hours three times a week. It
was enough to keep the place in good order. On those days the admirable woman
cooked Mrs. Fairlands a good solid English dinner, which she shared, and also
constructed several more main meals that could be eaten cold or warmed up. But
three half days of cleaning and cooking left four whole days in each week when
Mrs. Fairlands must provide for herself or go out to the High Street to a
restaurant. After her eightieth birthday she became more and more reluctant to
make the effort. But every week she wrote to her daughter Dorothy to say how
well she felt and how much she would detest leaving London, where she had lived
all her life except when she was evacuated to Wiltshire in the second war.

She was sincere in writing thus. The
letters were true as far as they went, but they did not go the whole distance.
They did not say that it took Mrs. Fairlands nearly an hour to wash and dress
in the morning. They did not say she was sometimes too tired to bother with
supper and then had to get up in the night, feeling faint and thirsty, to heat
herself some milk. They did not say that although she stuck to her routine of
dusting the whole flat every morning, she never mounted her low chair without a
secret terror that she might fall and break her hip and perhaps be unable to
reach the heavy stick she kept beside her armchair to use as a signal to the
flat above.

On this particular occasion, soon
after her eighty-first birthday, she had deferred the dusting until late in the
day, because it was Christmas Eve and in addition to cleaning the mantelpiece
she had arranged on it a pile of Christmas cards from her few remaining friends
and her many younger relations.

This year, she thought sadly, there
was not really much point in making the display. Dorothy and Hugh and the
children could not come to her as usual, nor could she go to them. The tiresome
creatures had chicken pox, in their late teens, too, except for Bobbie, the
afterthought, who was only ten. They should all have had it years ago, when
they first went to school. So the visit was canceled, and though she offered to
go to Devon instead, they told her she might get shingles from the same
infection and refused to expose her to the risk. Apart altogether from the
danger to her of traveling at that particular time of the year, the weather and
the holiday crowds combined, Dorothy had written.

Mrs. Fairlands turned sadly from the
fireplace and walked slowly to the window. A black Christmas this year, the
wireless report had promised. As black as the prospect of two whole days of
isolation at a time when the whole western world was celebrating its midwinter
festival and Christians were remembering the birth of their faith.

She turned from the bleak prospect
outside her window, a little chilled by the downdraft seeping through its
closed edges. Near the fire she had felt almost too hot, but then she needed to
keep it well stocked up for such a large room. In the old days there had been
logs, but she could no longer lift or carry logs. Everyone told her she ought
to have a cosy stove or even do away with solid fuel altogether, install
central heating and perhaps an electric fire to make a pleasant glow. But Mrs.
Fairlands considered these suggestions defeatist, an almost insulting reference
to her age. Secretly she now thought of her life as a gamble with time. She was
prepared to take risks for the sake of defeating them. There were few pleasures
left to her. Defiance was one of them.

When she left the window, she moved
to the far corner of the room, near the fireplace. Here a small table, usually
covered, like the mantelpiece, with a multitude of objects, had been cleared to
make room for a Christmas tree. It was mounted in a large bowl reserved for
this annual purpose. The daily had set it up for her and wrapped the bowl round
with crinkly red paper, fastened with safety pins. But the tree was not yet
decorated.

Mrs. Fairlands got to work upon it.
She knew that it would be more difficult by artificial light to tie the knots
in the black cotton she used for the dangling glass balls. Dorothy had provided
her with some newfangled strips of pliable metal that needed only to be
threaded through the rings on the glass balls and wrapped round the branches of
the tree. But she had tried these strips only once. The metal had slipped from
her hands and the ball had fallen and shattered. She went back to her long
practiced method with black cotton, leaving the strips in the box for her
grandchildren to use, which they always did with ferocious speed and
efficiency.

She sighed as she worked. It was not
much fun decorating the tree by herself. No one would see it until the day
after Boxing Day when the daily would be back. If only her tenants had not gone
away she could have invited them in for some small celebration. But the basement
man was in his own home in Essex, and the first floor couple always went to an
hotel for Christmas, allowing her to use their flat for Dorothy and Hugh and
the children. And this year the top floor, three girl students, had joined a
college group to go skiing. So the house was quite empty. There was no one left
to invite, except perhaps her next door neighbors. But that would be
impossible. They had detestable children, rude, destructive, uncontrolled
brats. She had already complained about broken glass and dirty sweet papers
thrown into her forecourt. She could not possibly ask them to enjoy her
Christmas tree with her. They might damage it. Perhaps she ought to have agreed
to go to May, or let her come to her. She was one of the last of her friends,
but never an intimate one. And such a chatterer. Nonstop, as Hugh would say.

By the time Mrs. Fairlands had
fastened the last golden ball and draped the last glittering piece of tinsel
and tied the crowning piece, the six-pronged shining silver star, to the topmost
twig and fixed the candles upright in their socket clips, dusk had fallen. She
had been obliged to turn on all her lights some time before she had done. Now
she moved again to her windows, drew the curtains, turned off all the wall
lights, and with one reading lamp beside her chair sat down near the glowing
fire.

It was nearly an hour after her
usual teatime, she noticed. But she was tired. Pleasantly tired, satisfied with
her work, shining quietly in its dark corner, bringing back so many memories of
her childhood in this house, of her brief marriage, cut off by the battle of
the Marne, of Dorothy, her only child, brought up here, too, since there was
nowhere for them to live except with the parents she had so recently left. Mrs.
Fairlands decided to skip tea and have an early supper with a boiled egg and
cake.

She dozed, snoring gently, her
ancient, wrinkled hand twitching from time to time as her head lolled on and
off the cushion behind it.

She woke with a start, confused,
trembling. There was a ringing in her head that resolved, as full consciousness
returned to her, into a ringing of bells, not only her own, just inside her
front door, but those of the other two flats, shrilling and buzzing in the
background.

Still trembling, her mouth dry with
fright and open-mouthed sleep, she sat up, trying to think. What time was it?
The clock on the mantelpiece told her it was nearly seven. Could she really
have slept for two whole hours? There was silence now. Could it really have
been the bell, all the bells, that had woken her? If so, it was a very good
thing. She had no business to be asleep in the afternoon, in a chair of all
places.

Mrs. Fairlands got to her feet,
shakily. Whoever it was at the door must have given up and gone away. Standing
still, she began to tremble again. For she remembered things Dorothy and Hugh
and her very few remaining friends said to her from time to time. “Aren’t you
afraid of burglars?” “I wouldn’t have the nerve to live alone!” “They ring you
up, and if there is no answer, they know you’re out, so they come and break in.”

Well, there had been no answer to
this bell ringing, so whoever it was, if ill-intentioned, might even now be
forcing the door or prowling round the house, looking for an open window.

While she stood there in the middle
of her drawing room, trying to build up enough courage to go round her flat
pulling the rest of the curtains, fastening the other windows, Mrs. Fairlands
heard sounds that instantly explained the situation. She heard, raggedly begun,
out of tune, but reassuringly familiar, the strains of “Once in Royal David’s
City.”

Carol singers! Of course. Why had
she not thought of them instead of frightening herself to death with gruesome
suspicions?

Mrs. Fairlands, always remembering
her age, her gamble, went to the side window of the bay and, pulling back the
edge of the curtain, looked out. A darkclad group stood there, six young
people, four girls with scarves on their heads, two boys with woolly caps. They
had a single electric torch directed onto a sheet of paper held by the central
figure of the group.

Mrs. Fairlands watched them for a
few seconds. Of course they had seen the light in her room, so they knew
someone was in. How stupid of her to think of burglars. The light would have
driven a burglar away if he was out looking for an empty house to break into.
All her fears about the unanswered bell were a nonsense.

In her immense relief, and seeing
the group straighten up as they finished the hymn, she tapped at the glass.
They turned quickly, shining the torch in her face. Though she was a little
startled by this, she smiled and nodded, trying to convey the fact that she
enjoyed their performance.

“Want another, missis?” one boy
shouted.

She nodded again, let the curtain
slip into place, and made her way to her bureau, where she kept her handbag.
Her purse in the handbag held very little silver, but she found the half crown
she was looking for and took it in her hand. “The Holly and the Ivy” was in
full swing outside. Mrs. Fairlands decided that these children must have been
well taught in school. It was not usual for small parties to sing real carols.
Two lines of “Come, All Ye Faithful,” followed by loud knocking, was much more
likely.

As she moved to the door with the
half crown in one hand, Mrs. Fairlands put the other to her throat to pull
together the folds of her cardigan before leaving her warm room for the cold
passage and the outer hall door. She felt her brooch, and instantly misgiving
struck her. It was a diamond brooch, a very valuable article, left to her by
her mother. It would perhaps be a mistake to appear at the door offering half a
crown and flaunting several hundred pounds. They might have seen it already, in
the light of the torch they had shone on her.

Mrs. Fairlands slipped the half
crown into her cardigan pocket, unfastened the brooch, and, moving quickly to
the little Christmas tree on its table, reached up to the top and pinned the
brooch to the very center of the silver tinsel star. Then, chuckling at her own
cleverness, her quick wit, she went out to the front door just as the bell rang
again in her flat. She opened it on a group of fresh young faces and sturdy
young bodies standing on her steps.