I was afraid at first that all this bellowing would spoil the carols, but there is so much goodwill behind it, and these busy women turn out to practices so cheerfully on the darkest, coldest, and wettest evenings, that there is something endearing about even the shrillest soprano or Miss Garvald’s gruffest growls.
And the two which I love best of the carols, Lullay my Liking, and In the Bleak Midwinter, have cast their spell over our choir, so many of whom are mothers themselves, and they sing them gently and sweetly without a thought of competition—as lullabys should be sung.
It was “Midwinter” that I was singing to myself as I walked home. You know it, of course, Christina Rossetti’s words and Holst’s lovely air which matches them so perfectly. I can never sing it without a lump in my throat, so it is just as well it is to be sung softly.
“In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.”
There is something inexpressibly touching in its simplicity and humility, something which cuts clean through the trappings of presents and candle-lit tree, turkey and plum-pudding and mistletoe, to the real heart of Christmas.
For most older people Christmas is really a melancholy season, full of memories and far too often regrets. Is there one among us who can drink the toast to absent friends without a “stoun at the hert”, when we remember those from whom we are parted not only by distance but by estrangement or death?
The sight of a number of middle-aged men and women trying to have a merry Christmas at some expensive hotel strikes a discordant note of false gaiety which is very pathetic. That is why I count myself so fortunate in having Atty to make preparations for. With him at Piper’s Cottage all the ritual of presents on the breakfast table and bringing in holly and evergreens to decorate the house will have meaning. I don’t think his Christmasses have been very exciting up to date, and I want this one to be complete for him, not only with parties and a wee tree and presents, but with the Christmas day services as well. I want to lay the sort of foundation for Atty that will comfort and help him in years to come when he has his own memories and losses, so that Christmas will always mean “peace on earth to men of goodwill” for him.
Dear Hugo, I have treated you to an impromptu sermon, all as a result of our choir practice! I must have been quite carried away by the carols. What I set out to do was to send you a short extra letter, to reach you in time for Christmas, which I expect you will be celebrating with the proper rites and food in spite of differences of climate.
I have ordered one or two new books for you, which I hope you will like; and when I raise my glass to “Absent friends”, be sure that you will be in my mind.
Think of us, perhaps deep in snow-wreaths—Atty is passionately hoping for lots of snow—while you are eating your plum-pudding under a blazing African sky, won’t you?
I shall answer your letter the next time I write, or some of it. I think I shall ignore your rather caustic comments on Major Whitburn. . . .
My strange neighbours have been invisible and inaudible for days. I should not know that they were there at all if they did not switch the wireless on sometimes; but Mrs. Kilmartin paid back the bread and flour she “borrowed.” I found them on the doorstep two mornings later, with a scrawled “many thanks” on a dirty scrap of paper tucked through the string. As for Madge, a most astonishing thing has happened: she has taken to rug-making during her spell in hospital, and according to Aunt Nettie, has gone “clean daft” about it. I am delighted to know of this, and only hope that Madge will continue to lavish the whole-hearted interest she has formerly given to men on—rugs! May your Christmas be a happy one, and the New Year bring you what you most wish for, Hugo. Good-bye until January.
CHAPTER VIII
JANUARY, 1952
Dear Hugo, I know it is an age since I wrote to you: November, wasn’t it, and here we are in the middle of January and Atty’s holidays almost at an end once more. Time is passing much too quickly. I want to catch at his wheel of turning years and hold it still for a little, now, when I have learned to be contented with small happinesses and am still strong and active enough to enjoy my quiet life. It is the change that I see in Atty which makes me so vividly aware of the hurrying days. Since the summer holidays he has grown inches in actual height and breadth, and now, verging on fourteen, he seems much more than a few months older when I compare him with the anxious little boy who first came to Ravenskirk. There is not much anxiety about him now; he is quite confident because he feels secure. Piper’s Cottage is his home, and he is the man of the house.
He enjoyed Christmas up to the hilt: presents, tree, church (where he sang very loudly and slightly off key), and all the parties. We ate our Christmas dinner with the Drysdales at Carmichael, and somehow managed to cram Elizabeth and Lewis and Anthony and Mrs. Keith into the dining-room here for dinner on New Year’s Day. Much though we missed them, I could not help feeling rather relieved that Ralph’s leave was up and Catherine back at her hospital by then, for unless some of the party had sat under the table I could see no possibility of seating them otherwise.
We have been living in a giddy whirl of gaiety—for Ravenskirk. Tea-parties and sherry-parties have raged almost daily. The Curries gave a magnificent children’s party at Templerig, with a sumptuous tea which included a cake covered in pale pink icing nearly as big as one of Mr. Currie’s haystacks, and games highly organised by Sylvia, and presents and prizes for everyone. Atty, who has an infinite capacity for enjoying life, considered it “an excellent show”; but I think he liked having lunch with Mrs. Keith even better. Ladymount is a stately house, as you know, and there are still two or three old servants to keep up the style in which Mrs. Keith has always lived. I must say that though I take great pleasure in eating a meal during which I haven’t either to jump up and down myself changing plates, or to watch my hostess doing so, I did not expect Atty to be so deeply impressed. Perhaps it was because he was treated exactly like a grown-up, the poker-faced, poker-backed parlourmaid pouring coca-cola into his glass as decorously as she poured white wine into ours: or perhaps it was simply the stateliness of it all, from our frail old hostess bolt upright at the head of the table to the family portraits frowning from the dark red walls.
There were only four of us; Mrs. Keith finds it less tiring to see a few people at a time; but I suspected her of an ulterior motive in asking Lawrence Whitburn to square the numbers, though she only said with bland innocence: “Joan has gone off to a dance in Edinburgh, so I thought Lawrence would be far better making himself agreeable to us than going to sleep over the fire by himself.”
When lunch was over and we were in the drawing-room drinking coffee out of exquisite little pink and gold Dresden cups, she announced that she had promised Atty to show him her bird books and the collection of birds’ eggs made long ago by her only son, killed in the First War. That ardent “orthinologist”—I don’t believe Atty will ever realise that he has got that word twisted in the middle—was on his feet in an instant.
“Lawrence has seen them before, and they would not interest you, my dear,” said Mrs. Keith blandly to me. “Amuse one another until we come back.”
The door shut, and we were left alone.
It was now or never.
“Major Whitburn,” I began, plunging in before I lost my nerve. “Do you remember one day at Carmichael, your sister telling us all at tea about a frightful woman who screamed at you and your friends when you were shooting grouse?”
He looked acutely uncomfortable.
“Er—really—I—” he stammered, but I hurried on, determined to get it over.
“It was me. I mean, I was the woman who screamed. I’ve felt most terribly ashamed of myself ever since.”
“Look here, please don’t!” he said desperately. “
Bill Wilson had no right to shout at you the way he did. I expect you got a fright, those shots going off close to you like that.”
“We shouldn’t have been there, but we had wandered from the path. It was exceedingly stupid of me.”
“Well, if we’re agreed that we all behaved badly, can’t we just forget about it?” he asked.
“You didn’t behave badly—”
“I thought I’d only make matters worse if I interfered,” he said. “But I rather wish I had.”
“It is just as well you didn’t,” I told him candidly. “I was far too angry by then to be reasonable. But now that: I’ve confessed to you, I really can forget it.”
He grinned suddenly and engagingly. “Of course I knew it was you all along. I recognised you as soon as I saw you again,” he said.
“I was rather afraid that you had,” I said. “It’s only too easy to remember people who scream like peacocks and generally behave like—like—”
“A fishwife, I think Joan said, didn’t she?” he said, laughing outright. “But I didn’t remember you just like that.”
“No?” I said inquiringly.
“No,” he said. “It reminded me of a character out of Scott—the tall figure and the flashing eyes—”
“Norma of the Fitful Head, perhaps?” said I. “Or Madge Wildfire?”
“Why not Helen MacGregor, with her foot on her native heath?”
“Well, the trouble was that it wasn’t my native heath at all!” I said.
And then Mrs. Keith and Atty came back, and presently Lawrence Whitburn drove us home and stayed for a cup of tea at Piper’s Cottage. He really is a very nice person, now that I don’t have to feel guilty and embarrassed every time I see him.
Miss Bonaly’s share in the festivities took the form of a huge afternoon Rummy party at the Lion Hotel. I was not invited, which did not surprise me. Sylvia Currie, who is at the ardent partisan stage, said it was a shame, and Miss Bonaly a mean old cat, but added darkly that perhaps I was lucky to have missed it. The heat, she said, and the squash! (I was irresistibly reminded of the tale told me by Ivo, who always swore it was true: the young British officer’s comment on Dunkirk after he had been picked up and brought back to England. “The place? Oh the place was not too bad. But the noise, my God, and the crowds of people!” A remark redeemed from any suggestion of doubtful taste by its utterer, and typical of the British fighting-man’s somewhat macabre humour.)
The boys, you will be glad to hear, got the snow they were longing—and in Atty’s case, I suspect, praying—for. While it lasted they were out sledging all day, from early morning until long after sunset. Even I made a few descents on the Drysdales’ big flat-bottomed Canadian toboggan with two companions to give me confidence, but I absolutely refused to go down solo on my stomach on one of their nasty little sledges! It was gorgeous whooshing at breakneck speed through the sharp air over the snow sparkling like a million diamonds in the frosty sunshine. The whole countryside was an etching: black trees holding out their lovely bare branches encrusted with snow, white fields with the dark smoky grey of hedges running between them. The only colour was in the pale blue of the midday sky and the deep soft blue of shadows on the snowy hillsides, until the sun went down in a splendour of fiery orange which turned the cruelly white crests of distant hills for a moment to rose.
Anthony and Atty would have liked this to last for ever, or at least until the end of the holidays, but a day or two of such weather is enough for me. My eyes ache with looking at all the glittering whiteness, I prefer the hills their own soft greys and greens and dun-browns, and the squalor in the house, which steams with endless relays of Atty’s drying garments, is unbearable. Boots and stockings and trousers, scarves and gloves are everywhere, lying round the fire, hanging from pulleys or draped over radiators. It just doesn’t seem possible that snow which is crisp and dry underfoot should be the cause of so many damp clothes. And how I dislike the smell of wet wool! Poor dear Pam, too, comes in with rows of little frozen balls of dirty snow hanging from him like the old-fashioned bobble fringe that used to trim the edges of velvet mantel-piece draperies in Victorian days. Unless they are cut off at once he lies in front of the fire biting them as they melt, and the rugs are covered with horrid pools of black water. Why it should be black when the snow is white I have no idea, any more than I can understand why snow should make dogs smell like foxes or ferrets. Soaked with rain or with plunging into Piper’s burn, Pam only smells of damp clean Harris tweed, but snow seems to bring out a sort of otto de dog which is highly unpleasant.
On the whole, then, I was quite relieved when one night the wind swung round to the south and blew a milder blast, melting the snow surprisingly quickly, and filling the burns far beyond their usual level. Atty was disgusted, especially as he and Anthony had been making splendid plans to increase the speed of their longest run by pouring hot water on it, the idea being that this smoother surface would then freeze. . . . All this time our neighbours at Wallace Cottage have been so little in evidence that they might be hibernating like hedgehogs, and I have been too much occupied to think about them.
Atty was determined to “first foot” them on New Year’s Day.
“I’m pretty dark, Aunt Sara, and I’m a man, or at least I will be in another few years, so I’m just the right one to do it. Besides, I haven’t ever seen them yet,” he said.
I was not very enthusiastic, but after all, the Kilmartins are our nearest neighbours, and at this season one wants to be friendly, so I let him go. He was back in five minutes, looking puzzled.
“She wouldn’t let me in,” he told me. “I explained it was to bring them luck, but she wouldn’t let me in. I think she’s a pretty funny sort of person, Aunt Sara.”
I was sorry that he had gone, then. “I think her husband isn’t very well, Atty,” I said. “And she is too busy looking after him to remember about New Year’s Day. Never mind, you can go and first-foot Miss Marchbanks, and take her this box of short-bread, and some sweets for Helen, and the book for Madge.”
He went off quite happily. But I wonder what is wrong at Wallace Cottage. Not a soul seems to go there, and my own attempts at being neighbourly met with no success, for Mrs. Kilmartin never came to tea, never even came to the door to borrow anything after that one time. Miss Marchbanks, usually an unfailing source of information, could tell me nothing about the Kilmartins, though she throws out dark hints from time to time that they are hiding at Wallace Cottage.
“But hiding from what, or whom?” I asked her.
She wagged her head sapiently. “From the Law,” she suggested, adding that I’d better be sure to keep my doors locked and the windows “snibbed” after dark!
I get on very well with Aunt Nettie to help in the house. She is a much more thorough worker than Madge, and her dry comments on everything are most refreshing.
Madge has been back from hospital for a week or two now, but she still has to walk with a stick, and it will be some time yet before she can come back to her job. Fortunately her mania for rug-making has not deserted her, and I intend to encourage it as much as I can. The W.R.I. has a rug-making class, which I told Madge about.
“I think I’ll maybe join the Rural,” she said. “They can show me some new patterns.”
Her innocent ambition is to supply new rugs not only for the Marchbanks’ living-room, but for Aunt Nettie’s bedroom and the room Madge and wee Helen share.
“What a good thing it is that Madge has found a hobby that really interests her,” I said to Aunt Nettie.
“Oh, ay,” was that worthy woman’s response. “But wee Ellen and me can barely get room to sit there’s that muckle bits o’ canvas an’ wool about the place! I whiles wish Madge had taken up knitting or embroidery. She’d not need more than the one chair then.”
I did think that this was ungrateful, and must have shown it, for Aunt Nettie nodded grimly. “It’s a lot better than runnin’ after the men. I’d hae the whole house darted up wi’ rugs an
’ wool sooner than see Madge fleein’ off to thae dances. What I’m askin’ mysel’ is how long will it last?”
The same question had been worrying me.
“We shall have to find something else when she gets tired of making rugs,” I said. “I’m sure at the W.R.I.—”
Aunt Nettie’s small sniff indicated that she had no very great opinion of the Women’s Rural Institute, though she is unjust to an admirable institution which has brought interest and information to thousands of isolated country women.
“Och well, we’ll see,” she said. “Nae use seekin’ trouble. It’ll come fast enough withoot seekin’.”
And she clashed the pieces of the vacuum cleaner ostentatiously as a hint that my idle chatter was keeping her from her work.
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