by Angus Wilson
'Oh, Thingy'll forgive me,' said John and he gave the address to the chauffeur. They drew up at a small semi-detached house in a nineteen-thirties street. 'I shan't be long,' said John, getting out, then he added, 'Would you care to come in?'
Gerald was about to refuse. He could think of no reason why he should go into a house in Slough with his son, then he felt annoyed at his acquiescence in his family's habit of isolating him. He was not going to let himself be held to blame for it. Besides, he thought, who knows, there might be another Elvira here, and one less likely to be a neurotic pseudo-intellectual. 'I think I will,' he said, getting out of the car.
John reflected doubtfully on presenting his father to Maureen and Derek Kershaw, but he saw no way out of his offer.
Derek Kershaw opened the door to them. His advertisement good-looking face creased into a smile on seeing John. The even white teeth gleamed as though from a hoarding, but the smile had more reality in it.
'My father,' said John. 'This is Derek Kershaw, Father. We're on our way to family Christmas at Thingy's, Derek. I couldn't pass so near without wishing you both a Happy Christmas.'
Gerald was annoyed to hear his wife's nickname mentioned to a stranger, but Derek said, 'Give all our wishes to your mother, won't you, John? Come in,' he said. 'Maureen's cooking and I was just going to play this.' He laid a long-playing gramophone record on a little plain wood table, then, again to Gerald's surprise, shook hands with them both. 'Maureen,' he called, 'here's John.'
A young woman with black garçon-cut hair, wearing a lime-green woollen dress with a smocked neck and frill skirt, came in, wiping her hands on her apron. She also shook hands with them. 'My present to Derek,' she said, pointing at the record. 'Salome with Welitsch. It'll keep him quiet over the holiday.'
'Aren't you working?' John asked, surprised.
'Oh no,' said Maureen, 'he's a bloated capitalist now.' She laughed. 'We've got an assistant and they work alternate Bank Holidays.'
'How is business?' John asked.
Derek shook his hands in the air, boxer fashion. 'First rate,' he said. 'I've got a wonderful 1935 Bentley for you if you'll take it off me.'
'Oh, do, John,' said Maureen, 'otherwise we're going to die a gory death in it.'
Derek grimaced behind her back cheerfully and, going to a corner cupboard, brought out a gin and Noilly Prat. 'Will this do you?' he asked Gerald. 'Aren't you a professor?' he asked, and, when Gerald assented, both he and his wife put on a pious church-going face in reverence for higher education.
'Well, what do you think of the room, John?' said Maureen; 'you haven't seen it since Derek did his worst on it.'
Gerald, looking around at the pink walls, low glass bookcases, and complicated gramophone and radio installations, was depressingly reminded of his wife's Scandinavian furnishing, but he said, 'I think it's delightful.'
'Thank you,' said Derek, with a coyness that Gerald did not expect from him.
'I'm sorry you couldn't find a job for Larrie,' said John.
'Nothing here that was any good to him, I'm afraid,' said Derek. He turned to Gerald. 'I wish I knew some history,' he said. But before Gerald could answer, Maureen said, 'Where on earth did you find that specimen, John? Derek couldn't have employed him. Crooked stands out a mile in those Irish eyes ...' She stopped as she saw her husband frowning at her and contented herself by saying, 'You need Derek to look after you, you know.'
'Well, whose fault's that?' John asked, and they all laughed.
Gerald, looking at the books, vaguely wondered why science-fiction should seem to him discreditable.
The subject of Larrie seemed to have made them all silent. Then Maureen said, 'Well, you're doing Father proud all right!' John looked puzzled. Derek roared with laughter.
'I told you he didn't know,' he said to his wife. 'Your protégé Cressett, John, is none other than my esteemed father-in-law.'
'Good God!' said John.
'Only we don't esteem him very much,' said Maureen.
'You're sure you've got the right end of the stick, John?' asked Derek. 'I know these civil servants can he bloody fools, but I can't see anyone being a bloodier fool about business than my father-in-law. That market garden of his...'
It was Maureen's turn to interrupt. 'Father's business is his own,' she said shortly. 'But whatever you do, John, don't get mixed up with my stepmother. She'll take the skin off your back.'
John seemed as unhappy with the subject of the Cressetts as with that of Larrie. He swallowed his drink. 'If you're ready, Father, I think we'll have to go,' he said. He fished in his overcoat pocket and brought out two tissue-paper-wrapped parcels. 'Just to show I don't forget old friends,' he said.
'Thank you,' said Maureen, and she smiled. 'In any case, we see you on television or, if we don't, the neighbours remind us of it.'
'There's a smashing blonde two doors away who's scats about you, John,' Derek said.
'Thank you, I'm sure,' said John. Once again they all laughed.
'Oh my God,' said Maureen, 'that's my risotto burning.' She rushed into the kitchen.
Gerald got up to follow John to the door. 'Thank you for the drink, Mrs Kershaw,' he called.
'Thank you for coming,' she called back; 'we don't have a live professor at Caldecott Avenue every day, you know.'
Gerald did not know whether the remark was friendly or not.
John had walked ahead with Derek to the car. 'Sorry about what Maureen said,' Derek mumbled. 'All the same, you want to watch your step with young Larrie, John.'
John gave no answer.
'Come again, won't you?' Derek said to Gerald, once more shaking his hand. 'Perhaps you can tell me what happened in history after the Tudors. We never got any farther than Sir Francis Drake and his bloody bowls at school. The glorious Armada, and back we went each year to the Ancient Britons in their woad. Not a word about why things were like they are now....'
John, seeing that Derek was launched on the imperfections of the English educational system, said, 'Father only knows about Canute. The chap who didn't want to get his feet wet.'
As they drove past the factories of Wembley Exhibition design, Gerald said, 'Nice people.'
'Yes,' said John. 'Derek's a good man. He was a C.P.O. Tel. with me in the Rodney in the Med. Maureen's all right, or would be, if she didn't always know best. She's a Bevanite,' he added with a grunt of disapproval. His own position as M.P. had been Right-Wing Radical.
Gerald looked at his watch. 'We're going to be very late at Inge's,' he said.
Ingeborg Middleton, coming downstairs to greet the village children, said to herself, 'Oh God, let the carol-singing be a success and let the family arrive in time to hear it and I shan't mind if on Christmas Day there are rows and difficulties. I honestly shan't expect everything to go right on Christmas Day, if I have what I want now,' she added, as though God might not believe her willingness to have only part of her own way. She feared, perhaps, that God would know her own temperament as well as she did. A more inner voice added, 'Let Robin and Johnnie, but especially Johnnie, think that only I could have made such a little Christmas occasion.' She was careful, however, not to listen too carefully to this second prayer lest its demand for filial adoration might be too outrageous and so annoy God that He would refuse her all her wishes.
If, at fifty-nine, she had no strong personal experience of God, she still believed that if she accepted any disappointment she should be recompensed for her self-denial. She had brought every power of her personality to convince other people of this in childhood; and she still did so. On occasion, of course, she overreached herself, but on the whole it had worked very well, except perhaps with her husband. In return, as she often reflected, she gave people everything she possessed - warmth, liveliness, love, natural gaiety.
The village girls were removing their overcoats, but, despite the central heating of the hall, they were shivering, for the long white muslin dresses Mrs Middleton had had made for them were very thin.
> 'No! no!' cried Ingeborg, towering above them, a Norse goddess from the stairway. She used her Danish accent with exaggerated emphasis, lengthening all the vowels in a marked singing tone. 'Don't shiver so. Give yourselves up to the happy time.'
She felt radiant with happiness. Her tall, ample figure, carefully corseted, moved everywhere in stately command. Her corn-coloured hair was greying now, but it was still thick and soft; her complexion was like a fairy-tale country girl's, her long pastel-blue silk dress showed her still lovely arms and shoulders. She used her arms a great deal - in stroking the children's heads and in gestures of kind command to the servants.
'Amalie! Monica! Irmgard,' she called to the servants who were still arranging chairs and refreshments in the long morning-room, 'please, where are the flowers? Take these cyclamens and this lovely cineraria into the room. You can't sing without flowers, can you, Norma?' she cried to one of the older girls, but she did not wait for an answer. 'No, one moment, please, Irmgard, we must have some of these beautiful crimson cinerarias to put in little Mollie's black hair, mustn't we, Mollie?' and she arranged the little flower-heads around the child's ears. 'Little red stars in the black, black night,' she said. Some of the girls still giggled when Mrs Middleton talked, but most of them took it for granted by now.
The maids ran about chattering like starlings, for Mrs Middleton loved them to be happy; she would not put up with glum faces. Her servants were always of three nationalities - English, Danish, and German - to mark her own triune nature - English by marriage, Danish by birth, and with her own darling mother, 'min kjaere lille mor', a Bavarian. For long years she had said, 'See! the two great giants can lie down together like little lambs when little Denmark tells them it must be so.' During the war she had not said it, indeed had not wanted to, for the occupation of Denmark had deeply upset her. Nevertheless, it was the kind of thing she liked saying, and now she was glad to be able to repeat it once more. She said it in a playful, deprecating little voice, but, whatever she may have thought of its application to the nations, she had no doubts of its truth in her personal life.
Now she began to fit the crowns of candles to the girls' heads. 'Of course, Saint Lucy is not Danish, you know,' she said. Since the rehearsals of the preceding week it was, by force of repetition, one of the few facts about Scandinavia that they did know. 'She is Swedish. But we follow the custom too, and now little English girls are going to do so. And why not? It is a beautiful custom. Christmas is not national. Oh dear no!'
Soon the parents began to arrive, and for every one of them Mrs Middleton had a word about their children. 'Little Harry would like to have a crown too, wouldn't he? But I'm afraid the crowns are only for little girls. Later the little boys will sing too. Everyone will sing in the Heilige Nacht, Mrs Adams,' and when she noted that lady's discomfiture, she cried, 'Oh yes! everyone. And they -will love it.' Once again there were to be carols in English and Danish and German, and she had even taught two little girls to sing 'Dans cet étable que Jésus est charmant', in compliment to Marie Hélène.
When everyone was seated, Mrs Middleton clapped her hands high in the air and all the lights went out, leaving only the holly wreaths, the mistletoe, and the thirty little spruce trees illuminated with red and white candles in the Danish fashion. Then, coming down between the two ranks of chairs, she walked on tiptoe with candle in hand. 'Hush!' she whispered, her finger to her lips.
There was no need for admonition, for her giant shadow had cast a silence upon the audience that just hovered on the edge of nervous giggles. Miss Butterfield, the infant-school teacher, had rescued Ingeborg from more than one such situation before now and she instantly struck up the first carol on the grand piano. And now all tendency to laughter was submerged in parental admiration as the little girls advanced singing 'Es ist ein' Ros' entsprungen'. They held their white gowns bunched in one hand and in the other a candle. There was a certain amount of squealing as drops of hot grease fell on hands and heads, but Mrs Middleton had found no way but spartan courage to meet the situation.
She had told them the story of the boy and the fox at rehearsals, making it sound strangely pretty. 'And though the little fox bit and bit the little boy's tummy,' she had said, 'did the little boy make a sound? No! He was a very brave little boy, and little girls can be brave too,' and her singing, rising accent put all the sweetness she could command into the word 'brave'.
Now that she saw some of the girls faltering in their steps, she bent down from her great height and said, 'Poppy, Eileen, remember the little fox.' She was determined to have no tears to mar the day.
Carol after carol they sang and, before each of them, Mrs Middleton said a few words: 'This is a most pretty story. Mary and her little infant Jesus are riding on a reindeer. Imagine! a reindeer! Of course, those little people that sang the song could not imagine anything else, for they lived right up,' and her voice rose as she said it, 'in the north of Norway. I have been there!' she said as simply as a little girl to the village audience.
The Vicar, despite years of practice, still got hot under the collar when she addressed him like this, but he turned and smiled at a small boy in the audience as though Mrs Middleton intended her words for the children only.
And now it was a little Jutland peasant song that the children were to sing, and Ingeborg led them with a deep contralto, her well-supported pastel-blue bosom heaving, her grey eyes round with surprise. 'Ole Dole din din,' she sang, or that, at any rate, was what it sounded like to the smaller children, who, thus reminded that they were hungry, began to cry.
At the end of the song, Mrs Middleton called up a very angel-pretty little boy of six from the audience - there was nothing she liked more than angelic faces in children - 'And now little Maurice Gardner will sing a verse of "Holy Night" and we shall sing the choruses. Little Maurice is a very shy, special little boy,' she said to the audience, 'so we must all help him.'
When no sound came from his terror-struck mouth, she bent down from the heavens above and placing her huge doll's face close to his, she asked, 'What is the matter, Maurice? Have the trolls bewitched your tongue?' so creating a deep psychic trauma that was to cause him to be court-martialled for cowardice many years later in World War III. Miss Butterfield coaxed Maurice out of his fright, and Heilige Nacht filled the room.
Ingeborg was by now so delighted with her little party that she had quite forgotten the absence of her family. When her daughter Kay and her son-in-law Donald were ushered into the room, she took them for late arrivals from the village, and said 'Hush' very loudly and pointed to Maurice, whose special character had to be considered.
Maurice's needs, however, were quickly forgotten when she recognized her own kin. 'Kay,' she called, and ran to the end of the room. 'My darling little Kay. And how is big Donald?' and then, with a special cry, she flung herself upon the baby, 'Min lille barnebarn,'she cried. '"No," he says, "I don't want a grandmother to swallow me up."'
'We're all right here, Mother,' said Kay. 'Don't, for goodness' sake, let us interrupt the singing.'
By now, however, Maurice had burst into tears and a righteously indignant Mrs Gardner had taken him back to his seat. Mrs Middleton was unable to persuade him to resume his solo, and Mrs Gardner was almost at the point of losing her temper when Ingeborg made what she believed to be a conciliatory remark. 'Never mind, Maurice,' she said, 'you are not the only little baby in the room now. See!' she added, pointing towards her grandchild, 'there is another one. But I think perhaps he is a braver little baby than you.'
Kay blushed scarlet; Donald took his usual defensive action on such occasions by carefully analysing the social elements involved; Mrs Gardner got up and took Maurice from the room.
Mrs Middleton, however, was too occupied in announcing the next carol to notice what had happened. The arrival of her daughter had reminded her that her two sons were not yet part of the audience and she determined to prolong the proceedings so that her prayer should be answered. 'And now a little English car
ol,' she said. '"Lully, lulley, lully, lulley; the falcon hath borne my mate away." '
The obscurity of the words baffled the audience; and they were not much helped by Mrs Middleton's demonstration of a bird in flight. The Vicar felt uncertain whether there was not an impropriety in the whole proceedings: he had not remembered that carols embodied so much of what, if not secular, seemed like an unhealthy mysticism. He feared there might even be some unsuitable element of pagan survival mixed up in the whole proceedings. Indeed, there was something about Ingeborg's Brunhild figure and her general passion for the charms of folklore, Christian or otherwise, that would have delighted Rose Lorimer herself.
When this carol drew to its strange end, the Vicar got up and announced that his Christmas duties forced him to leave. It had been a most delightful occasion, a real unity in rejoicing all too rare in these days when communal life was at a discount. How Mrs Middleton had managed to produce anything so really unusual in so short a time, he did not know. It seemed only yesterday that these charming dresses had just been strips of material, but then he did not profess to understand the powers of feminine magic. The realization that he had said 'magic' embarrassed the Vicar, and he could only murmur, 'A rare and unusual occasion.'
Any further remarks he might have made were cut short by Mrs Middleton, who turned to the children with a knowing look. 'Now just imagine! Mr Bilston thinks he has heard all our carols. He does not know how much little children like to sing, does he?'
But, alas, when she turned again to the audience, many other people had risen to support the Vicar in his signal for departure.
Mrs Middleton played her last card. 'I know, children,' she said, 'the Vicar is hungry, that is what it is. I expect he has his eye on those meringues. Now, all of you, off! and see who can get there before him. Please,' she said to the audience, 'to eat,' and she pointed to the huge array of food and drink. 'Then,' she added, 'we will all be ready to sing again.'