The great question of the stove being settled, Kate was able to give her full attention to the arrangement of the room. The Hosiers’ Boys, with a great deal of pleasurable and unnecessary shouting and shoving were getting the trestle tables up and placing the chairs. On the tables the Vicar’s wife, the doctor’s wife and Mrs. Birkett were fastening large gay paper tablecloths with drawing-pins and putting a cup and plate to each chair. Paper table napkins with borders of bright red and green holly were also provided, though with but little hope of their being used. By each cup were two straws, and this was a stroke of genius on the part of the Vicar’s wife who had noticed from many years’ experience that tea for children meant fuss, mess and a great expense of sugar, whereas lemonade needed no adjuncts of sugar or milk, did not stain their clothes so badly, and if drunk through a straw became a Treat of the highest order. It was therefore decided that the tea urns should be used only for the grown-ups, who would refresh themselves after the children had been served.
On a spare table, in front of the urns, Eileen from the Red Lion (co-opted to the Committee as a compliment to Mr. Brown who had lent a quantity of cups and spoons), Miss Hampton and Miss Bent were cutting the loaves into slices and covering them with liberal applications of margarine and fish paste. All three ladies smoked incessantly and kept up a conversation about local affairs to which only the initiates of the Red Lion bar had any clue.
Mrs. Morland, who was not much good with her hands, had given herself the job of tidying, by which means she was able to infuriate all the helpers in turn, sometimes by folding up and putting away in a corner the paper and boxes that they particularly wanted, sometimes by sweeping dust and breadcrumbs into little heaps which were trodden upon or scattered before she could come back with a dustpan.
A large Christmas tree, sent by Lord Pomfret through his agent Roddy Wicklow, had already been planted in a tub of earth, the tub being lent by Mr. Brown and the earth by McBean, the head gardener of South-bridge School, who grudged it bitterly but could not resist Kate Carter’s gentle insistence. Boxes and bags of toys and ornaments lay about ready for decorating its branches. This important part of the work was under the supervision of Mrs. Phelps who had decorated Christmas Trees in every part of the globe since her early married days, and usually in those parts of our Empire or other people’s empires where Christmas comes in the middle of the summer. Under her were Miss Phelps as Flag Lieutenant and Mrs. Birkett and Kate as warrant officers.
‘The tub looks a bit bare,’ said Mrs. Phelps, who looked very majestic with a brightly flowered overall over her zip lumber jacket and blue serge trousers. ‘Do you remember, Margot, the year Irons was at Flinders and we had that gum-tree in a huge block of ice for the wives and children of the Gridiron and the Andiron?’
Kate wanted to know if it didn’t melt very quickly as in Australia it was summer time in winter.
‘Ice doesn’t melt if you have enough of it,’ said Mrs. Phelps, who was unpacking the toys with great dispatch. ‘Irons got a shallow tank from the Naval Barracks and we stood the ice in it with some freezing salt. It looked very well. Margot put paper Union Jacks all over it. We ought to have something to drape round the tub. Do you remember, Margot, the year we were at Trincomalee and that nice Khansamah draped the box our tree stood in with yards of coloured muslin. Now, what could we use? You haven’t a few flags, have you, anyone?’
But at this moment Matron, who had given herself a roving commission to help in all fields of service, suddenly appeared in her white overall, followed by the biggest Hosiers’ Boy who was carrying a large bulky parcel.
‘What a busy hive!’ said Matron, looking admiringly at the scene. ‘And what do you think, Mrs. Carter? I was just giving Jessie a hand to turn out that cupboard in the maids’ sitting-room, because, I said, Jessie, it is just as well to see exactly what we have in the cupboard while we are about it, for you know the way things get put away and you cannot lay your hand on them just when you most want them, when lo! and behold what did Jessie find on the top shelf which I had absolutely forgotten about? So I asked Manners to carry it down like a good lad, saying to myself, “Now that is exactly the thing.” ’
Upon which simple explanation Matron proudly undid the parcel and revealed a huge roll of green baize.
‘There!’ said Matron with some pride. ‘The very piece of green baize, Mrs. Carter, that Mr. Carter bought for the doors between the House and the servants’ quarters on the first and second floors, but owing to a slight misunderstanding the Governors had them re-done with red baize, so there it has been all this time. Of course you wouldn’t have known about it,’ said Matron, who though she was devoted to Kate, liked to remind herself that she had known Mr. Carter before his marriage. ‘And I said to Jessie, Well, Jessie, I said, that will be exactly the thing, so Manners carried it down and quite a weight, wasn’t it, Manners?’
Manners, who was one of the Hosiers’ most brilliant Boys and had just been elected to an open scholarship at Cambridge, was quite used to being treated as a bright imbecile by Matron whose class feeling was very strong, and smiled engagingly, saying that he’d often carried heavier parcels for Dad on his rounds. As everyone knew that Manners’s father was a greengrocer and furniture remover in those districts beyond the East End from which the Hosiers’ Boys Foundation School drew most of its pupils, they all liked him the more for this statement and Kate suggested that he should go and help Mrs. Brown of the Red Lion to cut up the great slabs of currant and cherry cake and eat all the bits that fell off, which he most willingly did.
Mrs. Phelps exclaimed aloud with pleasure over the green baize which she said would give just the Touch of Old England that she wanted. She and Miss Phelps then draped it in folds and billows round the tub and when Kate had sprinkled a shilling’s worth of artificial frost over it, the effect was pronounced quite fairy-like. Then Miss Phelps, mounting a step-ladder, hung festoons of silver tinsel among the boughs and began to fasten the gold, silver, red and blue glass ornaments on to the higher branches.
‘What shall I put on the top, Mother?’ said Miss Phelps. ‘One of the silver stars?’
Matron, who had had a mysterious air of one biding her time, suddenly produced a cardboard box and said she couldn’t resist bringing a little contribution. The contribution was a china-faced doll with a yellow wig, dressed by Matron’s skilful hands in cloth of silver, with short full skirts, a silver star on the top of her head and a silver wand in her right hand. Mrs. Phelps said it reminded her of the doll their Number One Boy had dressed for the tree at Hong Kong, Miss Phelps tied it firmly by the waist to the topmost twig, and Matron was enchanted.
‘Well, that’s about enough,’ said Miss Hampton, strolling over from the sandwich table. ‘Eileen must get back to the Red Lion at twelve. Bent and I must show up too. Doesn’t do to let people down. Where’s Mannerheim?’
‘Do you mean Manners?’ said Kate. ‘He’s helping Mrs. Brown with the cake.’
‘Manners?’ said Miss Hampton, casting a monocled glance in the direction of the cake table. ‘Don’t know the lad. No, no, Mannerheim. Oh, Bent has got him.’
Miss Bent came up, leading the elephant-faced dog.
‘He knows his name, you see,’ said Miss Hampton proudly. ‘Changed it last week. Must do something for gallant little Finland. Thought of Kalevala but no one knew how to pronounce it. Sounds Indian too. Fine fellows the Indians, but can’t call them gallant. Not yet at least.’
Kate said she thought our Indian troops were very, very brave.
‘Brave as tigers,’ said Miss Hampton. ‘Lithe as panthers, too. But can’t call people gallant till they have their backs to the wall. Hope India will never have her back to the wall.’
‘Come along, Hampton,’ said Miss Bent. ‘I can’t hold Mannerheim much longer. He knows it’s twelve o’clock as well as I do. Ready, Eileen?’
Eileen, who had just had a new platinum bleach and looked more beautiful than ever, said it had been quite a treat t
o cut up the sandwiches for the kiddies, but she must say ta-ta now as the lads would be waiting, and so departed with Miss Hampton and Miss Bent, the ci-devant Smigly-Rydz in tow.
They had only been gone a few moments when Philip Winter and Captain Fairweather came in, having, as they explained with a wealth of apology, just had breakfast. Kate and Matron, who liked nothing better than to see men overeat and oversleep themselves, beamed approval, and as the work was now finished they all went back to lunch, leaving Edward the odd-man, to put the final touches by winding yards of electric flex with coloured lights strung on it about the tree.
In the middle of lunch Geraldine arrived, having previously said that she wouldn’t be home till two-thirty. Three people rang up for Mr. Birkett, wouldn’t give their names when Simnet asked them, and took offence. Mrs. Warbury rang up Mrs. Birkett, saying that it was urgent. Mr. Birkett growled, but Mrs. Birkett said she supposed she had better go in case it was about the party.
‘Well, what did she want?’ said Mr. Birkett when his wife came back.
‘What to wear,’ said Mrs. Birkett. ‘She seems to think it is a fancy-dress party and wanted to know if she is to come as a Red Cross nurse or as a visiting royalty.’
On hearing the name Warbury, Geraldine became aloof and ill-tempered, which her parents rightly diagnosed as the effects of love. Mrs. Morland, who was dramatising the stirring nature of the day by taking even less trouble than usual about her hair, dropped two tortoiseshell hairpins on the floor during pudding and as her host bent rather stiffly to pick them up, he felt that for twopence he would go to bed till after Christmas and stay there.
The party was to begin at four and end at six. By three o’clock the helpers were in their places, and just as well, for at three-fifteen precisely Sister Mary Joseph and her flying squadron of white-robed nuns arrived with thirty-six children spotlessly clean though unprepossessing, saying that the children had all been ready since two o’clock and it was eating their hearts out they were and sure we could be young but once. Her lambs, who having eaten their hearts out now had a hearty appetite, began to storm the tables and had to be kept at bay by a strong cordon of nuns and Hosiers’ Boys, until the Hiram Road school poured in, when the two schools had so much to do in eyeing each other suspiciously and giggling that the cordon was able to relax. They were quickly followed by St. Bathos and the Pocklington Road School and a crowd of mothers and children, so that by the hour at which the party was supposed to begin the gymnasium was quite full of humanity.
‘I think,’ said Mrs. Bissell to Kate, ‘that they had better have tea at once. When they see food they get restive.’
‘Don’t they have enough to eat then?’ asked Kate, in some distress.
‘Quite enough,’ said Mrs. Bissell, ‘but they are greedy and selfish and have no manners.’
‘Oh, Mrs. Bissell; the poor little things!’ said Kate.
‘You see, Mrs. Carter,’ said Mrs. Bissell calmly, ‘I know them. I taught until my marriage. Come here, Janice, and let Mrs. Bissell put your ribbon straight. You can’t really love them, Mrs. Carter, but you can do your duty by them. If I hadn’t married Mr. Bissell I’d be teaching still. That’s right, Janice, run along now. The worst of our profession, Mrs. Carter, is that you cannot really like your colleagues or your pupils, but it is a privilege to be able to devote oneself to the children and Mr. Bissell and I, being all in all to each other, do not see much of our colleagues except during working hours, which is I can assure you a great relief. I think tea immediately, Mrs. Carter. Sister Mary Joseph is losing control and if she does, all the others will.’
Acting on this advice, Kate told the four principals that tea was now ready. Sister Mary Joseph with the utmost dexterity at once whisked her flock into their places while the rest of the schools played a kind of musical chairs at the end of which some twenty children still remained standing. By the united efforts of the Hosiers’ Boys and the helpers a few extra forms were brought in, some supplementary teas were spread, and in a few moments the air was thick with the bolting of paste sandwiches, chocolate biscuits and slabs of cake, while cup after cup of lemonade was upset straw and all as the young scholars grabbed for more food. With the rapidity of a flock of locusts they stripped every plate of its contents, looking at each other with suspicious eyes as they crammed their flushed and shining faces with food. The helpers rushed backwards and forwards replenishing plates till the last crumb of their reserves had been used. Meanwhile the crackers which had been provided were torn open, for a large number of children did not know about pulling them and the even larger number who did, both despised and feared the method, preferring to disembowel the crackers without delay. Mrs. Phelps had ordered nothing but caps and musical instruments. The clamour became deafening. All the children got up and banged into each other deliberately, while they puffed and blew crumbs into the whistles, mouth organs and other wind instruments provided for them. The Hosiers’ Boys, who were really invaluable, cleared away the crockery and took down the tables thus giving the evacuees plenty of room to fight, as well as bang and bump and puff. Mrs. Morland, looking on from the door of the gymnasium changing-room, where she was helping to wash up, thought she had never seen a more revolting sight than so many hot children, the girls with their party frocks already crumpled and stained, the boys smeared with food from ear to ear, their unprepossessing faces full of the almost bestial look of satiety that cake and lemonade can produce even in the most gently nurtured young; so she went back to the washing up.
The helpers now got the tea-urns into action and fed the mothers and teachers, who were to have a slightly more refined tea of paste sandwiches and mixed biscuits. By the time this second tea was over a great many of the children were in tears with excitement and it was evident to any motherly eye that a number of them would probably be sick before bedtime. But such is pleasure. Kate asked Mrs. Bissell, who was entirely unperturbed by the scene, to say that the presents would now be given from the Christmas Tree.
‘Now, children,’ said Mrs. Bissell; and a hush fell on the room. ‘Come up quietly, each school together, and no pushing. Anyone who pushes will go to the back.’
The schools were rapidly organised. Mr. Hedgebottom managed to get the Hiram Road School into the front of the queue, hoping that his un-priestridden charges would get the pick of the presents, though in this he was disappointed for Mrs. and Miss Phelps who were responsible for the gifts were the soul of impartiality and Miss Hampton and Miss Bent who actually presented them, with Mrs. Bissell and Kate as a bodyguard, did not know one child or one present from another. When every boy had received something considered suitable for a boy, and every girl something considered suitable for a girl, they all tried to take each other’s presents away, and the noise was worse than ever. In the middle of it, Geraldine, who had really been working very hard all day and was feeling tired, for there had actually been six cases in her ward on the previous day and Matron had let her go on real night duty for a treat, suddenly saw young Mr. Warbury, accompanied by his mother who was roped with silver foxes and pearls.
‘Hullo, Fritz,’ she said; and her heart would let her say no more.
Young Mr. Warbury, who really has very little to do with this story except to show how easy it is for anyone to fall in love with a totally unworthy object, said God, what a smell and was there a drink anywhere. Geraldine, who had secretly been exercised about this all day, and would have brought some gin with her but that (a) her father had not opened the new bottle and might ask questions and (b) she felt that she had no genius for smuggling at all, exhausted herself in apologies.
‘Your lovely furs!’ said Kate to Mrs. Warbury, with a woman’s real admiration for silver foxes. ‘You really oughtn’t to have brought them. Do be careful not to get anything on them. I’m afraid everything is very sticky.’
Mrs. Warbury, smiling a queenly smile, said to Sister Mary Joseph who was standing near, that she thought one should always wear one’s prettiest things when one
went among poor children; it was, she said, a kind of duty to give pleasure.
Cheerfulness Breaks In Page 21