by James Brady
“Next year,” Emma cried out. “Next year I’ll be back. Taller, too, and maybe not so plain.”
Alix whirled on her.
“We’ve got to have something of a heart-to-heart on that, my girl,” said Her Ladyship. “You’re not at all ‘a plain girl.’ You’re ‘a thin girl!’ Quelle différence, I assure you! Look at me, I’m a thin girl, but Beecher and lots of chaps just dote! Don’t they, darling?” she said, addressing me.
“Well, I …”
There was another round of hugs and kisses and good-byes, then Alix was backing away from me toward the train, and Emma was with her, holding one hand. Then they were aboard. The trainman called, “All aboard!” and, hanging from the car steps in the old-fashioned and approved style of good railroad men everywhere, he waved an arm and the train began very, very slowly to move, its whistle sounding. Her Ladyship and her ward had by now taken seats and waved to us. My father shouted, though I don’t think they could hear:
“Remember next year! The Santa Claus parade!”
The kid’s grinning face, solemn just seconds earlier, appeared in the greasy, smoky window of the old train, one arm waving. So maybe she could hear him after all. Behind her, I could see Alix, a hand lifted though not waving, a kind of lorn salute, I guess.
My father waved, too. With a big, damaged hand snugged warmly into a bright red wool mitten. In a few years Emma wouldn’t be a child anymore but a teenager, improper thoughts and all, but to the Admiral she was still very much a kid. Promising to come back again next Christmas, telling my father she was counting on him to care for the Lionel trains until she did.
The locomotive’s big wheels slipped and skidded a few times more, loud and squeaking, before gradually gaining traction and moving into a smooth, powerful roll, leaving behind the painted wooden signs that proudly announced, EAST HAMPTON, and pulling the train quickly away from the little old rural station along the one-track, snowy right-of-way toward the great city.
Toward tomorrow and all the tomorrows and a world beyond.
With an exceedingly deferential bow to Mr. Charles Dickens, who some years ago in London, wrote a little story memorializing and celebrating the very same glorious and jolly season.
Also by James Brady
The Marines of Autumn
The Coldest War
Fashion Show
Nielsen’s Children
Paris One
The Press Lord
Superchic
Designs
Holy Wars
Further Lane
Gin Lane
The House That Ate the Hamptons
A HAMPTONS CHRISTMAS. Copyright © 2000 by James Brady. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.
www.stmartins.com
Book design by Clair Moritz
eISBN 9781429992473
First eBook Edition : April 2011
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brady, James.
A Hamptons Christmas / James Brady.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-312-26604-9
1. Hamptons (N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.R243 H35 2000
813’.54—dc21
00-031737
First Edition: November 2000