Christmas with the Savages

by Mary Clive

  ‘And I suppose everyone has to drop down dead at the end of them,’ said Harry. ‘Will we see the end of this one?’

  ‘No, you will only see the middle,’ said Lady Tamerlane. ‘And if you don’t go and get ready at once, you won’t see it at all.’

  In great haste we put on our outdoor things, and together with three or four nursery maids we set off for the back lodge. We did not go down the avenue but along a drive which I hadn’t been on before and which wound under trees and among rhododendron bushes. It seemed a long way, and as soon as we were out of earshot of the house we got Minnie to sing to us.

  Minnie knew a lot of songs, some of them modern songs about love and some of them old ballads with interesting, though somewhat mysterious, stories. These last were not unlike the stories about their sisters-in-law’s cousins which the nurses told to each other when they thought we weren’t listening. In a vague sort of way I imagined that Barbara Allen and the Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington were relations of Minnie’s, as was also the lady who ran away with the dark-eyed gypsy-o.

  Charlie came home late that night,

  Demanding for his lady-o,

  ‘She is gone, she is gone,’ said the old servingman,

  ‘She is gone with the dark-eyed gypsy-o.’

  I felt very sorry for Charlie and annoyed with the old servingman for being so unsympathetic, and also frightened of the gypsy-o – but then we were all frightened of gypsies. We had read books about children who were stolen by gypsies for their clothes, and the Savages’ nurse once knew a little girl, I think her own sister, who was stolen by gypsies and found in a quarry with nothing on but her chemise. Actually the adventures that happened to Nana Savage’s relations were always so startling that we didn’t really believe any of them, but all the same it made one uncomfortable. Peter was particularly frightened of very old women and would run for his life if he saw one. He did not really like the old woman in the lodge who came out of her dark little house to talk to us. As he was much the most attractive of us she took a special fancy to him and tried to make him walk into her parlour; but he wouldn’t. Although it was not made of toffee and gingerbread the lodge did look very like the picture of the witch’s house in Hansel and Gretel, and even the attractions of a glass case containing a school scene, the scholars being stuffed ferrets and the schoolmaster an owl, could not get him beyond the porch.

  The Marathon race was a long time coming. We swung on the gate and we swung on the chains that were stretched between white posts to prevent carriages driving over the grass edge, and we bickered among ourselves and we stared at the other people who had collected, and altogether we got very bored; but at last there was a murmur, ‘Here they come.’

  So we lined up at the side of the road and several men dressed in white trotted very slowly past. After they had gone by, another man, panting very hard, appeared. This man wore a stripy shirt which I thought prettier than the white ones and so I picked him as the winner.

  ‘That one will win,’ I said. ‘I know it.’

  The others looked at me to see if I had some sort of power of second sight and decided I had not.

  ‘Then you know wrong,’ said Rosamund.

  Betty seemed as though she were struggling not to cry.

  ‘But where are their golden helmets?’ she asked furiously. ‘Where are their shields?’

  ‘You are a silly,’ said Rosamund, ‘of course people don’t run races in helmets and shields.’

  ‘But Grandmama said they would,’ said Betty. ‘She said so. She said they were Greek and I know what Greeks look like. I know all the pictures in Lionel’s Greek history. Grandmama is an untruth-teller.’

  ‘Betty!’ said Rosamund, shocked. ‘You mustn’t say that about Grandmama.’

  ‘She is,’ said Betty. Her eyes were shiny with tears and the corners of her mouth went down.

  Harry was very soft-hearted and could not bear to see Betty crying.

  ‘As a matter of fact they did wear helmets and shields,’ he said, ‘only they went by so fast that they were very hard to see.’

  ‘Did they?’ asked Betty doubtfully.

  ‘Of course they did,’ he said, and appealed to the others. ‘They did wear helmets and shields, didn’t they? You all saw them, didn’t you?’

  The others were rather afraid of Betty’s violent temper and agreed quickly.

  ‘Yes, we all saw them. You must have seen them, Betty.’

  Betty said that perhaps after all she had seen them. ‘Sort of gold and glittering?’ she suggested.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed everyone. ‘Gold and glittering.’

  Betty quite cheered up.

  ‘Let’s have a Marathon race of our own,’ said Rosamund. ‘All the way home. It must be nearly as far as from Marathon to Athens.’

  ‘Let’s! Let’s!’ said everyone. ‘Minnie, you say “go”.’

  We drew up in a line with one foot stuck out so far in front that we were almost doing the splits. Minnie said: ‘Are you ready, are you steady, go!’ and away we went.

  The Tamerlane back drive was not perhaps as far as from Marathon to Athens, but it was very long for all that. Betty, who was the smallest and fattest, dropped off first, and I, who was not used to running, soon found that I could not keep up with the others, not even with Peter. I ran as hard as I could till my head seemed bursting and my inside empty of breath, but the others went further and further ahead, and the drive was so bendy that soon they were out of sight altogether. I had meant to get great glory by winning the race, and it was disappointing to find myself puffed and tired and behind everybody except Betty.

  Just when I thought I simply could not run another step I came to a small path leading off the drive. It looked like a shortcut to the house and was exactly what I wanted, and I started down it feeling rather clever, but when it stopped going straight and started winding among trees, I wondered if I had been so clever after all. The afternoon was getting late and under the trees it was very gloomy. I dropped to a walk but then remembered gypsies and started to run again. I suppose the sensible thing would have been to turn round and go back, but that never entered my head. I only thought of going faster so as to get home quicker.

  To make matters worse, I came to a crossroads where five paths met, and I had no idea which one led towards the house. I chose the path which looked widest and ran on down it, by this time with a bad stitch in my side, and then to my horror I heard a horse coming along behind me.

  I did not dare to look round as I was quite sure the horse was dragging a gypsy caravan, and though I tried to run faster and faster my breath was entirely gone, and the horse, though only walking, gained on me. When it was quite close to me a man’s voice said:

  ‘Hello, Atalanta!’

  This was too much for me. I thought Atalanta was some magic word like Abracadabra, and with a loud scream I tried to run up a tree. I had a sort of confused idea that horses couldn’t climb trees (nor caravans either) and that if I got up one I would be safe. The tree I attempted, however, had no branches anywhere near the ground, and after hugging the trunk with both arms for a second I dropped back helplessly on to the root. I lay huddled for a moment, not daring to look up, while the horse made crunchy noises and then the man’s voice said:

  ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

  It was a kind voice, and I had heard it before. I wriggled round and looked up, seeing first the horse’s muddy legs, then a very muddy boot, then some muddy white breeches, then a muddy red coat, then a face with some dried blood on it, and finally an old top hat rather crooked and a bit muddy too. I knew that gypsies didn’t wear top hats, and looking more calmly I recognized the Savages’ father coming back from hunting. Harry had boasted to me that his father rode ‘straight’ and was ‘a tiger to go’, and indeed he looked as if he had ridden extremely straight, through hedges, ditches, ponds, everything.

  ‘We are having a Marathon race,’ I said, as well as I could for panting. I thought he mig
ht think it rude if I told him I had mistaken him for a gypsy. ‘But I seem to be lost.’

  ‘Well, if you keep straight on you’ll get to the house,’ he said. ‘Where’s your nurse?’

  ‘I don’t have a nurse,’ I said, hurt in my dignity. ‘I haven’t had a nurse for years.’

  I picked myself up and began to run again. I did not want to come in behind Betty.

  But the shortcut had taken me a long way round, and when I reached home there was an anxious crowd of children and nursery maids waiting by the side door. They did not dare go upstairs without me, and they did not know where to go to look for me. Harry was actually crying.

  Rosamund rushed at me and seized me so violently by the arm that it hurt, and Marguerite was moved to burst into speech, but as it was all in French I don’t know what she said.

  ‘Where have you been?’ everyone shouted.

  I was just going to ask who had won the Marathon race when I saw that Betty was there, so it was clear that, whoever had won, it was Evelyn who had come in last.

  ‘I decided that Marathon races are rather overdone,’ I said grandly. ‘So I walked home with the Savages’ father. I found him a delightful man.’

  Everyone was silenced by these grown-up remarks. I shook off the hands that still clutched me and, with head in air, stalked up the wooden stairs magnificently, though it is not easy to be magnificent when one is puffing and panting like a bellows.

  9. The Wet Day

  The next day was wet, sheets of rain pouring down so that even the Glens’ nurse, who was the hardiest of the three, announced at breakfast, ‘No walks. No riding.’

  After breakfast we always tore off to Lady Tamerlane’s room, which was at the end of a lovely, long passage with four steps up and four steps down in the middle. You can imagine the crashes as we jumped up them and then jumped down the other side. When we came to the end we used to pause to collect ourselves and to look at a picture of people on a sledge being attacked by wolves. We were frightened of wolves, even Lionel a little, but we could not help looking at the picture. Did they escape? We never knew. One could but hope for the best but fear the worst.

  Then the passage zigzagged and we were in darkness as, giggling a little, we stood and knocked at Lady Tamerlane’s door.

  ‘Come in!’ she always answered promptly, and we burst in and rushed to our favourite corners.

  I expect you have read how in the old days when the kings of France were dressing, their rooms used to be crowded with courtiers. The scene in Lady Tamerlane’s bedroom must have been rather like what the French kings put up with, except, I suppose, that courtiers would behave better than the Savages did. Lady Tamerlane was only half dressed when we came in, but at that date people wore such a lot of clothes that her petticoat had more to it than a modern person’s frock. A little chest of drawers full of bead necklaces and curios was put on the floor and we chiefly played with that, while she wandered round cleaning her teeth and having her hair done by Miss Spenser, her maid.

  Miss Spenser was a dear little creature with pince-nez. She looked very old and frail beside Lady Tamerlane. She brushed Lady Tamerlane’s hair on and on, and then tied it in bunches with tapes, and finally pinned it up on top so cleverly that all the tapes were hidden.

  Lady Tamerlane talked to us all the time, generally about the strange people she had met in the course of her life. I remember her saying that ‘everyone who lives long enough knows three murderers’, and then telling us about the three murderers that she had met. She had travelled a great deal and she liked talking about the countries she had visited. On this particular wet morning Harry had asked her if she had ever been in a sledge and been chased by wolves, and though she confessed she had not, she told us a story about a friend of hers who had been. That led her to tell us other stories about Russia and about Revolutionaries who threw bombs. One of her peculiarities was that she didn’t bother to pronounce things properly, and ‘bomb’ she pronounced ‘boom’.

  ‘What’s a boom, Grandmama?’ asked Harry.

  ‘She means a bomb,’ said Peter, looking up from the shoes which he was arranging in a pattern.

  The rest of us were shocked by this remark which we felt to be in terrible taste. Even Lady Tamerlane looked disconcerted and quickly changed the subject.

  ‘Everline, have you written to thank your mother and father for their presents?’

  I said that I hadn’t had time.

  ‘You had better come down into my sitting room and do it this morning.’

  Her hair being finished, she rose up and presented us all with Red Indian suits and there was a scrimmage as we forced ourselves into them. Most of them were a sort of khaki colour, but Betty’s was green.

  ‘I’m not a Red Indian,’ said Betty. ‘I’m a Green Indian.’

  ‘There isn’t such a thing,’ said Rosamund. ‘You’ve got to be a Red Indian too.’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ said Betty. ‘I’m a Green Indian.’

  ‘You can’t be,’ said Rosamund. ‘Can she, Grandmama?’

  ‘I’m a Green Indian,’ yelled Betty, flying into a rage.

  ‘Time you all went back to the nursery,’ said Lady Tamerlane, and we swept out into the passage and charged off, up the steps and down the steps, shouting, ‘I’m a Red Indian!’ except for Betty who shouted, ‘Green Indian!’

  Later on, as it was so wet, the Glens’ mother and the Savages’ mother also descended on their young to force them to write their thank-you letters. They had not many to write as most of their presents came from people in the house, but there were a few strays, such as godmothers, who had to be thanked. I remember that Peter had a very special godmother whom even the grown-ups seemed to hold in fear, and his mother tried to work him up into the right frame of mind to write something really showy.

  ‘But need I write at all?’ said Peter. ‘She only sent me a book.’

  ‘What was it called?’ asked his mother.

  ‘Some bosh like “The Art of Joy”,’ said Peter.

  ‘It wasn’t called that,’ said Peggy.

  ‘Wasn’t it? Well, perhaps it was called “The Joy of Art”,’ said Peter carelessly. He was very bored with the whole subject.

  ‘Where is it?’ said his mother.

  The book, which was called nothing about either Art or Joy, was found built into a camp for Peter’s soldiers. It was very large and grand-looking, bound in imitation white vellum and its edges were gold. Gold clouds (or smoke curls) were drawn on the cover, and the pages, which were very thick with wide margins, were ornamented with the same sort of curly-wiggle. There were a few coloured pictures protected by tissue-paper, but these were also mostly of clouds (or smoke).

  ‘What a lovely book!’ exclaimed Peter’s mother, stroking it respectfully.

  ‘That sort of book is not much good really,’ said Peter wisely. ‘I know them of old. The pages fall out almost at once. I truly don’t think it’s worth thanking for.’

  ‘You are naughty to be so ungrateful to your godmother,’ put in Peggy priggishly. ‘Look what lovely thick paper it is. And all those blank pages at the end! Ideal for drawing on, and you could paint on them too.’

  ‘I’ll write a letter for you and you can copy it,’ said his mother. ‘Your godmother will be very hurt if she doesn’t get a letter.’

  ‘All right,’ said Peter amiably. ‘I don’t mind her sending it if she wants to. And if I paint a red cross on the lid it will make a jolly good hospital tent.’

  I turned away to listen to the Savages’ mother, who was having trouble with Betty. Betty’s godmother had sent her a postal order for 5s. with a letter saying that she was afraid it would arrive late for Christmas. As a matter of fact it had come on Christmas Eve and Betty had got into one of her contrary moods and said that she wouldn’t accept it.

  ‘If I write a letter, will you put “Love from Betty” at the bottom?’ said her mother.

  ‘No,’ said Betty. ‘I’ll put “Hate from Betty”.’

&
nbsp; ‘It’s no good,’ said Harry. ‘Nothing will make her change her mind now. But I’ll write “Love from Betty” all blotchy and her godmother won’t know the difference.’

  ‘If you do,’ said Betty, ‘I’ll throw your bedroom slippers into the fire.’

  She would have, too. I did not wait to see the end of this discussion but went mincing off to Lady Tamerlane’s sitting room. I was still dressed in my Red Indian clothes, and the feathers on my head and the beads and bobbles made me feel particularly elegant and grown-up.

  I found Lady Tamerlane in the Chinese Room writing away at her own letters. There was another writing table, however, and she told me to sit down at it and to start. I was annoyed that she was occupied with her own affairs as I hoped that she would let me spend the whole morning with her, away from the nursery, and being too stupid to realize that busy people don’t like being interrupted by even the most intelligent child, I thought it a wonderful opportunity for making friends with her. I remembered acrostics and the Italian poetry, and not having any idea what an acrostic was I said:

  ‘Shall I write to Mamma in Italian?’

  Lady Tamerlane looked up in surprise and said:

  ‘Do you know Italian?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then write in English.’

  She began scribbling away again, but I was determined to be noticed.

  ‘I think this nib is bent,’ I said.

  ‘Use a pencil.’

  There were two pencils there, both beautifully sharpened by Mr O’Sullivan. I looked round for other ways of making myself noticed. My eyes fell on a pot plant.

  ‘Oh, Lady Tamerlane, what is the name of that lovely flower?’

  Lady Tamerlane knew nothing about flowers and cared less.

  ‘Write what you’ve got to, first,’ she said, ‘you may talk afterwards.’

  There was nothing else for it. I had to get on with my letter. The pen, of course, was perfectly all right, but I was not used to writing in ink and I kept dipping too far into the silver inkpot (which was filled exactly to the brim) and making terrible blots. My fingers got covered with ink and the blotting-paper and my face became very messy, and I was not helped by the tags and feathers on my Red Indian suit. I could not see into the ballroom as curtains had been let down across the alcove, but the Chinese Room was full of small attractive objects and I kept looking about me instead of getting on with what I was supposed to be doing.