by EH Walter
beloved brother safely home.
“Are you there Jack?” she questioned the sky, “I bloody need you, you know. The farm is too much work for me - not that I’d tell a soul that - and Mother is all shut up like that puzzle box you bought me when I was eight. I couldn’t figure it out. Do you remember? After two days you took pity on me and showed me the solution. Well, I don’t know the solution to Mother. I bloody need you, you bugger. I bloody need you…”
The sky had no answers. There was no response, not even a breeze.
“Well bugger you Jack. I told you last time, I’m not talking to you again. I don’t think you’re listening and neither is He.”
Margaret kicked at the snow.
“Neither of you listen, so this is my farewell. I’m going to midnight mass, but I won’t be speaking to either of You.”
In truth there was only one reason Margaret went to church at all, which was to sit back, surrounded by the hum of other people and remember the past. Church had been a Sunday ritual for her father, mother, Jack and her. It was a place of memories and that was why she went.
Her father had loved Christmas. She sometimes thought he spent the whole year preparing for it. There would be a tree, of course, decorated with the trinkets Margaret and Jack had made as well as her father and his siblings before them. On the very top was the most beautiful angel, a doll like figure Margaret had spent her childhood wanting to play with. Christmas dinner was a huge affair and family had always been invited to share it with them. The meal took so long to eat it merged into supper which was eaten to parlour games and sherry.
Margaret remembered walking these fields as a child on her way to midnight mass, except then - more often than not, she would be sitting on her father’s broad shoulders.
“Can you touch the sky yet?” he would ask, “Pluck me a star will you? Pick the brightest and the best. Then make a wish.”
And she would pretend she was plucking a star from the sky and holding it carefully in her hand.
“Don’t fill her head with nonsense,” her mother would say, not because she was a mean woman - but because she wanted her daughter to be absolutely clear about the world and her place in it. Margaret grew to learn the stars were unpluckable and there was no one left in the world to whom she would give a star anyway.
On the last hill before the village Margaret reached up and pretended to pluck a star.
“I wish…” she said, “for help on the farm. And I wish there were more young men left. Do you know Jack, we are all going to die old maids. If you were listening you’d send me a man to make up for your not being here. And you’d make him a handsome one. But I’m not talking to you anymore.”
She released her fingers to let the star go and her heart sank. She was destined to die an old maid, they all were. She would carry on doing the work of two men until she dropped of old age - sad and alone.
The church was lit up and Margaret felt her heart lift a little at the sight. Was there anything more perfect than a bright church on Christmas Eve?
There was comfort too in being around familiar people, people who had known her and her family forever. They knew this was a hard Christmas for her, as it was for many, and wouldn’t say anything to open a wound.
She smiled and wished those who approached her a Merry Christmas, but she didn’t approach anyone herself. This was to be her private reverie.
Everyone had their usual place to sit, even those who came but once a year, and everyone sat where they usually sat - even if there were spaces around them. And there were spaces. Many of them. The pews were like an elaborate doilie. There were spaces caused by the war and there were spaces caused by the Spanish flu.
But you can’t see the spaces inside us, Margaret thought, but they are there all the same.
Margaret noticed the stranger before anyone else because she was seated at the back. He entered the church as the vicar was giving his welcome. The man had travelled, that was clear to see from the clothes he wore and the small backpack he had with him. He hastily removed a flat cap and shuffled into Margaret’s pew because it was the closest.
His clothes were old, but clean. His coat was ex-army and his age gave away the fact he had served.
As the singing started he looked for a hymn book. When Margaret realised there wasn’t another she shuffled closer and let him look over her shoulder. When the singing finished she didn’t even think about moving back to her spot, his presence didn’t make her feel at all uncomfortable.
At the conclusion of the service he rose to leave.
Instinctively Margaret said: “Stranger, there’s always tea at the vicarage afterwards for those who’ve come far. There’s usually food as well.”
The flicker on his face told her he was hungry.
“I shouldn’t stop. I am already late. I couldn’t get through the snow. My friend doesn’t know I’m coming.”
“Your friend?”
“He invited me to spend Christmas with his family when we were both demobbed. But I’ve only just been discharged from the army. I hope he hasn’t forgotten.”
“Does he live in the village?”
“No, a little way out. That’s why I must go.”
“Most of the village and surrounding farmers are here. Do you see him?”
He looked about as he shook his head. “No.”
“Did you serve together?”
“What gives me away?”
“You’re one of the lucky ones.”
“I know. I don’t know why I deserve it more than anyone else. But I’m sure God has a plan for me.”
Margaret said nothing. If God existed she didn’t see much of a plan. A plan wouldn’t have seen her brother volunteer to fight and lose a leg. A plan wouldn’t have had her father’s heart giving out. A plan wouldn’t have let her brother come home to them only to be taken by the ‘flu and leave her untouched.
“Don’t you die you bugger,” she had told him, “you survived the bloody war you can fight this…”
“Don’t worry about me, sis.”
Margaret had bitten back the tears. “Worry about you? Who’s going to help me?”
“You need a strong man, sis. A man with two legs.”
“Have you got one then?”
“I’ll send you one,” he whispered. Then he smiled. And then he died and she and her mother had been alone since.
In the church, Margaret wiped her eye with the back of her hand. “Who are you looking for? Perhaps I can point you in the right direction.”
“Jack. Jack Dewsbury.”
Margaret laughed. To her shame her laugh turned into a sob.
“Miss?”
“I’m sorry. I’m Margaret Dewsbury. Jack was my brother.”
“Was?”
“The ‘flu got him, Mr…”
“Wilde. Johnnie Wilde. When?”
“Last spring.”
“That’s impossible. Not Jack…”
“He got the ‘flu. The doctor said he was probably already weakened after the war. He was peaceful at the end.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
Margaret placed her hand on his. “And I for yours, you’ve lost a friend.”
“More than that. When he lost his leg I promised I would come and work with him. We used to have a farm you see, before my parents died. I have nowhere else to go.”
Margaret got up. “You are going to spend Christmas with Mother and I.”
“I can’t impose, not under the circumstances…”
“You won’t be imposing. I will gladly put you to work. Please, Mr Wilde. Spend Christmas with us. It might even make mother cook a hen.”
He hesitated, then looked at her. “The truth is I’ve come so far and I have nowhere else to go.”
“That’s settled then. I hope you like walking.”
“Nothing better.”
“Wrap up warm.”
“Will your mother mind?”
“She’ll enjoy hearing your stories of Jack. He didn’t s
peak about his time in the war.”
As they rounded the last hill a gentle sprinkle of snow began to fall.
“This reminds me of the first Christmas of the war,” Johnnie told her, “The trenches were white with frost. It was freezing cold and Jack and I were on the early watch Christmas Eve. All of a sudden we heard this eerie sound floating across no man’s land - which was less than one hundred yards across. We didn’t know the words, but the tune was clear. Silent Night. We started to join in - with the English words. As dawn broke it sounded like the whole world was filled with this one song. Some of the Jerries knew English - they’d often rib us over no man’s land. ‘Give us a fag’ one of them says then. ‘Come and get it,’ Jack calls back. ‘You shoot me’, the Jerry says back. ‘No I won’t’ Jack replied. ‘Alright, I come over.’ Jack looked at me and the other chaps. We stuffed fags into his hands and gave him a lift up. Over he goes. A few minutes later he’s back with a German cheese. ‘Jerry says he thinks he’ll beat us a football,’ Jack told us, ‘so I’ve told him we’ll show him.’ On that frosty, iron hard earth we played football against the Germans until the light began to fade. At the end we all shook hands. ‘Good game,’ one of them told me, ‘no firing tomorrow - yes?’. ‘No firing,’ I told him and then wished him a Merry Christmas. We all did.”
“Did you fire the next day?” she asked him as they approached the house.
“No, and neither did they. There was never another Christmas like it. The war changed after that with the gassing. I guess no one felt the spirit anymore.”
Margaret opened the porch door and let him go in first. “Put your boots there,” she told him as she took hers off.
She had expected the kitchen to be