by Rebecca West
When Papa and Mamma had had their presents we had ours. They were lovely. I really cannot think, looking back over a lifetime in which I have known many quite opulent Christmases, that any children have ever had much lovelier Christmas presents. We had known that Papa was making us new furniture and inhabitants for our dolls’ houses, but he had done better than that. He had given Cordelia’s Tudor palace a maze and a sunken garden and a pleached walk, like the one in Much Ado About Nothing; he had given Mary’s Queen Anne mansion a walled garden with espaliered trees all around it and a vinery outside built against the south wall; and he had given my Victorian Gothic abbey a small park with a looking-glass lake with a rocky island in it surmounted by a mock hermitage. Out of her old dresses Mother had made a pale green Mary Queen of Scots dress for Cordelia, an eighteenth-century white dress for Mary, a rose-coloured crinoline dress for me, and a Three Musketeers uniform with a cardboard sword for Richard Quin. Like everything else that Mamma did each was unique, we had never seen anything like them before, any one of them was something only she would have imagined. So enchanted were we with these big presents that we had hardly time to look at the presents Constance had sent us before we had to dress for church, except to see that for us girls she had pretty little pinafores, each with a hair-ribbon to match, and for Richard Quin a little shirt. There was an air of cool composure about the needlework which made these garments as distinctive as my mother’s wilder work.
It had been decided beforehand that Richard Quin was to go to church with us for the first time on Christmas morning. But he was bemused with his toys. He had not even begun to empty his stocking, but was dragging it about with him. If anybody tried to relieve him of it, he said, “Not yet, not yet in a minute,” but he could not bring himself to take his eyes off the fortress Papa had made for him, a proper fortress with casemates and redoubts and glacis and a garrison numbering twenty, all in silver-foil armour. He could not bear to touch it, he liked it so much. So Mamma took pity on him and said that he need not go, perhaps he was too little, it would wait till next Christmas. But he said that if Papa was going he would like to go too. So we started out through a crisp morning, Mamma going to the steps to see us off. “Gloves?” she said sternly to us three, for all over England little girls were starting a revolt against gloves, which was to succeed before very long, but was then discouraged by all adults. “I wish I could come with you.” She sighed. “I would enjoy the service.”
“Oh, come!” we cried, and Papa asked, “Can you not come, my dear?”
“If I did, you would have no dinner,” she said. “Kate could not do it alone, and set the table, and do the beds as well. How strange it is to think of all the women who have to stay on Christmas morning to look after the dinner, and get no Christian blessing, like so many witches.” She checked herself, we did not see why, and waved good-bye and shut the door, and we started off through a scene that, when I remember it, seems peopled by marionettes. A little white dog ran across the road under the hooves of an old horse drawing an old cab, and its master bent and gave it a gentle lash with a lead for disobedience; two men came out of a shop and let the iron rollers of the shop-front shutter fall noisily behind them; a company of Salvation Army officers, the men in their peaked caps and the women in their bonnets, passed by, carrying their musical instruments. Only the horse and dog seem real, the men seem like ill-dressed dolls in their so short coats, the women in their so long skirts. All these beings moved at the bottom of a sea of happiness, an old gentleman we did not know said “Merry Christmas” to us, we passed many other families of children that danced as they walked, as we were doing.
In church we were so contented that we did not think of the singing of the choir as music and did not approve or disapprove, but gratefully took it that it was giving tongue to what was in our hearts. “How bright,” Mary whispered in my ear, “the silver dishes on the altar are.” We liked the holly round the pulpit, the white chrysanthemums on the altar. Of late Mary and I had doubts about religion, we wished God had worked miracles that would have enabled Mamma to keep Aunt Clara’s furniture and saved Papa from his disappointment over the deal in Manchester, but now faith was restored to us. We saw that it was good of God to send His Son to earth because man had sinned, it was the opposite of keeping out of trouble, which was mean, it was the opposite of what Papa’s relatives were doing in not wanting to see him just because he had been unlucky. We liked the way Richard Quin stood on the seat of the pew and, though he had been told he must be good and sit as still as a mouse in this holy place, nuzzled against Papa’s shoulder and sometimes put up his face for a kiss, certain that showing love for Papa must be part of being good. There was a sermon which Mary and I approved, for it was, roughly speaking, against crossness and we thought crossness was the worst thing in the world. People were always being cross with us at school, it made the thing impossible. It broke Mamma’s heart when Papa was cross to her. Cordelia was always being cross to us. But I was disappointed with Mary when she murmured, “We must try to be less cross to Cordelia.” I did not believe there was any hope of solving our problem that way. Outside the church people offered my father greetings about which even then I recognized a special distant quality. I realize now that it showed deference without confidence. So might they have wished a merry Christmas to a shabby Prospero, exiled even from his own island, but still a magician.
We had just time to get into our fancy dresses before dinner, which was wonderful. One of Papa’s relatives in Ireland who never wanted to see us always sent us a turkey and a ham, and we had both sausage and chestnut stuffing with the turkey. Mamma had worried because the removal from Scotland had meant that she could not make her Christmas puddings before October, which was later than she had ever left it before, but really the one we had could not have been better. Each of us children got a charm out of the pudding, which we thought happened by chance. Afterwards we had tangerines, and almonds and raisins, and Carlsbad plums from the box with a picture of a plum on it which Papa’s City friend, Mr. Langham, sent us every Christmas. We could not have crackers, none of us could bear the bang. On the sideboard there was one of the bottles of port which the margarine manufacturer had sent Papa, and he poured out two glasses for himself and Mamma, and then he asked Mamma if it were not true that Kate’s mother, who was now a washerwoman at Wimbledon, and her brother, a bluejacket now on leave, were having their dinner in the kitchen. Since it was so, Cordelia was sent down to ask him to come up and drink a glass of port with Papa. The brother was younger than Kate, and indeed far more fragile and girlish, and at first he was shy. But Papa and the port warmed him, and he sat for quite a while, telling us of Gibraltar and Cyprus and Malta, and hearing Papa’s stories of what they had been like in his day.
When he got up to go he hesitated, and we thought his shyness had taken him again. Then he said, very gravely, “I have to thank you for being so good to Kate and my mother when they were in trouble.”
“It is nothing,” said Papa, smiling.
“We have already been repaid many times by your sister’s kindness to all the children, and all the hard work she does,” said Mamma, looking very uncomfortable.
“Yes, ma’am, but when you stood by them in their trouble she hadn’t done much work for you,” said the sailor. “Kate says she hadn’t been in the house three days when the policeman come, and you stood by her from the first moment.”
“It is nothing, nothing,” Mamma broke in, with a quick look at my father.
“Of course I know that it’s not as if it were a real crime they had against my poor old mother and my sister,” the sailor continued. “It’s just a way that the women of our family have had since time out of mind, and very natural in a harbour town. They had a cheek, those magistrates, to talk of sending my mother and my sister to prison. Why, fining them the other two times was cheek too, considering how long our family’s been in the town.”
“What little we could do for your mother and sister,” said Ma
mma, standing up and shaking the sailor’s hand, “we gladly did. Good-bye, good-bye, and may you have Christmas dinner with us every year for many years to come.”
After he had left the room Mamma sank back into her chair and covered her face with her hands, and Papa, looking much amused, poured out another glass of port and dipped a cluster of raisins in it.
Cordelia asked, “But what did Kate do that they wanted to send her to prison for it?”
“I think you had better tell them, my dear,” Papa said. “It is not so terrible, after all.”
“But I think it is,” said Mamma. “I want them to go on loving Kate, for she is a good girl, but I want them to hate what she did. That is very difficult.”
“Is it?” asked Papa in a teasing way. “I have an idea that people find that very thing quite easy to do.”
“You are mistaken if you think they find it easy,” said Mamma with a sudden flash of temper. Papa did not answer, he looked into the distance while he took a raisin out of the port and lifted it to his mouth. I saw the fullness of his lips, the whiteness of his teeth under his moustache. I felt angry because Papa and Mamma had so many secrets from us.
Mary said, tears in her eyes, “But tell us what it was that poor Kate did.”
“Oh, I had better tell you,” said Mamma, “in case you think she stole, which she would never do. She had been with us for just three days, as the boy said, when a policeman came and said that they wanted Kate and her mother, because they had run away from Portsmouth when they were awaiting trial. It seemed that Kate’s mother had been—oh, do not think it was not a wicked thing, though she is such a nice woman—telling fortunes. Oh, dear.”
“Why is that so wrong?” I asked defensively.
“Of course it is wrong. You see, when sailors are away for a long time their wives get frightened lest their ships should have sunk, and they go to women who say they have a gift for seeing what is far away and they fill a bucket with water, and what has happened to the ships appears to them in the water.”
“But surely,” said Mary, in the tones of an advocate, “it is nice for the sailors’ wives to know what has happened to their husbands.”
“No, it is not nice at all,” cried my mother. “For some of the women who say they have this gift are frauds and liars, and cheat the poor creatures out of their money, and though the others may have gifts, what company must they keep, the wretched spirits who hang about this earth when they should leave it! Oh, children, never pry into hidden things, the supernatural is always so very dirty. But it seems that in Kate’s family the women have always done this thing, it must have started long ago when people did not understand, so you cannot blame her and her mother. And they have promised that in this house there shall be nothing, there will not be even tea-leaf readings. And you must help them keep their promise if you have the chance.”
“I hope nobody saw the policeman come to the house,” said Cordelia. “We had just arrived, our neighbours would not know the sort of people we were.”
“But how was it that if the policeman came to take Kate back to Portsmouth he went away without her?” asked Mary.
“Let us help Kate now by clearing the table,” said Mamma, rising from her chair. “Otherwise you will never be able to take me out before tea.”
Papa said, laughing quite loud, “Since you ask, Mary, the policeman got it into his head from something that was said to him that Kate was not the girl he wanted.”
“How fortunate!” we exclaimed.
“Yes, yes,” said Mamma. “Hurry now, dears.”
We changed from our fancy dresses into our outdoor clothes and while Papa stayed with Richard Quin we took Mamma for a little walk. We passed a church and she suddenly cried out with pleasure because she saw lights behind the stained-glass windows at that unlikely hour. When we got inside the service was nearly over, but Mamma was grateful for the twenty minutes or so that she had in the half-empty church. “Now I have not had a wholly heathen Christmas,” she said, when we came out into a world blackening before a rich gold sunset. “It is terrible if I should be denied Christian burial just because turkeys will not baste themselves.” A cold wind blew from the sunset, it had been warm in the church, Mamma shuddered and said, “Let’s see if your poor old mother can still run.” Of course she could, we ran quite a long way, we were nearly home when she had to ask us to stop. Before we went into the house she asked us to be careful never to say anything to poor Kate about her trouble.
We girls all went up to our room and changed back into our fancy dresses. These were of course very roughly made. Mamma was so busy and so tired and could use needles with such difficulty that there were always defects in them which we had to remedy. This time Mamma had forgotten to put a hole for the fang of the buckle in the belt which covered the raw seam she had left at the waist. I asked Cordelia if she thought I could safely snip a hole in the silk with the point of my scissors, but she was dressing in a great hurry, and she told me with an oddly fussy, consequential air that she had no time to look at it; and Mary was not much good at that kind of thing. So I went downstairs and asked Mamma, who was helping Kate to set the table for tea and telling her about Constance’s presents. “There are hours of work in each one of them,” she was saying happily. When I showed her my belt she said, “Oh, my love, you must forgive me. Look, Kate, you see what I mean. My cousin would rather die than give anyone such work.” She said she thought we could drill a hole between the threads with a stiletto which Papa kept on his desk to pierce his manuscripts to take the paper-fasteners. I went into the sitting room to ask Papa if we might borrow it, and then came back to tell her that Papa said we could, and that he and Richard Quin were playing with the fortress, but that Richard Quin had his stocking beside him not yet unpacked, and that sometimes he turned to it and said, “That too.” Turning from the table, she said, “Everything has gone very well today,” and then sighed and added, “so far.” But she was humming again by the time we had crossed the passage and opened the study door.
Then she ceased to hum. Inside the room there was standing a woman who appeared to us for a moment as a total stranger. Then I recognized her as Miss Beevor, the teacher whom Cordelia had once brought to tea. My wonder at her presence in my father’s study was confused and even eclipsed by wonder whether any human being could really have such a yellow skin. This jaundiced effect was the work of her dress, which was made of bright violet velveteen, and of her hat, which was only slightly softer in hue. She was obviously much embarrassed at being discovered, and dipped and cringed before us, nervously transferring a roll of music to her left hand from her right, which she then offered to my mother. She said in a flat voice, “A little surprise,” and my mother said, “Yes?” without taking her hand. I realized that she had entirely forgotten Miss Beevor and thought her a total stranger and was speculating whether she was a lunatic or an unusual type of burglar. Her eyes then fell on the brooch which Miss Beevor was wearing, a mosaic representing two doves drinking from a fountain. My mother was by now exhausted by her efforts to give us a good Christmas, and the shock of discovering this stranger in Papa’s study deprived her of all her self-control. She stared at this brooch with a positive grimace of disapproval.
It was at this point that Cordelia entered the room, looking lovely in her Tudor dress, and holding her violin and bow. On seeing Miss Beevor confronted by my mother and myself, she uttered an exclamation of annoyance and uttered another, which was quite angry, when she looked from my mother’s face, on which there was fixed this extraordinary grimace, to the terrified Miss Beevor’s fluttering eyes and lips. For the first time I realized that a visitor from outside might think it strange that a pretty little girl like Cordelia should be the daughter of an emaciated and shabby and nerve-jerked woman like Mamma, and would for that reason be sorry for Cordelia; and for the first time I realized that Cordelia might share that stranger’s opinion.
She said, with a capable air, “Mamma, don’t you remember Miss Be
evor? You know, she came to tea.”
Mamma uttered a sharp sound which she tried, too late, to render cordial and welcoming, and extended her hand to Miss Beevor, who took it tremulously, murmuring again, “A little surprise.”
“Yes, Mamma,” said Cordelia, “Miss Beevor has been helping me with a surprise Christmas present for you.” She made a proud flourish with her bow, and Mamma, who could no longer speak, pointed at the violin with an air of readiness to take any blow.
“Yes, Mamma,” said Cordelia. “Miss Beevor has been teaching me a piece to play to you. We have been working so hard to get it right so that even you would like it.”
“You see, I have been giving Cordelia quite a lot of lessons,” said Miss Beevor. “Usually,” the poor woman added, stroking Cordelia’s hair, so that the force of her rebuke should be directed solely on my mother and not be thought to extend to her favourite, “an extra. But I am proud to make my lessons a gift to your daughter.”
My mother was silent for a second. She had drooped beneath the same lassitude she sometimes showed when she had to deal with a dunning tradesman, or a nail in the sole of one of our shoes. She got the tradesman to go away, the nail was hammered down or prised out, but one felt that however much she rested after this ordeal she would never get back to what she had been before. “How wonderfully kind,” she said. “You must forgive me for not recognizing you, Christmas is such a rush for me that I lose my wits. So you have been teaching Cordelia and have taught her a solo?” She stooped and kissed Cordelia very tenderly. “Now let us go to the sitting room and hear it,” she said, and held the door open for Miss Beevor, turning her head to give me the penetrating look which we knew was her signal that she at once expected us to behave well and recognized that it would be difficult for us to do so.