Tidings of Comfort and Joy

by T. Davis Bunn

  "I would be honored," I replied shyly, retreating behind the same odd formality I heard in his voice.

  "There's not much on offer these days, I'm afraid. But we could walk down to the pub and see what they have on the board."

  It felt as though the sun reached down and generated a warmth inside me. "I'm sure it will be just fine."

  THE ONLY REASON I knew I made it upstairs before conking out was because I woke up in my bed. My clothes were scattered in a haphazard line down the hall and into the bedroom. I dressed as I retraced my steps, stopping in the kitchen for a cup of tea and two slices of stale bread with margarine—it was all I had in my larder, and I did not want to risk waking Rachel from a much-needed sleep. She had looked positively haggard by the time we arrived home the afternoon before. I suspected that I had not looked much better.

  Now that I felt fewer qualms over venturing into the village, I was eager to see if I could stock my pantry with something more substantial. Armed with Grant's discarded ration coupons, I started down the stairs. But I froze on the bottom step. Poking through the front door's mail slot were two letters.

  My hands were shaking as I pulled the letters free. One was from my former boss at the shipping company. The other caused my heart to quaver. Instandy I recognized the handwriting. It was from my father.

  I had not expected him to write me. I recalled how angry he had become during our quarrels about Grant. I knew he would have been mortified by how I had left without saying what I was doing or where I was going. By now my hands were trembling so I could hardly hold the envelope, much less open it. I was terrified that he would tell me not to come home. The thought left me scarcely able to breathe.

  I set the letter from my boss down on the side table. That one could wait. Holding the letter from my father, I clenched my eyes shut, and prayed as hard as I had ever prayed in my entire life. I did not deserve anything better than to be disowned, I knew that. But I could also not help but pray for something more.

  My stomach felt as frozen solid as the trees behind the orphanage. I slit the envelope and pulled out the single page. Daddy had never been one for a lot of words. Even so, the thinness of this letter drew the steel band around my chest even tighter.

  I could put it off no longer. I unfolded the page and began to read. The words jarred so hard I dropped the sheet, and just stood there, trying to remember how to breathe.

  I picked up the letter, and reread the page. A third time. Then more slowly. Through the closed door, I could hear the village church bells begin to peal. I lingered over the short note, the words vibrating in time to the ringing bell.

  My dearest Emily,

  I have asked your mother to allow me to write you first. Your letter arrived last night, and I have scarcely been able to sleep a wink. You have inherited my own stubborn strength, but you have grown far beyond anything I could ever hope to be. Your letter contained both newfound humility and a remarkable wisdom.

  I am sorry this man hurt you so badly, but Iam proud that you have managed to grow from the experience. Yes, proud. Your mother will write more tomorrow. This is all I wanted to say, except that I do so hope you will hurry home.

  The leaves continue to fall from my calendar, each passing day marking the void your absence has caused in our lives.

  With love, Dad.

  I crushed the letter to my heart, wanting to shout, to cry, to sing out loud. Instead, I offered a single note of joyful thanks to the Lord above, then opened the door and stepped into the new day. I was instantly blinded by the sun.

  As ALWAYS, THERE were lines in front of every store. And, as usual, I could feel the eyes turn toward me as I strolled along the sidewalk. Today they did not bother me, not even when I joined the line at the grocer's and a trio of ladies turned to stare and whisper. I recognized them as having been among the group standing before the church on New Year's Eve. The Grim Brigade, Rachel had called them. As I observed them from the corner of my eye, with their tight mouths and hunched shoulders and angry looks, I decided they deserved the title. They certainly did look grim.

  Turning away, I tried to focus my thoughts on the good things that had happened. My family loved me. The children had been inoculated. They would be getting better. A few might even be adopted. The sun was shining. Even so, I could feel the trio's whispered words cross the distance and strike me like darts.

  I pulled the second letter from my pocket, the one from my boss at the shipping company, and used it as a shield. The letter held about what I had expected. The man was sympathetic, but also irritated—he had done so much to find me a way over to England. Naturally, he wrote, he would do all he could to find me a position. Or he could be called upon to write a recommendation. But as to a passage back, his connections were all for places going the other way. I sighed and stuffed the page back into my pocket.

  "Oh, hello, Emily. Didn't see you standing there."

  I looked up. The woman who had joined the queue behind me was Kate, the mistress of the night shift. Tears streaked her broad face. Instandy, concern over her pushed my own distress aside. I knew she had a boy who had not yet returned from Singapore. "What's the matter?"

  "Oh, it's silly." She lifted the news magazine she was holding. "There's this article on the DP crisis. I suppose you've heard about it."

  "Who hasn't?" DPs, as displaced persons were known, had been streaming in from Eastern Europe ever since the fighting had stopped last May. According to what the papers said, there were millions and millions of them. Some were survivors of the death camps. Others were fleeing Stalin's army. Still others had seen their villages destroyed, their livestock killed, and had taken to the streets in search of food. Whole cities were on the move to nowhere.

  "There were these pictures; here, have a look for yourself." Before I could object that I already had enough to worry about, Kate thrust the page under my nose.

  Two photographs were set side by side. The first was of a train station, or what once had been one. The building itself had been bombed to rubble. The railroad tracks were lost beneath a sea of people. Thousands and thousands of them, huddled under makeshift tents, wrapped in rags, freezing on the snow-covered ground. I asked weakly, "Where is this?"

  "Do you know, I didn't even get that far." She pointed at the second picture. "That one stopped me cold."

  The photograph was of a dozen or so children, all of them trying to share two blankets. They were lying side by side, tight as sardines in a can. Snow had fallen while they lay, dotting the tattered cover with white. All but two of the children were still asleep, their faces almost lost beneath heaps of rags used to keep their ears and noses warm. But two girls looked up at the camera. They were perhaps eight or nine years old. One of them was flaxen-haired, the other dark. Hunger and fatigue and fear had turned them into twins. Especially their eyes.

  "They look so much like our own little ones," the woman sniffled.

  "Hmph." One of the trio sniffled loudly. "My Jim warned you at that first council meeting, you were getting in over your head, taking on that orphanage."

  "There's too many of them," another agreed. "Your lot can't save the world on your own."

  Kate reddened. "We certainly won't be having any help from you, now, will we?"

  "I do my best to avoid lost causes and futile gestures," the first replied loftily.

  "Aye, and it's a grand thing to see them finally clearing those wastrels out," her friend agreed. "Good riddance to bad rubbish, I say."

  I did not join in the ensuing argument. The pair of images lingered, making a mockery of this petty gibing. The impressions stayed with me as I stood in line at the butcher's, and then the bakery. The eyes and the whispers were still there, but I did not have room for them. I felt as though the girls were trying to communicate with me, or perhaps it was God speaking through them. And I felt ashamed that, try as I might, I could not understand what was being said.

  EIGHTEEN

  I'm afraid the woman was correct, at least
about one thing," Colin chided gently over dinner that night. "You can't go about trying to save the world."

  "Oh, I know that." Yet the feeling of missing some vital message had stayed with me throughout the day. That and the image of those two girls. I wanted Colin to understand. For some reason, it was vital to try and share the power that photograph held for me. "It wasn't two strangers I saw there on the page. It was two of our girls."

  Colin nodded slowly. "I see what you mean. And it very well could have been, you know. For some reason, the train stations have become gathering points for DPs."

  "Not the station. It wasn't the setting at all." Trying to explain it to him was helping me draw it into focus for myself. As was the intent way he listened. "It was the look.Their expression and their gaze and the way I was staring at two totally different faces, but really seeing just one set of experiences . . . Oh, I don't know. I can't seem to explain myself at all."

  Colin suggested, "Perhaps you feel like you were seeing into the past of those children who have been given into our care."

  "That's it," I said, and was filled with the pleasure of being with someone who understood, who cared enough to want to understand me. "That's it exactly."

  We were seated in the White Hart Inn, a riverside establishment dating back to the sixteenth century. Like most village inns, there were two main rooms—the public bar with its raw wood floors and louder voices, and the more subdued atmosphere of the carpeted parlor. Colin and I were seated near the fireplace, warmed by the flames and the company. We had just completed a wondrous concoction called venison stew; while there had been little meat to be found, the publican's wife had managed to elevate the common carrot and stalk of celery to wondrous levels. I was as pleasantly full as I had been since my arrival in England.

  An image coalesced from the recesses of my thoughts. "I just thought of something. Did you notice how few of the children cried over the injections?"

  "They were doing a jolly good j ob of wailing there at the start," Colin pointed out.

  "While they were afraid, yes," I countered. "But once we had them calmed down, most didn't make a sound when they were inoculated."

  "What are you saying, Emily?"

  "It struck me as odd at the time, but you know how busy we all were. And then I thought of it again this afternoon. I found myself thinking of the way Annique watched me as the doctor gave her the injection."

  "She just sat there in my arms," Colin recalled. "Didn't move a muscle."

  "When I saw that photograph in the magazine, what I really saw was Annique. Her and all the others," I went on. "It brought home to me just how much they've gone through, these children."

  "Bringing them to the point," Colin added for me, his face somber, "where they do not even cry over a needle and an injection and a strange doctor."

  "Not unless they're scared," I finished quietly.

  We sat there, silent for a long moment. Then Colin straightened with a sigh and rubbed his neck. I asked, "Are you all right?"

  "I've been feeling a little tired lately."

  "No wonder," I told him. "You really ought to slow down."

  He smiled and changed the subject with, "You know, the hardest time for me was when we could not give the children a Christmas."

  "What?" I cried. "Nothing at all?"

  "There wasn't much of a Christmas for any of us," Colin said. "Most of our soldiers are still overseas, waiting for places on too few boats home. Rationing was worse than ever. Presents were lean on the ground, let me tell you. The whole town seemed dressed for Christmas in Land Army colors—brown, beige, gray, and lots of black." His face seemed to age as he spoke. "It seemed like the sweetness had gone from life. I had my Christmas with a friend who runs the parish church in Bottley, and a grim affair it was indeed. The only way his wife managed a Christmas dinner at all was because we butchered Adolf."

  I stared at him. "Did what?"

  "Adolf, the house pig," Colin explained. "Long overdue for the pot, if you ask me. Tough as a wild boar raised on shoe leather." He tried for a smile. "Christmas was a perfectly miserable time, if you want to know the truth. I spent the entire day running from one tragic household to the next. It was the first Christmas since the war ended, and so many families would never be whole again."

  "But the children," I protested.

  "There was simply so little of everything left," Colin said apologetically. "Besides which, we could not communicate with them. So we simply treated the day as any other, searching for enough food to keep their little bodies alive, and hoping for things to improve."

  I sipped from my cup, wondering why it seemed as though his words were connected to the magazine picture and my own unheard message. Finally I pushed the confusion aside, and asked, "When can we expect to see your photographs?"

  "Three days, perhaps four." His face drew longer lines. "That is, unless they need me on one of their empty treks to London."

  Abruptly a shadow was cast over our evening. We had tried hard not to speak of our worries, but I knew the topic was bound to rise to the surface sooner or later. It was always there, hovering just beyond the reach of the fire and our cozy table. "There's been no change, then?"

  "None at all, I'm afraid." Colin sighed and leaned back. "Even the mayor and his entourage have found nothing but a series of closed doors to their entreaties."

  Before I could speak, the bartender came hurrying over. "Sorry to disturb you, but the operator's putting a call through."

  Colin started to rise. "Won't be a moment."

  "Not you, Vicar. It's for the young lady here."

  I jerked upright. "Me?"

  "If you're Miss Emily sitting with the vicar, it is indeed."

  Confused, I followed him back. The phone was a wooden box hung from the central pillar, with a black Bakelite earpiece hanging from a long cord. I fitted the receiver to my ear, and raised up on tiptoes so I could say into the mouthpiece, "Hello?"

  "This is Mabel at the booking agency. Oh, my dear, you wouldn't believe the trouble I've had tracking you down. First I tried the orphanage, and they told me to call Rachel, and she said you were with the vicar, but when I called the vicarage they said he had come here, and, well . . . Hello? Are you there?"

  "Still here," I shouted back, feeling my cheeks flushing at the eyes watching me from both rooms.

  "I can hardly believe it myself. Couldn't wait until tomorrow, of course, not with only six days left."

  "Six days until what?"

  "The ship sails, of course. Oh, goodness, I forgot to tell you that bit, didn't I? Yes, they've found you passage. On the Brittany. Sails from Portsmouth next Tuesday. Isn't that good news?"

  I swallowed and managed to say, "Great."

  "I knew you'd be pleased, that's why I didn't wait. You'll need to stop in the office tomorrow, of course, there are forms to fill out and a deposit to pay."

  "Of course. Thank you." I set the receiver back in slow motion. I did not want to turn around.

  As WE LEFT the inn, Colin steered me across the village's main crossroads and down toward the bridge. The night was so cold the wet air tasted metallic. A n icy mist drifted in the utterly still air. Streetlights were golden globes floating above the cobblestone way. All was painted with their soft light. It was a special glow, granted only to this village, and only to this night. I shivered with the delicious pleasure of our lonely walk. "Why do you push yourself so hard, Colin?"

  "Because it is in prayerful service that I find the closest connection to our Lord's command to love," he replied.

  A lonely truck trundled by, and then the night and the silence closed back around us. We started across the bridge, its ancient stone turned luminous by the tall iron lamps. A bridge into the unknown, crossing over mist-clad waters. Colin said, "You've been so quiet since the call came for you. Is everything all right?"

  I wish I knew, should have been my answer. But I could not speak. We stopped and leaned over the center of the bridge, staring at the d
ark waters flowing beneath us. So many questions, so many worries, so few answers.

  "Emily?"

  I did not turn toward him. What could I say, that I might be leaving for America? That I might go away and abandon him and the children in their hour of need?

  "I do wish you would say something."

  But a sigh was all I could manage. America. It was strange how the possibility of going home was suddenly a problem and not a solution. I stared down at the waters and silently spoke a prayer, asking God for guidance. But the river remained a mystery, and I found no answers that night.

  NINETEEN

  The next day was busy before I even opened the door.

  The doorbell startled me so that I spilled my tea all over my hand. I rushed down the narrow stairs. As I crossed the front room, a loud hammering began. I opened the door to find Rachel standing there, brandishing her cane. "Oh, there you are. Where on earth is your coat?"

  "Upstairs. What's the matter?"

  "Tell you on the way," she said, wheeling smartly about and stumping down the lane. "Hurry!"

  I flew back upstairs, grabbed my coat and scarf, and raced to catch up. For a seventy-year-old woman leaning heavily on a cane, Rachel set a remarkable pace. "The orphanage called. Colin did not show up with his supplies this morning."

  "So?"

  "I fear the worst. He has never been late. Not once, not since this whole affair began."

  Her harsh tone frightened me as much as her words. "Maybe he just overslept."

  "Hardly likely. Regular as clockwork is our Colin."

  Thankfully, the church courtyard's walk was graveled, for the world was frozen once again. The vicarage was a modest stone home built to match the church. The assistant pastor lived in what had once been the stables, the brick-and-beam walls so old they leaned heavily against the adjoining church. Dried stalks of wisteria climbed in haphazard profusion around the two lead-paned windows. Rachel knocked, then called loudly when Colin did not appear. "His truck is still here, so he—"