Christmas at High Rising: A Virago Modern Classic (VMC)

by Thirkell, Angela

  ‘Oh!!!’ said William. ‘Does it really go?’

  ‘Of course it does,’ said Mary; and she nearly said, ‘because Aunt Isabel sent it,’ but her secret self remembered that she ought not to have been awake last night, so she said nothing and put her other arm into her dressing-gown and went down the passage to Grannie’s room, carrying her stocking and her cage, while William, with both his bedroom slippers on, came after her with his sock and his clock.

  In Grannie’s room a bright fire was already burning and everything smelled of lavender water. William and Mary climbed onto Grannie’s large four-poster bed with muslin curtains and said, ‘A Happy Christmas,’ and snuggled under the eiderdown, one on each side of Grannie, to show her their presents. They both talked at once so Grannie said, ‘William first, because he is the smallest.’

  William was so excited that he could hardly speak, especially as one of his front teeth was very loose, so he held the clock up and said, ‘It goes.’

  ‘How lovely,’ said Grannie. And she showed him how to wind it up.

  ‘Every night you must wind it up till it feels stiff,’ said Grannie. ‘But when it feels stiff, don’t wind any more, or you will break it. And now what is in your stocking?’

  Perhaps the things in William’s stocking will not seem very amusing to you, but when Queen Victoria was still Queen of England they were all that heart could desire. They were

  A humming top that sang a lovely sad note and would change to another note if you hit it hard while it was spinning

  A little bag of button chocolates with tiny white sugar balls on them

  A mouth organ

  A book of transfers

  A real pocket-knife with two blades

  A box of coloured chalks

  A Plate Lifter, which was a rubber bulb with a long rubber tube and a little rubber bag at the end of it. If you put the little bag under somebody’s plate at dinner and then squeezed the bulb, the plate jumped about

  And right at the bottom, in the toe, a tangerine orange

  ‘Now, said Grannie to Mary, ‘we will look at your presents.’

  ‘First I have a lovely cage,’ said Mary. ‘I shall put my china owl called Rudolph in it.’

  Grannie smiled in a rather mysterious way but said nothing.

  Then Mary began to empty her stocking. In it she found

  A handkerchief with M in one corner

  A little fruit-knife with a mother o’ pearl handle and a silver blade

  A very small prayer book in such tiny print that no one could read it and some angel children’s heads stamped in silver on the cover

  A thimble

  A very tiny bottle of eau de Cologne and

  A little brooch made of forget-me-nots

  And at the bottom was something cold.

  ‘A tangerine like William’s,’ said Mary. ‘We always get tangerines in our stockings.’ She put her hand in and pulled it out.

  But it wasn’t a tangerine.

  It was small and brown and furry.

  It was curled up into a ball and its tiny hands were over its sharp little face.

  ‘Oh! It’s a mouse!’ said Mary. ‘Oh, how darling! It’s still asleep, Grannie, I’ll wake it up!’

  ‘It is a dormouse,’ said Grannie. ‘You mustn’t wake it, because it has to sleep all winter. Put it in the nest in the wooden box and it will be quite happy there, and when spring comes it will wake up and come out of the little wooden box into the cage and run about, and you can feed it with hazelnuts and walnuts and hemp and bits of apple, and give it clean sand in its house every day.’

  So Mary put the dormouse into the nest of hay and dry moss and fastened the hook and then she and William went back to their room and got dressed.

  ‘Wasn’t the dormouse a nice surprise?’ said Nannie, while she was tying Mary’s hair with a blue bow.

  ‘Not a surprise,’ said Mary, ‘because I knew I was going to have it.’

  ‘You couldn’t,’ said Nannie. ‘Father only brought it back from the shop yesterday and stand still while I do your bow.’

  Then Mary felt wicked again in her secret self, because truly she could never have known about the dormouse unless she had done that dreadful thing of being awake last night. Of course she hadn’t known that it was a dormouse, but she did know it was something round and cold and perhaps now Nannie would know how naughty she had been. So she said nothing.

  There were sausages for breakfast because of Christmas Day and more presents and the whole family went to church. William wanted to take all his presents, but Nannie said only heathen little boys took toys to church, or chalks, or transfers, or chocolates, or tangerines, and he could play with them all when he came back. So he took his new pocket-knife with two blades, and when Nannie wasn’t looking he put his Plate Lifter in his pocket as well.

  Nannie let Mary sprinkle some of her eau de Cologne on her handkerchief and pin her forget-me-not brooch on her frock and the little prayer book of course went to church with her. But while Nannie was buttoning William’s gaiters, Mary did quite a dreadful thing, even worse than pretending she was asleep when she wasn’t. She opened the cage and took the dormouse out of his nest and put him in her pocket with her handkerchief.

  All through the service Mary was thinking about her dormouse, and whenever she wasn’t using her little prayer book she put her hand in her pocket to feel how it was getting on, and every time she thought it felt a little warmer; but she couldn’t be quite sure. Presently she took one of her gloves off so that she could feel better, but Nannie, who was sitting a pew behind, said Take your hand out of your pocket and put on your glove again at once and in church too, Miss Mary, so she put it on again in a great hurry and was so afraid that Nannie would ask why she was putting her hand in her pocket that she was afraid to take her handkerchief out, and sniffed. Nannie said in a dreadful whisper Not to sniff in church and to get her handkerchief out at once. Mary was afraid that Nannie would reach over and get the handkerchief out herself, but most luckily William behaved very badly just then. He was tired of being at church and sitting on a hard seat with his short legs swinging in the air, so he had taken his Plate Lifter out of his pocket and slipped one end under Grandmamma’s prayer book and squeezed the bulb. The prayer book gave a jump and Grandmamma put on her spectacles to see what was happening, but as quick as lightning Nannie, who must have had eyes all over her head as well as her usual two and the one at the back, reached over from the pew behind and took the Plate Lifter out of William’s hand and put it in her pocket. William was so surprised that he was as good as gold for the rest of the service and Mary was as good as gold too.

  When they got back Nannie said to come upstairs and wash their hands before lunch, and now something had happened more dreadful than anything that had happened yet. Mary was just going to take her coat off, but she thought she would feel if the dormouse was still there, so she put her hand in her pocket. Something very warm and wriggly was there. She took out her hand with the dormouse in it. The dormouse sat up for half a second and looked at her with his bright eyes and then he sprang out of her hand onto the floor, rushed away like a flash of lightning and was out of the door and down the passage before anyone could stop him.

  Mary began to cry at the top of her voice, which was very loud indeed. William was so excited that he began to cry too, and they made such a noise that their father and mother came rushing up to see what had happened.

  ‘Oh Mother, Mother,’ yelled Mary, ‘I only wanted to take my dormouse to church and he has woken up and run away.’ And she made such a noise that Grandfather and Grandmother came up too. And when anyone could hear themselves speak, Grandmother said she had told Mary that the dormouse must be left in its nest till it woke up, and Mary yelled more than ever, and was so unhappy that she told her mother all about her wickedness last night and how she had really been awake all the time, but she was crying and sniffing so much that no one could really hear what she said. So her mother hugged her
and said Never mind and to wash her face before lunch.

  When one has cried a great deal and yelled and bellowed one often feels much better, and Mary was very good all that afternoon. William was not quite so good, because he had to use his new pocket-knife with two blades and he cut a hole in the nursery tablecloth.

  When bath-time came they were both very tired and sleepy. Nannie had put the water into the bath and came down to the drawing-room to fetch them. They said goodnight to everyone and climbed upstairs to the nursery. Before the fire was the bath, and the towels were hanging on the fender, getting nice and warm. Mary was just going to take her frock off when she saw something in the bath. It was a little brown thing, floating on the water.

  ‘Nannie! Nannie!’ she said.

  Nannie, who had just come in with their biscuit and milk for supper, looked in the bath.

  ‘There now, it’s your dormouse, Miss Mary,’ she said. ‘Grannie told you to leave it in its nest and now the poor little thing has got into the bath and got drowned. I’ll get it out and don’t dawdle now or the water will get cold.’

  ‘Nannie,’ said William.

  ‘That’s enough, Master William,’ said Nannie, ‘and you can’t have that Plate Lifter tonight, but if you are good I’ll see if I’ll let you have it tomorrow, and don’t you start crying again, Miss Mary, because crying doesn’t do no good.’

  ‘Nannie,’ said William.

  ‘That’s enough, Master William,’ said Nannie. ‘And if you don’t stop crying, Miss Mary, you’ll have to go to bed at once without your biscuit.’

  ‘Nannie,’ said William, who always went on till he got what he wanted, ‘can we have a funeral for the dormouse tomorrow?’

  And when Mary heard this lovely suggestion she quite forgot to cry and Nannie put the poor dormouse into a cardboard box with some cotton wool over it to wait till the funeral. Then William and Mary had a quick bath and ate their supper.

  ‘Don’t you want to wind up your clock, Master William?’ said Nannie, as the children were getting into bed.

  ‘No,’ said William.

  ‘No what?’ said Nannie.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said William. ‘It said it didn’t want to be wound up tonight.’

  Nannie said that was nonsense and began winding it up herself, but the handle went round and round and the clock didn’t wind.

  ‘Have you been winding the clock, Master William?’ said Nannie.

  William got right under the bedclothes and said nothing, so everyone knew he had disobeyed Grandmamma and wound it up till it broke.

  ‘You are a naughty boy,’ said Nannie, but not very angrily, because she was quite tired with all the naughty things William and Mary had done on Christmas Day. Then she tucked them up and said goodnight and took the clock away. And in ten minutes both the children were fast asleep.

  Of course, in a proper story people who let their dormouses wake up and run away and get drowned and other people who used their Plate Lifters in church and broke their clocks would come to a dreadful end. But in their story there are no dreadful ends. Mary was very sorry that she had behaved so badly, and William was very sorry that Nannie had seen him playing with his Plate Lifter and had noticed that his clock was broken, but next day Nannie gave him the Plate Lifter back and the clock was mended by Mr Clamp the watchmaker in the village. Only, for a punishment, William had to learn to tell the time.

  As for the dormouse, it had a lovely funeral and was buried under the apple tree after lunch. And what is more, their father drew a picture of the dormouse flying over the garden with wings and Mary coloured it with William’s chalks, all except the purple one which he wouldn’t let her use, but as she didn’t really want it she didn’t much mind. And Grandfather had the picture framed in a beautiful gold frame and it was hung in the nursery.

  ‘And what will that always remind you of, Miss Mary?’ said Nannie, in a rather important voice.

  Of course she meant Mary to say it would remind her of how naughty she had been.

  But Mary and William both said, ‘The Funeral.’

  And if you look in Mr and Mrs Mulberry’s house in London, I believe you will find the picture of the dormouse still hanging in Mary’s mother’s bedroom.

  First published in The Shining Tree and Other Christmas Stories, 1940

  St Valentine’s Holiday

  Tony Morland’s school had an arrangement, agreeable to masters and boys, devastating to parents, by which the boarders could go home for the weekend three times in the term. Early in February, Laura Morland received the following letter from her son:

  DEAR MOTHER, –

  Please can I come home for the weekend that has February the 14th in it. This is most important. I had to go to some beastly kind of concert on Friday and Fairweather threw paper darts at a chap and got whacked. More when we meet.

  Your loving son

  Tony.

  P.S.– Please could you get me some new grey flannel trousers because a boy called Pidloe (C. J. St. P.) had been burning the edge of the prep-room fender with a red-hot poker and when I sat on it it was still smoldering. Also my pyjamas have split across the back again and matron says they arnt worth mending. Could I have a 9d. packet of stamp hinges. This is urgent.

  Laura, who was weak enough to hate disappointing her demon child, did as she was told, and on the Friday afternoon drove over to Tony’s school. It was bitterly cold, and Laura’s temper was not improved by the thought that she would have to drive that very road again on Sunday evening to take Tony back, but when she saw her youngest son with a clean, serious face, his weekend bag in his hand, a large muffler round his neck, waiting for her on the school steps, her heart leapt.

  ‘Have you got the stamp hinges, Mother?’ asked Tony. ‘Oh, good on you. Mother, can we stop at Stoke Dry? I’ve got some important shopping to do.’

  ‘Yes, if the shops are still open. Where’s your overcoat?’

  ‘Oh Mother, need I have an overcoat? I’ve got my muffler.’

  ‘That’s neither here nor there,’ said Laura, with surprising firmness. ‘Get your overcoat at once, and your gloves. It’s freezing hard.’

  Tony went unwillingly into the boarding house, and after a very long interval emerged, carrying his coat with as much difficulty as Christian carried his burden.

  ‘Put it on,’ said Laura.

  ‘Oh Mother —’

  ‘Put your coat on at once, Morland,’ said matron, appearing behind him. ‘Good evening, Mrs Morland. Did Morland tell you about his grey trousers? That was Pidloe’s fault. Really, Mrs Morland, the boys seem to be particularly troublesome this term. Neither to hold nor to bind as they say. Syrup of Figs all round is what they need. Your lad isn’t like the rest, Mrs Morland,’ said matron, patting Tony on the shoulder, at which he winced and cast up his eyes to heaven. ‘He’s quite a little help to me. When Pussy was so ill he was quite concerned.’

  Before matron could get her second wind and embark upon the saga of her bad leg and her married sister’s little girl in Bournemouth, Laura had excused herself on grounds of lateness, said goodbye and driven off.

  ‘Who is Pussy?’ she asked.

  ‘Pussy? Oh, Pussy. Matron’s cat. It got its paw in the prep-room door when Donk was being Horatius, and I went to cheer it up. I have a kind of instinct about animals, Mother. I held its paw, and it looked at me with grateful eyes.’

  Wrapped in a dream of his own noble philanthropy, Tony sat silent till they reached the outskirts of Stoke Dry. Here the shining lights in the shop windows roused him to life.

  ‘Mother, could we stop at Woolworth’s?’ he asked.

  ‘All right, Tony, but be quick. I can’t park here long.’

  ‘I know. Mother, do you think I could have my next week’s pocket-money now? I need it rather importantly. Oh, thanks awfully, Mother.’

  Before the Stoke Dry policeman, who was a friend of Laura’s, had warned her more than twice, Tony came back with a long parcel, and they drove on towa
rds High Rising.

  ‘Mother,’ said Tony, ‘can you guess what I was getting? I was getting some red crêpe paper and some gold ink to make Valentines. I thought Rose and Dora would like Valentines, and Stoker. I shall cut out red hearts and stick them on cardboard. Have you any cardboard, Mother? About roughly nine by six. White cardboard, I mean, not cardboard-box kind of cardboard. I’ll make you a Valentine, too, if you’d like.’

  ‘Thank you, Tony, I’d love one. I’ve still got that poem you sent me from school for a Valentine about two years ago.’

  ‘I know. And I’ll make one for Mr and Mrs Knox and Mr Knox’s Annie. I did think of making one for Mrs Coates’s baby, but I don’t think she would appreciate it, as she’s so small.’

  By this time they had reached the house, and Laura told her son to hurry up and get washed for supper while she put the car away. She found Tony waiting for her in the dining-room and Stoker bringing in their meal.

  ‘Shepherd’s pie! Oh, good on you, Stoker,’ said Tony. ‘Stoker, do you want a Valentine? I’m going to make Valentines for Rose and Dora, and I’ll make you one too. Mother, could I have some cardboard and your scissors and the Stickphast? I shall have to work frightfully hard because of Sunday being St Valentine’s Day. Would you really like a Valentine, Stoker?’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said Stoker. ‘I suppose you’ve heard they got him round,’ she added to Laura.

  ‘Got who round?’

  ‘That Sid Brown.’

  ‘Round what?’

  ‘Round again. Showing off to Mr Knox’s Annie, that’s what it was, and it took two men and a rope, silly young fellow. Mr Mallow at the station was properly wild, with the weekend traffic coming on and Dr Ford saying young Sid was to have Saturday off.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Stoker?’

  ‘Anyone with any sense in their heads would have known the ice wasn’t bearing yesterday, and of course that Sid Brown had to go skating round Rising Mere because it was Mr Knox’s Annie’s afternoon off, and so he fell in near the weir, and it’s the mercy of Providence his poor mother isn’t wearing mourning for him at this very moment. Then there was that sheep got drowned down at the weir last Sunday. They say there’s always three of everything, so we’ve more troubles to come. And the butcher says there isn’t no lamb’s fry, so —’