Authors: Anne Bennett
‘How old is your eldest brother?’
‘Terry’s twelve.’
‘So say you left soup or something?’ Joy persisted. ‘He’s old enough to dish it up and get them all back to school on time.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Meg said. ‘My dad might not like it.’
‘What difference would it make to him?’
‘None, I suppose,’ Meg said. ‘It’s just I’ve got out of the habit of thinking about myself.’
‘Then start again,’ Joy said. ‘God blimey, Meg, you’re a long time dead.’
Meg’s laugh startled the drowsy baby a little and Joy said, ‘Why don’t you put it to your dad? I’m sure he will see no harm in it. Anyway,’ she said, getting to her feet, ‘must be away or I’ll be getting my cards, but I’ll be here next week about the same time if you can make it.’
‘I’ll try,’ Meg promised, and she sat enviously watching her friend returning to work while she held Ruth against her shoulder, rubbing her back in case she had wind.
Meg might never have got round to mentioning her meeting Joy if it hadn’t been for Billy telling them that evening about meeting a kind lady.
‘And who is this kind lady?’ Charlie asked.
Billy shrugged and said, ‘Dunno, but she bought us egg on toast and doughnuts and her name is Joy and she don’t half talk a lot.’
They all laughed and Terry put in, ‘Surprised you noticed that, Billy. Bit like pot calling kettle.’ for everyone knew Billy was a chatterbox.
Charlie, though, was more interested in who the ‘kind lady’ was. He knew because of what she had taken on that Meg had few friends now, and certainly not one who would treat her and her young brother to egg on toast and doughnuts.
‘Billy’s right,’ she told her father. ‘Her name is Joy, Joy Tranter. She’s the girl from Lewis’s that took me up to the interview the day Mom fell in the yard.’
‘Fancy her remembering you all this time.’
Meg nodded. ‘Yeah, I know. I mean only saw her for a short time and yet we sort of hit it off. I thought we might have become friends if I’d worked there.’
Charlie heard the wistfulness in Meg’s voice and felt guilty that she had no friends her own age. ‘Haven’t you seen her since?’
‘Just once before today,’ Meg said. ‘She goes to the Bull Ring often on a Friday because it’s her pay day and she has a mooch around the shops and treats herself to a snack in the Market Hall café, but normally I have to be home for the children at twelve so I leave before her dinner hour.’
‘So what happened today?’
‘I had to buy some winter clothes for Ruth today, remember?’ Meg said. ‘The children sorted themselves out.’
‘And it did them no harm, I would say,’ Charlie said. He looked from one child to the other. ‘Did it?’
‘No, Dad,’ they chorused.
‘So can you do that every Friday so Meg has a chance to meet her friend?’
They all nodded solemnly, and Meg was touched by her father’s consideration and the children falling in with his plan so readily. ‘I didn’t think you would be so keen on me going every week.’
‘Why on earth not?’ Charlie said. ‘God, Meg it’s not much to ask.’
‘And I am not helpless,’ Terry said. ‘I am twelve, you know, not two.’
‘I could leave you some soup or something just to heat up.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘Well, I’ll leave the details up to you,’ Charlie said. ‘But in the meantime, Meg, while it was very nice of your friend to treat you today, I shouldn’t think she earns that much so she wouldn’t want to do it every week.’
‘I shouldn’t want her to do it either,’ Meg said.
‘No, I will give you separate money for yourself.’
‘How?’ Meg asked. She knew how finely the finances were balanced.
‘Never you mind how,’ Charlie said, knowing he would have to cut back on the ciggies and beer to give Meg an extra five bob a week, but he thought there was nothing to be gained by telling her this.
Christmas grew nearer. Although it was only six months since their mother died Meg wanted to make Christmas Day a special one for Jenny, Sally and Billy, who still believed in Santa Claus.
Her aunt Rosie could see her point and suggested Meg talk to her father lest he be upset, so she mentioned it to him as they sat over a cup of tea one evening. He was quiet when she had finished and she feared she had offended him.
‘Do you think me awful, Dad?
‘For what exactly?’
‘You know, planning to celebrate Christmas and all with Mom dead less than six months?’
Charlie thought for a little while and then he said, ‘No, Meg I don’t think you’re awful. You knew your mother almost as well as I did and she wouldn’t have wanted us to mourn for ever.’
Meg nodded. ‘I know.’
‘Or for the young ones to miss out because she isn’t here anymore. She loved everything about Christmas,’ Charlie said, and a smile tugged at his mouth as he recalled his wife’s excitement in past years as the season approached.
Meg smiled in memory too. ‘Yes, she was worse than the children, stringing up the streamers and decorations and adorning the tree.
‘She never minded all the cooking,’ Charlie said. ‘She revelled in it, she did, and the house used to smell beautiful with all the delicious food and cakes and puddings and all she cooked. Do you remember?’
‘Of course.’ Her mother’s enthusiasm had engendered a love of Christmas in all of the children; even Meg’s toes would curl in anticipation as it grew near.
‘Do you know what I think we must do?’ Charlie said suddenly. ‘This is our first Christmas without Maeve and we owe it to her to have the very best Christmas we can in her memory. That would be what she would want us to do, and for children that means presents.’
‘I’ve been saving for months,’ Meg said proudly.
‘So how much have you saved?’ Charlie asked.
‘Nearly two pounds and ten shillings.’
‘Well done,’ said Charlie. ‘You’re almost as good a manager as your mother.’
That was high praise indeed, for her father was always saying her mother could make sixpence do the work of a shilling, and then he surprised her still further by putting a ten-pound note in her hand. She had never seen so much money at one time and she stared at it in amazement. ‘Where did you get it?’
Charlie laughed. ‘You can get that look off your face, girl, because I didn’t rob a bank. It’s part of the Christmas Club that I have to pay into every year. It’s taken out of my wages and ensures that we all have a good Christmas. Use it to get some things for the young ones, at least.’
‘I will, Daddy,’ Meg said. Joy’s going to help me choose because she said it is lovely to buy presents for children who still believe. And it is, so thanks for this.’
‘I don’t need thanks,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m their father and I know it will be a tough time. Perhaps it will help if they have presents they will enjoy opening on Christmas morning.’
Meg bought skipping ropes for the girls and more toy cars for Billy and a spinning top for each, which Joy encouraged her to buy. Seeing Meg hesitate, the coster wound up three spinning tops. ‘Just a tanner each,’ he said. ‘Watch this.’ And he set them off so they danced along the stall, twirling like dervishes so that the patterns on them melded into rings of vibrant colours. ‘On the table, on the chair, little devils go everywhere,’ he chanted. Meg, knowing the children would be delighted with them, parted with one and six.
‘What about your older brother?’ Joy asked as they turned away from the stall.
‘A model,’ Meg said decidedly, heading for the Hobbies shop. ‘He loves making up sailing ships. He has quite few but there are bound to be some he hasn’t got yet.’
There were, of course, and then Meg picked up the Swiss army knife that she had seen Terry lusting over, a large bag of marbles for Billy, and a set of rattles and building blocks for Ruth. And from Woolworth’s opposite the Market Hall she got some ribbons and slides for Jenny and Sally’s hair, colouring books and crayons for the three youngest and a bottle of whiskey for her father.
‘I just love Christmas, don’t you?’ Joy said a little later in the Market Hall as she placed her bowl of soup on the table.
‘Yes,’ Meg said. ‘And Mom did.’
Joy gasped. ‘Oh, Meg, I’m sorry.’
Meg shrugged. ‘’S’all right,’ she said. ‘Dad said we must make it a special time for the others, that she would want us to. Like he said, we can’t mourn for ever.’
That night, with the children in bed, Meg showed Terry and her father the things she had bought for her younger brother and sisters. Charlie smiled proudly and said she was getting more like her mother every day.
The children entered into the spirit of the occasion, weaving garlands to be pinned around the house, helping decorate the tree Charlie had unearthed from the cupboard in the attic, and making a wish as they stirred the Christmas pudding Meg had made with more than a bit of help from May.
A few days before Christmas Eve, a large crate was delivered to the house. The children were at school and Billy was at May’s house ‘helping’ her make mince pies, so Meg could open the crate from her mother’s family in America, which she found was filled with presents for them all.
There were beautiful rag dolls for Sally and Jenny. They had pretty painted faces and dark brown hair in plaits, the ends tied with shiny ribbons. The clothes, too, were magnificent: they were dressed in Victorian costume, even down to the pantaloons and petticoats, with velvet dresses. Jenny’s doll wore dark red and Sally’s midnight blue, and the dresses were decorated with lace at the neck and cuffs of the sleeves, with a matching jacket over that and black leather boots covering their cloth feet. Meg knew that the girls would be almost speechless at owing such beautiful dolls; even Jenny, who had said only the other day that she was getting too old to play with them. But not dolls like these, Meg was sure – no one in the streets around them would have anything so fine.
Billy had a wind-up train on a track. From the box lid it looked a tremendously exciting thing and Meg could guess that her father and Terry would play with it just as much as Billy would. For Ruth there was a soft fluffy teddy and a Jack-in-the-box, which Meg felt sure she would enjoy, though they might have to work it for her at first.
They had sent Meg an elegant watch with a silver face and a leather strap, in its own box. She laid the watch over her wrist and turned her hand this way and that, for it was the first watch she had ever owned. When she lifted out the large box for her father and realised it contained cigars, she suddenly remembered her mother had always bought a few cigars for her father at Christmas, because he always said it properly completed the dinner. Terry’s box was even larger and contained Meccano, the lid decorated with all the things that a person could make with all the metal rods and plates and screws and bolts.
Underneath the toys there were clothes. Hat, scarf and glove sets for the three girls, a soft grey cardigan for her father, seamen’s jumpers for Terry and Billy. And for Ruth there was a little pink padded all-in-one that would cover her clothes and could be zipped up snugly. It had a little fur-trimmed hood and mittens attached and Meg knew, whatever the weather, Ruth would be as warm as toast in that.
She decided not to mention the presents at all; she wrapped everything up again, put them back in the crate and bumped it up the stairs to hide it in her mother’s side of the wardrobe, where her father never went.
Downstairs once more, she opened the small parcel she had taken from the very bottom of the crate to find it contained cards from all her American relations and a letter from her mother’s eldest brother. He said that the presents were from all of them.
This will probably be a sorrowful time for all your family, because it is the first without your mother, and so we all hope the things we’ve sent, especially the toys for the children, will help a little on Christmas morning and hope, despite the inevitable sense of loss, you still manage to enjoy the day.
As she read the letter, tears prickled behind Meg’s eyes at the kindness of her mother’s brothers and sister. Strange to think that she had relatives miles away that she would probably never see, though she knew plenty more were in the same boat.
Christmas Day began very early. The children exclaimed in delight as they pulled one item after another from the stocking they had hung on the bedhead, and declared themselves pleased as punch with everything. Despite the early hour they were so interested in playing with them that Meg had trouble getting them all ready for Mass in time.
After a wonderful roast chicken dinner, praised by everyone, followed by the sumptuous pudding they had all stirred, Charlie said that he would wash up the dishes and Terry could dry them and give Meg a break. She was really touched by such thoughtfulness and when all was finished she asked her father to give her a hand bringing something downstairs and so produced the crate. As they examined the contents they were almost speechless with pleasure and Meg blessed those kind people in America. The excitement the children felt at being given things they never in their wildest dreams imagined they’d ever own drove any sadness they might be feeling to the back of their minds, and the day took on an almost magical quality. Charlie smoked his cigar and treated himself to a small glass of whiskey, with a look of delighted pleasure on his face, and later, when the boys set out the clockwork railway, he was as interested as they, while Ruth sat on Meg’s knee and waved her arms excitedly, fascinated by the trains running around the track.
The girls had taken their rag dolls out on the street to be admired by their friends, and when the cold and darkness drew them in they did some colouring with the new books and crayons. No one was interested in much tea, but Meg made a few chicken sandwiches and put them on the table with the Christmas cake that was May’s present to them. There were mince pies as well, some of which Billy had helped May make, so they were a bit squashed-looking but they tasted all right.
When everyone had eaten what they wanted, Charlie led them all in carol singing. Her father had such a pleasant voice that Meg would have been happy just to listen, but Charlie would have none of it and soon she was singing along with the rest. They sang till the children were yawning and Ruth had fallen asleep on her knee, and when Meg got up to make a last drink for the children before bed she placed her in her father’s arms.