The elder of the two small girls, who was sitting beside
Fay, broke her silence to say in a slight hiatus which had overcome the talk : "Oonagh won't like you—you're too pretty and you're sitting next to Mark."
Oonagh was evidently the dark girl. She flashed a momentary look at Fay, and it was not entirely her imagination that made Fay think the look was malevolent.
"I have to sit somewhere, don't I?" Fay addressed the child, "and after all, I'm beside you too."
Mark had been replying to some remark from his neighbour, and without in the least changing his tone or tempo he apostrophised Helen. "If you can't behave yourself, brat, please go up to your room." Then he went on with whatever it was he had been saying.
Helen attacked the food on her plate in silence for a moment or two. Then she demanded, "Are you a schoolteacher?"
"No," Fay answered without vouchsafing any other information.
"Wendy said you were," the child went on.
"Did she? I wonder why?"
Wendy, who was sitting opposite, answered for herself. "'Cos you ask so ma
ny questions and you're not
int
erested
in men," she announced.
"Helen. Wendy." Mark did not raise his voice, but it was like a whiplash, and both the children looked at him with something like fear in their faces. They evidently knew they had gone too far, and almost before he told them they were sliding off their chairs.
"You heard me before. If you can't behave like civilised persons you'd better go upstairs." The stern expression did not leave his face until the two small girls had left the room and silently closed the door behind them. Then he smiled at Fay. "I really do apologise. Those two are the most abominably behaved brats I've ever come across."
Fay would have found it difficult to disclaim that opinion herself, but she had no time to do so, for Oonagh, with her languorous drawl, was speaking to Mark.
"Y
ou're old-fashioned, Mark. Modern
children speak the truth, that's all. They don't believe in humbug, nowadays,
you know. Poor little brutes, they've only had half their supper."
"They've had quite as much as is good for them last thing at night," Mark's lips compressed sternly again. "And if someone doesn't take the trouble to correct their manners soon they'll be completely impossible."
After the meal was over the whole party gathered round the great fireplace in the hall while Toni dispensed coffee from a heavy Georgian silver pot.
"We're not allowed in the drawing room until tomorrow, because of the tree," Cynthia told Fay. She was more disposed to be friendly than the others, and Fay was grateful for even the slightest overture which made her feel one of the group. Trying to analyse the situation, Fay came to the conclusion that these people never spoke of the past or the future, but just lived for the moment. Like ships that pass in the night, she thought.
While they were sipping coffee the two children appeared once more, ready for bed now in woolly dressing gowns and well-wrinkled pyjama legs, and looking more like children.
They had evidently come to say good night to Toni, but used the occasion to regale themselves on lumps of sugar.
"Anyone would think you were starving children," Toni demurred as the lumps disappeared rapidly.
"Well, Mark didn't let us finish our supper," Helen explained, while Wendy clamoured for attention.
"Toni—Toni, tell Helen she's got to let me have the electric blanket tonight—it's my turn!"
Toni obviously did not know how to cope with this, and she looked appealingly at Mark.
"It's Helen's blanket, isn't it?" he asked.
Wendy turned to him and, perhaps because she was overtired and only a small child, her wizened little face puckered as if she were about to cry. "But it's my turn—she promised !"
"Did you promise, Helen?" Mark asked quietly, and when silence was his answer he went on, "Then you must let her have it. A promise is for keeping, you know."
As she watched them mount the great staircase Fay wished that she too could have gone off to her room like the
children. Wishing that, she stared overlong at the children's retreating backs, until a voice with a hint of amusement in it broke in upon her reverie.
"Well, I was right, wasn't I?"
She turned to find Mark half smiling at her, but with a look of enquiry in his eyes. "Yes—quite right," she told him gravely.
Later on that evening, when at last she was in her bedroom, she drew back the curtains of her window and gazed out. She had been brought up on stories of "white Christmases"—nostalgic stories told by two people who were exiles from their own native land.
The favourite spot for the Christmas picnic, she and her parents, was a tiny beach east of Waikerooma; a place so small that their own party, which usually included the Camerons, had it to themselves. It had become a ritual ever since she had been a small child that when the tinned turkey was eaten and the slab of cold Christmas pudding lay indigestibly on top, she should demand to be told stories of Christmas at home, and her eyes would grow big with wonder at the stories of snow which at that time she had never seen, and Yule logs, and frosty starlight.
Well, all the ingredients were there, she thought, eyeing the scene spread out before her. The snow was there, the moon and the stars were all present and correct. The frosty air was needle-sharp, and indoors Fay had seen the great Yule log ready to be put into the huge fireplace tomorrow. But something was missing; at any rate the occasion did not come up to Fay's expectations. "I suppose it's the spirit of Christmas," she mused. "Nobody cares. It might be different if one had a family with lots of relations, aunts and uncles and cousins." And the thought of all those people whom she didn't have made Fay lonelier than she had ever felt in her life before.
By an edict which had gone forth from Toni's room via Horsey the whole household had retired to their rooms by eleven-thirty. Toni liked to hear the church bells ringing out across the valley.
Fay realised that they had started to ring now. Another part of that white English Christmas of her dreams, she
thought, and pushed open the casement of her window a little in order to hear them better. The night air was still and the bite of the frost was keen so that she huddled down into the furry hood of her white dressing gown.
There was some magic about those bells, Fay thought. Under the tower they would probably have been deafening, but coming as they did from across the valley they had all the enchantment of another world, and she lost count of the time she stood by the window listening.
Pin-points of light began to prick the darkness as cars, silent under the voice of the bells, began to leave the region of the church as worshippers came away from the midnight service. Fascinated, Fay watched—saw them twist and turn and disappear from sight. Only two cars took the road which led to the bridge across the river, and one of those turned away at the valley bottom and was lost to her sight. The other came on—and on.
As she watched that last car she realised that she was holding her breath and that made her heart beat a little too fast. "It is—it's coming in here," she told herself, and a moment or two later she caught sight of a long black car as it swung through the open gateway. The headlights reflected back off a bank of snow, and in their momentary gleam Fay saw that the driver was Mark.
A little niggle of—something or other—made her whisper to herself, "He might have told me he was going—I would like to have gone to the service too." But common sense negatived the thought immediately. Why on earth should he?
The car passed under her window and round to the garage. She heard the doors close and then in complete silence on the snow she watched him come round to the front of the house.
It was all so quiet that Fay felt like an invisible watcher of some scene spread out on a canvas, of which she was not a part. It came with something of a shock then when the dark figure just under the window stopped his long strides, and throwing back his head called up, "Happy Christmas to you!"
"Happy Christmas !" she called back.
She had not realised how warm his voice was until she
heard it now against the cold silence of the night. It supplied that essential something which had been lacking about this Christmas. It started a glow of warmth in her heart which spread through all her body as she snuggled down under her eiderdown. "Happy Christmas," she murmured, sleep coming fast with the contrast of warmth after cold. "Happy Christmas, Mark."
IT seemed to Fay that she had hardly gone to sleep before the house started to come to life again. It was in reality about half past six when after being sleepily aware of various bumpings and noises she was forced into full consciousness by someone banging on her door and opening it almost in one movement.
"Who's that?" she asked, yawning as she brought her head from under the sheet.
" 's me. Wendy," a child's voice replied. "Are you awake? Can I come in?"
"I suppose so," she said a little ungraciously—she had been enjoying her sleep and would have liked to continue it. "What do you want?"
"It's Christmas morning—and nobody wants to be bothered. Mark said to try you. I want to open my stocking."
Light from the landing streamed through the half open door and Fay could see the child quite plainly as she stood in its beam. Suddenly she felt compassion. "Happy Christmas, Wendy !" she said. "Come along then—I'll switch on the bed light and then we can see to open your presents—looks more like a pillowcase than a stocking, though."
Wendy made a dive for the bed and flung herself and her pillowcase on it. "It is," she agreed, "but it isn't our real presents. We get the big ones off the tree this afternoon. At least—" she wrinkled her nose—"they're not always big ones. Last year it was, because I had a bicycle, but sometimes it's just something to say that Toni's paid our fees for school."
"And do you like that sort of present?" Fay asked.
"Oh, yes," Wendy sighed. "I like school—I like being with the same child'n all the time and not having to change over again. I hope it's school fees this year. I 'spect it is, 'smatter of fact, 'cos there's lots of things in our pillowcases. Mark fills those, and he always puts in extra when something like school fees is downstairs. Now, let's see—" she started rummaging in the pillowcase. She brought out packet after packet, all attractively wrapped in coloured paper, and in spite of the veneer of sophistication which she had, Fay realised that Wendy was just a child like any other, and she began to like the little girl.
"Ahh!" it was a sigh of satisfaction when the pillowcase was finally emptied and Fay's bed strewn with an assortment of toys, books, paper and oranges. "I have made your bed in a mess, haven't I? Are you cross?"
"No—it's Christmas, isn't it?" Fay smiled, and was taken aback when the child flung her arms round her neck and gave her a series of moist kisses. "Mark was right," she said. "You are nice."
Fay's heart warmed. She was glad that Mark liked her—very glad indeed. Though he doesn't really know me very well, she thought to herself, refusing to let her imagination—or her heart—lead her too far along the daisied paths.
"Does Mark live here?" Fay asked.
"Not all the time. But he comes quite often. Are you going to live here?"
"No," Fay shook her head. "I'm only staying a few days. Then I've got a job to go to—in London."
"That's where Mark lives too."
Fay's heart quickened a little more. It would be nice to get to know Mark better—but London was a big place, she reflected.
"Ugh, it's cold!" Wendy shivered a little, "and it'll be simply ages before we have our breakfast. Can I come in your bed?"
"If you put all the things back in your pillowcase first," Fay told her, and that job soon done, the child snuggled in beside her.
Almost immediately there was another tap at the door. This time it was Helen, plus pillowcase. "Oh, that's where
you are," she addressed her young sister. "Is she being a nuisance? Mark said we weren't to be a nuisance."
"No—come on in and join the party," Fay invited, smiling a little as the thought flashed through her mind, "Master Mark does seem to order everyone about!"
Both pillowcases had to be emptied again and their contents admired or squabbled over a little until there was hardly an inch of bed left visible—and time passed unheeded until there came another knock at the door.
The children cried "Come in!" without giving Fay a chance, and in a second Mark was standing in the doorway.
"Now then, you two," he addressed the children, "I told you not to be nuisances—are they?" he questioned Fay. "Oh, and a Happy Christmas, for the second time."
"When was the first time?" Helen asked, and Fay thought she saw a momentary look of annoyance cross Mark's handsome face. "He really is handsome," she thought, "even with his hair tousled." But his look of annoyance irritated her too. After all, nothing could have been more innocent than that midnight salutation. But she understood the reason for it a moment later when she saw the way the children's minds worked.