Christmas Wishes (44 page)

Gillian felt a tide of colour flood her face. ‘No I did not, thank God,’ she said devoutly and then, seeing Mr Dodman’s eyes fixed thoughtfully upon her face, added: ‘I’m not such a fool as that! Oh, I admit I went to Barnstaple knowing that he might try it on, but I never would have let him.’ Mr Dodman’s eyes were still fixed on her face and she said crossly: ‘I’ll swear on the Bible that it never got as far as – as that, if you like.’

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Mr Dodman said gruffly, whilst his wife nodded furiously and then shook her head, not sure which of these gestures was applicable. Mr Dodman turned to his wife. ‘My, I’m so hungry my belly thinks my throat has been cut. Serve up that rabbit stew, Mother; if I don’t get fed soon my nose will dive across the kitchen straight into that big old saucepan and help itself.’

Mrs Dodman complied, and as they ate the delicious rabbit stew the three of them worked out a story, part truth, part fantasy, which would satisfy the Lawrences. ‘’Tis very wrong to lie to one’s family, but ’tis almost as wrong, sometimes, to tell the whole truth,’ Mr Dodman said, whilst his wife nodded agreement.

‘Since you’ve done nothin’ to be ashamed of, the full truth could only worry poor Mr Alex, to say nothin’ of our little Joy,’ she said. ‘What a good thing you came straight on here after you’d visited that infirmary. If you leave Barnstaple out of it altogether, you won’t have to tell a single lie.’

Gillian thought it over and found to her relief that Mrs Dodman had hit the nail on the head. And at Mr Dodman’s suggestion, as soon as supper was over Gillian borrowed his old bicycle and set off for the village, armed with a good handful of pennies. As soon as she was connected, the receiver was snatched up and Joy’s voice, high with worry, gabbled out their number and then said anxiously: ‘Gillian? Is that you? Oh, darling Gillian, we’ve been so worried!’

‘Yes, it’s me. I’m so sorry I worried you,’ Gillian said. She was not surprised that Joy had known it was her on the other end of the telephone – they were twins, after all – but found she was dismayed by the distress in her sister’s voice. ‘I suppose I should have phoned earlier, but I had to summon up all my courage because it was a rotten thing to do to go off and leave you with no real explanation. Only I knew you would know I’d be safe with the Dodmans …’

The receiver was snatched from Joy’s hand and Alex’s voice came down the wire. ‘Gillian? You wretched, thoughtless young devil, how dared you worry us so! Joy kept saying she knew you were all right, but you’ve had everyone worried stiff. Keith was frantic, kept talking about some feller called Rodney who as far as I could gather he thought might have whisked you away.’ He chuckled. ‘To South America, I presume; the white slave trade, you know. If the Goodys and the Dodmans were on the telephone we could have made sure you’d arrived safely, but we still can’t understand why you went off so – so furtively. You didn’t even tell Joy, and you tell her most things …’

Gillian began to mumble that she had had her reasons, then came out with the half-truth which she and the Dodmans had decided on. ‘I knew Joy couldn’t possibly take time off from Wittard’s to come with me and to be honest, Daddy, I didn’t want her. I wanted to be alone to think. Joy and I could have rushed down one Saturday and returned on the Sunday, but that wasn’t what I needed. Can you understand?’

‘No, not really,’ Alex said after the briefest of pauses. ‘I take it you mean to return before term starts? If not, you’ll have to explain to your teachers yourself, because I don’t intend to do so.’

Gillian sighed. ‘I’ll be back in less than a week, so no one need explain anything to anyone else,’ she said. ‘And now I simply must get back to the Dodmans because I’ve only got five pennies left and I’m deathly tired. Put Joy back on so I can say I’m sorry I worried her and then I’ll climb aboard Mr Dodman’s old bicycle and get back to the cottage.’

Joy’s voice came down the wire. ‘Gillian? What a beast you are to worry us so! But I forgive you, darling twin, because I understand more than you think …’

Gillian was about to reply when the operator’s voice cut in. ‘Have you finished, caller? There are others waiting for this line, but if you wish to continue to talk please place another shilling in the slot.’

‘Haven’t got another shilling. Goodbye!’ Gillian shrieked and replaced her receiver with a thump.

I might have guessed Joy would begin to put two and two together, and she knows me so well that she could make four, she told herself, emerging from the stuffy kiosk and taking deep lungfuls of the icy air. It had not snowed on her bike ride into the village and now, looking up at a black sky spangled with stars, she thought that it would remain cloudless and therefore snowless until morning.

As she mounted the bicycle, her thoughts went back to the time she and Joy had spent here as children. How they had loved everything about it! In a big city, when peacetime brought street lighting back to even the tiniest alleys, one seldom noticed the stars, but out here they blazed as they had done in biblical times.

Pedalling with care, Gillian decided to write a long and apologetic letter to her twin, and then settled down to the journey home. As she rode, she found herself singing:

We three kings of Orient are;

Bearing gifts we traverse afar

Field and fountain, moor and mountain
,

Following yonder star …

She bounced on the bicycle’s ancient leather saddle and realised suddenly that she had seldom felt happier; not, in fact, since she had lived here as of right rather than as a guest. Recklessly she speeded up, ignoring the ruts and the iced-over puddles. She was young Gillian Lawrence again, making her way home after a trip to the shops for something Mrs Dodman needed. She glanced into the bicycle basket, almost expecting to see groceries, then smiled to herself. Tomorrow she would go into the village and visit Mrs Bailey’s little shop. She would buy aniseed balls and liquorice sticks, both great favourites with the Dodmans, if her sweet coupons would stretch that far; if not, it would have to be pipe tobacco for Mr Dodman and a packet of the little iced cakes his wife loved. Pedalling hard, she broke into song once more:

O star of wonder, star of night
,

Star with royal beauty bright …

When Gillian awoke on the third day of her visit to the Dodmans, she knew at once that her carefully laid plans were about to go awry, and seldom had she felt more pleased over the prospect of such a disruption. Sitting up on one elbow she tweaked the curtain back and breathed a porthole in the frosted pane, though she had little doubt of what she would see. Snow! Not the sort of snow which could be brushed aside – ha ha – but the sort which trapped people in their homes and might take a whole family the best part of a day to dig themselves out of. It must have been snowing all night, and certainly it was snowing still; big flakes were being whirled almost horizontally by the wind, but even so the branches of the trees were white with it, and Gillian knew that the lane which led in one direction to the Goodys’ farmhouse and in the other to the village would already be almost impassable, for the banks on either side – sweet with primroses, violets and wild strawberries at other times of year – would have filled up with snow as a cup fills with milk.

This made her remember that possibly Mr Dodman might be on early milking today; if so, she should get up at once since he would need all the help he could get to reach the lane, let alone to traverse it. She got out of bed, cringing as warm feet touched cold floorboards. She had not packed a dressing gown, having taken only essentials when she had fled from her home, but reached for her trusty duffel coat, slipping her arms into the sleeves and doing up the toggles before she shot her feet into her brogues and set off for the stairs. The warmth coming up from the kitchen – for the staircase led directly into that room – was delicious and Gillian fairly scampered down the rest of the treads to be met by big smiles from her hosts, both seated at the kitchen table as though snow was nothing out of the ordinary.

‘Marnin’, maid. Hast come to help dig we out?’ Mrs Dodman said cheerfully. ‘We’m heard the weather forecast; ’tes likely we’ll be snowed in for a day or so, but you won’t mind that. Father is on early milking, but Mr Goody knows we ’baint as young as we used to be so he’ll send Alfie and Mick up to help clear a way through.’

Mr Dodman nodded confirmation, then stared hard at his guest. ‘Are you’m dressed under that coat?’ he asked suspiciously. ‘If not, you’d best get upstairs again. Mother’s made the porridge and brewed the tea, so you and myself can dig a way across the yard as soon as you’re decent and you’ve had some grub to line your stomach.’

‘Right,’ Gillian said briskly, turning on her heel and beginning to mount the wooden stairs she had just descended. As she reached her own room and began to dress, she thought guiltily that at home she would have brought hot water up and given herself a good wash. But that could come later, after she and Mr Dodman, ably assisted by Alfie and Mick, had fought their way through to the shippon and the cows waiting patiently to be milked.

Later, relaxing in the kitchen again and seeing the flakes continuing to whirl past the window, Gillian thought that she really should try to reach the village so that she could warn her father and sister that she might not be able to return as planned, but she knew it wasn’t really necessary. Joy would hear on the wireless that the snow had descended over places like Exmoor, that the ponies were being brought into shelter or at least fed with bales of hay, and would guess that her twin’s leaving would be held up, perhaps for several days. And since Mr Goody had agreed that whilst the severe weather lasted he would not expect his ‘best cowman’ (his very words) to fight his way to the farm each day, Gillian was not the only one to suddenly find herself enjoying a little holiday.

And enjoying was the word. Somehow, in the undemanding company of the two old people, Gillian began to see that though she had honestly believed she had told the Dodmans the whole truth, she had only told them half, chiefly because the other half was so deeply buried in her subconscious that it had taken time, quiet and a good deal of self-examination before she had begun to accept that there was more to her running away than even she had realised.

Little remarks, often coming from Mrs Dodman, had helped. On one day, when Gillian had battled into the village and returned triumphant with flour, sugar, margarine and sultanas, Mrs Dodman had remarked as she unloaded the goods: ‘Once it would have been young Joy who went off after me messages, as you children used to call errands. I used to think you were a bit jealous of young Joy … well you were, there’s no denyin’.’ She had shot a beady, bright-eyed glance at Gillian, who was staring at her round-eyed, and chuckled. ‘Oh aye, lover, I dare say now you’m ashamed, but I reckon you’re still a bit envious like …’

Gillian had begun to protest hotly, to point out that her sister was blind, almost entirely dependent on others, but Mrs Dodman, though she cackled, had shaken her head. ‘Envy and jealousy bain’t ’xactly the same, my little love, and as mortals we’m all at their marcy, so to say. You bain’t jealous of Joy, but I reckon, from odd remarks you’ve dropped, that you envy the way people love your sister. Oh, I don’t doubt you’ve a heap of pals and are headin’ for a great future, but there’s a sweetness and generosity in Joy which makes her loved wherever she goes, and she don’t have to make no effort, it comes nat’ral. Know what I mean?’

Poor Gillian would have liked to deny it, to say that Mrs Dodman’s imagination was running away with her, but her innate honesty forbade it. Instead, she began to think hard and eventually of course to realise that her old friend was right. She did envy Joy her ease with people, was definitely envious of the care and affection their father lavished on her twin, and though she would not have exchanged sight for lack of it she was now aware that in a deeply buried part of her mind she blamed herself, as the elder twin, for not grabbing her sister and pulling her back into the room so that the window crashed harmlessly back into place, injuring no one.

And the best part of this was, she thought now, that confession can go hand in hand with absolution. As she admitted these things to the Dodmans she was aware that they understood, did not condemn her, even admired her honesty. And this filled her with such overwhelming relief that she longed to spend the rest of her life in the little cottage, even though she also longed for the new Gillian to return home so that Alex and Joy could appreciate the change.

Whilst the bad weather continued Gillian revelled in the company of her two old friends, and when at last it cleared she packed her belongings and bade them goodbye with many tears and much gratitude. ‘You don’t know what you’ve done for me, the pair of you,’ she said as they stood on the station platform waiting for the train which would take her, she felt, from one home to another. ‘You’ve made me see things clearly for the first time. I’m so very grateful … and I mean to come back in the summer holidays, if that’s all right by you. And this time’ – the pang of previously unrecognised jealousy shot through her and was quickly dismissed – ‘this time I’ll bring Joy, I promise.’

All the way home in the train Gillian had been buoyed up by a feeling of righteousness; she was going to tell Joy everything, and once she had done that she would tell an expurgated version to her father, perhaps even drop a hint or two to Auntie Clarke, because that lady spent almost as much time in their house as in her own.

But as the train neared Liverpool the first tiny seeds of doubt began to make themselves felt. Suppose Joy was so angry with her that she would not listen, would not believe that her sister had changed, that the quarrel had been manufactured? After all, it was a lot for anyone to take on board. She had left her home more than two weeks previously thinking, she now realised, only of herself. She had intended to have some sort of affair with Jason, though she had told herself she did not mean to let it go too far. But when she had tried to explain that to Mrs Dodman, that wise old person had clucked disapprovingly. ‘Don’t this feller have no mind of his own?’ she had enquired. ‘What might have happened between the pair of you would have been as much his choice as yours. Don’t ee realise that, maid?’