Lucy Charlton's Christmas (2 page)

‘She lives with her aunt in Jesmond.’

‘Then go there. That is what you intended to do all along?’ he said and smiled.

‘I’m afraid to intrude.’

‘You can’t learn more without,’ her father said, smiling just a little to encourage her. Her father did not consider failure a problem. You had to do everything you could, regardless.

*

That afternoon Lucy took a tram to Jesmond. It was a very middle-class part of the city, with big detached houses behind stone walls, and terraces of large three-storied town houses. Shamala’s aunt, Lucy had ascertained from Miss Sheane’s secretary, lived in number 30, Northumberland Way. Lucy banged on the door and waited a long time before banging again. Finally, it was hauled open and on the doorstep stood a young man, twenty or twenty-one, she judged.

‘We’re not buying anything,’ he said, and would have shut the door but she stepped up and put one foot inside. It hurt rather where the door banged against it but she looked straight at him.

‘That’s good because I’m not selling anything. I’m here to see Shamala Henderson.’

‘She’s not at home to any of you people. Now go away or I will call the police.’

He tried to shut the door again but Lucy pushed her weight against it. She had never before been glad of being tall, it helped her a good deal.

‘I am from St Winifred’s school. Miss Sheane sent me,’ she said.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Well, you’d better come in then. My mother is in the drawing room.’

The hall was dark brown and freezing cold and every door was shut. He didn’t offer to take her coat, and led the way off to the right, opening a pair of double doors. This room was just as cold as the hall had been, and Lucy couldn’t see much at first. The fire was tiny and gave off little heat. The blinds were pulled against the cloudy afternoon, and there in a small armchair sat a tiny wizened woman. Was this old person his mother? Surely not.

‘Somebody from the school, Mother,’ he said and went back out again.

Lucy was glad he had not offered to take her coat.‘My name is Lucy Charlton. Miss Sheane sent me to see Miss Henderson,’ she said.

‘Miss Henderson is indisposed,’ the woman said.

‘I would like to see her.’

‘I’m afraid that isn’t possible.’

‘Miss Sheane is concerned about Miss Henderson and wished me to see her.’

‘Miss Charlton, do you understand the word “no”? Harold! See Miss Charlton out.’

*

‘And so,’ Lucy said, having returned to her father’s office and told him everything, ‘do you think they’ve done something with her?’

He looked gravely at her.

‘Like what?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Wait and see,’ was his advice.

So she did, but on the Monday when Shamala did not come to school, Lucy was convinced that something had happened to the girl. So after school, she took to the dark streets and made her way back. The house was black, and nobody answered the door no matter how hard she banged. Finally, the people from next door heard her and a man came out and asked her why she was making all that row.

‘I can’t get an answer.’

‘Well, you won’t,’ he said, ‘they’ve gone off. They go to Edinburgh for Christmas every year. The woman and her son and all their baggage.’

‘And the girl?’

‘Didn’t see no girl,’ he said and went back inside.

Lucy didn’t know what to do. She stood back and looked at the house. She was half convinced that there was nobody in it. She waited as though it was going to help her somehow, but nothing happened and the street was deserted. It seemed that everyone was at home sitting in front of their fires and drinking tea and talking of plans for Christmas. Lucy could hear singing from some place nearby – Christmas carols – the sound stopping and starting again, as though somebody was practicing. It was ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’. Not one of her favourites.

She was keen to go home. It was so cold that she could see her breath, and above her a million stars tried to convince her that the Christ child would soon be born. She began to walk along the street, got to the end and then turned, not for home but for the back street which would lead her again to number 30.

There were lights everywhere from the houses in the back lane but they stopped at the kitchens so didn’t shed much light on the surface of the road. Lucy stumbled every few steps, calling herself names for having done something so silly, but still she went on. She counted until she reached thirty once more – it still had the same neglected area about it. The yard gate stood open and was only just hanging on one hinge. The downstairs was dark, but she thought she could see a faint light. Yes, there it was again, way up on the third floor.

Lucy banged and banged on the back door, but there was no answer. She thought to herself that from the third floor it would be difficult to hear it anyway, but by now she was convinced that Shamala was inside.

In the yard was a shed, and in the shed was a ladder, and so Lucy took the ladder from the shed – not an easy thing to do, the ladder was tall and difficult to manouevre – and leaned it up against the house. She then extended it as far as she could, jamming her fingers and cursing as she did so. Praying it would hold, Lucy tried not to consider that the night was icy and it might fall, and began to climb. When she got to the top, she didn’t look down, didn’t think about the ice on the roof, but got off the ladder as carefully as she could and made her way up to the next piece of roof and then to the next. The roof had been designed with such things in mind, she told herself, and soon she was banging on the window, afraid to alarm Shamala, but more afraid that she might fall and break her neck. Her father would not have been pleased with her.

The curtains flew back and Shamala’s terrified face emerged through the lamplight, then she tried to get the sash window up and failed. She pushed and pushed and in the end she managed, and Lucy fell thankfully into the room.

Shamala closed the window and Lucy lay there, unable to believe what she had done.

‘We have outside doors,’ Shamala said.

‘That’s all very well but you didn’t answer the door.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Exactly what I was going to ask you.’

Lucy got to her feet, she felt much better now. Having closed the window and pulled the curtains across, Shamala came forward to where Lucy stood. The grate was dark and cold and the room itself was bare.

‘Why are you here all alone?’ she looked Shamala straight in the face. The girl smiled. She seemed so much older, so much more cynical now than she had at school.

‘My aunt and my cousin have gone to Scotland for Christmas.’

‘And you?’

She shrugged. Lucy was beginning to hate those shrugs. As though she had given up. Perhaps she had.

‘I don’t have to go to school any more. They aren’t here.’

‘Was that the only reason you went?’

‘What other reason could there be? Do you think such a place has anything to teach me?’

She was looking straight at Lucy now and seemed so old for her years that Lucy felt such pity that it was pain.

‘I don’t need your help,’ the girl said.

Lucy hesitated for a second and then she nodded.

‘All right,’ she said. She felt defeated. She felt as though she had done what she could. Her hands were grazed, her stockings were torn, her parents would be wondering where she was. She had risked falling and breaking a limb for this girl. ‘Could you let me out of the front door?’

She turned to leave, and then heard a great sigh as Shamala began to cry. It was not the crying of a girl who cried often, it was the crying of a girl who never did – it was dam gates breaking, a whole world shattered. It took Shamala to itself and floored her. The girl gathered her arms and legs close, and then took to the bare floor, turning away so Lucy would not have to witness her breakdown.

Lucy knew better than to stop her. Could you contain a flood? She got down on the floor but didn’t even make sure the girl could see her. She sat there as the relentless moon shone in like a huge snowball on Shamala’s distress.

Lucy didn’t know how long it was before the girl stopped crying. She didn’t see any point in asking her to stop. Her mother always said things were better out than in, and she had never seen it more ably demonstrated.

Eventually, Shamala became a heap of spent force. Nothing could hold her up. She lay down and whimpered, and then her breathing evened and she slept. Lucy had no idea what to do, so she let Shamala sleep for a few minutes. Then the girl suddenly came round quite on her own, sitting up in the dim lamplight – there was only one lamp lit.

‘I’m fine now. You don’t have to stay.’

‘Come back with me to my house.’

Shamala shook her head.

‘I can’t leave.’

‘Who’s to know?’

‘I’m not going back to school.’

‘You don’t have to do anything.’

‘Your parents will make me. That’s what people do.’

‘No, they won’t. We’re old to be at school, you know.’

‘I have to go. My aunt made it a condition.’

‘A condition of what?’

‘That I would be kept until I was twenty-one. I come into my money then, you see. After that I can do what I like. She is in charge of my money. Until then I must do as I am told.’

‘If she’s in Edinburgh how can she know what you are doing?’ Lucy said.

*

‘Do you know how late you are?’ Lucy’s mother greeted her as Lucy reached the back door of her home by the river. ‘I thought something awful had happened to you.’

Lucy’s family lived in Sandhill, down a steep bank in the middle of the city. They had lived in the same house for hundreds of years. It was black and white timbered, and she and Gemma, adored it.

‘I’ve been so worried about you,’ Gemma said, as she followed her mother into the hall.‘Who is this?’

Lucy ushered Shamala into the house, saying, ‘This is my friend, Miss Henderson. Her family is away. May she stay the night, Mother?’

‘Of course,’ her mother said, as Lucy had known she would.

Lucy took Shamala into the front of the house where she knew her father would be working in his study until dinner was ready as he did every night. As they came in, he looked up from the papers on his desk and smiled to show he was not that deep in work and could talk sensibly.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Miss Henderson, I gather?’

Shamala came forward, nervously.

‘It is very kind of you,’ she said.

‘Not at all,’ Lucy’s father said.

They sat down across from the desk, and Lucy was glad of the formality. She explained to her father that Shamala’s aunt had gone off for Christmas and left her. At that point she could hear her mother calling them to the table and so they went through.

They all sat down to a good pork dinner. Shamala gazed at it in horror.

‘Oh dear,’ Lucy’s mother said, ‘You’re Jewish.’

Shamala smiled. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but—‘

‘Don’t worry,’ Lucy’s mother said, and bustled off to the kitchen, coming back minutes later with fish and vegetables. ‘Will this serve?’

‘It is very kind of you.’

It was the next day’s dinner, Lucy thought, because her mother was going out and would leave it to heat. It wasn’t the best but it went well here. It smelled good too, and Shamala tucked in as though she hadn’t eaten in days, which – judging by her family such as they were, Lucy thought – could be the truth.

When Shamala had eaten two helpings of fish and vegetables and two more helpings of treacle sponge pudding with custard she was exhausted. Lucy saw her to her own bedroom on the first floor, which Gemma and her mother had quickly made up with clean sheets and pillowcases and a towel.

She and Gemma would have to sleep in the same room, but they had done so as children and didn’t mind. It was not late, but Lucy discerned that it was late in Shamala’s day and possibly in her life and she was not surprised when she got back downstairs to find her parents still at the table, her father saying –

‘That girl needs looking after. Well done, Lucy.’

Then Lucy told them exactly what had happened and her mother shook her head and said that it wasn’t right, what they had done, how could they leave her like that and she could stay as long as she needed to and they would see that she was fine. Poor lass.

‘She doesn’t want to go to school,’ Lucy said.

‘She doesn’t have to,’ her mother said. ‘She can stay here with Gemma and me. What girl needs school at that age?’

Lucy didn’t answer. Her mother didn’t like her still at school, didn’t see the sense to it. She couldn’t understand why women would want to go and sit in offices and deal with what her mother called the ‘scum of the earth’. They were much better off at home with cookery and children. Lucy wasn’t sure that Shamala would agree, but if she wouldn’t go to school what was the alternative?

*

Shamala slept late that day and they let her. She stayed for the next few days and seemed happy enough, sitting by the fire, reading, propped up with cushions and eating lots of cake, which Lucy’s mother provided for every ill. On the day before the last day of school, the Tuesday morning, Lucy reported to Miss Sheane that Shamala would probably stay with her over the Christmas holiday.

‘I’m so relieved,’ Miss Sheane said, ‘I never liked the arrangement. I’d like her to come back to school when she can, but in the meanwhile it’s good that your parents have taken her in. I think she needed that. How that woman and her son could go off and leave the girl I just can’t imagine.’

Lucy was happy and able to concentrate on her studies, but when she got home her mother, who had obviously been waiting, came out to meet her.

‘She’s gone,’ she said.

Lucy didn’t know what to do. She waited until the next day and then went to Miss Sheane before school started, wondering whether Miss Sheane had any information that might help.

‘All I have is her address in Newcastle.’

‘But she must have come from somewhere.’

‘Malaya.’

‘Yes, but she left Malaya when she was small. There were years and years after that before her father died and her aunt caught up with her.’