Authors: Amy Myers
The bells were ringing now – so Christmas had truly begun. With so many men at the front, it was a struggle to keep the bells going, but wives had nobly stepped into the breach, and the memory of Mrs Bertram being lifted high into the air by mistake in her training days, black boots kicking wildly under the heavy skirts and petticoats, still made Caroline giggle.
‘What’s the matter, Yves?’ Caroline asked anxiously, when they had finished the mince pies and hot chocolate provided for their homecoming. He was looking bewildered, a little lost.
‘It is so different. In Belgium we would have been exchanging presents at this moment.’
‘Can’t you wait?’ she teased him. ‘Look, you can see them all in a heap under the tree. They’ll still be there tomorrow.’
‘I will try to be less impatient.’
‘I knew you’d be feeling like this. So this is a little pre-present.’ She put a small package into his hand. ‘It’s perfectly hideous, but I did write it myself.’ It was a short poem of love, decorated with dried rose petals she’d saved from the summer. She stopped him as he was about to unwrap the tissue paper. ‘Don’t open it now. Take it to bed with you,’ she dropped her voice, ‘and think of me.’
‘I do not need aide-memoires for that.’ For a moment she thought there were tears in his eyes. ‘But I have no pre-present for you, and I love you.’
‘
You
are my present.’
‘Where on earth did you get the turkeys from, Mother?’ Caroline clapped as Father ceremoniously carried in the Christmas festive fare, with George behind him blowing a child’s trumpet, and the rest of them singing the Boar’s Head carol. Even Grandmother sang – she seemed unusually benevolent this year.
‘We have to thank your grandmother for it.
And
three capons and a goose. One for Mrs Dibble to cook for the servants and the rest for tomorrow.’
‘Well, I do thank you, Grandmama. What fun to have turkey.’
‘Oscar thinks so,’ chortled George. ‘Percy would have been after him with a cleaver otherwise.’
‘If that pig has any sense, it will teach itself to truffle-hunt to earn its keep,’ Laurence declared, setting down the bird and brandishing the knife.
‘Unless the war ends,’ declared Elizabeth. ‘Even the Kaiser couldn’t be so cruel as to deprive us of Oscar.’
‘He’d always be part of us, Mother,’ George consoled her gravely.
‘George!’ Caroline warned – before she realised he was no longer a mischievous schoolboy, but was a lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps,
and
one whose cartoons of life in the air were rapidly becoming as popular as Bruce Bairnsfather’s of trench warfare.
He winked at her to show he’d understood exactly what she was thinking.
There were only ten of them round the table this Christmas. Conscious of the expected battle for food, the Hunneys, the Bannings, and Aunt Tilly would not be
joining them till the afternoon. Caroline was almost glad of this, because it made the family circle more intimate, and this now – so far as she was concerned – included Yves. Phoebe seemed to think the same way about Billy, for she kept an adoring eye on him throughout the lunch. He had been awkward at first in the Rectory, being no churchgoer and clearly unaccustomed to family gatherings, at least at Rectory tables. He seemed to have found his feet quickly and firmly – indeed, almost too firmly.
Caroline smiled to herself as she thought of her mother’s whispered comments yesterday evening. ‘He’s very
unusual
, isn’t he?’
Compared with Ashden folk, Caroline supposed he was. ‘Probably there’s something about him that reminds her of Harry Darling.’ Phoebe’s sweetheart had been wounded at Loos, and died in hospital.
‘Besides the cockney accent and lack of table manners?’ Elizabeth asked drily. ‘
And
his age. He must be over forty and she’s only twenty. Suppose she wants to marry him? What would your father say?’
‘I imagine Father would want Phoebe to be happy, first and foremost.’
Her mother had a final shot however. ‘Certainly, if Billy were like Yves. You must enjoy working with him.’
Did she imagine it or was there a slight emphasis on the
working
? ‘Yes,’ Caroline had answered uneasily.
She decided she liked Billy very much. He had a presence that rivalled even Father’s in company, as he reeled off jokes and anecdotes of music-hall life, while Phoebe giggled at his side.
‘You seem to lead a very full life, Mr Jones,’ Lady Buckford remarked glacially, after one outrageous story. Obviously Billy Jones was still beyond the limits of tolerance that Grandmother was prepared to consider as part of her war effort.
Billy grinned. ‘Now I do. They never let the likes of me out of the East End before they were needed in the trenches, your ladyship.’
‘From what I gather, you left the East End some time ago, Mr Jones.’
‘But not for your drawing room, eh?’
Billy was running straight towards the portcullis at the end of Grandmother’s drawbridge, marked ‘No entry, fear of boiling oil’, and his ease of manner wouldn’t be enough for Grandmama to show mercy.
‘I spy a currant in here,’ announced George hastily, investigating his slice of pudding. ‘Has it escaped from somewhere and if so, do I have to hand it back?’
Margaret Dibble looked at her diminished family, Percy, Lizzie and little Frank, all doing their best to jolly her along so that she would forget Fred. She’d tried to make an effort, but was it worth it? Why should she bother? The reins should be handed over to the younger generation. She was fifty now, and the grey hairs were coming. Even old Peck and Lewis were looking to her as though she was solely responsible for cheering everybody up. Lizzie at least was happy that Frank was back, and was planning to leave the baby with her tomorrow while she went to visit him.
Mind you, Lizzie might
look
happy, but inside she was a worrier like Margaret, though unlike Percy. She had a lot to worry about too. It was all very well and nice Frank coming home to be with his baby, but how was she going to choose between him and Rudolf? Someone was going to get hurt.
‘How about one or two of your songs, Louise?’ Percy said in desperation to Miss Lewis. Louise Lewis, the highly respectable personal maid to Lady Buckford, had turned out to have hidden talents. She had been giving sing-songs on the Rectory piano for the wounded officers from Ashden Manor Hospital. ‘Carols, of course,’ Percy added quickly, his eye on Margaret, ‘seeing it’s Christmas.’ There was an old piano in the servants’ hall. It wasn’t up to much, but it served its purpose.
‘Why not?’ Louise said. ‘And I’ll tell you what. Let’s ask Billy Jones to come and give us a song, seeing that it’s Christmas.’
Margaret stared at her as though she’d suggested flying to the moon. In normal times she would never have dared ask the Rector if one of his guests could come to the servants’ quarters to give them a song, but suddenly she too thought: why not?
‘I’ll go.’ Resolutely, defying umpteen years of protocol, Margaret marched into the drawing room where it seemed an army of people had now gathered and were drinking tea. The Hunneys and the Bannings had arrived, and there propped in a chair looking very pale was another familiar face.
Caroline was the first to notice her entrance. ‘Look
who’s arrived, Mrs Dibble. Isn’t it marvellous to see her?’
Yes, it was, Margaret decided, though Miss Matilda (she always refused to be called your ladyship as she was by rights) didn’t look well. Seedy, almost yellow in the face she was. Too many late nights in that hospital of hers, Margaret thought knowingly.
‘Pleased to see you, Miss Tilly, and how’s Miss Felicia?’
‘It’s me let the side down,’ Tilly rasped, ‘not her.’
She was a shadow of her old self, Margaret thought, alarmed, and Lady Buckford was fussing over her like a newborn lamb, for all they hadn’t spoken for years. That was because Miss Tilly had let the side down then too, by being a suffragette. Funny to think she, Margaret Dibble, being over thirty, would probably have the vote next year if this bill went through parliament, and it was all because of Miss Tilly.
‘I beg pardon for interrupting, Rector,’ Margaret remembered her mission, ‘but I speak for us all in the servants’ hall in asking whether Mr Jones might favour us with a song there at his convenience.’ She looked uncertainly round. ‘Seeing as how it’s Christmas.’
‘Right you are.’ Billy leapt up to come straight away, but he couldn’t do that. Margaret knew this was the time that the Rector started the traditional Christmas game of the Family Coach.
‘Any time would suit us, Rector. We’re only a small group, as you know,’ Margaret said, alarmed at the inconvenience to the Rector’s programme.
Caroline saw a glance pass between her father and mother, but even she was surprised when her father
said warmly: ‘I’ve a better idea, Mrs Dibble, if your family agrees. After we’ve played the Family Coach, why don’t you all come to join us? We’ll have tea and entertainment together, if Miss Lewis would oblige us on the piano and Mr Jones is agreeable. And of course if you yourself have no objection, Mrs Dibble.’
Objection? Margaret was dazed. Never would she have thought it proper for servants to sit with family drinking tea and chatting, but now the Rector suggested it, it seemed highly sensible. Seeing that it was Christmas. It took an hour and a half with so many players for the Family Coach to reach its destination. Father allotted everyone a role, refusing to be put off by his mother’s bleak face. Fortunately, Grandmother’s rivalry with Lady Hunney meant she could not afford to refuse to play. Every year Father chose a different story to relate as narrator, to invoke a different set of circumstances, and this year, following last year’s triumph of ‘The Hunting of the Snark’, he had chosen
Through the Looking-Glass
, Lewis Carroll’s sequel to
Alice in Wonderland
. The coach rattled its way through the battles of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and the Lion and the Unicorn, and past the White Knight, and by the time it had arrived back through the Looking-Glass they were ready for the tea which father summoned.
‘Dear Lord,’ he finished in his customary prayer for the year ahead, ‘as we rattle through this topsy-turvy looking-glass war, into the year ahead, full of uncertainty and fear, may we overcome with Thy help all such monsters and obstacles before us.’
After tea had been cleared, the servants self-consciously
filed in, automatically gravitating to the back and sides of the room. By now they included Agnes and Elizabeth Agnes, since Agnes had decided to make her visit to her parents short and sweet – if that was the word for the gloomy hellfire atmosphere of her childhood home.
‘No,’ said Laurence firmly. ‘Sit
with
us, if you please.’
Even the tradition of family prayers every morning had long since gone by the board, Caroline knew, for everyone breakfasted at different times, so this mixing of the two components that made up the Rectory was indeed breaking new ground.
Caroline saw Lady Hunney exchange a quick look with Lady Buckford, obviously to gauge the reaction of the other at this novel procedure. Fortunately neither of them dared to be the first to make an objection, which would afford the other the opportunity to display Christmas goodwill. Baby Frank broke the ensuing ice by trying to clamber onto Lady Buckford’s lap, sending Lizzie chasing after him.
‘I will hold him, if I may,’ Lady Buckford said graciously. ‘It is a long time since Lady Matilda could be held in my lap.’ She glanced at her daughter, with whom she now had an uneasy relationship again, after Tilly had been cast from the house in 1914 for her suffragette activities.
One up on Lady Hunney, Caroline thought appreciatively. Her ladyship retaliated by bribing Elizabeth Agnes’s attention with one of Mrs Dibble’s few precious home-made jelly sweets. No truffles and chocolates this year.
‘How’s Felicia?’ Daniel Hunney asked nonchalantly, coming to sit next to her (for that express purpose, Caroline suspected).
‘Aunt Tilly says she’s well, though she’s insisted on staying at her post.’
‘What’s wrong with Tilly?’ he asked, keeping his voice low.
‘I don’t know. Simon says some kind of pneumonia, but she looks odd, doesn’t she? I’m amazed Tilly’s held out so long in those appalling conditions.’
‘I’m amazed at both of them.’ Daniel frowned as he looked at Tilly, but he said no more and Caroline dismissed the odd niggle from her mind. Felicia was deeply in love with Daniel, but there was a bar to their marrying – which Caroline had correctly deduced had to do with impotence due to his war wounds. Luke Dequessy was equally deeply in love with Felicia. What a pickle it all was, Caroline thought despondently. Herself and Yves, Felicia – war had a lot to answer for, and whom or whether one could love was the least of it.
After Billy Jones had sung several of his own Cockney songs and then Albert Chevalier’s ‘Wot Cher’ and ‘It’s a Great Big Shame’, Percy disappeared, at Father’s suggestion, to make some of his famous punch. It wouldn’t have quite so much ‘punch’ in it as usual, since the brandy had all been used in the puddings, but he said he’d see what he could do. When pushed, Percy was as adept at ‘making do’ in his field, as Mrs Dibble was in hers.
‘Caroline told me you believed the days of music hall were numbered, Mr Jones,’ Laurence said. ‘Why do you believe that?’
Billy shrugged. ‘The old tunes and songs spring from everyday life, that’s why. Now the war’s on, there isn’t one. So we sing war songs or little bits of nothing.’
‘What about a nice love song?’ Margaret asked belligerently. ‘“My old Dutch”. That’s a good one.’
‘Then I’ll sing it for you, madam.’ He made her a deep bow, and she gave a mental sniff just to show she wasn’t going to be smarmied.
When he finished, another volunteer took his place. ‘I too will sing you a love song, Mrs Dibble.’
Caroline’s jaw dropped, as Yves went to the piano and whispered to Miss Lewis.
Could
Yves sing? How odd that after all this time, she hadn’t the least idea.
It was soon apparent that he could. He stood, in the grand manner, one hand on his heart, the other on the grand piano, singing majestically: ‘Under the old apple tree, When the love in your eyes I could see, The old apple tree.’ Caroline had to struggle to keep back tears. It was in their orchard of apple trees she had met Yves again, and mistaken him for Reggie, for it was in that same orchard that she and Reggie had become engaged, once upon a time and long ago. To sing this song was Yves’ way of reminding her that he, as Reggie, loved her and that he was not jealous of old ghosts.