The letter ran thus: –
“
YOU will not remember, Nona Julia, but never let them forget to tell you that
I came. The godmother they forgot to ask is always the one who brings bad luck
and bad wishes, and I meant to. I would have known how, because I have gone to
the bad, they say. Anyway, I am an inconvenient person. Your mother’s wise, she
knows that – there never was any place in her life for inconvenient people. But I
was not inconvenient to her when we were both ten. That was when she made me
your first godmother. What one has once been made to be, one is, always. That is
why I am here.
This is what I am wishing you, Nona Julia – a life in which there can always
be some place for inconvenient people. Make them tell you how my name came out
of the hat. I WAS to come here. Dear godchild, I have been waiting for you for
years and years, and once I hoped to be good for you, but I lost my way somehow.
The world is full of people with no places, flittering around like bats, and someone
must be good to them: that is what I wish you. I came here ugly and full of spite.
But from the moment your nurse took the shawl off your face, I knew you had
something for me and I had something for you, though we are never to meet again.
The two others have wished you Happiness in Love and Truthfulness.
12
They
are allowing me to wish you the final thing necessary, if you are to be a person.
After this, we are going. All three of us must be out of here long before the hour
of midnight strikes and Christmas Eve is over. You have been christened on the one
magic day. Remember there is always magic in the world.
Sleep sweet, Nona Julia, and wake happy. You are at the beginning of what I
wish you – Life.”
The last of the guests had gone. When the last of the cars had
driven away, the village carol singers came and took up their stand
on the snowy lawn and sang “Noel.” The air was already milder:
through opened windows night was allowed to blow through the
littered, now empty party rooms. Before they went to bed, Tom and
Angela Claybee went into the nursery to kiss Nona Julia, who slept
sweetly on, with Boofie’s letter where Angela had slipped it, under
her pillow.
Angela, through her sleep, heard the clocks strike twelve. The
day of magic was over; the greater Day had begun.
13
She thought of
the world, and said “Happy Christmas.”
Christmas Games
P
hyllida turned, at last, into Market Square. Gasping with
breathlessness and anxiety she looked across it – yes, there, outside
the Red Lion, were lined up the country buses, half a dozen of them:
lights full on, packed up inside with people and showing every sign
of being ready to start. “Oh, wait!” she called, to the world in
general, and, only pausing to shift from one to the other hand her
suitcase, which by now weighed like lead, she put on a last spurt of
speed and dashed over the cobbled space. “Plenty of time, miss,
plenty of time!” shouted one or two of the onlookers, but she could
not believe them. Since she had started out on this Christmas
journey, everything, everything possible, seemed to have gone
wrong.
She had stayed too long in London, doing belated shopping, and
thereby missed the train she’d been told to take; she had lost her
ticket and had to pay for another; and she had, just now, emerged
from Brindford station to find (as she knew she deserved) no car to
meet her, and the last of the taxis whirling away. A porter, on
learning her destination, told her there
was
still a bus to there, but
she’d have to run for it – a late-evening, extra service, laid on for
Christmas Eve. Run she did, often losing her bearings: she had never
been here in Brindford before. This was, in fact, her first Christmas
in England – as things were, which was sad, the charm of the oldfashioned town at this festive season was being totally lost on her.
Peals of bells being rung from an ancient steeple mingled with the
throbbing inside her head; she was dazzled by the many lights of
small shops – windows a-shimmer with tinsel, slung with paper
chains, cast their reflections on to the damp pavements, till she felt
herself lost in a mirror maze. Good-humoured townsfolk, gathering
late to talk, formed an obstruction at every corner – nobody else in
Brindford was in a hurry.
If
she were to miss this last bus, there
would be nothing for it but to hire a car for the whole of the fifteen
miles. Had she the money to pay one? – she was pretty sure not.
What a way to arrive at an unknown house; if, indeed, she ever
arrived at all!
Phyllida surged up and down the line of buses, crying, “Oh,
which one for Little Birdover?” She found herself being hoisted by
willing hands onto the one for Mockington-under-Wyck, pulled off
it again, thrust firmly into another; which, she was told, put Little
Birdover
1
passengers down at a nearby corner called Gallows Cross.
Someone seized her suitcase and swung it on the rack; and men
standing up passed her from hand to hand to the back seat; upon
which five stout women cleared for her six inches or so of space.
Gratefully, slim little Phyllida wedged herself in between them –
lapfuls of parcels, bunches of mistletoe, babies, extended into the
distance on either side.
“Goodness,” remarked her placid right-hand neighbour, “you ran
it fine! However, all’s well that ends well.”
“Yes,” agreed Phyllida, wishing that the end were in sight.
“Excuse me, but aren’t you strange to these parts?”
Phyllida nodded. “I’ve come from London.” All heads, at that,
turned to look at her, somewhat dubiously, and someone suggested:
“You’ll be finding it quiet here, then.”
“Oh, but that’s what I’ll like! I grew up with the prairie all round
me – I’m a Canadian.”
That
set them all off talking. What, then, was she doing in
London? She was a student. Didn’t she miss her family? Yes, that
was
sometimes bad. Was she not young to have come so far, alone? She
was (she said proudly) twenty. Did she know two Canadians, ever
such nice young lads, who’d spent their leaves at Great Grogsby
during the war? Alas, not – Canada is so big. Did she – but at this
point the bus started: having been throbbing for some time, it
heaved, with a grind of gears, into forward motion, to nose its way
out through the small streets into open country. All round Phyllida
flowed dark, hidden England, to be excitedly sensed by her, not
seen. The bus lights ran over tree trunks, hedgerows, here and there
a gate; each, picked out for a moment, slipped back to be lost to
view. From now on, it was hard to talk without shouting, but her
companions were in excellent voice: the five, while she stared at the
windows, continued their questionnaire.
“You don’t, then, know many in this country?”
“So far, almost no one. – I’ve only been here two months.”
“Tck-tck – lonely for you, at Christmas! Not got any relatives on
this side?”
“One of my aunts lived in England; but she’s dead.”
“Tck-tck. – Then what brings you into these parts? Going to
friends?”
“I hope so. – That’s to say, I haven’t met them yet.”
“Little Birdover people, I shouldn’t wonder? Birdover people are
friendly – that is, mostly.”
Phyllida saw no reason not to reveal her plans. “I’m going to Mrs.
Throcksby’s – Ravenswood Hall.”
This news produced an immediate hush, an uneasy blend of
constraint, condolence, suspicion. Significant glances and nudges
were exchanged; it seemed to Phyllida that the women seated on
either side of her drew away a little. Another, at the end of the line,
said: “Ah, well,” in a forlorn attempt to remain hopeful. What
remained unsaid, by the others, spoke volumes more. After an
awkward interval, her good neighbours turned to each other, to
speak of their own affairs; for the rest of the journey Phyllida felt
ruled out.
Misgiving gripped the young traveller by the throat; the
apprehensions which had hung over her all day surged up and began
to reach fever-pitch. Why, oh why, had she ever accepted this
invitation? Mrs. Throcksby’s letter arriving out of the blue, had
seemed, at the time, the solution of her whole Christmas problem –
growing more and more homesick, as the season approached, she
had dreaded spending those days alone in a semi-deserted London
hostel. Mrs. Throcksby, introducing herself, had written that she
had been a dear friend, a very close friend, of Phyllida’s late Aunt
Beattie,
2
the one who had died in England. As Aunt Beattie, after
sailing from Canada, had ceased to keep in touch with the rest of
the family, there was no way of checking up on this information;
however, the whole thing sounded likely enough. Mrs. Throcksby,
she said, took an interest in girls’ hostels; and, on scanning the
books of the one at which Phyllida lived, had been delighted to see
a familiar name. Dear Beattie had spoken of her niece Phyllida
Haughton – who had been no more than an infant when she, Beattie
Haughton, left home. It would therefore give Mrs. Throcksby the
greatest pleasure if Phyllida would spend Christmas at Ravenswood,
Little Birdover.
“I have lived very secludedly,” she had added, “since my poor
husband’s death; but we still keep a typical English Christmas, and
shall be glad to show you something of our old-fashioned ways. Two
of my nephews, and my invalid uncle, will be at Ravenswood; in
addition to my companion, a sensitive, cultured person, and myself.”
It had, in fact, all sounded pretty good. Why, then, as Christmas
Eve approached, had Phyllida fallen into a state of conflict? Several
times she had considered sending a telegram saying that she was ill
and could not leave town – but, besides being unwilling to tell a lie,
she had, each time it came to the point, lost her nerve when she
went to despatch the message. Reluctance (for which she could not
account) to embark on the journey to Ravenswood had mingled
with the most odd compulsion to do so – as though Mrs.
Throcksby’s letter had cast a spell on her! The lady’s handwriting,
topped by the heavy black gothic lettering of the note-paper, had,
each time she looked again at it, seemed ominous. Why, though?
Was it not Phyllida’s policy to stand no nonsense from herself? What
was she, indeed, but a thoroughly lucky girl, having this chance to
enjoy a Dickens-y Christmas, in a traditional English country home?
Every time she leaned forward to look out of a window, she met
the reflection of her own small, fair, anxious face, with the beret
pushed back, against the outside flying darkness. Now, however, the
bus lurched downhill into a belt of white mist, on which the lights
fell chunkily: Phyllida’s image vanished. The passengers, to cheer
their way through this blinded scene, broke out into singing carols
or cracking jokes with each other; and with this Phyllida’s spirits
rose – there
was
something warming about this jovial, close-packed,
human rush through the night! Stops began to be made, and people
got off or on. All at once the conductor yelled: “Gallows Cross –
this is you, miss!”
Nobody else, it turned out, descended here. Phyllida’s suitcase
was dropped down to her, and, armed with directions and good
wishes (in some of which she detected a pessimistic note) she set out
on her tramp to Ravenswood Hall – first gate on the left, they’d said,
on this side of Little Birdover. Looking back, she watched the bus
disappear – then, slowly, the road ahead of her glimmered out into
view, under faint, cloud-muffled gleams of moonlight. This was not
a “white Christmas”: snowlessness still surprised her – from the dark
woods she drank in damp, mysterious smells; and she could hear
somewhere, magnified by the winter silence, the tinkle of an
English, unfrozen brook. Something august, but a little frightening,
brooded over this breathless night.
She had had enough of the sound of her own footsteps by the
time she came to the spiked gate, set in still higher walls. This, from
all accounts, was the entrance to Ravenswood. She pushed at the
gate, which creakingly yielded: inside, the drive was pitch-black,
tunnelled through arching evergreens. She felt in her overcoat
pocket for her torch – blessing the last-moment instinct which had
made her bring it! – and kept its small, bright beam probing ahead
of her. Round a bend, the drive broadened into a gravel sweep; at
the far side massively loomed a house – high, narrow, and without a
light showing. Ravenswood gave, in fact, every impression of having
been bolted and barred up for the night. She at last located the
entrance porch, its nail-studded door and iron bell-pull.
3
She rang:
the lugubrious jangling set up inside the house produced, for quite a
long time, no sign of life, and she was about to attack again when,
without warning, bolts were pulled back inside. A key grated round
in a lock and the door opened – opened just wide enough to allow
someone, dimly outlined by lamplight, to peer round it. “What
d’you want?” asked the man, in an edgy, harsh voice. “I say,” he
repeated, “what do you
want
?”
“To come in, please. – This is Ravenswood, isn’t it?”
“Well, and what if it is?”
“I’m Phyllida Haughton – Mrs. Throcksby’s expecting me.”
“She may once have been: by now, she’s given you up.”
“Well, I’m sorry; but would you tell her I’m here?”
He hesitated, then, with marked reluctance, said: “All right, then,
you can come in and wait. I’ll ask.”
Stumbling over the threshold with her suitcase, Phyllida found
herself in a pine-panelled hall. A lamp stood on a table, but gloom
poured down from above, from a number of echoing galleries. The
place – which to a more calm or more knowing eye would have
revealed itself as a neo-Gothic monstrosity, built about 1880 –
smelled of musty woodwork and tiles; and from somewhere back
away in the shadows an old clock gave out a dragging tick. She,
chafing her hands together – for it was colder in here than it had
been outdoors – stood anxiously, while the man who had let her in
shambled off through an archway and poked his head round a door,
to announce: “Well, here