by Jane Bailey
“Thanks be to –”
A small blanketed figure in the central aisle cries out before Betty Chudd can complete her last word: “It be a cold night, me masters!”
The shepherds all give an exaggerated shiver and exclaim at the brightness of the clouds. Iris Holland tiptoes up in a sheet with a paper plate perched on her head, and everyone sings ‘While shepherds watched their flocks by night’.
A short reading by Mr Fairly heralds the arrival of the wise men, who deliver their gifts with suitable awe at the baby Jesus. Then as the entire assemblage of Sunday school and other children sing ‘Away in a manger’, shepherds, wise men, cattle and innkeepers all crane to see the holy infant.
During the hymn the baby begins to cry, and a few members of the congregation look uneasy.
“The cattle are lowing,
The baby awakes,
But little Lord Jesus
No crying he makes …”
At this, the Lord Jesus does indeed fall silent. A lamb takes an unwarranted interest in him, and the innkeeper gazes at the donkey with a fond look of complicity.
Joyce and Jack eye the exchange with curiosity, then sit open-jawed with the rest of the congregation as the holy infant raises a chubby arm towards the bosom of the virgin mother.
The verse ends, and in the slight pause the silence is filled with glances and gasps. In the confusion we children continue, primed to sing our song to the end. The vicar, now in his pulpit, can see better than anyone that Jesus is what everyone has suddenly noticed he is: a real, live brown baby.
“Bless all the dear children
In thy tender care,
And fit us for heaven
To live with thee there.”
Say something sweet to
your sweetheart
After the service Miss Lavish offers Miss Hubble a cup of tea in the vestry, lighting a little camper gas ring in the corner, and the vicar offers her a cigarette. Miss Hubble accepts both, and I get to cuddle the baby, who is a beautiful coffee-colour and called Jerome like his father.
As soon as we have changed we are all ushered back through the church and out to where the grown-ups are waiting for us by the gravestones along the church path. But just before we reach them a group of POWs have lined up by the porch and are handing out presents to us. They are all gifts they have made: little baskets of bark with flowers and moss, ships and dolls made out of sticks or even carved from wood, corn dollies, miniature toys made out of match boxes or acorn cups. Heinrich hands me a small piece of wood and wraps my hands around it, as though I must not show it to anyone else. I take a peek and see that it is an intricately carved cat.
“Boomer!” I whisper. I am so overcome that I throw my arms around him, all churned up and eyes full to bursting.
Uncle Jack comes over and pulls me away. “Come on, you’ve caused enough trouble already,” he hisses.
I am saved from a bollocking on the way home by Miss Lavish, who catches up with us and trills about the lovely service as we climb the sunken lane towards the terrace. But as soon as we sit down for our Ovaltine, Uncle Jack switches off the wireless that Aunty Joyce has turned on.To my surprise he starts off with her.
“I couldn’t help noticing in church that you’re wearing nylons.”
Aunty Joyce cups her mug in her hands and does not look at him. “So I am.”
He flares his nostrils slightly and bangs his pipe on the hearth.
“Are you going to tell me where you got them? … Or should I ask how you got them?”
He is beginning to turn pink, and I feel I should help her out. “I gave her them, Uncle Jack. It was when we was up at the American base. My GI guide gave them to me.”
“A GI!” He spreads his hands flat on the chair arms as if he is about to get up, but just breathes heavily instead. “And I’m supposed to just sit here and do nothing while my wife goes round like a slut wearing the nylons some American has given her? What do you think everyone has made of it, hmm? You tell me that!” He points a finger at Joyce, and his spite makes me angry.
“That’s not how it was!” I protest from my position at the table. “All the GIs were giving treats out to the children for them to take home to their families and friends.”
“And what was your GI called?”
“Ted.”
“So, a GI called Ted gives my wife stockings and I don’t know about it?”
Joyce stares vacantly from her armchair towards the tablecloth. Heinrich’s carved cat is sitting there: it really is very good.
I thought she was in a defiant mood, but now she just seems to have given up. I wish she would say something, but she doesn’t.
“Look, I wish I’d just saved them for my own mum,” I say. “She wouldn’t have worried where they came from and neither would my dad. He’d just’ve been pleased to see a smile on her face. And he’d have trusted her enough to know she wasn’t no slut.”
Uncle Jack twitches a bit and begins to stuff his pipe with tobacco. Aunty Joyce shoots me what might be a grateful glance. Then he starts on me.
“There’s no need for rude language like that,” he says, forgetting that he’d just used it himself. He lights the tobacco and takes one or two puffs, filling the air with vanilla. It seems to soften him a little, for he leans forward and says in a much gentler voice, “You know what you did in church was very wrong, don’t you, Kitty?”
“I’m sorry, Uncle Jack, but I just don’t understand.”
“Well …” He puts his elbows on his knees in a thoughtful manner. “You may not understand it all yet, but … having a baby outside marriage is a wicked thing to do. And people do have a choice, it doesn’t just happen.”
I assume a bewildered look. “Are you saying Miss Hubble is wicked, then?”
“Well! I know you liked Miss Hubble, Kitty, but we must all respect the teachings of Christ, and I’m afraid … it was wrong of her to bring the fruits of her sin to church – to a family service as well!”
Now I am bewildered. It wasn’t fruit that Miss Hubble brought in at all. I want to get back to the point, and why Uncle Jack is wrong about Miss Hubble. I think for a moment about what he did in church, and I can’t let it go. I have tried hard to understand the bible stories I’ve heard in Sunday school and church to please Uncle Jack, but this just doesn’t add up.
“But Uncle Jack, ‘Whoever receives a child in my name is really being nice to me.’”
There is a sharp intake of breath. “Don’t quote the Bible at me, young lady!”
“But Uncle Jack, aren’t you afraid of the millstone?”
“What millstone?”
“The one that you have to wear round your neck if you’re horrid to one of God’s … you know … little ones.” I’m on uncertain ground here. There’s a millstone in the field behind the school and it doesn’t look like the sort of thing you could hang round your neck at all.
He begins to turn pink. I scratch my nose and say in a singsong voice, “I’m only saying … that’s all.”
“Upstairs NOW! You’d better watch out you don’t get cinders in your stocking!”
But Father Christmas doesn’t leave me cinders. When I awake in the morning my stocking is full, with an apple, a biscuit, a small colouring book, a pencil and an intricately knitted doll. The doll has long black hair in plaits with a red skirt, and if you turn her upside down she becomes a lady with blonde plaits, and a blue skirt. Each doll has little ribbons, one has a handbag, which opens, and the other has an apron, which comes off if you want.
I have never had anything like this before. I am so thrilled I can’t wait to tell everyone. Not only was God on my side over the Miss Hubble incident (because he didn’t tell Father Christmas to leave me cinders), but I have the most amazing present I have ever known (apart from Heinrich’s cat).
“Look! Look! Look at my beautiful doll! Look!”
When I come hurtling down the stairs to show Aunty Joyce, she gives me a smile so tender I can hardly believe
it, and pours us all porridge.
Poor hurt people
At around half past nine on Christmas morning, Aunty Joyce’s mother turns up in a horse and cart, driven by a neighbour from Painswick who is also visiting relatives.
“I’ll be back this afternoon!” shouts the man at the reins. “I want to be home before dark, look.”
In she comes with a blast of cold air, carrying a carpet bag full of knitting.
She has the same features as Aunty Joyce, but more extreme. The eyes are paler and bluer, the cheekbones more widely spaced. But the full lips have collapsed a little with age and the hair is almost white, the curls piled on top like Queen Mary’s. As soon as she comes in, the house is different.
She refuses a comfortable chair by the range and takes a seat at the table, from where she can watch us preparing vegetables.
“I see you got the littl’un working,” she says, sucking the side of her cheek.
I smile from my carrot scraping, but Aunty Joyce just looks flustered.
“You’re doing a good job there, love,” she says to me.Then, under her breath, she mutters, “You wanna watch she don’t pack you off fishing.”
Aunty Joyce slams down her potato knife and glares at her mother. There is a silence in which Mrs Stringer carries on knitting with eyebrows raised in total innocence, and in which Aunty Joyce is clearly deliberating about something.
“What did you say?”
Mrs Stringer looks up a little surprised and tugs at her wool. I am about to repeat what she said for Aunty Joyce – because I heard it quite clearly – when I realize that this is something grown-up and unpredictable, and I had better keep my mouth shut.
I am relieved when Uncle Jack comes in from the back with a scuttle full of coal.
“You’re looking well!” he says, smiling at his mother-in-law. “Journey all right?”
“Not so bad. That horse of Gill’s’ve seen better days, mind. Bump, bump, bump all the way!”
The kettle whistles on the range, and Uncle Jack pours some water into the teapot. There is a silence even louder than the ones I’m used to at the tea-table here, and the sounds of the water going into the pot and the scraping of vegetables seem to thunder through the whole room.
“’Twill be bump, bump, bump all the way back an’ all,” she says at last.
“I’ll sort out something soft for you to sit on,” says Uncle Jack.
Aunty Joyce is chopping my carrots, aggressively, with a mouth clamped very shut.
“I ’ope you’re not doin’ them all like that. Great fat slabs o’carrot. You know I like mine fine.”
There is a silence again, just the shuffle of coals as Uncle Jack stokes the fire.
“Sorry,” says Aunty Joyce and, to my amazement, she starts to cut carefully, producing delicate rounds of carrot without a trace of malice.
At first I think it is a little battle between the two of them, but soon I see there is only one winner. As Uncle Jack pours the tea, Mrs Stringer pipes up: “You got him well trained then!” And she just can’t seem to help herself from adding, “Always did know how to twist a man round your little finger!” And then she just can’t resist patting his hand: “You watch she don’t pack you off to the war, Jack.”
Aunty Joyce does not rise to it. She carries on, subdued, wrestling with the carrots and potatoes, her pretty mouth beginning to lose the radiance it had at breakfast.
At dinnertime we bring out a beautifully roasted half of chicken. Miss Lavish has had the other half and taken it down to the school house, where she, Miss Miller and Boss Harry are having their Christmas meal together.
“I ’ope this isn’t one of yours,” says Mrs Stringer.
“Certainly is,” says Jack, smiling. “Only we couldn’t bring ourselves to do it, so we got Thumper in on it.”
“Well, all I can say is what a waste! All them eggs it could lay for you every week and you throw it all away on one meal!”
Aunty Joyce starts to carve it reluctantly, but Uncle Jack takes over. “Here, let me.” I can’t work out if he is cross or not. But if he is, it is certainly not with Aunty Joyce, and he is hiding it very well.
“The war will be over soon, and what on earth will we do with all these chickens then?” He smiles at me, and I smile back.
“They said that last year, and look what ’appened,” she says.
“Breast?” Uncle Jack holds up the best meat, poised above the tablecloth, and his mother-in-law nods.
“No need to use disgusting words like that,” she adds.
The food is dished out with the quiet clinking of cutlery. We munch and hear each other munching.
“No holly on the table this year, then?” asks the old goat.
Aunty Joyce puts a hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry!” She sounds devastated. “Oh hang, I completely forgot! I’ve got some out the back –”
“Sit down,” says Uncle Jack calmly. “Enjoy the meal.”
More munching.
“Sprouts are a bit crunchy,” Mrs Stringer observes. “’Ow long you do them for, then?”
“Twelve minutes.”
“Twelve minutes? I always do mine for fourteen. Like bloody rock they are otherwise.”
Aunty Joyce apologizes again. “Everything else all right for you?”
“Oh yes. Yes … tiz lovely …” Mrs Stringer sucks her cheeks a little. “Mind … the gravy’s dreadful thin – you never could make gravy, though, Joyce.” Joyce looks down at her plate and seems almost to shrink.
“No …” continues her mother, “never could make gravy for tuppence.”
I don’t recognize the Aunty Joyce I see before me: shrunken, defeated, utterly wrong-footed at every turn.
“I think it’s a lovely meal,” I say suddenly. “I’ve never tasted a meal like it!” I smile at Aunty Joyce, desperate to raise her spirits. She looks at me and smiles weakly, but full of gratitude.
‘Well, ’course you would say that, wouldn’t you, my darlin’? Don’t ’spose you eat food like this back in London, do you? Lucky to get bread up there, I ’speck.”
“Well, I –”
“Now you make sure our Joyce takes care of you.” She smiles at me mischievously. “She tends to be a bit careless with little girls, do our Joyce.”
Now, you’d expect Aunty Joyce to throw the rest of the gravy at her mother, or the bread sauce, or the delicious Brussels sprouts she has been growing for months in the back garden. But no, she just puts the carefully prepared food into her mouth and eats it painfully slowly, as if the meal she has planned with such love and foresight is making her nauseous, and as if she is unworthy of every mouthful.
I am glad when the horse and trap comes to take Mrs Stringer away, but she has left Aunty Joyce crippled with bad feelings way beyond my reach. As soon as she is gone the washing starts. Not just the washing up, which I help her with while Uncle Jack lights his pipe and listens to the wireless, but washing the taps, washing her arms, washing her clothes, washing her face, washing the taps again, cleaning her shoes, scrubbing her nails, washing the door handles, washing her hands again and again and again …
Dumbo
My mother was supposed to come at Christmas, but she didn’t and no one says a thing about it. Two days after Boxing Day Aunty Joyce tells me to put on my coat, she gives me mittens, straightens my woollen bonnet and takes me off to the bus stop.
The battering winds have strewn the lanes with twigs and branches, and the sad hedgerows, empty of leaves, show the old nests of song thrushes, blackbirds and warblers, all trilling indignantly at their secret haunts laid bare. The leaves of autumn are now a thin brown paste spread over the road. We tread crisply along the stony patches, avoiding the yellow puddles near the verge.
When the bus comes no one gets off, but we get on. The bus conductress comes over breathing smoke and winds us tickets with blue fingers. One and a half return to Cheltenham. She shakes her leather bag and the coins shuffle richly.
“Shoppin’ then?”
“Yes,” says Aunty Joyce.
She takes me to Ward’s and lets me choose half a yard of ribbon for my hair. When we buy it the money is put in a tube which is sent rocketing down a chute like magic, only to return with the exact change.
We go up in a lift and down in a lift. We giggle at the stiff snooty models and feel all the fabrics. We go into Cavendish House and put Shalimar on our wrists, try on hats and pop the handbags open and shut. We listen to the Salvation Army playing carols, put a penny in their tin, and then walk up to Suffolk Parade to queue up outside the Daffodil where Dumbo is showing.
I have never seen anything like it. I laugh and laugh at the stork letting the baby elephant slip through the clouds, and Aunty Joyce laughs too. I hum to the music of the little train, and she looks at me in the flashing shadows and smiles. We all stop breathing when the circus tent comes down, and we all say “Aaah!” when Mother Elephant gets locked in a prison caravan.
Later, there is a scene where Dumbo goes to see his mum and they get to touch trunks. She puts her trunk out through the bars of her prison and he reaches his trunk up to meet it. My face and neck ache with grief, and when Mother Elephant starts to rock her baby on her trunk and sings ‘Baby of Mine’ I feel the tears messing up my cheeks.
But Aunty Joyce is laughing. I can’t believe it. I can hear her laughing next to me. Other mother animals are rocking their babies to sleep – giraffes, tigers, monkeys, even hyenas – and I am all choked up trying not to burst and Aunty Joyce is laughing.
Then I glance at her, and see that her hand is clutched over her mouth not to stifle giggles but wails of despair. I stare at her pale face flickering in the dark. She is sobbing loudly now, and I have no idea what to do.
I grab the free hand in her lap, and squeeze it gently.
On the way home she says nothing of the little episode, and she is chattier than usual, perhaps to make sure I don’t refer to it either. But when the bus gets out into the countryside, and the dark is so dark the driver could not drive unless he knew the road from childhood, then I take her hand again and give it a squeeze. Let her think I am afraid of the dark. Let her think what she likes. It felt good to hold her hand in the cinema, so I’m doing it again. And she lets me.
