by Katie King
The sight of it brought such a tear to Peggy’s eye; so that she had to reach for a hanky.
Half an hour later, the mood in the house was much less bright.
There had been another telephone call.
Mabel’s mother was desperately ill, having now been taken hospital, and she wasn’t expected to make it.
Chapter Thirty-six
23rd December 1939
Dearest Barbara,
Your parcel has arrived and I’ve got it for safe keeping in my room, as I don’t want any prying little fingers and eyes trying to work out what you and Ted have sent them for Christmas!
Mabel’s mother is hanging on, and so we are all starting to miss having Mabel around as she is still over with her. Gracie’s cooking is best described as ‘basic’ – well, actually, that would be to oversell it – and Roger doesn’t know one end of a saucepan from another. June Blenkinsop is having to cook us food each day – a pie usually, or sometimes a stew – and then Gracie can just about manage to boil some cabbage (there’s a glut, much to Connie’s horror) and turn the oven on to heat the pie. Larry goes to the café every day to collect the food from June and to take back the washed baking tin or stewing pot, and I am paying him a shilling a week to do this. Tommy and Aiden are going for an hour every other day to help June by peeling potatoes and with some washing-up, and so this is in exchange for the food she is giving to us, and Roger is paying each of them a shilling weekly. The system seems to be working quite well because I told them that if there’s just one argument between the boys, their shillings will stop.
Connie wants to earn some money too, but I said she can help me with the baby and earn a little pocket money that way, and anyway, right now how would she fit some work in seeing she and Aiden are virtually welded together? Meanwhile Mabel’s bread production has had to stop, but maybe this isn’t such a bad thing as it looks like flour is going to be rationed, although goodness knows what those people Mabel gives her bread away to every day are now finding to eat.
I’m still in bed, with my ankles back almost, I like to think, to what they were in my heyday. James is quite pleased with me, so he says.
From Bill’s last card I think he might still be in England – he’s not allowed to say, but he’s using phrases like ‘kicking his heels’ and ‘it’s very jolly’, which, reading between the lines, I think is saying he’s still on a training camp.
Roger says we’re waiting to see what the Germans do, and they are waiting to see what we are up to. Tommy had to write about the Boer War at school, and he spelt it ‘Bore’, so Roger says this current war will go down in history as the Bore War if it goes on like this much longer.
I hope you got my Christmas card. I would have sent presents but I’ve not been able to get out, but you know I wish you and Ted all Christmas greetings.
I’ll stop now as I have a headache, and my fingers are so awkward I’m struggling to hold my pen, but all my love as ever,
Peggy
The next morning it would be Christmas Eve, and the previous evening Roger had told the children that after breakfast they should come with him over to the church, where, along with other children from his congregation, they could help put out the nativity scene – with its little painted wooden characters denoting Mary, Joseph, the donkey that had carried Mary, the three wise men and the shepherds, the angel Gabriel and little baby Jesus in a wooden crib, who would be watched over by a variety of farm animals in the stable – so that it would be arranged and ready for a carol service during the afternoon.
For the first time in living memory, midnight mass at Roger’s church was going to be cancelled over the difficulty of blacking out the high and awkwardly shaped church windows, which Peggy thought that Roger had found an upsetting decision to make.
The children seemed happy to agree to help with organising the nativity scene, although Roger told Peggy in an aside that the previous year somebody – and he didn’t think it was Tommy – had arranged two of the shepherds’ sheep in a very rude position in pride of place in the nativity scene, and it was only quite a way into the Christmas Eve carols that Roger had noticed, having been alerted to the fact by some chortling amongst the younger members of the church choir. Then he had to make the choice of pretending he hadn’t seen, in the hope that his congregation wouldn’t notice either, or else going across to the nativity scene to remove the amorous ram to a position that was less ‘frisky’ and thereby drawing everyone’s attention to the jape. Mabel had seen the sheep too, and had had a hard time not laughing out loud.
The children were slightly at a loose end now that school had broken up for the Christmas holidays, and aside from going to see Angela, they didn’t have anything much to do, other than going over to June Blenkinsop’s for the food each day.
A parishioner had given the Braithwaithes a fir tree, and the children had spent an hour draping it in tinsel, and in decorating the house with some leftover holly and spruce, with some white-painted fir cones standing out from the dark green of the boughs in pretty relief.
Peggy had decided that although Barbara had sent something for the twins, she was going to say to them that they weren’t to show off about this, as Larry and Gracie wouldn’t be getting anything at all, and it looked like Tommy might not get anything either as unless Mabel and Roger had been more organised than they were usually, present-buying had probably gone out of the window in the run-up to this Christmas.
Peggy thought that there was bound to be some singing around the piano to mark Christmas Day, and she had got Gracie to bring back some oranges from the greengrocer’s that had been hidden under Peggy’s bed, and so Christmas Day wouldn’t pass without any treats, even if the twins and Larry couldn’t be with their parents. Just about everywhere was draped in paper chains as the children had had competitions to see who could make the longest one, and who the quickest paper-chain-maker was.
The twins had taken it reasonably well that they weren’t going to be seeing their parents over the festive period, and Peggy thought the distractions of having Larry move in and Angela showing signs of improvement had made them realise that these were trying times, and that they had to concentrate on just getting through it all as best as they could.
Immediately the last paper chain had been strung in loops around the banisters to the stairs to the first floor, Roger and Gracie went out in the dark to take a few remaining sprigs of holly and evergreens over to the church, and soon afterwards Peggy heard a plan being hatched amongst the children.
Tommy and Jessie’s bedroom was big enough, just about, to have a second set of bunk beds put in it, all the children were agreeing as they sat in the kitchen icing some gingerbread men that June Blenkinsop had sent over. Aiden was sleeping in bunks at his home, but now with Kelvin away fighting, might it be an idea if the bunks, and Aiden too, came over to Tall Trees while the evacuees were here, and then he and Larry could share the bunks that would be reconstructed on the other side of the room?
Connie was the brains behind this idea, Peggy was certain, although she played dumb when Peggy asked her about it half an hour later when Connie brought her in some bedtime cocoa.
‘You know the timing of this isn’t great, don’t you, Connie? Mabel’s mother is poorly, and with me and Gracie having babies in the not too distant future it’s going to be very busy here,’ said Peggy. ‘And if Angela comes back to live at Tall Trees too when she is well enough, I think Roger and Mabel will feel they’ve got quite enough on their plate without Aiden being here too.’
Connie didn’t look defeated in the slightest. ‘I know all of this, Auntie Peggy. But Roger and Mabel also think Aiden is an exceptionally good influence on the other boys, and he’s quite academic, so he’d be good for all our homework as we’ll work up to the level he is, rather than everyone working down to the level I am at. And it would free up space at the Kells’, so they could rent to the Air Ministry, and this would mean they could pay for Aiden’s keep here and still make a tidy
profit.’
Connie might not be good with her books herself, thought Peggy, but she had clearly taken on board a lot of Barbara’s comments about money and how the war was proving to be a welcome boost to the income of some. In fact, listening to her had been remarkably like listening to Barbara when she had set her mind on something.
‘I don’t disagree with you, Connie, not in the slightest,’ said Peggy. ‘But the truth of it is that Tall Trees is not our house to do with as we please, and you and the other children know that. But if you are to persist in this bunks plan, if I were you, I’d wait until Christmas is out of the way before someone mentions it to Roger and Mabel. And if I were you, I’d absolutely be telling all of my friends right now that it isn’t at all likely that this is going to happen.’
Connie gave a demure look in her aunt’s direction, and said she would go and get Peggy a gingerbread man as a parishioner had just dropped some off.
Peggy smiled to herself, thinking Connie could be a cheeky minx at times.
She heard Connie say from the passageway, ‘Auntie Peggy says we are to wait until after Christmas before mentioning anything about the bunk beds. She says too that she doesn’t think we are going to be allowed.’
What Connie didn’t realise, however, was that she was standing in the perfect place for her reflection in the hallway mirror to be reflected back onto the mirror in Peggy’s room, giving Peggy full view of Connie’s thumbs up and raised brows, all of which signalled very clearly that Connie, together with the corresponding silence from the boys (who were presumably signalling back at Connie just as cheekily), thought it a done deal that Aiden and his bunks would soon be in residence upstairs at Tall Trees.
Peggy had to laugh – and suddenly she was pretty certain too that the redoubtable Connie and her chums would get their way.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Peggy’s sleep was broken first thing on Christmas Eve with what turned out to be a sad telephone call long before anyone had woken up, and as the telephone was ringing in the room next to where Peggy was, and Roger didn’t pound down the stairs to answer it as he usually did, she got out of bed, and with it still being pitch black outside went to answer the dratted telephone, her bare feet cold on the cool of the large grey flagstones that covered the whole of the ground floor.
It was to hear Mabel’s querulous voice as she told Peggy that her mother had finally passed away, Mabel having just found her still and stiff in bed, presumably having died not long after Mabel checked on her for the night, as rigor mortis had set in already.
Peggy said how sorry she was as this must be very upsetting for Mabel.
Peggy was used to Mabel sounding capable, but now she sounded very shaken as she prattled on in a quickening tempo saying that of course the timing was dreadful, as trying to get a funeral director out on Christmas Eve, when many of the roads were closed, was likely to prove nigh on impossible and it didn’t bear thinking about just leaving her mother’s body lying in bed over Christmas. She had been planning on coming home anyway at lunchtime as one of Roger’s parishioners had offered to go and get her, as she was determined to spend Christmas at Tall Trees, even if her mother were to slip away in her absence. She had paid a nurse to come over later in the day to look after her mother, but now she could stop that, which would save some money.
Although her words made sense, and in theory their clarity suggested all was well with Mabel – or as well as it could be when a woman has recently lost a deeply loved parent – Mabel didn’t sound at all like the resourceful, rambunctious woman Peggy had become so fond of. She sounded what Peggy could only think of as diminished as a person somehow, and as if she needed some moral support, neither of which one would normally associate with the ordinarily larger-than-life Mabel.
‘Let me go and fetch Roger for you, Mabel. I think he’s the one you need to speak to,’ said Peggy in as soothing a way as she could, given the early hour as she was feeling bleary with sleep. ‘Don’t go away as I can’t sprint up the stairs.’
She found herself able to climb the stairs to his room only very slowly. The shock of hearing that Mabel’s mother had finally died seemed to be making her feel light-headed and queasy.
Peggy tapped on Roger’s door and after she’d knocked a second time, he opened it dressed in Mabel’s floral dressing gown, having clearly not been able to find his woollen maroon one.
‘Mabel is on the telephone, Roger – she doesn’t sound very good. Her mother died during the night, and Mabel is now having a few problems as to what to do,’ Peggy said in a whisper as she didn’t want to wake the children or Gracie.
Roger nodded as he brushed past and went swiftly down the stairs.
He and Mabel talked for a long time, he explaining that the first thing she needed to do was to get a doctor to come and certify death, as nothing could happen until after that.
Peggy got back into bed and tried to go back to sleep. But then she heard Roger say to Mabel that he would go to help her, but he would need first for his curate to take the carol service this afternoon and to oversee the nativity.
After a while there was the ding of the bell as Roger replaced the receiver, and Peggy called to him, saying if he needed her to ring the curate for him, she could do that, as that would mean he could concentrate on getting over to see Mabel as soon as possible.
Roger came into her room and said he really couldn’t do that as Peggy was supposed to be on bed rest.
‘Roger, I don’t think making a telephone call is going to be beyond me, I promise,’ Peggy tried to reassure him. ‘Mabel sounds as if she needs her husband, and I can tell Tommy what has happened when the children get up.’
‘Let me make a brew and I’ll think about it,’ said Roger. ‘I do feel I’m needed over in Leeds at the minute and so you might have hit on a good plan, even if it is Gracie who ends up doing the running around.’
Twenty minutes later Roger was in the car, attempting to navigate his way through flurries of snow so that he could be with his grieving wife.
After a while there was a strange dull thudding noise from outside, and Gracie (Roger had insisted she was up and dressed before he left, and that she was on top of what she had to do with giving breakfasts, and possibly lunches, to the hens, Bucky and Peggy, as well as everybody else) and Peggy peered out of the window next to her bedside to see the telephone pole at the end of the garden had toppled sideways, presumably having been weakened by the bad weather, wrenching the telephone line into Tall Trees off the house, so that it lay like a black snake sinewed across the white of the lawn.
Peggy thought Gracie summed up their thoughts pretty well when she lifted the now dead telephone receiver and announced, ‘Well, that’s a reet bugger.’
While Gracie pulled on her gum boots to go and sort out the hens, Peggy tried to decide what to do.
She needed to report the loss of the telephone connection, but she wasn’t certain who to do this to. In the end she decided that the curate would have to organise this, being Roger’s right-hand man at the church, and with Tall Trees being the responsibility of the church.
She wrote the curate a note explaining the situation with Mabel’s mother and the broken telephone line, and gave him the telephone number of Mabel’s mother’s house, and asked him if he could also report the loss of the line to the telephone company and say that it was very important that Roger’s telephone be established as soon as possible, as this bout of cold weather had left many of his parishioners vulnerable and people needed to be able to raise him in an emergency. Peggy then said in the letter that the curate would also have to see to getting the nativity set out from where it was stored in the crypt and then oversee the children as they put it up (she would send the Tall Trees contingent of children over to the church at eleven, she mentioned) and, finally, the curate would also have to step into Roger’s shoes by taking the carol service this afternoon.
Peggy explained that she was sorry to have to ask the curate to do so much and so
quickly, but Roger had had no choice but to leave first thing for Leeds. Roger planned on being back at Tall Trees to take the two church services on Christmas Day, she added as a PS.
Gracie came back in from the garden with a very pink nose and a haul of only three eggs, the hens clearly not thinking much of laying in the cold weather, and she didn’t even take off her coat but just turned round and went straight out again, this time clutching Peggy’s note to the curate.
Connie came downstairs for a drink of water and Peggy said could Connie drink it quickly and then nip back upstairs and fetch Tommy to her, ideally without waking Larry or Jessie, and then would Connie go back to her room and give Peggy ten minutes on her own with Tommy?
Tommy came into Peggy’s room downstairs with a very pensive look on his face.
Bucky hissed at him and jumped off of the bed and onto the floor; clearly the cat could still remember Tommy’s former taunting, although Peggy had been encouraging Tommy to feed him as she told him that when Bucky came to associate Tommy with food, the puss would very likely start to look forward to seeing him.
Peggy patted the bed, and told Tommy to sit on it beside her. She quickly filled him in on what had happened and that Roger had had to go to Leeds to be with Mabel.
Tommy didn’t know how to react. At one moment he looked like he might cry, and then the next he looked lost, and after that quite angry.
‘Whatever you feel, Tommy, is fine,’ said Peggy, ‘as there is no right or wrong way to behave when somebody dies. Some people find themselves very angry and others very sad. Your granny was ill and she was quite old, but you have spent a lot of time with her, and so the news of her dying will make you feel a bit strange.’
Tommy looked at her with eyes seeming to be dark, bottomless pools, a-swirl with emotion.
Without a word Peggy opened her arms, and Tommy allowed himself to be comforted.
