by Angela Huth
‘I’ve got all this to get through, dear,’ said Miss Burrows, indicating a huge pile of letters at her side. ‘But it’s very nice of you to think of it all the same.’ She slipped a new piece of paper into the typewriter.
Emily paused. ‘Do come,’ she said. ‘Just for a bit. I’ll get you a glass. Would you like a straw?’
‘Well.’ Miss Burrows smiled and slipped her cardigan over her shoulders, feeling the draught from the door. ‘Why do you want me to come?’
Emily paused again.
‘I just do.’ Miss Burrows rubbed her hands together, kneading the knuckles.
‘Very well,’ she said, standing up, ‘since you’re so insistent, just for a moment. I could do with a few minutes’ break.’
‘Goody. Come on, then.’ Emily darted away ahead of her. While she fetched another glass from the kitchen Miss Burrows put on her long brown mackintosh. They went together into the garden. In silence they walked side by side towards the orchard. The figures of Fen, Idle and Wolf were silhouettes against the untidy triangle of flames. Miss Burrows sniffed the air.
‘What a lovely smell. I haven’t smelt anything like that for years.’
‘My roast apples,’ said Emily. ‘You might have them for dinner.’
Fen and Idle welcomed Miss Burrows: said what a good idea it was of Emily’s to have brought her. Idle poured her a quarter glass of champagne – all she would allow as alcohol didn’t agree with her, she said. Glass in hand, she stood a little away from the others, further from the fire.
Emily found a stick and tried to poke one of her apples out of the ashes. It fell apart as she did so, a charred grey ball brightened with just one stripe of unburnt yellow. Fen said she would get some potatoes instead. Miss Burrows smiled gently in the firelight. Wolf ran to fetch the potatoes. Emily whispered to her mother she felt quite sorry for Miss Burrows. Out loud, she asked if they could cook sausages on sticks, as well. Idle threw more branches on to the fire, shifting its position. The flames pointed higher into the night air, cold now, and Miss Burrows, shivering, sipped politely at her iced champagne.
Emily’s bedroom was at the top of the house, the attic floor. Its small window overlooked part of the garden, the barn – whose thatched roof sagged under its weight of old moss, and badly needed renewing – and the solid tower of the church. The room itself, with its sloping ceilings and low-slung white-washed beams, hazardous to grown-ups, was a delight to children. The walls were papered with a small pink ragwort, old-fashioned and pale. Emily had pinned some of her own paintings to the beams-crowds of brightly coloured, active children all with their names and ages floating above their heads. In a tooth-mug on the pine chest was a sprig of bronzed beech leaves and a couple of white chrysanthemums – Fen’s doing: this autumn every room, every corner of the house was lit by a random clump of flowers and leaves. The arm chair by the window was piled with old stuffed animals whose heyday was long since past, but whom out of loyalty Emily could not bear to throw away. Only her two special bears – quite opposite characters, one tall and skinny, one fat and fluffy, both called Patrick - were allowed on her bed. On the table beside the bed were a pile of E. Nesbit books, an alarm clock with a funny luminous face that Idle had given her when she was six, and an old bottle of scent, with just a trace of scent left on its bottom, that had once belonged to Fen.
A rod of early sun shone directly on to Emily’s bed, waking her. She stirred, rubbed her eyes. The small square of the sky in the window was bright blue, the mists of yesterday all gone. She pulled the two Patricks into bed with her, their early morning treat. They were too big to sleep there all night. Their fur was cold, the inside of the bed soft and warm.
It was Sunday, Emily remembered. She liked everything about Sunday except for the church bells. No school, an hour or so in her parents’ room before they got up, roast beef, a whole afternoon with Wolf. There was just one thing wrong with this Sunday, though: it was Papa’s last day.
Remembering this, she reached under her bed for her sketch block and Caran d’Ache felt pens: she would do him a picture to take to Africa. Guy Fawkes’ Night: a bonfire bigger than theirs last night, with an ugly guy and people with smiling red faces. She started off with the flames, brilliant on the white paper. It was almost irresistible not to do the best bits first.
Emily drew carefully: Idle liked her drawings. When she gave them to him on special occasions, such as going abroad, he would take them with him, folded small in his wallet. Then when he came home, he would add them to the collection in the special drawer in his desk. Sometimes they would get the whole lot out and laugh at Emily’s earliest attempts, things she had done when she was three and four. Idle himself had never been able to draw, so he couldn’t help her. Fen was the best one at that. Only last week she’d shown Emily an easy way to draw a horse : draw box shapes first, then fill in the curves. But Idle used to write poetry, he said. Once, he’d had something published in his school magazine, and a magazine he worked for when he was at Oxford published several of his poems. He’d show them to Emily one day, he promised, when she was older. She probably wouldn’t like them much at the moment: they were about love and people running away from each other and things like that. He still wrote poems, sometimes, for Emily: she kept them locked up in her writing case and only showed them to her three best friends, who thought they were very good. Once Idle had sent her a letter addressing the envelope in rhyme: it had taken five days to arrive from Scotland because, she supposed, all the postmen had taken so long to read it. Emily was proud of her father: he gave the best advice she knew, about anything you asked. This morning she must remember to have a word with him about her play. He’d never been in the theatre himself, like Uncle Tom, but he seemed to know about everything.
When Emily had finished the drawing she crept downstairs to the kitchen. It had become a routine, in this house, to take up her parents’ Sunday breakfast on a tray. Every week they seemed surprised and pleased. Every week the planning of this surprise was an especial pleasure.
The kitchen itself was warm, but the tiles cold under Emily’s bare feet. Sun glittered on the draining board and through a pot of chives. There was a faint smell of last night’s garlic, and apples, and the smoke from Fen’s French cigarettes. The kettle was still warm: Fen must have been down to fetch coffee and the papers already. Emily went to the larder, to the shelf crammed with different cereals. Which should she choose for them this Sunday? Every week, whatever her choice, Fen and Idle were marvellously pleased. Taking her time, enjoying the luxury of the decision, Emily reached for two packets. Then she went to the fridge to fetch the jug of cream. She opened and shut the door quickly, so that only for a moment was she struck by the cold blast of refrigerated air.
Fen and Idle’s room, beneath Emily’s, was a disorganised clutter. Books were piled everywhere, between faded antique jugs full of dried wheat and pheasant feathers, between dull brass oil lamps that had never worked. Long necklaces of jet, coral, amethyst and quartz, entangled with crude plastic beads, hung down the sides of the dressing-table mirror, whose dull silver glass was speckled with black spots. On the chaise-longue under the window lay a muddle of Fen’s bright clothes : velvets, soft leathers, wools rich with cornflowers and emerald leaves. The low window ledge itself was crowded with pots of flowers: rust crysanthemums mixed with orange and scarlet poppies made of tissue paper, their petals fulgent in the sunlight, their layered shadows very precise, very pale.
Fen and Idle were propped up in bed against a mass of untidy pillows: Idle in his Londonish pyjamas, almost uncreased blue silk, Fen in a Victorian nightdress of cream cotton, lace ruffles up to her neck. She leant against Idle, her turbulent dark hair awry on his shoulder. Both read papers: both held mugs of coffee.
Emily, so silent at the door with her tray they didn’t notice her, thought that if they had an oval gold frame round them they would look like her grandmother’s miniature paintings of olden days people. She didn’t want to disturb them, in
a way, but she needed their attention. She could wait no longer.
‘Mama and Papa?’
‘Em!’
‘You were so quiet!’
‘How long have you been standing there?’
‘Only a minute.’
They put down their mugs and papers simultaneously. Emily went to the bed and gave them the tray. Fen took the Grape Nuts and kissed her.
‘I was just hoping for Grape Nuts, this morning. You are a clever one to have known.’
Idle dug his spoon into the Rice Crispies swamped in thick cream.
‘Just what I wanted, too,’ he said.
Emily curled herself upon the warm, faded old patchwork quilt that covered the bed, watching her parents eat. She gave a small, comfortable shiver, thinking of the day ahead: all of them helping her and Wolf with the bird town. Of the weeks ahead: snow and holly, and stockings she would fill for them at Christmas with painted fir cones they were making at school, tangerines, and paperbacks from the bottom of the piles so that they wouldn’t remember, and think they were new.
When they had finished eating, Fen and Idle put down their plates and shifted nearer together. Idle had his arm round Fen, now. His fingers stroked her ruffled shoulder. She was warm, deliquescent, beautiful against him.
‘Wolf says his father and Coral his stepmother sleep in separate beds,’ said Emily.
‘Do they ?’ Fen sounded curiously sleepy.
‘Wolf says Coral says it’s because she doesn’t like being so near his father’s snoring.’
Idle smiled at his daughter.
‘Tell you what, Em. Why don’t you go and see how Miss Burrows is? Find out what she’d like for breakfast. Perhaps you could even take it up for her.’
‘That’s a good idea.’ Fen nodded, eyes shut, her hand climbing to Idle’s shoulder.
‘All right. Then I’ll come back.’
She climbed off her parents’ bed, went to the door. In the lesser light of the passage outside their room, the impression of her parents, so close together, became a shining banner in her mind.
Miss Burrows’ brown macintosh covered her narrow bed. She must have been cold in the night. The room, sunless on this side of the house, wasn’t warm. Emily crept over to the window and shut it.
The noise woke Miss Burrows. She sat up quickly, surprised and confused by Emily’s presence.
‘Sorry if I woke you.’
‘Oh, dear, have I overslept? What’s the time?’
Miss Burrows pulled a crochet dressing-jacket from under the sheets and arranged it round her bony white shoulders. Unlike Fen’s, they looked as if they would be uncomfortable to grasp.
‘It isn’t very late. I just came to see if you’d like me to bring you any breakfast.’
‘Breakfast? Well, at home I just manage with a cup of tea and a Ryvita.’ Miss Burrows touched her hair. The roll had come undone. It hung, thinly, to her shoulders. Stripped of its powder, her face shone palely. Her mouth, without its dark lipstick, was a gentle curve, a little tight at the edges.
‘I’ll get it for you,’ said Emily, ‘if you like.’
‘Oh, don’t bother. I can easily come down.’
‘No, really.’
‘Very well.’ In face of such kindness Miss Burrows shivered again. ‘I’m not used to such spoiling,’ she said.
When Emily returned to her parents’ room an hour later, the previous mood had disappeared. The bed was a choppy stretch of newspapers, empty mugs, dressing gowns. Fen was in it alone, reading. Totally absorbed, as she always was by the printed word, Emily didn’t disturb her as she crossed to the bathroom, where Idle was shaving. His face was a snowman’s face of soap: just two black holes for eyes. Emily sat in her usual position on the edge of the bath.
‘I suppose that’s why Miss Burrows is so thin,’ she said. ‘She only eats Ryvita for breakfast.’
‘I dare say that’s it.’ Idle braced his chin in the mirror and made a skilful track of skin across it with his razor.
‘I think she’s too thin.’ Emily paused. She liked to prolong these Sunday morning conversations with her father. Steam rose up from the emerald water he had already run in the bath. There was a smell of pine essence. ‘Thinking of green,’ Emily went on, ‘I was wondering. Do you think in my next play, the children should wear green or brown? I mean, they do live in a wood. In a tree house, you know.’
Idle fidgeted his razor round the crevices of his nose. His decisions on such subjects were always very serious. Even now, Emily was sometimes shy of asking him: but each time she remembered she need not have been, so thoughtful was he in his answers. He’d been a great help over her last play, Daisy, Daisy, the first one she’d actually written down. It had been performed in the drawing room in London, two friends and herself in the cast. Her own part had been Mrs Lemonheart, a fussy old woman with a bun. She’d stuffed her jersey with a cushion to make a huge bosom and stomach, rouged her cheeks and spoken in a gruff voice. And Idle hadn’t known it was her till the very end, when she let down her hair at the third bow. He swore positively he hadn’t known it was her: he thought she was just the producer and writer. It was amazing. He was the best ever audience, Idle.
‘Couldn’t you dye their clothes greeny brown, like camouflage?’ Idle suggested. ‘That way, when they were being chased through the forest, like you said, they’d stand a better chance of not being seen.’
‘Oh, Papa, that is a good idea. I’ll do that. Wolf’ll like that because it’ll be more boyish, camouflage. It’ll be the first play he’s ever been in, you know. He’s going to be the murderer.’
‘A child murderer?’
‘I read about one in the papers the other day. Oh, he’ll get punished all right.’
Idle raised his grey brows, cracking the drying soap on his forehead.
‘And will you help us a bit with our bird town this afternoon?’
‘Of course.’
‘I wish you weren’t going away.’
‘So do I. Still, it won’t be for too long.’ Idle cleared his mouth of soap. He came over to her, bunched his lips through the circle of white froth, and kissed Emily on the forehead. He was expert at doing this, without getting the soap on her. Emily tried to smile. She supposed it wouldn’t be that long, really.
Three
‘Emily Harris, please. Come forward, Emily.’
From the shadows of the hall, Miss Neal’s bossy voice. Up on the stage Emily stepped from the security of the line of Children by the Manger. She had been chosen to speak a solo poem. A double-edged honour, fear and excitement combined to make one of her knees tremble. She took a deep breath. You should always start off with a deep breath, Miss Neal said. Like opera singers. Otherwise, how would your voice carry?
‘“The Star that shone on Bethlehem,” ’ Emily began.
‘“Its bright, ethereal ray,
“To guide three kings and show to them
“The place where Jesus lay,
“Shine on your path all through the year — ” ’
‘ “Your path,” ’ Miss Neal interrupted. ‘How many times have I told you, Emily? You’ve got to get this message to the parents, down here in the audience. Their path, you must make them feel. Try again.’
Emily tried again.
‘And once more, shall we?’
Behind her, Emily could hear Sandra Buckle tittering. Someone else shifted, restless. She sensed Miss Neal’s patience, limited by her keenness, was expiring. If she didn’t get it right this time, someone else would be asked to replace her. She’d have to tell Papa, who’d known for weeks she was going to do it, they’d changed their minds.
Deep breath. Dig toes into polished wooden floor boards that were becoming warm under her cold feet.
‘ “… Shine on your path all through the year”’ – Emily gritted her back teeth -
‘ “To guide, to comfort and to cheer and bless you” ’ (sweetly)
‘ “On” ’ (pause, smile) ‘ “your” ’ (pause, smi
le) ‘ “way” ’ … (smile, smile, smile).
‘That’s it. There we are at last.’
Miss Neal snapped together her small hands. They remained locked, like a clip. Together they bounced up and down, eager. Miss Neal was blessed with a superlative enthusiasm, every Christmas, for producing a Nativity Play whose strength and tradition were built on lack of change. Over the years these plays had achieved a considerable reputation in the locality. The consistently high standard of fine emotion with which the school wrung from its version of the Christmas story had been known to cause tears in the most cynical father’s eye. More, one old girl Virgin Mary had had a screen test with MGM (outcome still unknown), and possibly as a result of attributes developed since her Virgin days. But still. It was common knowledge that anyone who rose above an extra in the Nativity Play was certain of a solid beginning in the real theatrical world, should she choose a histrionic life.
‘Now.’ On her particularly small feet Miss Neal trotted across the hall to the pianist, Miss Curtis, whose only resemblance to Beethoven was her deafness. ‘ “The Holly and the Ivy,” girls,’ said Miss Neal. She took a slight hop in Miss Curtis’s direction, unclipping her hands and posing them above her head to indicate she held a garland of imaginary ivy. ‘And the ivy, dear,’ she mouthed. The partnership had been a long one : Miss Curtis understood.
The children descended the squeaky steps from the platform and formed themselves into two rings of eight. Miss Curtis, eyes alert for signals, played a chord, bending her whole body forward. She was always moved by Christmas carols, no matter how often she played them.
‘Ready! Eight to the right, then. Begin.’
The music, the singing, the skipping began. Emily concentrated hard. This was her best time of the week at school. The excitement of rehearsals was like climbing a slow hill to Christmas, being quite positive of all the glitter at the top. Besides, she loved dancing and acting. This year, being a junior, she had to put up with her minor role as Child by the Manger, although the solo verse gave her a slight taste of the stardom to come if she tried very hard. If she tried very hard there was even a chance, next year, she would be a Dancing Angel. The year after, perhaps, a Speaking Shepherd, followed by a Singing Wise Man. (Each Wise Man had to sing a whole solo verse walking up the hall through the audience. If ever she was one, she’d keep her fingers crossed to be Myrrh.) After that … Well, she didn’t like to think about it, really. Her hands might get too big, or her nose. And according to Jennifer Plomley, this year’s Mary, it was quite a drag keeping still all that time, staring unblinking into the strong torchlight shining from the manger which, from the audience’s point of view, was merely a gentle halo.
