by Angela Huth
They lunched in a busy room full of loud-voiced people, smoke, smells of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Emily, sitting opposite Fen and Kevin, could only just hear what they were talking about. Something to do with the Prime Minister, which made them smile. All the same, they looked fidgety, like people running out of time : Fen’s fingers strummed the striped tablecloth. Emily counted the beams in the ceiling: thirteen down, fourteen across. That must be wrong. She counted again. No, she was right. She felt inclined to point this out to Kevin – he would be able to explain. But his head was bent towards Fen’s, listening to her. He didn’t look as if he wanted to be interrupted. So Emily turned her attention to the knives and forks. They had wooden handles, nice to feel, black as the beams. She wondered if they had a life of their own, in the darkness of their drawer, which we could know nothing about. Her fork, for instance? Was it married to her knife? Or merely a friend? Or perhaps an enemy, furious at having been laid opposite this knife? Emily picked them both up, wondering.
‘Put those down,’ said Fen. ‘What on earth are you doing?’
Emily spent most of lunch in silence, working out a story about a runaway spoon who was adopted by a kind old knife and fork. The reason the spoon ran away was because it hated its unkind stepfather, who was a sharp carving knife. On the train, if she wasn’t too sleepy, she might tell the story to Fen to see if she thought it was a good idea.
The pudding arrived. Orange banana jelly. Emily pushed her plate away.
‘What’s the matter with it?’ asked Fen. Her cheeks were unusually pink.
‘I don’t want it.’
‘But you ordered it.’
‘I don’t like the look of it, though. Please need I eat it?’
‘Half of it,’ said Fen, finally. ‘There’s nothing more boring than children who are fussy about food.’
Emily pursed her lips, dug her spoon into the glossy jelly. She looked up at Kevin, who was watching her.
‘I was the one who stole your handkerchief,’ she said. Kevin looked surprised, glanced at Fen.
‘What handkerchief?’
‘Didn’t you miss it? You dropped it at our house that morning.’
‘No, I didn’t miss it,’ said Kevin. ‘What did you do with it? Can I have it back?’
‘Afraid not. I let it float down the stream. I suppose I could have rescued it, but I decided not to.’ Emily felt her mother’s eyes unflinchingly upon her. She dare not meet them. She ate a spoonful of the jelly.
‘Why did you do that, Em?’ Fen’s voice was puzzled but gentle. Emily shrugged, still not looking at her mother. Fen bent towards her, not noticing Kevin now.
‘Dunno.’
‘You’ve never done anything like that before, have you?’
‘Course not.’
‘You know about stealing. I mean – ‘
‘I know it’s wrong,’ Emily interrupted, ‘but I just felt like doing it.’
‘Well, just so long as you don’t feel like doing it again,’ said Kevin. He smiled at her. She felt the burning of tears behind her eyes, but controlled them. She swung the melted jelly about in her mouth from cheek to cheek. All this understanding was confusing. ‘We’ll have to be leaving in half an hour if we want to catch that train,’ Kevin was saying.
‘And leave that revolting looking stuff, darling. If you want to get down …’ Fen’s eyes were sad. Emily ran from them.
She ran outside into the grey squalls of rain, where the cold instantly quenched the fire in her cheeks, and spat out the jelly in the car park. For a moment she wondered where to go, then she saw a grey stone outhouse with a notice nailed near its door: Pottery for Sale. Emily made her way through the huddle of cars to the door of this building – a stable door, the top half open. Tiptoeing, she looked inside.
An old man sat at a potter’s wheel, his fingers fluid in the spinning wet clay beneath them, the only sound the soft rasping of stone as the wheel revolved. Emily opened the door. She went in. The potter looked up, his hands fluttering over his lump of clay in absolute harmony, like a pair of wings, as he did so.
‘Nasty out,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Emily. She stepped nearer the wheel. A dark hollow was now forming in the clay, and its sides bulged a little, just for a moment, till the potter decided to press them back again. In a faraway corner of the roughly converted room the yellow-green flame of an oil stove flickered behind its small windows, suggesting warmth within itself, but jealously forbidding that warmth to escape.
‘Why are you working on a Sunday?’ asked Emily.
‘Like it. Like working every day of the week. If you like your work you don’t care which day it is, do you?’
‘Like my father,’ said Emily.
‘Besides,’ the potter went on, not appearing to have heard her, ‘my hands are seizing up. Cold like this, they aren’t much good. Not many more years.’
‘Till you die, you mean?’
“That’s right.’ The potter lifted one hand from the clay and curled up his fingers, testing them. ‘Then all that’s left of me is these few pots.’ He nodded towards a table behind him, scattered with an assortment of jars, mugs and plates. Simple things, their ridged sides glazed peaty brown or terra cotta. Emily went to the table and picked up a shallow ashtray. Its bottom was marked with white, twig-like strokes. Wintry.
‘You can have that if you like,’ said the potter.
‘Oh no, really. My mother will give me some money.’
‘You take it, luv. There’s not many that comes in of a Sunday, and if they do they disturb me. You haven’t disturbed me. I’d like you to have it.’
Emily thanked him and left. Outside she met her mother and Kevin making for the car. She ran to them, excited, and handed the ashtray to Kevin.
‘Look what the old man in the pottery shop has given me! He said I could have it for no money.’
Kevin examined it, Fen close to him. The rain dimmed its glaze.
‘Beautiful,’ he said.
‘Would you like it?’ Emily asked.
‘Thank you, Em. But I think you ought to give it to your father.’
‘That’s a good idea. I hadn’t got a present for him.’ She took it back at once and wiped the rain from its surface.
At the station the truculence that had afflicted her for two days – a disagreeable feeling that rose within her but she felt unable to combat – came upon her again. Fen stood at the window waving at Kevin-silly little nervous waves-while Emily refused to move from her seat.
‘Kevin’s an old fat pig,’ she said, and then remembered about the ashtray. Fen didn’t seem to have heard – noise of the train starting. Emily was glad. She opened her book, and shortly fell asleep.
Five
There was no news of Idle’s return from Africa. As the Nativity Play drew nearer Emily began to fret. Fen’s promises that somehow he would manage to be there were no consolation. She needed positive assurance. As it was, the anxiety began to detract from the pleasure of rehearsals, the excitement.
It wasn’t till the morning of the play itself that a telegram arrived : all being well, Idle planned to arrive at the airport just in time for Fen to drive him straight to the school. Emily’s relief and delight were boundless. She ran off through the snowy garden singing to herself, shaking branches of the trees as she went. Some of their snow fell around her in small showers, but laughing out loud, she scarcely felt their wet or cold on her cheeks.
At school, everything was wonderfully abnormal. In the Hall, the Christmas tree was lit with blue and green bulbs, giving the place an unfamiliar and mysterious glow. Miss Curtis played the morning hymn with trembling fingers and great nicety of feeling, while on the bosom of her crochet cardigan bobbed a posy of plastic holly and tinsel fern. Miss Neal, a character less swayed into celebration of annual events, in spite of her dedication of the spirit of the Nativity, made only one concession to the importance of the day: a hairnet sprinkled with tiny diamonds. While the headmistress asked in
her confident voice that God should bring peace into the hearts of parents and children, Emily, screwing up her eyes in the black cup of her hands, prayed that she wouldn’t stumble over her lines : and by the time the many requests to the Lord were over fresh snow was flowering against the glass of the grey windows.
The seniors were allowed to change first – lucky things, as Emily said to Sandra – almost directly after lunch. From the door of her classroom Emily watched with some envy as they went by: first, the troupe of Dancing Angels, in one- shouldered white tunics. They had gleaming pink lips and haloes of small lacquered stars, whose wire structure, carefully hidden in their hair, could just be observed from behind. They carried their huge gold wings, ready to put them on at the last moment. Meantime, wingless, they were trusted to spend a quiet hour in the library, reading, still as possible so as to cause no creases.
Then came the kings and shepherds, in rough and bright Eastern clothes. Their faces had been made up by the art teacher, whose talent and experience had taught her what looked impressive from a distance. Close to, their livid brown skins and wild black brows were almost clownish, though their eyes remained solemn. Finally, Mary. Jennifer Plomber, ace of the netball field, transformed to an unimaginable gentleness of bearing. She came up the steps, navy school mackintosh flung carelessly over her long, blue cloak, twinkling with snow. As she lifted her long skirts, showing a flash of wet gumboot, she smiled at Emily. Emily returned a sighing smile, and counted the years.
Finally, the Children by the Manger were allowed to exchange their uniforms for their simple dancing tunics, garlanded only with strands of real ivy over their shoulders. They pinned these sprays on to each other, fingers unusually clumsy, and squealed as the cold leaves touched their bare arms. The room in which they gathered behind the stage smelt of sweat. The floor beneath their feet was ice. The first carol, muffled by the curtains, began.
When the time came for Emily’s solo, she was calm and untrembling. Alone on the steps leading to the stage, a spotlight in her eyes, she listened to her voice funnelling into the quiet blackness of the audience. At the end of her verse they applauded. (Miss Neal had said they would do no such thing until the very end : it would spoil the atmosphere.) As Emily stepped down to the side of the stage, containing her pleasure in the slightest flicker of a smile, a booming voice from the back of Hall quickly came to the rescue of that atmosphere, cutting short the applause.
‘… And suddenly, there were with the shepherds, the angels of the Lord, praising God and saying …’
The stage curtains snapped back. There they were, the dazzling bank of Dancing Angels, piled up on their hidden chairs and step ladders, paper trumpets to the ready at their mouths, wings and haloes a-glitter: the results of all their rehearsals triumphant now, as they kept their tableau of uncanny stillness. Before them, on the ground, the shepherds were twisted into ingenious positions of fear, equally frozen.
‘Holy, Holy, Holy,’ shouted the angels, breaking the dramatic tension, and the smallest shepherd, overcome, dropped his crook with a great thud. Under cover of all this activity Emily glanced quickly at the dim faces of the audience. Unable to see her parents, she hastily lowered her eyes again. This was an occasion when make-believe worked for her. The Angels, ordinary school girls any other day of the year, conjured a strange wonder on the stage. And as the next carol filled the Hall an old and private world of clear midnights and snowbound stars, which flames the dullest soul at Christmas, dazed Emily, until cramp struck her leg, God’s holiness receded a little, and she came back to reality.
One of the few advantages of being a Child by the Manger was that, not being required for the final tableau, they were able to change first, and thus find their parents first when the performance was over. The great surge of parental pride that burst forth with the final curtain – applause and tears in almost equal measure, therefore went unheeded by the Children. They were already in the basement cloakroom, ripping off their ivy-ed tunics and leaving them in blue pools on the stone floor, as they clamoured with excitement, impatient for anticipated praise. Emily was one of the first to race back to the Hall. Brightly lit by the tree and other lights, the awe of so short a while ago quite scattered now, jabbering parents stood thickly together, united in their feelings. Almost at once Emily saw Fen. She stood by the piano in a long, mustard velvet cloak, a black scarf swathed over her head, rather in the fashion of the shepherds. Emily quickly pushed towards her. Fen smiled at once, and bent down to kiss her.
‘Darling, you were absolutely marvellous.’
‘Where’s Papa?’ asked Emily, looking round.
‘I’ll tell you. Let’s go.’
Fen took Emily’s hand. They made their way out of the Hall and into the drive. There, small gusts of snow blew into their faces.
‘What happened to him?’
‘No one could help it,’ said Fen, ‘but his aeroplane was delayed. He rang me from the airport in Capetown. He was dreadfully upset.’
Emily stopped. For a moment she watched the snow pile up on the toes of her boots. Then she said :
‘But I wanted him to come,’ and buried her head in her mother’s shoulder.
‘I know, I know. But there was nothing he could do. He’ll be back very late tonight. He’ll be there when you wake up in the morning.’
Emily felt a shudder go right through her body. She detached herself from the warmth of her mother. She could think of nothing to say.
They walked a few paces up the slight incline of the drive till they came to the windows of the Hall. There, at Emily’s instigation, they paused again. They looked in. Mothers and fathers greeted their children with shouts and gestures of congratulation, laughing and smiling.
‘It was so good, too,’ said Fen. The circle of snow in which she stood was grapefruit coloured from the lights inside. Emily, turning from the scene in the Hall and looking up at her, saw that her black scarf merged into the night sky, its long ends billowing among the clouds, and her face was pale but distinct. ‘Marcia Burrows is waiting for us in the car,’ Fen added.
‘Marcia Burrows? Why’s she come?’
‘She was going to be all ready for Papa’s return so that she could get on with whatever he wanted done right away.’ Fen paused. ‘Kevin’s there too. He didn’t think you’d mind. He so wanted to see you …’
Emily let her eyes fall from her mother’s face to her cloak. It was the ugliest colour she had ever seen. A sickly, hideous colour against the snow.
‘I didn’t want Kevin to come,’ she said.
‘He thought you were—’
‘I didn’t want him or Miss Burrows. I didn’t want anyone but you and Papa.’
‘Oh, Em.’ Fen shifted her feet, cold. ‘There was nothing anyone could do, you know. I thought – ’
‘Whatever you thought, you thought wrong,’ Emily shouted. Snow blew into her mouth. ‘But anyhow, it doesn’t matter because it was an awful play and I was terrible and I wish I hadn’t been in it.’ She swung back to the windows of the Hall, hunching her shoulders. ‘Look in there!‘
Fen stepped towards her.
‘It doesn’t look to me as if there are many fathers, in fact, darling.’
‘I don’t care. I wanted Papa to come.’ Suddenly she pressed her head against the glass pane and felt the snow that had lodged there crowd against her forehead. ‘All I wanted in the whole world was for you and Papa to come.’
Fen tugged at her arm.
‘Come on, Em. It’s so cold. Please.’
Emily didn’t resist. She no longer cared what she did, whether the snow covered her completely, or she died of cold, anything.
‘I was praying not to forget my words,’ she said. ‘I didn’t even think I should be praying for the aeroplane to get here on time, or for Marcia Burrows and Kevin McCloud not to come.’
‘Don’t go on,’ said Fen, a little desperate, ‘there are so many other years.’
Emily hadn’t seen Kevin since the weekend in the
north. He sat in the back seat of the car, Marcia Burrows beside him.
‘Congratulations,’ she said at once. ‘You were quite a little star, dear.’ She wore an angora beret pulled down over one eye, angora gloves to match.
‘Well done,’ said Kevin. ‘We enjoyed it.’ Emily said nothing.
Fen drove cautiously to the station-it was still snowing, and settling quite deeply. Kevin left for London with a final tribute to Emily’s performance, but still she did not respond.
Her spirits remained dulled for the rest of the evening. Silently, she noticed that on this visit Marcia Burrows seemed a little easier, more at home. She took out her knitting, after a glass of sherry, without asking Fen’s permission, and chattered on about how comparatively lucky were the birds of Holland Park during a hard winter. So many people seemed keen to feed them. She herself went there most Saturday mornings, with a small bag of special bird food, though of course priority was for the few sparrows, almost tame now, who came to her house in Olympia.
Soon after supper Fen left for the airport, telling Emily to go to bed. She doubted whether she would be back much before midnight in this weather. She wrapped herself up in her cloak and scarf again, and took a torch to the door. Emily knelt at the window and watched the timeless shape of her mother, guided by the thin beam, bent against the flurrying snow. She felt a moment’s anxiety. But the feeling, settling as it did on the surface of the baser sadnesses of the last few hours, was lightweight. By the time she sat at the fire once more, it had gone, to be replaced by a great longing for tomorrow.
She watched the fire. Marcia Burrows’ needles clicked with a definite rhythm. Her ankles were crossed on the floor. The green sage stuff of her skirt just covered her knees. She had straight, thinnish, dull legs, the kind that look easiest in walking shoes. Her fingers had beautifully polished nails -short but shining. There was something reassuring about her appearance : a firmness, a sense of constancy, and responsibility, not immediately apparent when you first encountered her slight frame, and were impressed only by its neatness. Looking at her now, Emily understood why the sparrows kept on going back to her house: she would see to it they always found crumbs. Also, decided Emily, she had rather a nice face. Especially when she thought no one was looking at her. It was only when people questioned her, paid her attention, that her features recoiled almost imperceptibly, leaving her with an expression of anticipated disapproval, or perhaps it was caution. At least she wasn’t bossy and interfering. She said nothing about bed. Instead, after a while, she remarked how good she thought the play.
