The Silent Stars Go By

by Sally Nicholls

  ‘There you are!’ Margot said. ‘I’m so sorry, I seem to have missed breakfast altogether.’

  ‘Oh, darling, don’t worry about it. I know what it’s like when you’re young. Enjoy it while you can! I don’t suppose you get much chance to sleep in a boarding house.’

  ‘I’ll say.’ Margot watched her mother. ‘How is everything? James looked well last night.’

  ‘He’s very well.’ Her mother carried on pulling out the old straw without looking up. ‘But you can see that yourself.’

  ‘I...’ Margot stopped. She felt, once again, the frustration that there wasn’t a script for this. She knew how one was supposed to behave towards brothers, sons, parents. But this?

  Was she supposed to be a second mother to James? Or ignore him completely? Or treat him like a favourite brother?

  She’d been so determined that James would never feel his difference, that he would feel as loved by her mother as the other children were. She had stayed away deliberately, so as not to get in the way. But was that right?

  James’s birth certificate had her own name on it, of course. Mother: Margaret Allen. And one day he would read it. Margot had thought about that moment far more often that she liked to admit. What would he think when he saw her name? Was it better to tell... but one couldn’t tell a two-year-old a thing like that.

  What would he think when he saw that name? Surely he would hate it – knowing they had all lied to him, knowing that his parents weren’t his parents?

  But would he hate her ? Would he understand that she hadn’t had a choice, that she was trying to be unselfish, to give him the best life she possibly could? How would he feel if she persisted in behaving like a stranger towards him? Surely a child would expect his mother to behave like one? But how could her mother love him properly if Margot was there, getting in her way? She’d had to leave them to their own devices, surely that was obvious? But would it be obvious to James?

  How could one behave with honour towards the child he was now, the adult he would be one day and her parents? It was impossible.

  Her mother, still bent over the nest box, cut into these thoughts.

  ‘Harry’s home for Christmas.’

  Margot stiffened.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Jocelyn told me.’

  ‘His mother was asking after you. Said she’d written but you didn’t reply. She couldn’t understand it, she said. Wanted to know if you were – spoken for – by someone else.’

  Heavens, how awful this conversation was! Margot could feel herself curling up with embarrassment inside.

  ‘I told her you were an adult now and I didn’t have the first idea what you got up to in Durham, but that as far as I knew you were still unattached.’

  ‘That must have been excruciating for you,’ said Margot, studying the peeling paint on the top of the henhouse.

  ‘Well, darling, it was rather.’ Something in her mother’s voice made her look up. ‘It’s never a good idea to leave people hanging, you know. His mother is one of our most regular churchgoers, and I’m sure she has no intention of leaving the parish – and we certainly don’t, of course. It does make life difficult for your father, you know.’

  ‘Perhaps Father might like to discuss it with me himself, if he’s got a problem with how I behave,’ said Margot, more bitterly than she’d intended. But really! Her father was marvellous at handling the villagers’ problems. How absurd that he should be so bad at dealing with his own.

  ‘Your father—’ her mother began.

  ‘. . . Is a wonderful man. I know! To everyone else. He never talks to me! Surely you must see that?’

  Margot’s mother sighed.

  ‘Your father works incredibly hard,’ she said. ‘Particularly at Christmas. Perhaps you could try talking to him yourself?’

  Margot flushed. She was... well, not a child, but not exactly an adult either. And her father was her father. The idea that she might mend this breach herself was a new thought, and not entirely a pleasant one.

  She turned the conversation back to Harry.

  ‘What do you want me to do, Mother?’ she said. ‘Exactly? You were so down on him when you found out about – about—’

  ‘Really!’ Now it was her mother’s turn to be surprised. ‘You couldn’t expect your father and I to be pleased, could you? After what he did to you?’

  No, of course she couldn’t.

  ‘Naturally we were upset,’ her mother went on. ‘And really both of you should have known better! But, darling – you can’t leave him hanging like that. You have to finish it one way or another.’

  ‘You mean I should tell him about James?’ The thought was alarming.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far.’ The secrecy around James wasn’t just to protect her, she knew. Awkwardnesess with Mrs Singer about the church flowers wasn’t the only way she might make life difficult for your father. ‘Not unless you were planning on marrying him. But for the boy’s sake, you ought to finish things properly.’

  Finish things properly... How bleak those words made her feel. She couldn’t... surely she couldn’t have thought there might still be a chance... that she and Harry might... ?

  But perhaps she always had, somewhere inside her. She had never loved anybody the way she loved Harry.

  Something of this must have shown on her face, because her mother’s expression altered.

  ‘Well, darling! That puts rather a different spin on things, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I didn’t say...’ Margot began.

  ‘Naturally not.’ Her mother studied her. ‘He’s a nice boy, Margot. I always liked him. He’s had rather a rough war of it, from what his mother said. Being a prisoner and so forth.’

  ‘You liked him? But you were so fearfully against us marrying, and then...’

  ‘Well, naturally you were both far too young to even think of marriage. Goodness, Margot! You were fifteen when you got engaged – and rather a young fifteen, at that. And then to get you in trouble and disappear...’

  ‘He was captured! It was hardly deliberate!’

  ‘Really, darling! He was being posted to the Front Line. He must have realised it was a possibility that something might happen.’

  Margot scowled.

  Her mother, noticing, said, ‘Anyway, things are different now.’

  ‘I suppose they are.’ What a lot of new things she had to think about! ‘I don’t even know if he still likes me,’ she said weakly.

  Her mother gave her the sort of look Nana used to give when you said you couldn’t remember if you’d washed your face, or didn’t know who had pushed Jocelyn into the puddle.

  ‘From the impression his mother gave me,’ she said, ‘that isn’t something you need to be worried about at all.’

  Oh heavens! What was one supposed to say to that? She gawped at her mother, who laughed.

  ‘Think about it. And while you’re here, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. I don’t suppose you could help me out on Saturday, could you? Only I’m supposed to be organising the Christmas party for the Sunday School, and it’s Doris’s half day, and I don’t see how I’m expected to organise the games and so forth and keep an eye on James at the same time. You needn’t do much,’ she added, piling straw into the nest box. ‘Just show him what to do in the party games and make sure he doesn’t get into mischief.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Margot. ‘I’d love to.’ She felt a rush of gratitude towards her mother. She didn’t have to do that.

  But back inside, she was at something of a loose end. A good daughter – Jocelyn, for example – would, she supposed, be offering to help her mother with all the hundreds of jobs that needed doing in a vicarage in the week before Christmas. There were her own preparations to finish – gifts to wrap, Christmas cards to buy and post, local friends to see, if she could bear to. Yet Margot didn’t feel like doing any of them.

  Harry would have got her letter by
now. It would have come by the morning post.

  Perhaps he’d reply this morning. It would arrive this afternoon perhaps? Or the evening post?

  She shook herself. It had been sent. There was nothing she could do about it now.

  Fired by this decision, she went up to the nursery. It was evidently time for James’s walk. Doris was wrestling him into a coat – James protesting, ‘No! I do it!’

  ‘No, Master James,’ Doris grabbed his arm and thrust it into the sleeve. ‘We haven’t got all day.’

  ‘Why can’t he do it himself?’ Margot spoke more sharply than she’d intended. But really! Manhandling a child like that!

  Doris dropped his arm and gave her a look Margot couldn’t identify.

  ‘As you wish, miss.’

  James, released from her hold, wriggled himself around, trying to get his arm backwards and into the other sleeve. Margot watched, trying not to intervene. She hadn’t realised before quite how complicated putting on a coat was.

  James was growing more and more frustrated.

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘Here,’ Margot stepped forward, relieved. ‘Let me—’

  ‘No ! I do it!’

  He wrenched his arm back and dissolved into furious sobs.

  ‘No help!’

  Margot glanced at Doris. Her face was carefully neutral, but Margot was sure she could detect an I told you so lingering unspoken.

  ‘Look – if you’d just let me –’

  He was properly crying, his face flushed, tears streaming down his cheeks. Margot watched helplessly. She was used to children, of course, being one of five, but still... Ernest was eight now. She’d forgotten quite how quickly small children went from total composure to absolute despair.

  Determinedly not meeting Doris’s eye she said, ‘Can he put his own coat on?’

  ‘Not really, miss,’ said Doris. ‘It’s just he’s at that age when they want to do everything for themselves. There, Master James,’ she said comfortably, patting him on the back. ‘Your sister doesn’t want to see you upset like that!’

  She was behaving very well, Margot thought. She watched meekly as the nanny put James into his coat, helped him do up the buttons and gave him his hat.

  ‘Now just you show your sister how well you can put your own hat on!’ she said, and Margot made obedient admiring noises.

  ‘We were just going for our walk,’ said Doris, when this was finished. If she was wondering what Margot was doing in her nursery, she didn’t show it. ‘We’re going to feed the duckies, aren’t we, pet?’

  ‘Would you like me to take him?’ Margot said. ‘I’d love to, honestly. And I expect you’ve got things to be getting on with here, haven’t you?’

  The breakfast things were still spread over the nursery table. Margot winced. She hadn’t meant to sound as though she were criticising her.

  But Doris just said, ‘That would be very nice, wouldn’t it, Master James? Would you like to go for a walk with your sister?’

  ‘We going feed the ducks,’ James said. His disinterest in her was obvious. Margot tried not to show that she cared.

  Outside, the air was icy. The little village looked just as it always did – grey stone houses and labourers’ cottages clustered around the green and the duckpond. Smoke was rising from the chimneys, and the grass and roads were stiff with frost. Here and there, Model Ts had begun to appear in front of the houses. But otherwise it could have been any wintry afternoon from her childhood.

  Margot walked down the dirt road to the green, holding James’s hand, thinking back to how she and Stephen and Jocelyn had taken this walk with their own Nana, paper bags full of stale bread clutched in their mittened hands. She couldn’t remember being quite as young as James, but she could remember the agonies of being five or six – the awfulness of not being allowed a beautiful ringletted doll like the one Betty Helcroft owned, the agony of being smaller than Stephen, and of Nana taking Jocelyn’s side in battles. Don’t be so naughty to your little sister! A big girl like you should know better!

  Had she been awful? She supposed she had. She remembered her frustration that Jocelyn was always thought clever and Stephen brave, and she was... what? Pretty. And difficult.

  Once upon a time, she had been difficult.

  But James seemed happy enough. He’d forgotten his shyness, trotting along the pavement, his hair extravagantly blond, just like her own.

  ‘Come on, Jamie-o,’ she said.

  He’d stopped by the Warners’ hedge.

  ‘What dat, Margot?’

  ‘That – it’s holly. You get it at Christmas. They’ll be decorating Daddy’s church with it.’

  ‘Want.’

  ‘Oh – no, Jamie-o, it belongs to the Warners. You can’t just pick other people’s plants, it’s not allowed. Come on.’

  She tugged on his hand. His face dissolved and he began to cry. Margot watched him helplessly. They’d barely spent fifteen minutes together and she’d made him cry twice.

  ‘All right,’ she said quickly. ‘All right, I’m sorry! Please don’t cry, darling. Here you go.’

  She reached up and plucked a holly twig off the bush, taking care to choose a piece with berries on. James’s tears miraculously vanished and he held up his hands for it.

  ‘Careful – it’s prickly.’

  ‘Prickly.’

  ‘Yes – it’s got prickles, look –’

  She showed him, testing her finger against the prickles. ‘See – ow!’

  He laughed and did the same.

  ‘Ow!’

  ‘Yes, but do really be careful, darling, you could hurt yourself. Look – where do you want it? On your hat? In your buttonhole?’

  They tried the holly twig in various places, before settling on James’s buttonhole.

  ‘Beautiful!’ she said, and he beamed at her, before trotting off down the road towards the duckpond. He did like being with her.

  They crunched their way across the frozen grass – ‘Look, James, that’s called frost – you see, where the grass is all white?’ At the pond on the common, they threw their crusts to the ducks, who gobbled them with satisfactory enthusiasm.

  ‘More!’ said James.

  Margot said, ‘All gone!’ and held out her hands.

  James giggled and copied her. ‘All gone!’

  It seemed a shame just to go back home.

  ‘Shall we go and get some sweets at the shop?’ she suggested, and James agreed enthusiastically.

  But this turned out to be a bad idea. The village shop was further away than she’d remembered – or rather, it was where it always had been, at the other end of the village, next to the school, but she hadn’t realised how long it would take a two-year-old to walk three quarters of a mile. James seemed to want to stop at every doorway, to pick up every stick, and to investigate every stone in the road. He wanted to drag his hands along every wall and jump in every puddle. Margot could feel her patience draining away.

  ‘Look, Jamie-o,’ she said encouragingly. ‘There’s the shop – look! Don’t you want some sweeties? We could get some Liquorice Allsorts – or some Dairy Milk. Come on – I’ll race you.’

  This worked, and they spent a happy ten minutes in the grocer’s, deciding between the various sweets available, until James settled on a bag of Liquorice Allsorts (he loved liquorice, she had been just the same as a child). Margot also bought some cocoa for the nursery – she knew Doris loved it – and some Christmas cards (she supposed she ought to send them). On an impulse, she also bought chocolate for Ernest and Ruth (their Christmas presents were rather paltry this year – most of her money had gone on James). And then, feeling rather guilty for the way she’d treated her mother, she bought a potted fern as a peace-offering and a packet of biscuits.

  They made quite a parcel when the grocer had finished wrapping them. Margot let James sit on the wall outside the grocer’s and eat his Allsorts, feeling rather rebellious (Nana
had never let them eat in public). Then they headed back home.

  It was now that the trouble started. At first, James began to lag, stooping to pick up bits of twig and stone, and to trail his hands along the walls. Margot tried not to be impatient, but it was hard – she was beginning to get cold, and the vicarage was the other side of the village.

  ‘Come on, Jamie-o,’ she said. ‘Home time!’

  James dropped to his knees on the pavement.

  ‘Carry me!’

  ‘I can’t, darling.’ She felt a flutter of panic. ‘I’ve got my hands full – I can’t carry the parcels and you. Look, it’s not that far.’

  But to a two-year-old it apparently was. With much cajoling on her behalf and whining on James’s, they made it to the edge of the village green, where he refused to go any further.

  ‘James, please,’ she said. ‘You made it all the way here! We’re nearly there.’

  But James had reached the end of his endurance. He began to cry. She bent down to embrace him, but he pushed her away.

  ‘No! Want Doris! Want Mummy!’

  ‘Please, James,’ she said again. ‘It’s not far – come on...’

  But James sank to his knees and began to howl – mouth open, cheeks red, tears streaming down his face.

  Margot considered her options. She could carry James if she didn’t have the shopping – could she go back to the village shop and leave the parcel there to be picked up later? She glanced back down the street. It was a good five minutes there and five minutes back, not to mention however long it would take to explain to the grocer. Even supposing she could run, which she couldn’t. The dirt road through the village would, she supposed, eventually be tarred over if everyone carried on buying motor cars, but right now it was thick and claggy and potholed, with two deep ruts in the dirt where the cart tracks ran. You couldn’t run along it – not easily – and certainly not in petticoats.

  Could she leave the parcels here and come back to them? A spatter of rain against her cheek suggested not. She looked up at the sky. Grey, heavy clouds as far as she could see. She thought of the Christmas cards and chocolates in the brown-paper parcel. They would be ruined. And she had no money left for more.