Parents and nannies were beginning to arrive with the other partygoers. Margot, who knew a few of them from church, said, ‘Look, there’s Albert and Jane!’
Margot was a veteran of church Christmas parties, of course. It felt strange to be here as a mother, even a disguised one, like crossing an invisible boundary into adulthood. There had been none last year, of course, because of the Spanish influenza. She had thought crossing that boundary would be something which happened once, when she became an adult, but in fact it was something that had happened over and over again; when she left school, when she left home, when James was born, when the telegram came about Harry. She still felt – even now – like a child playing at being a grown-up. She might be living the trappings of a grown-up life, but she knew that if something actually grown-up happened – if Mother or Father were killed in a motorcar accident, for example, and she and Stephen had to deal with the consequences – she would be flung back onto the other side of the boundary and into childhood.
She sat on the edge of the room with the other attendants, most of whom, of course, were older than her. Mary’s nursemaid was there with Mary’s eldest, Victoria – the baby was teething, she explained to Margot, so she was at home. Mary sent her regards.
As well as Victoria and James, there were a few other tiny children, including a fat baby in awful bright pink woollies who crawled all over the floor getting in everyone’s way and cried when anyone tried to thwart it. Its mother ignored it completely and sat as close to the oil-stove as she could get, occasionally shouting at her older child to ‘Stop bothering me, do! Go and play!’
Margot had thought that James might be shy, but after his initial caution had worn off, he was anything but. He ran around the party, trying to join in with the older children’s games, always a little behind but always eager to get it right. He danced about excitedly at Blind Man’s Bluff, thrilled to bits when he was allowed to be the Blind Man (though of course Jocelyn quickly allowed him to catch her, knowing from experience how soon little children got frustrated by this game). His face puckered up with concentration at Grandmother’s Footsteps, saying ‘Shh! Shh!’ like the other children, though it wasn’t clear he understood the rules at all, and had to be told to stop moving when Jocelyn turned around.
Watching him, in his blue flannel rompers and knitted jersey, his fair little head bobbing excitedly amongst the older children, Margot wondered if it was as obvious to everyone else there what a superior child he was. Look at him – so happy still, so eager to join in! How intelligent he clearly was for a child not yet two and a half! How darling! One or two of the little girls with their curls and party dresses might be prettier, but he was far and away the most attractive of the little boys. So sturdy! So sweet! So happy!
How could her mother possibly think it was a comfort to tell her that she could have another child? How could another baby possibly replace this funny little person bobbing about on tiptoes with his hand in the air as Jocelyn called for volunteers for a sack race. A sack race against all these bigger boys! Jocelyn gave him a sack, and of course he came last, hopping bravely behind Ernest and Hilary Connor and Adam Jacobson. But how cheerful he seemed about the whole thing! (Of course it was possible that he hadn’t realised that it was a race.)
How, she marvelled, had someone as awful as she managed to create a little creature as wonderful as this?
It was almost enough to make one believe in God after all.
The Trouble with James
The trouble was, even after all this time, Margot couldn’t decide one way or the other.
Did she want a child or didn’t she?
Margot thought back to the mother and baby home. To the girl in the bed beside her, her breasts bound with black crepe bandages to keep in the milk, screaming and screaming because one morning her baby simply hadn’t been wheeled in with the others. He’d been taken away to his new parents the night before. The girl had known this was going to happen, of course. But she had thought she would be allowed to say goodbye.
When James was growing inside her, Margot had known she was lucky. The other mothers in the home had faced a dreadful choice; a lifetime of shame or an impossible goodbye. She’d had the best of both worlds, or so she’d thought. The very thought of a baby had terrified her, even Harry’s baby, even now Harry had gone. She had felt no connection to the thing growing inside of her. She had not wanted to be a mother. She had not wanted a child. She had not wanted any of it.
But then, when he’d come. When she’d held him. The tininess of him. The perfection, like a cross little old man, all curled up onto himself as he lay against her stomach. The soft, red skin, the fine black hair (it had turned blond later). You thought of babies with curls and dimples, didn’t you? James hadn’t had curls or dimples – he hadn’t looked anything like the babies in a Pears advertisement. He hadn’t looked sweet at all. He was a person. She hadn’t expected that. A proper warm little person.
‘Hullo,’ she’d whispered, and he’d lifted his head and mewled at her, like a little cat.
Her baby. Her son.
She had never wanted a baby. She’d looked at the girls – women, some of them – who were going to keep their children, and had been filled with visceral terror. To live like that! To be disbarred from polite society for ever, to be hissed at and whispered at in the street, the way some of the women from the village whispered at the girls in the home. Margot’s father was fond of sermonising on the way in which God sent lessons designed for the sinner. To the vain woman, he took her beauty. To the strong man, his strength. To Job he took everything. Margot had never been able to forgive God for Job.
Margot had always thought that vanity was her weakness, but in those months in the home, cleaning the floors and tending the garden with the other girls, she’d realised that actually it was how much she cared about how others saw her. How much she wanted to be liked. If she kept this baby, she would lose everything, it had seemed to her, aged sixteen. A place in society. A marriage and a home of her own. Because who would marry her, knowing she had a child?
Really, she was lucky that her parents had given her this way out.
But then she’d met him. Held him. This tiny warm body, lying close and safe against her skin.
Then she’d known with absolute certainty that she wasn’t lucky at all.
She had not wanted a child. Not even Harry’s child. She had wanted nothing to do with the very idea of it.
But she had wanted James.
Two O’Clock
Harry rang the doorbell at two o’clock precisely. Margot was helping her mother write out laundry lists, and she flinched. Her mother looked at her.
‘All right?’
‘Yes, thank you.’ Now she was going crimson, she could feel it.
James, who was sitting on her mother’s knee, dropped his lead soldier and cried, ‘Dimmy!’
‘He thinks it’s the grocer’s boy,’ said Margot’s mother. She kissed his blond hair. ‘No, darling, it’s not Jimmy. It’s someone for Margot.’
Ernest and Ruth, sprawled on their bellies on the floor with a copy of The Magnet between them, looked up with interest.
Edith appeared in the doorway.
‘Mr Harry Singer, ma’am.’
‘Golly!’ said Ruth, sitting up.
‘All right,’ their mother said. She stood up, lifting James onto her hip. He wriggled and put out his hands for the soldier. ‘Come on, Jamie, let’s go upstairs. Don’t fuss, silly boy, here he is. Ruth, I think Edith wanted some help making mince pies for the Girls’ Friendly Society Christmas party.’
‘What? Oh, Mother, no! Let me stay!’
‘Ernest, you may stay here and read quietly. Margot, I hope I can trust you and Harry.’
I hope . . . Margot’s face flared. She didn’t think... she couldn’t...
And how... how could she possibly say what she had to say with Ernest there?
She opened her mouth to a
rgue, then closed it.
‘Yes, Mother,’ she said.
Her mother nodded. ‘Come along, Ruth.’
They got to their feet as Edith showed Harry in. He was wearing a brown tweed suit, and suddenly seemed very adult. He was twenty-two. A grown-up. Of course she’d always known that, but looking at him now she had to face the truth of it. The adolescent awkwardness was gone; he was a grown person now, calm and content in his own body.
‘Hullo,’ he said, and she found herself smiling. She had forgotten what it was like to be in the same room as him. To be the focus of his attention. Not that she deserved any of that today... But he was smiling at her, and she was sure his pleasure was genuine. It made her feel truly happy for the first time all holiday.
But that was foolish, wasn’t it? Perhaps he had a new girl now. It would be surprising if he didn’t. There were so few young men nowadays, a man as whole and handsome as Harry must be in demand. Could she really expect him to have stayed faithful for the three years they’d been apart?
Perhaps this was what this meeting was about.
His letter hadn’t said fiancée after all. It had said friend.
‘Hullo,’ she said. She came forward – should they shake hands? Embrace? She hovered, hesitating, and Harry laughed. ‘It’s good to see you,’ she said, and then blushed. ‘Oh, I’ve done it again! But it is, you know.’
‘And you.’ He was pleased to see her, she was certain. But there was a hesitancy there as well, a holding-back. He wasn’t sure of her.
Her smile widened, spreading across her face like sunshine. He smiled too – and there they were, smiling at each other.
She turned away first, saying confusedly, ‘Would you like tea? I could ring for Edith...’
‘No, thank you. Hullo, Ernest, old chap, how’s tricks?’
Oh, goodness, what were they going to talk about? He was going to ask her why she hadn’t replied to his letter – of course he was – and there was Ernest, fair, stolid Ernest, his blond head studiously bent over his paper.
‘How are you?’ she said quickly.
‘Well. I’m well. I’m going to be a farmer – did you know?’
‘Yes! Your mother told me. How splendid!’
‘Well, I think it is. My uncle farms, you know. He was always sorry none of his children wanted to go into it, so he’s terribly pleased about me. The plan is to study Agriculture next year – the doctor-sahibs thought I wouldn’t quite be fit enough this year, and I must say I’m rather glad. There are a fearful lot of army chaps going this year, and I think it would be nicer to do it properly. I’ve been living with uncle in the dales, helping out with the animals, and I feel rather as though it’s all my childhood holidays come at once.’
‘I was so sorry to hear you were ill.’
Oh, surely that was the wrong thing to say! Surely his next question would be why she hadn’t answered his letter?
‘Yes, it was rather beastly. I was on a farm in Germany – that’s what gave me the taste for it, you know. Actually, I think that probably saved my life, because the family I was working for were rather decent to me. Some people had a simply frightful time – in camps and so forth, but our family was – well, they were just ordinary people, you know, in wartime. Only we all had to work terribly hard, and there was never very much food – we were luckier than most, because there’s always food on a farm, isn’t there? – but Germany was fearfully hungry, at the end of the War.’
‘I suppose it must have been,’ said Margot. She thought back to last year. Margarine and no cake and rationing and queues at the fishmonger’s. ‘I mean, we were blockading them, weren’t we? That was the point.’
‘Well, yes,’ said Harry. ‘But if you’d been there... I mean, people were starving. And of course, no one wants to give food to prisoners of war when children are dying. I don’t suppose I would either, if it were Prissy and Mabel...’
‘No,’ said Margot thoughtfully.
‘So I was in pretty bad shape when I came home. Better than many people were, but still... the doctor chappie said I was run-down, and packed me off to the Isle of Wight to a convalescent home with a whole lot of soldiers. That was rather grim.’
He pulled a face. Margot said, ‘Oh, why?’
‘Well... You know what soldiers are like – or maybe you don’t? It’s all jaw jaw jaw about the War, and people they know, and campaigns they were in and how fearful it all was. One feels rather a fool when one spent the whole War at school or starving on a dairy farm in Bavaria.’
‘That does sound rather beastly.’ Margot smiled at him. She was remembering all the things she liked about him. She knew exactly what he meant about the soldiers – all Stephen’s subaltern friends, talking endlessly about the War.
There was an awkward pause – the first in the whole conversation.
Harry said, ‘And – and what about you? How have you been? You said you were a typist.’
‘Yes, in a girls’ school in Durham. I work in the office, typing up letters and telephoning the parents to tell them Beryl’s feeling unwell. It’s an awful bore.’
‘And I suppose you have a new chap now?’
It was said casually, but she could see that he was anything but casual.
‘I don’t actually,’ she said, as calmly as she could. ‘I haven’t had anything like that in a long time. Not since you went to France.’
She watched him take in this information. He had always been terrible at hiding his feelings.
‘Oh!’ he said. Then a smile spread over his face. ‘Oh...’
‘And you?’ she said. ‘It’s been nearly three years, surely – I mean, I have read novels, I know that soldiers – Well...’
And I didn’t reply to that letter.
‘Oh, well.’ He looked awkward.
He had another girl. Of course he did. There were so few young men left now, and one as – well, as eligible as Harry – of course he had another girl.
‘When you didn’t – I – well, I confess I was rather cut up about it, and –’
She said hurriedly, ‘Oh no, of course. That’s wonderful, Harry. I’m very happy for you, you deserve every – every—’
‘Oh!’ He was – was he laughing ? ‘No, it wasn’t... I’m not... it was nothing like that!’
‘Then what... ?’
‘Well –’ A glance at Ernest, his fair head still bent over The Magnet. ‘Look here, it was just – well, I was rather upset and there was a VAD girl – it wasn’t anything, honour bright.’
It wasn’t anything. Had he – had they? She couldn’t ask. But the thought suddenly blinded her with misery. Lovely Harry Singer moving easily through the world like a scythe through corn, leaving girls behind him like... like... baby fieldmice torn from their nests? Perhaps not. Something like that anyway. Lovely Harry Singer – he wasn’t lovely at all, if he could say ‘It wasn’t anything,’ about that.
‘I say!’ Something of this must be showing on her face. ‘Really, it wasn’t – wasn’t anything worth talking about. She never meant anything to me—’
‘Never meant anything to you!’ She was suddenly furious. ‘It’s all right for you to say that – disappearing off to your fancy uncle’s farm. What about her?’
‘Now, look here—’
‘You’re all the same, all of you! You can do whatever you like and nobody gives a fig! It’s the women who have to live with it when you’re gone!’
‘Good Lord!’ He was looking at her like she was a lunatic. ‘I just took the girl dancing a couple of times! I didn’t break her heart! If we’re going to talk about disappearing, what about you? Nine months I’ve been home, and you haven’t so much as written! I thought you must be engaged to another chap and couldn’t face telling me! And now you tell me it isn’t that – so what is it, Margot? Because I haven’t got a bloody clue!’
He was really angry. She couldn’t remember ever seeing him like this before. She stared, shocked
. His face was flushed and furious. His chest was heaving. She suddenly, shockingly, wanted nothing more than to kiss him, full on the lips.
‘I can’t!’ she said. ‘I wish I could, but I can’t – not here—’ She looked across at Ernest, who had lowered The Magnet and was looking at them in amazement. ‘And I couldn’t – not in a letter either.’
His mouth was moving. She wondered what he was thinking. Did he – had he guessed ? It seemed so clear to her, but perhaps it was like reading a murder mystery, like one of the Sexton Blake stories. The solution was always so obvious, the second time you read it...
‘What the devil?’ he said.
Obviously not.
She was nearly crying.
‘I’m sorry!’ she cried. ‘I’m so sorry!’
He moved towards her.
‘Look here – I didn’t...’
But all of a sudden, she couldn’t bear it. The sympathy in his eyes, and what would he think if he knew the truth.
‘Oh, don’t!’ she cried. She pushed past him, rushing across the hall and up the stairs, while he stood gaping in astonishment.
Four Weeks
He’d been hers for four weeks.
Four weeks in the home. A warm body, sleeping on her stomach like a little monkey.
They’d kept the babies in another room from the mothers, wheeling them in when it was time to feed, wheeling them out again afterwards. But James had known who she was. She was sure of it. Could babies hear things from inside the womb? Could they recognise their mother’s voice when they came out into the world? He had stirred when she spoke to him, in a way he hadn’t for the nurses. She could make him stop crying when nobody else could. He had known her.
Had he missed her when she’d gone? Did he think she’d abandoned him?
He was perfection. Perfect face. Perfect eyes, perfect tiny, soft, red hands and feet. Perfect smooth cheeks and tiny, perfect eyelashes.
Somewhere, there was another Margot who had raised him herself. Who had scooped him up in her arms and walked out of the door, who was living in a little house, just James and herself. Paying the rent by... but here Margot’s imagination ran out. Taking in washing? Sewing shirts? They were despised by the world, but they did not care, because they had each other.
The Silent Stars Go By Page 6
