The Silent Stars Go By

by Sally Nicholls

  ‘Er – whisky, please, I think,’ Margot said. ‘Sherry sounds so maiden auntish.’

  ‘Rather. What about you, Jos?’

  Jocelyn hesitated. Margot wondered if Stephen had remembered how young she was. Then, ‘I’ll have sherry please. I’m likely to be a maiden aunt no matter what I do, so I may as well enjoy it.’

  ‘Rot! If I wasn’t a blood relation, I’d marry you like a shot, and so would any chap with sense.’

  ‘It’s all right, Steve, you needn’t play nice for the children. I’m quite resigned to it. There are two million spare women in Britain, don’t you read the newspapers? And if anyone was ever a spare woman, it’s me. I just need to decide what I’m going to do instead.’

  ‘Crikey. You aren’t going to be a policewoman like Ruth, are you?’

  ‘No. But I only have one life and I don’t intend to waste it.’ She gave him a pointed look. ‘Unlike some people I could name.’

  Stephen winced.

  ‘Mea culpa. Don’t you start. It’s going to be bad enough when the Pater finds out—’ He stopped.

  Jocelyn cried, ‘Finds out... ? Oh, Steve! Not again. What happened?’

  ‘Let him pour the drinks before you start the third degree, can’t you?’ said Margot. Stephen bowed. There was a pause while he filled the glasses and handed them around.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘To us all. And to Christmas.’

  ‘To Christmas.’

  They drank. Margot tried not to pull a face. The whisky tasted like fire and medicine. Stephen caught her eye and winked, and she resisted the urge to throw her glass at him.

  ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Steve, old boy. Tell us all. You didn’t set fire to the boss’s trousers, did you?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ He shook his head. ‘It was nothing. I’m more interested in Jocelyn here. If she isn’t going to be a policewoman, what is she going to be? How about an explorer?’

  ‘Or a lady archaeologist,’ said Margot, joining in the fun.

  Jocelyn frowned.

  ‘You needn’t twit,’ she said. ‘It’s all right for you. Men can be anything. And it’s not as though Margot need worry. It isn’t a bit the same for girls—’

  ‘Hold up,’ said Margot. ‘Why needn’t I worry?’ She felt obliquely hurt. ‘I’m not going to stay in that beastly school for ever.’

  ‘Oh! I didn’t mean that.’ Jocelyn looked surprised. ‘Only that you’ll marry, of course. If not to Harry, to someone else. It isn’t like you need worry about men being interested.’

  ‘I don’t know that that’s so certain.’ Margot was unsure whether to be insulted or flattered by this. ‘It’s not as though I ever meet any eligible men – even if I wanted to – which I’m not saying I do . . .’

  ‘Oh, do dry up,’ said Stephen. ‘Of course you’ll marry Harry. And if you don’t, you’re a damn fool, that’s all.’

  ‘Lay off,’ said Jocelyn, with a glance at Margot. ‘I don’t see that you’re in any position to cast nasturtiums. What are you doing with your life? Getting the boot from one job after another, as far as I can see.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Margot. ‘What did happen, Steve? You can tell us.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t anything,’ said Stephen again. He looked suddenly shifty. He began playing with the box of matches on the table. ‘Just...’ He looked from one sister to the other, then: ‘Don’t you ever wonder what the point of it all is?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Margot, at the same time as, ‘No,’ said Jocelyn.

  They looked at each other and laughed.

  ‘Don’t you, Jos? Good for you. I wonder why not?’

  ‘I’m a vicar’s daughter, aren’t I?’ Jocelyn tucked her hair behind her ears. Even with it up, she still looked a child. Her serious little sister. ‘It goes with the territory. Even if I don’t believe in – well, God and all that—’

  ‘Goodness, don’t you?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so.’ Jocelyn was serious. ‘At least – I don’t know that I do. Not like Father. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think men like Father have the right way of looking at the world. We can blow each other to bits and gas ourselves to death or we can – well, try and help each other, like Mother and Father do. That’s the point, isn’t it? The only one that matters anyway.’

  ‘Soup kitchens and whatnot?’

  ‘And whatnot.’ Jocelyn looked from her brother to her sister. ‘Don’t laugh! I’m serious.’

  ‘I know you are.’ Stephen looked at her affectionately. ‘I’m all for compassion. I just – well, it isn’t so easy in practice, is it?’

  ‘Nothing ever is,’ said Jocelyn. She leaned forward, her thin hands clutching each other. ‘I wish I did believe in God,’ she said. ‘Then I could be a nun. I always rather liked the idea of being a nun. It seemed so simple.’

  ‘Never trust anyone who makes out life is simple,’ said Stephen darkly. ‘France was supposed to be simple. Duty and honour and all that. Look where that led us.’

  ‘Poor old Steve,’ said Margot. She took another glug of her whisky. ‘I’m with you. You do what’s supposed to be the right thing and it all goes to pot. Let’s stick to wickedness, it’s a damn sight easier, and at least we all know where we stand.’

  ‘Amen!’ Stephen raised his glass. They drank. ‘Poor old Pater. At least one of his children turned out all right.’

  ‘Give her time,’ said Margot. She rather thought Jocelyn might surprise them all.

  Christmas Eve

  And then it was Christmas Eve.

  Father was busy, of course, decorating the church, preparing for the celebrations tomorrow. The house was full of expectation and excitement – cooking smells coming from the kitchen, shouts from the children, people disappearing into rooms to write Christmas cards and wrap presents and plan complicated secrets.

  There was a trip to a nearby copse to cut mistletoe and holly and ivy, and a great deal of enthusiasm about making paper-chains and hanging holly around all the gas-jets.

  Her father was run off his feet, but every Christmas Eve, without fail, he gave up most of the morning to make biscuits with the children. Margot had always loved this tradition and had always intended to do the same thing with her own children. She wandered down to the kitchen, half-intending to help, but it was clear she was not wanted.

  Ernest and Ruth were enthusiastically rolling out the dough. Both were covered in flour, and Ernest had a streak of what looked like cinnamon across his cheek.

  James was sitting on her father’s knee. He had a biscuit cutter in his hand, and her father was showing him how to press it into the dough.

  ‘That’s right, old man,’ he said. ‘Look! A star!’

  ‘Tar,’ said James.

  ‘That’s right. And then we’ll put it in the oven, and when it comes out, it’ll be a star biscuit!’

  ‘Tar bikkit!’

  ‘Good man.’

  Margot felt a strange lump in her chest, somewhere between grief and envy.

  Look what you’re giving him, she told herself fiercely. Just look at him! He’d never have a Christmas like this with you, would he?

  She retreated up to the bedroom she shared with Jocelyn and spread her Christmas presents out on the bed. Nothing very fancy. Handkerchiefs for the adults in the family. Chocolates for the children. The extra bits she’d picked up at the grocer’s. And James...

  James’s present had been rather difficult. The youngest child in a large household never exactly wants for toys; the day nursery was full of twenty years’ worth of trainsets and dolls’ houses and Noah’s arks and balls and bricks and tricycles. Not so many new toys of course; the War had made that difficult. But that didn’t matter so much to a small child.

  Margot had agonised over the choices in the toy shop. A teddy bear? They had a lovely one with a stiff, funny snout. But was James the sort of child who cared for teddy bears? His interests had been mechanical the last time she’d seen him – ca
rs and trains and aeroplanes. There were some lovely aeroplanes in the toy shop, but they were aimed at rather older children, and Margot and the shop girl agreed they would be wasted on a two-year-old. In the end she bought him a wooden ship. It was too old for him, but the toys for younger children looked so dull. She could still remember her own childhood excitement at the older children’s toys.

  The Christmas stocking had been more fun. The Allen children always had their first stocking at two, and Margot had enjoyed the challenge of finding as many things as she could that would fit. Candy canes. Sugar mice. A toy trumpet, nuts, a satsuma, of course, and a little woolly dog to sit in the top. And a wind-up mouse which spun around the table.

  But when she had presented the stocking to her mother, she could see at once that it was a mistake.

  ‘You’ve done him a stocking?’ her mother had said, and Margot had realised with a crashing sense of her own idiocy that of course her mother would have made James a stocking. Why on earth wouldn’t she?

  ‘It’s a lovely idea, darling,’ her mother said with some bewilderment, looking at the little collection of things.

  ‘But that’s about twice as much as Ruth and Ernest have. Stockings are supposed to come from Father Christmas, though I don’t suppose either of the older two really believe in him any more. But they’ll mind dreadfully if he favours one child over the others. Surely you can see that?’

  Margot’s cheeks flamed.

  ‘I suppose – I didn’t—’

  ‘And the stocking gifts are supposed to be a set,’ her mother went on. ‘They’ve all got new flannels, and little purses that a lady in the parish sewed for them. Doris and James wrote a letter to Father Christmas and posted it up the chimney. James said he wanted a whistle, so your father’s given him that old one they used to use for the games at the Sunday School Treat.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Margot humbly. ‘I should have thought. I just...’ To her horror, she felt tears coming into her eyes. She had given James to her mother and father. Hadn’t she?

  So why couldn’t she let him go?

  In the end, they’d agreed a compromise – dividing the presents somewhat evenly between the three stockings and keeping the ship as Margot’s own gift to James. Margot wrapped this up now and put the whole collection into her shopping bag ready for the Christmas tree.

  She then went over to her desk and looked at the Christmas cards all addressed and waiting to be posted. There was one for Harry, still unwritten.

  What to say?

  Even if he didn’t – didn’t want her... surely he deserved to know about James?

  Or would it be kinder to leave him in ignorance?

  She had left the Christmas card on the table since yesterday. But now she could hear Mary’s voice in the back of her head. I think that now is the time...

  ‘Oh damn!’ she said out loud, and reached for the ink bottle. Dipping her pen into the ink, she wrote, without thinking too hard about it:

  The Vicarage

  Church Lane

  Thwaite

  North Yorkshire

  24th December 1919

  Dear Harry,

  Happy Christmas. I am frightfully sorry about storming out like that. I know I was an ass. Please understand that I have good reason to be, and it isn’t something I can talk about in front of Ernest.

  Christmas is all about forgiveness, so I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive,

  Your affectionate friend,

  Margot

  There!

  Midnight

  Christmas night. The Christmas Eve dinner eaten, the over-excited children put to bed, their father and mother dispatched to Midnight Mass. Margot had wondered about going too, but in the end had decided on an early night.

  And now...

  A clanging, a clashing, a tolling, a ringing.

  Margot surfaced, rising from the depths of a sleep so total it still clogged her senses. She’d been dreaming. Something about Harry and something hidden in the walls – a dead man, or was it an animal? No, it had gone, she couldn’t remember it. Something awful anyway. And now this noise...

  ‘What is it?’ she said groggily, and from Jocelyn’s side of the room she heard fumbling, then the spark of a match. The candle flared.

  ‘It’s the bells,’ Jocelyn said. ‘For Christmas morning. They couldn’t ring them last year – I suppose they didn’t have the men.’

  The Christmas bells. They rang them at the end of Midnight Mass – of course they did, only somewhere in the middle of the War, they’d stopped ringing all of the bells – the passing bells for the dead, the wedding bells for the living, even the church bells on Sunday mornings. And all the bell-ringers had gone to war...

  And now the men were home, and they were ringing in Christmas.

  From the nursery, she could hear crying. Doris was at Mass... but before she could move, Jocelyn was up and past her, heading for the nursery, clutching the candlestick.

  James was standing up in his cot, clutching the side and sobbing. Jocelyn stroked his back. Margot caught him up in her arms, but she could not comfort him.

  ‘He does this if he wakes up suddenly in the night – he’ll be all right,’ said Jocelyn.

  ‘Mummy!’ James was crying, pushing her away.

  ‘Let me try,’ said Jocelyn. She took James from Margot’s arms, and rocked him gently. ‘It’s all right, darling, Jocelyn’s here. It’s only the silly bells. They won’t hurt you.’

  ‘Oh, why won’t they stop?’ said Margot furiously.

  Little faces appeared at the door, orange in the light of a new candlestick. Ruth and Ernest.

  ‘What is it?’ said Ernest wonderingly.

  ‘It’s Christmas,’ said Jocelyn. ‘There, darling, there.’

  ‘It’s a beastly racket, whatever it is,’ said Ruth.

  James wouldn’t calm while those awful bells were ringing, surely? But miraculously, he seemed to. His head drooped onto Jocelyn’s shoulder and his eyes closed. Watching them, Margot felt her loss like a physical pain, somewhere over her heart.

  ‘It’s only because he knows me,’ said Jocelyn.

  ‘Of course,’ said Margot stiffly. ‘It’s quite all right.’

  ‘What’s all right?’ said Ruth. Nobody answered. ‘What?’

  ‘Everything,’ said Jocelyn. She laid James gently back into the cot and draped the blanket over him. He didn’t stir. ‘There!’ she said. ‘And it’s Christmas Day!’

  Openings

  Christmas Day.

  Stockings in the drawing room. This year, only Ruth, Ernest and James had stockings, but everyone gathered to watch them open them anyway, Stephen grumbling about the early morning.

  ‘Really... Do we have to be up at such an ungodly hour?’

  ‘Of course!’ said Margot’s mother. Margot could read the anxiety in her face. Stephen home for Christmas. All those awful wartime Christmases, not knowing where he was and if he was safe, all those prayers for his safe return. But what to do with him now he was home? ‘Think of the children!’ she said, and Stephen groaned and muttered something that made Margot’s mother tighten her lips and seem to swallow a retort.

  Margot, though she tried not to show it, was excited about the stockings. James’s first!

  ‘Happy Christmas, Jamie-o!’ she said and he mumbled, ‘Happy Christmas,’ and went straight over to the fireplace.

  Doris said, ‘Oh careful, Master James – wait for Doris. He loves that nutcracker,’ she said, over her shoulder to Margot. ‘He’d just play with it all morning if he were allowed. There you go, darling, let Doris help you – that’s right.’

  The nutcracker was an old-fashioned soldier boy, like the one in the ballet. He had been left on the hearth by the basket of Christmas nuts.

  Margot said, ‘Should he have that – is it safe?’

  ‘Oh, it’s right enough if I helps him,’ said Doris. ‘There you go, pet! I expect there’
ll be some nuts of your own in the stocking.’

  There were. Nuts and fruit and all sorts of lovely things, but James didn’t seem to understand how stockings were supposed to work. The woolly dog was cuddled, and had to be introduced to the rest of the family – Ruth and Ernest shook its paw solemnly, while James said, ‘Woof, woof, woof!’ and dissolved into giggles.

  This seemed likely to go on all morning, so Margot, growing impatient, said, ‘Look, Jamie-o, there’s a sugar mouse too.’

  James had never seen a sugar mouse before, so that had to be explained too, and then eaten – not crunched down, like Ruth’s, but solemnly sucked. Ruth and Ernest, meanwhile, had worked their way to the bottom of their own stockings and were taking an interest in James’s.

  ‘Come on,’ Ruth said, waving the stocking tantalisingly under his nose. Her voice took on the special cadence the older children adopted when mimicking the adults to their younger siblings. ‘Look, Jamie-o, it’s full of lovely presents. Don’t you want to see what’s inside?’

  ‘I’ll open it for you if you want,’ said Ernest, practical as ever, as the grown-ups howled.

  ‘Ernest!’

  And then her father came home from the early-morning communion service and lifted him onto his knee with an easy, ‘Come on, Jamie. Let’s not keep the troops waiting, eh?’

  Margot watched them, her father’s hands helping James to lift the things out of the stocking, and had to look away. Her eye caught her mother’s, standing in the doorway. Her mother, watching Margot, watching her father, watching James. And James, engrossed in his new whistle, unaware of them all.

  At last they were finished and family prayers were over. And they were clattering into the dining room for Christmas breakfast.

  ‘Ham!’ Ruth cried, as Edith brought the platters in. ‘Ham and eggs! Oh, angel Edith!’

  ‘Goodness, Edith,’ said the children’s mother. ‘Wherever did you find it?’

  ‘I have my ways, ma’am,’ said Edith, rather stiffly. Then, seeing the vicar’s face, ‘My sister’s husband’s sister – her that was Mabel Jacobs, ma’am, before she was married – well, she works at a pig farm, ma’am, and, well, you see...’