The Silent Stars Go By

by Sally Nicholls

  A child ought to live with his parents.

  Oughtn’t he?

  Mistakes

  Maybe it had been a mistake to go to Durham. A mistake to leave James. Maybe Margot should have gone home with her mother, pretended she’d come back to help with the baby, stayed a part of his life. It wouldn’t have seemed so strange, with help so hard to find.

  But she hadn’t. She and James had stayed their four weeks in the home, then James had gone back to the vicarage with Mother, and she – still bleeding, still finding it painful to walk – had gone to the Boarding House for Young Christian Ladies and a secretarial course in Durham.

  The goodbye had been strange and rather forced. Her father had come to escort Mother and James home, which meant that her aunt had had to be drafted in to escort Margot to Durham. Margot understood all the reasons why this was necessary – James was so small, he and Mother had so much luggage, it would look so queer if Father had not been there to help them home. But she couldn’t help feeling that she were being punished. That she was a problem which had now been solved, and everyone could forget about the whole ghastly affair and get on with their lives.

  She said goodbye to James in the waiting room at the train station. It was three-quarters full of soldiers and sailors in uniform, ladies with shopping bags and an elderly woman who kept coughing up phlegm into a handkerchief. Margot had felt sullen and cross and like she was going to be sick. Everyone had insisted on treating her as though she were a whiny child spoiling a day out. Her aunt and mother talked mostly to each other, while her father had busied himself with tickets and newsstands. James – little beast – had slept through the whole thing.

  All the time they were waiting, Margot had been wondering if she would say something. Protest. Cry. Grab the perambulator and make a run for it.

  But when it came to it, the scene was so wretchedly British and public that she had done nothing. Father had said, ‘Well. We’d better make a move then.’

  Her mother had embraced her and said, ‘Goodbye, darling. Send us a cable when you get there, will you?’

  Margot had stared at James. She had wanted to hold him, kiss him, tell him she loved him, but he was sleeping so peacefully, and the waiting room was so public. What would he think when he woke up and she was gone? Would he miss her? Would he think she had abandoned him? She had been shamefully close to tears. Her mother must have seen it, because she said briskly, ‘Come along, Andrew, we’ll miss the train.’

  And they had gone.

  Twenty minutes later, Margot and her aunt were on the train to Durham.

  The Boarding House for Young Christian Ladies was an awful place. Everything was cheese-pared, from the individual pats of butter on the side of their plates, to the coal for the fires in the communal areas. There was no privacy, and everyone was for ever in each other’s business. If you did so much as wear a new blouse to dinner, it was commented on and dissected. The food was awful, even by wartime standards – watery cod and stewed prunes and tapioca pudding. In winter it was freezing, and in summer it was dreadfully hot. The other girls had seemed impossibly young and silly. Had she ever been like that? It seemed incredible. She felt about a thousand years old.

  It was ridiculous, Margot knew, to be stuck somewhere so Third Formish. Probably she ought to go somewhere else – but the thought just exhausted her. And how sickening if the somewhere else turned out to be just the same?

  It was queer though. She, who had always been so social, was so isolated now. You would have thought she would mind terribly, but she found herself struggling to care. She couldn’t summon the energy to be interested in their petty dramas.

  The work in the girl’s day school was fine, if dull: typing letters to parents, sending out invoices, immersing herself in the day-to-day administration of a busy organisation. Her mother had found the job for her, thinking it would be nice for her to be around girls nearly her own age, but in fact it was just depressing. These girls had their whole lives in front of them, but Margot couldn’t help but feel as though hers was already over.

  The topic of ‘spare women’ was a common one in the boarding house. There was much talk about who would be married and who would not, and how to achieve this longed-for state. Margot found it hard to care. When they asked her about it, she said her fiancé was missing in action, and they treated her with the respect they gave everyone with a young man in the forces. But since losing James, she had found that even her feelings for Harry had been crushed. It was as though there was no space for anything in her head besides the grief that she felt for her baby. It consumed her. Harry – who had once felt like everything in the world – had been lost. She couldn’t grieve for both of them. Instead she found herself furious at him. If he hadn’t gone to France. If he hadn’t been lost. She’d been sixteen, that last leave. A child. Shouldn’t he have known better?

  She thought of her father, who would never, in a million, million years, have ever put her mother at risk of such a thing happening. At fifteen, she had thought him the most incredible bore, but now...

  She’d found it impossible to remember her love for Harry. All she could feel was the loss of that warm little body, resting against her chest.

  That baby who would grow up calling another woman ‘Mother’.

  What could anything mean, compared to that?

  The Vicarage

  Church Lane

  Thwaite

  North Yorkshire

  26th December 1919

  Dear Harry,

  Thank you so much for the lovely bracelet. It is very beautiful. I hope you had a lovely Christmas.

  Yours,

  Margot

  Dear God, she sounded about seven years old! Those two lovelys were very bad style, she knew, but it would look worse to cross one out, and she was running out of writing-paper. Boxing Day was always the day for thank-you letters in the vicarage. Could anything be less like a love letter?

  5 Watery Lane

  Thwaite

  North Yorkshire

  26th December 1919

  Dear Margot,

  I bought it from a fellow who was rather down on his luck. He was trying to get back home to his wife and kids in the country. I thought you might like to think you’d helped a family reunite.

  Talking of reuniting, we’re holding a luncheon party on the 30th. Nothing fancy – food and fellowship from half twelve, maybe some cards, and games for the children. The invitation officially extends to you and Steve and Jocelyn and Ruth, but of course Ernest is welcome if he wants to come, though he’ll be rather at the smaller end of the pack.

  Mother is inviting all the parentals as well, so I’m not sure it will be quite the place for a heart-to-heart, but – well, are you going to the Hendersons’ on the 31st? And if so, could we perhaps sit out a dance or two? Your mother isn’t planning on chaperoning, is she?

  Yours,

  Harry

  The Vicarage

  Church Lane

  Thwaite

  North Yorkshire

  27th December 1919

  Dear Harry,

  Thank you for the invitation. We’d all love to come, including Mother, but not including Ernest who is going skating on the duckpond with some boys from the village. And doesn’t much like parties anyway.

  Yes, I’m going to the Hendersons’. And no, Mother isn’t coming. That’s a very good idea. I do honestly want to tell you. It’s just – well, I didn’t quite know how, when there’s always beastly chaperones about. And – well, I’m so terribly afraid you’ll hate me.

  Yours,

  Margot

  5 Watery Lane

  Thwaite

  North Yorkshire

  27th December 1919

  Dear Margot,

  I could never hate you.

  Yours,

  Harry

  Three Days

  Three days. 28th, 29th, 30th December (when she would see him again! Oh happy d
ay!) and then it would be the 31st. The ball. She would tell him – she would have to tell him, wouldn’t she? And then he would know.

  And her whole fate would be decided.

  It reminded her of how she had felt the day the telegram came about Harry. How she had stood in the hallway with it, thinking of all the different futures it might contain – wounded, missing, killed, maimed – and how she would open it and then she would know, but at that moment all those futures were still possible.

  The vicarage had been full of people, she remembered. It had been blind luck that it had been she who had opened the door and not Edith or Ruth. Her mother had had a Girls’ Friendly Society meeting in the drawing room, Ruth and Ernest were sliding down the servants’ stairs on tea trays. (Nana had given in her notice, and they were being left rather to their own devices). Edith was beating carpets in the garden and singing at the top of her voice. (Margot could hear her when she opened the door to the telegram boy). There was even a clock-winder there in the hall.

  ‘Everything all right, miss?’ he’d said anxiously, seeing the little brown envelope in her hand.

  She’d said, ‘Oh yes, I’m expecting a cable from my aunt,’ and had hurried upstairs before anyone else could find her.

  The bedroom had been empty, thank God. She couldn’t remember where Jocelyn had been. She had sat on the bed, wanting to wait a little longer, but knowing from bitter experience how soon it would be before someone burst into the room demanding something. She had wanted – needed – to open the cable alone.

  So in the end she had rushed it, turning what ought to have been one of the most significant moments of her life into something hurried and furtive.

  Regret to inform you... missing in action.

  She thought back to her sixteen-year-old self, how happy that girl would have been to know that Harry was still alive. Whatever future she was to live in, it was not one in which Harry had never come home. That was something to remember, and be thankful for. If God gave her nothing else, that should be plenty.

  But still, she wanted more.

  A future with Harry. Or a future with Harry and James, somehow. Or a return to the dull misery of long afternoons alone in the office with her typewriter, of tapioca pudding and chilblains.

  Once again, she held those separate futures between her fingers, as in that small brown envelope. In three days, the envelope would be opened, and she would know. But for now, all three were still possible.

  Sunday, and a surprise in the church – Harry Singer sitting beside his mother in his old army greatcoat, holding the hymn book, singing the hymns with the best of them. She felt her mouth drop open. Was he there to see her? He must be, surely? Harry Singer, who never set foot in a church except under duress.

  She stared and stared, drinking in the sight of him. He turned and smiled at her. It was so lovely a smile – so warm and delighted at her surprise. Harry Singer!

  ‘Fancy meeting you here,’ she said to him afterwards, over the tea and biscuits.

  ‘Well... I heard there might be other inducements,’ he said, and she felt herself go warm all over.

  ‘Did you?’ she said. ‘That’ll be Edith’s leftover Christmas cake, no doubt?’

  ‘No doubt,’ he agreed, with a wink.

  Drama in the evening. Stephen – who’d been growing steadily more morose since Christmas – chose Sunday supper to announce that he was no longer in employment. Tears from their mother, and a disappointed but not-exactly-surprised look from their father.

  ‘But why ?’ their mother said.

  Stephen shrugged. ‘Nothing seems to matter very much these days, does it?’

  Poor darling Stephen. There had been months and months like that in the boarding house in Durham. It was a perfectly wretched sort of way to feel. But things had always mattered intensely to her mother, so clearly this was incomprehensible.

  She snapped, ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Stephen! You’re very lucky to have had such a good job at all! I know an office isn’t as exciting as the Front Line, but—’

  ‘Mother!’ said Jocelyn.

  Even Ruth knew that was the wrong thing to say. Stephen stood up, his narrow face flushed. Margot’s father said, ‘All right, my lad,’ and laid a hand on his arm. ‘Come on, now.’

  They disappeared off into his study, and did not reappear until after Ruth and Ernest were in bed.

  ‘Did he stick it to you?’ Jocelyn asked, but Stephen just shrugged.

  ‘Actually, he was pretty decent about it.’ He stretched his arms over his head. ‘I tell you one thing though, that’s the last time he’s going to try and shove me into some ghastly office.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ Margot asked, but Stephen didn’t seem to know.

  ‘We are a wretched lot, aren’t we?’ he said. ‘Poor old Mother and Father. And they had such high hopes for us all!’

  Ordinary Things

  The 29th. Margot spent the morning playing with James and Doris – he did like her, now the initial shyness had vanished. As much as he liked Jocelyn, at least, and more than Doris. He looked round eagerly when she came in, and sat on her lap while she read him storybooks, and... Oh! Wouldn’t it, perhaps, have been better to have handed him over and never seen him again? At least then she could grieve. How could you grieve for someone who was running about like a little cherub in gingham rompers shouting, ‘Book, Margot!’ and waving Cinderella at her? What could you do with this grief that had nowhere to go?

  She didn’t know the answer, so she took her restlessness round to Mary’s, where she found George on the hearthrug mending a toy boat, the baby sleeping in her cradle and Victoria out for a walk with the nursemaid. Mary greeted her with tea and enthusiasm and listened patiently while Margot tried to explain all of this. Then she said, ‘Margot – you’re allowed to be happy, you know. You didn’t do anything wrong.’

  ‘Didn’t I? I’m not sure Father would agree.’

  Mary dismissed that with a wave of her hand.

  ‘You’re making yourself miserable,’ she said. ‘Because you think you don’t deserve to be happy. But who does that benefit? Not James. Certainly not your mother. You gave up James to give everyone a better life. So live yours. Otherwise what was the point?’

  ‘That’s all very well for you to say,’ said Margot, aggrieved. ‘What exactly do you want me to do with it? It isn’t as though I ever had a burning ambition to go onto the stage or anything. I just wanted – well, what everyone wants. A house and a family, ordinary things.’

  ‘And Harry,’ said Mary.

  Margot didn’t rise to that. ‘What I want,’ she said slowly, ‘is what you’ve got, really. Only with Harry and James, all nice and legal. But it’s idiotic to think about it. I don’t suppose Mother and Father would really let me take James away. They wouldn’t, would they? And he’s adopted now – I signed the filthy bit of paper myself. So...’

  ‘Adopted?’ George looked up from the boat.

  ‘Yes. There was a fearful lot of beastly forms and things.’

  George said, ‘But I say, old girl. You do know adoption is illegal, don’t you?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Margot was startled.

  ‘You can’t just give a kid away like a piece of furniture. Not in this country at any rate.’

  ‘But...’ Margot stared at him. ‘Hold up a minute. All these girls in the maternity home I was in – they had to sign these great long adoption forms giving their children away. They...’

  ‘Absolute tosh. They probably drew up the whole thing out of plain cloth.’

  ‘Golly,’ said Margot. She wasn’t sure whether to giggle or cry. ‘Just think of all their lectures! Someone,’ she said, with increasing confidence, ‘should write to the papers about it.’

  George waved a beatific hand. ‘Be my guest.’

  Margot was quiet. Then she said, ‘You mean... if I decide I want James back. If Harry and I – I mean – my parents couldn’t�
��’

  ‘Couldn’t do a thing to stop you.’

  ‘Crikey.’ Margot was quiet.

  Mary said, ‘But your mother...’ Margot looked at her and she quailed. ‘I mean – well, she loves James, doesn’t she?’

  ‘She could still see him,’ Margot said. Mary raised her eyebrows. ‘She’d be happy for me,’ she said, but even to herself it sounded lame.

  Charlotte

  Jocelyn was brushing her hair before bed.

  ‘Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, and that’s the hundred!’

  ‘Jos –’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Does Mother love James?’

  Jocelyn put down her hairbrush and turned to look at her sister.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean – well – I know she wasn’t exactly pleased about having him, and...’

  ‘Margot, what are you talking about? Of course she loves him!’

  ‘I know that, but – I mean, she’s getting on, isn’t she? She’ll be forty-six in February. I thought –’ She faltered. ‘What?’

  ‘Margot, you can’t be serious.’

  ‘I just – well, if Harry and I were to get married, and— Stop looking at me like that! She never wanted him in the first place!’

  ‘You’re demented. You’re out of your mind. You thrust him on her when you didn’t want him.’

  ‘It wasn’t that I didn’t—’

  ‘Oh, Margot, don’t be absurd! Of course you didn’t want him! You were hysterical. Don’t pretend you weren’t!’

  Margot hesitated. Was Jocelyn right?

  Of course she was right.

  ‘All right, but—’

  ‘And now Harry Singer’s come home, you think you can take James back like – like a parcel.’

  ‘He’s not a parcel! He’s my son!’

  ‘Honestly, Margot! How you could do such a beastly thing to Mother, I can’t think! After Charlotte and everything!’

  Charlotte.