The Silent Stars Go By

by Sally Nicholls

‘All right!’ said Margot. ‘I was only asking, that’s all.’

  But Jocelyn, normally so calm and reasonable, was angrier than Margot had seen her in a long time.

  ‘Of all the selfish beasts,’ she said furiously. ‘You are the worst.’

  Margot flung herself onto the bed and turned off the light. She and Jocelyn lay in the dark, both fuming.

  Charlotte.

  Charlotte was Margot’s sister – her real sister. She would be nearly four now, had she lived, but she hadn’t – she’d lasted a week and then died. There had been something wrong with her – Margot was hazy about the details. She remembered the awfulness of it – it was January 1916, when the weather was icy and news from the Front was bleak. Charlotte was supposed to be a spark of hope in a family which desperately needed it.

  They’d had the news only a few weeks earlier that Margot’s cousin John had been killed on manoeuvres. (The idea had been to call the baby John, or Joan, in his honour, but that had had to be hastily reassessed when it became clear that Charlotte was not going to live.) Cook had given her notice just before Christmas, and with mother so close to her lying-in, everyone else was forced to take up the slack. But the baby had been much-longed-for, much talked-about and prepared-for. Jocelyn and Margot and their mother had knitted little matinée jackets and booties. Ernest’s old cradle, bath and perambulator had been fetched out of the attic and dusted down. She had been the one true happy thing, that awful winter.

  When she had died, it had felt like the end of the world. Their mother had fallen into a deep depression, which had lasted for most of that year. That unhappiness at home had been the backdrop to Harry and his family’s arrival, Margot remembered. It had been part of that whole reckless, unsettled summer.

  And part of why she’d been so desperate to escape.

  One Day

  The 30th. The luncheon party.

  Harry.

  The usual lovely chaos of his household – so familiar from the tea- and tennis-parties where they had first fallen in love. Games for the younger children – Devil in the Dark and Blind Man’s Bluff and Sardines. Whist and Bridge in the drawing-room for the older set (Stephen and Jocelyn disappeared into here with some relief – both were excellent card-players, and neither cared very much for socialising.)

  Cold meats and cheese and bread and fruit in the dining-room, with potted shrimp and a box of rich-mixed biscuits and a jar of olives and a big seed cake – oh, how glorious to have cake again! Oh, how she had missed it!

  The parents – those who weren’t supervising the children’s games – all sitting in the parlour, with the door open so they could see into the hall and up the stairs. It would be idiotic to try and sneak away here, she saw at once, and Harry didn’t even attempt it.

  The rest of them, the lumpish, awkward young people that they were, neither one thing or the other, all crowded in the hall on the stairs. Chairs had been brought down from the rest of the house and scattered about the place to accommodate this. How awkward it was and yet how nice, too. How familiar. People she had known all her life, like Jack, Dickie, Betty, Annabel, Beryl and Sue. Dickie had lost an ear and most of one hand on Hill Sixty. (‘An ear ?’ said Harry. ‘Isn’t a leg or something more traditional?’) and was engaged to be married to Peggy, who was showing off her little sterling band with the paste diamond in it like it was the Koh-i-Noor. Jack was still in his subaltern’s uniform, grinning like an idiot at all the girls.

  They looked, she supposed, like any other set of newly adult children. And yet what secrets did they all carry? What histories and heartaches? Why did Beryl look so shifty when Jack came into the room? Why did Harry’s sister Mabel look so much like she was going to cry? What did all these people think about when they were alone in their rooms at night? Who were they all really ?

  Harry.

  Harry smiling at her when she came in at the door, with a smile she was sure he kept only for her. Harry so attentive – taking her coat, asking about her Christmas, fetching her a glass of lemonade and laughing at her descriptions of the charades and the Lonely of the Parish. Harry, who made her shiver all over and – well, sort of come to attention when he was in the room. Harry who promised so much – respectability (an awful word but an honest one), a home, a future, a family, an escape from the awfulness of damp boarding houses and prunes and custard and spats over who’d used the last of the hot water and who wasn’t speaking to whom. A life with James. That couldn’t happen, could it? Perhaps it could.

  Harry’s house was very like her own, a noisy, shabby chaotic kingdom. But the garden – thanks to Harry’s mother – was really lovely. On the way back from the WC Margot stopped at the window to admire it; the trees and the grass all dressed in frost, the high, rolling fields of the dales stretching out behind it. Say what you like about Thwaite, on a day like today, it was beautiful.

  He came up beside her and leaned his face against the glass.

  ‘Hullo!’

  ‘Hullo.’ She smiled at him.

  ‘We haven’t managed to spend much time together, have we?’ he said. ‘Do you remember, that summer... ? Every minute we weren’t together was agony.’

  ‘Of course I remember.’

  ‘It seems so long ago, doesn’t it?’

  She looked at him. His long, kind face, the funny tuft at the back of his hair that he never managed to control.

  ‘Not so very long,’ she said, though secretly she agreed with him. It felt like a thousand years ago.

  He gave her that smile again. There was something about Harry’s smile. Nobody else seemed to see it – perhaps they didn’t see it – but the warmth that radiated from it was like a blazing fire on a cold day. She thought she could sit beside it and rest for ever.

  But could she ever really rest?

  ‘It’s funny...’ he said, swinging the curtain cord absently, not looking at her. ‘Coming back, I mean. While you’re out there... you feel so distant from the fellows at home. Like it’s another world. And then when you’re home, it doesn’t go away, somehow. At least the other chaps can talk to each other about it. I know it must have been hideous, but you do feel rather out of it if you were just a POW.’

  ‘What was it like?’ said Margot, fascinated by this idea. ‘Really? Was it awful?’

  ‘Oh...’ He stared out of the window at the garden. ‘Bits of it were fairly brutal. It’s just... well... it’s not really something you can talk about to anyone. It’s frightfully romantic to have suffered in the trenches, but it’s rather different when it’s our own boys who were doing the blockading. There were times when I rather thought I hated our navy. There were children starving in Germany because of men like my cousins. That’s a rum sort of thing to get your head around. It’s not something that tends to go down very well when you try and talk about it.’

  ‘No, I suppose it wouldn’t.’ She didn’t look at him. ‘Like a thicket between you and the rest of the world. Like everyone else can be happy... and normal... and you can’t because you carry this awful weight around everywhere. And you can’t ever put it down or talk about it, so you’re always pretending to be something you aren’t. And you know if people ever found out, they’d hate you. I think it must be rather like committing a murder or something. You couldn’t ever forget it, could you? Or be happy again.’

  ‘Heavens!’ He looked at her. ‘I don’t know that it’s so bad as all that. Although I know some chaps at the Front have rather a horror show to carry. I got off lightly really, compared to some.’

  She wondered if he was telling the truth. He’d been in that nursing home on the Isle of Wight for months. He must have had a pretty rotten time of it.

  ‘Father once said,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘that it never does to compare your troubles to other people’s. That grief is grief, and you can’t know how heavy someone else’s is unless you carry it. I mean, is it easier to lose your leg or your mind? Or your son? How can you compare them? And why would yo
u? What difference does it make?’

  ‘I think your pater’s pretty wise, you know,’ Harry said. She flicked her eyes across at him and saw that he was watching her with such warmth that she couldn’t look away.

  ‘What did happen to you, Margot?’ he said quietly, and she blushed. For the first time, she really felt as though she might be able to tell him.

  ‘I...’ she said.

  They stared at each other. Then from downstairs, they heard voices calling.

  ‘Harry! Harry, you old devil, where are you?’

  ‘Margot!’

  ‘Dinner time! Come on, chaps, come down!’

  They grimaced at each other.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Harry. He turned away, and went downstairs.

  Scent and Silk

  And then the 31st itself. The Day of Judgement.

  Margot and Jocelyn dressed for the ball.

  ‘How lovely to be having balls again! Of course, before the War I only went to children’s parties, but even so...’ Jocelyn’s voice was rather wistful. ‘I suppose there are heaps of dances in Durham.’

  ‘Not at all.’ Margot was brisk. ‘Not now, at any rate. Last year was different, of course...’

  What a strange time that had been! All the girls had gone a little wild with the joy of it; the young men home from the War, the peace here at last. Everyone giddy and drunk with reaction. The celebrations in the streets. The parties that lasted all night, the fierce urgency of the dancing and the drinking, the girls sneaking in through the windows in the early hours of the morning. It had frightened Margot a little.

  ‘Here,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘Let me finish buttoning you up – stay still, can’t you? There! What do you think?’

  Jocelyn surveyed herself dubiously in the looking-glass. The blue dress did fit her, more or less, though she would never look as well in it as Margot had. The three layers of woolly underwear necessary for a midwinter ball didn’t much help.

  Margot, in contrast, looked effortlessly glamorous. She had eschewed their mother’s suggestions, and found a pattern in an old copy of Vogue hiding in the bowels of her childhood dressing-table. The dress looked deceptively simple, but striking. Her blonde hair was neat and sophisticated, with a black velvet rose – an unexpectedly perfect Christmas-present from Stephen, however had he thought of it? – slid above her ear. Their mother had found a pair of Victorian jet earrings in an old jewellery box. They would have looked ridiculous on Jocelyn, but in Margot’s small creamy ears they were perfect. A strip of black velvet around her neck completed the ensemble.

  ‘You’ll always outshine me,’ Jocelyn said, without sadness. ‘No matter what I do. Next ball I’ll go in tweeds and galoshes and a woolly jersey. At least I’ll be warm and comfortable.’

  ‘Sounds like a jolly good idea to me,’ said Margot, frowning at her reflection in the looking-glass. She had always cared so much about how she looked. She still went through all the routines, but since – since James, she had felt detached from it. It was as though there was an outside Margot who looked as perfect and beautiful as ever, and an inner, secret Margot, who tore at her hair and rent her clothing, and wailed and gnashed her teeth. How strange to be two such separate people! Would they ever be reconciled? The quiet, composed Margot in the mirror seemed to live on another planet to the desperate Margot inside. ‘It’s ridiculous really, to expect so much from a ball... and yet we do. Your coming-out ball, Jos. How do you feel?’

  ‘Absurd,’ said Jocelyn grumpily. Then, seeing the concern in her sister’s face, she smiled. ‘All right, a little excited. It’s just as well I’ve resigned myself to being an old maid, for I’m sure no one will dance with me.’

  ‘Stephen will, at least,’ said Margot. ‘And Harry and George if I ask them.’

  ‘Oh goody,’ said Jocelyn. ‘You do know how to make a girl feel special, I don’t say.’

  Through the Darkness

  The Hendersons lived in a small manor house at the edge of the village. The two families had never been close, but the Hendersons came to the church at Christmas, Easter and Harvest Festival, and all of the children had been christened and confirmed by Margot’s father. They did not come to the children’s parties her father held for the parishioners, but all the older Allen children had at one time or another been invited to parties at the manor. Once, when Margot had been about nine, they’d been to tea with the Henderson children, but it hadn’t been a success. Stephen had fought with Marjorie Henderson and pushed her into the mud, and they’d been sent home more or less in disgrace.

  For children’s parties, they had walked through the village with Nana. Margot had always resented this, particularly in wet weather, when they would arrive in galoshes and mud-spattered stockings, and would have to retire to a drawing room to change. The other, wealthier children would come in carriages or – on one or two glamorous occasions – even in motorcars.

  Now their father had a motorcar of his own – a black Model T, like half the village. He was to drive them there, and they were to call a taxi to collect them when the party finished, some time in the early hours of the morning.

  James was in bed, but Ernest and Ruth were allowed to stay up to see them go. They sat on the stairs in their pyjamas and dressing-gowns.

  ‘Goodbye!’ Ruth called, waving. ‘I hope you have a simply marvellous time!’

  ‘Bring us back some cake!’ called Ernest.

  ‘And one of those little pencils from the dance programme!’ Ruth added.

  ‘And one for me!’

  ‘And some champagne!’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Mother. ‘Goodbye, darlings. Have a lovely time.’

  But their excitement was catching. Even freezing in the little car, her black dress hidden under her wrap and several blankets, Margot could still feel it. A ball! A dance!

  Harry.

  ‘Excited?’ their father said to Jocelyn.

  ‘I might be if people would stop asking,’ she said. Stephen grinned. Their father turned the car into the manor drive.

  ‘Oh!’ Jocelyn said. ‘Oh, look!’

  It did look lovely. Every window in the manor was blazing. Chinese lanterns had been hung from the trees, and glowed pink and purple and cream amongst the bare branches. In the window, the Christmas tree glowed with little red candles shining amongst the baubles. It brought back memories of children’s parties in the manor, girls in white party dresses, coloured sashes and hair-ribbons, party games in the garden, tea in the hall on long tables with white tablecloths. Trifle and jelly and angel bread and little triangular sandwiches. The agonising consciousness of the wrongness of their dresses and the shabbiness of their birthday presents.

  How long ago that all seemed.

  And now, here they were at the door. The footman was directing them upstairs – Margot and Jocelyn up one staircase, Stephen another. This was Mrs Henderson’s room, she realised, looking around it with frank curiosity – the dressing-table, the four-poster bed, the long looking-glass. It was all fiendishly neat, of course. Imagine asking ladies to leave their wraps in Mother and Father’s room! Amongst the mess of Mother’s old pots of cold cream and Father’s parish magazines and James’s wooden animals from the Noah’s ark, the piles of books by the bed, and the ashtray full of Father’s pipe-ash.

  She and Jocelyn took off their wraps and laid them on the bed. Then they stared into the looking-glass, Jocelyn gloomily, Margot appraisingly. After a moment, she took out her powder compact and dusted her nose.

  ‘Ready?’ she said to Jocelyn.

  And Jocelyn said glumly, ‘If I must, I suppose.’

  And they were off.

  Off down the long, wooden stairs, back down the wainscotted corridor. Imagine living in a house like this! It was Norman, someone had told her – at least the banqueting hall and the solar were. Other parts were later, and the garden, of course, was Victorian. But still! Margot had always thought that if she could live anyw
here she would have chosen the old manor, with its moat and its physic garden, its dark, shabby rooms and its wonderful scent of cool, dusty stone, green leaves and water in springtime and old wood.

  Stephen was waiting in the hallway, holding their dance programmes with – yes – the little pencils attached with lengths of silk cord (she must remember to bring one home to Ruth). There was a gaggle of girls in shot-silk dresses, talking excitedly. From the hall, Margot could hear music and voices.

  Her heart was fluttering. Her entire future might be decided tonight! Although she supposed that could be true any day, whether one wanted it or not. Margot thought of all the things she might do if she chose – marry someone unsuitable, run away to Paris, join a convent. Announce to the whole party that James was her son.

  It seemed like it was much easier to ruin a life than to build one.

  Tonight I shall find Harry, she told herself. For once in my life, I won’t funk it. I’ll tell him about James. The rest is in his hands.

  She could feel the nerves shivering down her arms and her legs. Her stomach churned.

  It’s your own silly fault, she said sternly. And then, remembering what Mary had said, Do you want to spend the rest of your life in purgatory for one foolish mistake?

  Into the Light

  Not a huge crowd, but presumably there would be more later. A few faces she recognised. A noisy group in really lovely clothes – a dark-haired woman in a dark green gown so beautiful it made her want to go over and stroke it – they must be the house party. A girl in a bright yellow dress – goodness, she looked a fright! Boys in army uniform. Men in hunting pinks.

  Where was he?

  ‘Right,’ said Jocelyn, looking down at her programme. ‘Let’s get one dance into this thing anyway. Then it won’t look so wretched if anyone else asks. Which do you want, Stephen?’

  ‘I’ll have two,’ said Stephen, with surprising generosity. ‘Let’s see – how about two and eight? And what about you, Margot? When shall I have you? Shall we say one, then we’ve got it out of the way early? I expect yours will fill up pretty sharpish, won’t it?’