Christmas With the Chrystals Other Stories

  ‘My dear wife, my little daughter, this is an occasion.’ And then, with a big smile round the room, ‘A merry Christmas to you all from the Brain family.’

  The moment this introduction was over, Aunt Marguerite ran across the drawing room to hug Aunt Lindsey, but her eyes were on the children.

  ‘Oh, isn’t this fun! I have so wanted to meet you, but we’ve been touring.’ She kissed each of the children in turn. ‘I didn’t know what to bring you, dears; it’s so hard these days to find anything nice.’ She turned to Miranda. ‘Run and get the parcels out of the hall.’

  Miranda and Miriam were both looking as well dressed as Sorrel was afraid they would. Miranda had on a party dress of green taffeta, and Miriam was in white with an orange ribbon round the waist. Sorrel felt at her worst, as if she were sticking out in all the wrong places.

  Miranda, who had gone into the passage to fetch the parcels, came back with her arms full. Aunt Marguerite selected three of the parcels and handed them to the children.

  ‘Don’t undo them until Grandmother comes. We keep the presents until then.’

  Grandmother’s arrival was announced. The butler threw open the drawing-room door:

  ‘Miss Margaret Shaw.’

  Grandmother stood in the open doorway. She was wearing a dress of black trailing chiffon, and fox furs, and her hair was held up on the top of her head with a diamond comb. There was not very much light in the hall and as she stood there she did not look like an old lady, but like somebody out of a fairy story. She stretched out both arms.

  ‘My children! Now this is really Christmas.’

  The children that she referred to were, of course, Aunt Lindsey and Aunt Marguerite, and they hurried forward and kissed their mother.

  ‘Darling Mother.’

  ‘Mother dearest.’

  Then Uncle Francis came across the room and kissed Grandmother’s hand.

  ‘Wonderful, wonderful woman!’

  Uncle Mose followed Uncle Francis. He kissed Grandmother’s hand, too. All this time Sorrel, Mark and Holly had been waiting to do something, and now they had their cue. Miranda and Miriam danced across the room.

  ‘Granny, Granny!’

  Uncle Mose gave a wink and a jerk of his head to Sorrel. She caught hold of Mark and Holly and they hurried forward. After kissing Grandmother, the right thing to do seemed to be to lead her to her chair. She sat down, shook out her skirts, rested her back comfortably against her cushion and twinkled up at Aunt Lindsey.

  ‘Well, what is it this year?’

  Aunt Lindsey looked positively nervous as she produced her parcel.

  ‘I do hope it’s something you’ll like, darling; but you know how difficult things are.’

  Aunt Lindsey, being obviously so nervous, seemed to affect everybody else, and they all leaned forward while Grandmother opened the box. Inside was a beautiful handbag.

  ‘Of course,’ Sorrel thought, ‘one shouldn’t criticise one’s grandmother,’ but she did seem to take presents in a funny way. She turned the bag upside down, she smelt the leather, and she looked at the lining; and it was this that took most of her attention, for when she had examined it carefully she said to Aunt Lindsey in a shocked way:

  ‘Artificial.’

  ‘I know, dear,’ Aunt Lindsey agreed, ‘but there is so little real silk about these days.’

  Uncle Mose gave Grandmother an affectionate tap on the shoulder.

  ‘You’ve fooled her as usual, Mother. I know you’re not looking at the lining; you’re hoping to find the price ticket.’

  Grandmother twinkled up at him.

  ‘Quite right. I love knowing what things cost.’

  Aunt Marguerite laid her present on Grandmother’s knee. This time it was a thin parcel. Inside was an umbrella.

  ‘I know, dear,’ Aunt Marguerite said, ‘that you never have used an umbrella, and that you never walk anywhere; but now that you’re going into this show, I do think you ought to be prepared in case you have to, there are so very few taxis.’

  Grandmother turned over the umbrella as if it were some curiosity from a foreign country.

  ‘Interesting. I remember I carried one just like this in the first act of Aunt Celia. You remember, that was the play when I had to try and look dowdy.’

  Uncle Francis cleared his throat.

  ‘Good umbrellas are scarce today, Mother.’

  Grandmother answered him in a very good imitation of his own voice.

  ‘Then it was very kind of the Brains to give it to me.’ All of a sudden, her manner changed and she swung round in her chair and looked at the children. ‘Now, what about the children’s parcels? Where are they? Bring them out.’

  Aunt Marguerite’s parcels were opened. In Sorrel’s and Holly’s were very pretty strings of beads, and in Mark’s a penknife. As well, there was a parcel each from Aunt Lindsey. A book by Ransome for Sorrel, a torch for Mark, and a game for Holly. They took a very good view of their aunts’ ideas of presents.

  The children had made Grandmother’s heath look better by putting round the pot a bow that Alice had found. They had given it to Alice to put on the table. Now Sorrel began rather to wish they had not. Evidently this was the right time to give presents, and anyway it looked pretty shabby of them not to have got presents for at any rate Miranda and Miriam; but even with the presents they had given they were cleaned out.

  They need not have worried; their present was a great success. Grandmother said she should put it on her dressing table at the theatre to bring her luck.

  Dinner was tremendous fun. Grandmother and Uncle Mose were both terribly funny and always funny about things to do with the children. First, it was about Miranda, and then Sorrel perhaps, and then Mark. It seemed to be that kind of party when nobody minds how excited you get or how noisy you are. There was turkey to eat. Uncle Mose had managed to get it from a friend and he told a long, silly story about how he had led it on a gold ribbon right up from the city. Of course, they all knew it was not true, but they enjoyed it just the same. There was plum pudding of a sort to follow and some mince pies. The children all chose the plum pudding because, as Alice laid it down, she said:

  ‘There’s a thimble, a china baby, a horseshoe and a sixpence in there, and I want everything except the sixpence back for next year, so mind you don’t swallow them.’

  The thimble and the china baby were found by Holly, the horseshoe by Miranda, and Uncle Mose got the sixpence. Uncle Francis had brought with him a bottle of port wine, which he said he had got from his club, and when dinner was over, everybody, including the children, were given some to drink. It was for toasts. There seemed to be a custom about this. First of all, Grandmother’s health was drunk, and Uncle Francis made a speech about it. Then Aunt Lindsey fetched an enormous photograph of Uncle Henry and put it down by Grandmother’s side, and Grandmother made a speech about ‘my eldest boy’, and everybody drank to Uncle Henry. Then Grandmother made a speech about the Cohens and another about the Brains. The children, who had not had very much port to begin with, began to wonder how many more healths were going to be drunk, because even though they took only teeny little sips they had not much left, when Grandmother suddenly held up her hand for silence.

  ‘There’s someone we specially want to drink to tonight. These children’s father. May he be home with them by next Christmas.’

  It was quite awful; but somehow, thinking of its being Christmas and even imagining him home by next Christmas was so absolutely gorgeous, it made Sorrel want to cry. She looked at Mark and saw he was going to cry too, and then she looked at Holly and saw that she was, too. Fortunately, Sorrel was not the only one who knew what was going to happen. Uncle Mose was quicker than she was. Before more than two tears had flopped down Sorrel’s cheeks and Mark had only got to the making-faces stage, and Holly was just puckering up, he had got off his chair and was walking round the table on his hands.

  None of the children had ever seen a person do that before, and they were so i
nterested watching him that the crying moment passed, and they were back feeling Christmassy again.

  After dinner they played charades, and the man dressed as a butler, Alice and Hannah came in as audience.

  The charades started like ordinary party charades, only of rather a grand kind. Uncle Mose, Grandmother, Miranda, Holly and Aunt Lindsey made a side. They acted ‘manifold’ but the word did not seem to have much to do with it. It was just thinking of amusing things to give everybody, especially the children, to do. The second charade was acted by the rest of the family. This was more serious because Uncle Francis seemed only to play serious parts, and so that charade was not very funny. It was when they were playing the third charade that Grandmother and Uncle Mose got together.

  ‘You must do Jaques in As You Like It,’ Uncle Mose urged, ‘only, instead of the apple, I’ve got a prop for you.’

  The children had never seen Uncle Francis act. So it was not half as funny to them as it seemed to be to the others.

  Grandmother, with an overcoat on to show she was being a man, stood with an enormous carving knife in one hand and peeled a pumpkin. And while the skin fell on the floor she rolled out very slowly the Seven Ages of Man speech. There were immense pauses when she looked up and did things with her eyes, and this simply convulsed Aunt Lindsey, Uncle Mose and Alice. Alice laughed so much that she had to hold her inside, and she kept murmuring to the butler:

  ‘She’ll be the death of me.’

  Hannah, sitting beside her, never laughed at all. Alice had told her that this was Shakespeare – and Shakespeare, according to what Hannah had heard, was not a thing to laugh at. After that, Uncle Mose pretending to be Aunt Marguerite and Grandmother pretending to be Uncle Francis, did a scene from Macbeth. Sorrel, who had learnt Macbeth, knew that neither of them was using the real words, but making it up. Some of the things that Uncle Mose did were really funny, but otherwise the people who enjoyed themselves most were Grandmother and Uncle Mose. Uncle Francis was not amused at all.

  Then the charades were over. Grandmother went back to her chair and Aunt Lindsey looked at her watch.

  ‘I think it’s time we started the carols.’

  They sang ‘The First Noel’ and ‘Good King Wenceslas’. And then Grandmother held out a hand to Mark.

  ‘Come here, grandson. I hear from Madame Fidolia that you can sing. What carol will you sing for us?’

  Mark did not want to sing at all. It was that sort of party which, as nobody was stern with anybody, had got to the point when knocking other people about, especially grown-ups, was fun. Mark felt more in the mood to stand on his head than to sing a carol, but Grandmother was holding him firmly and she obviously meant to have her way.

  ‘If I sing one you won’t say “sing another”, will you?’

  Grandmother looked round at her daughters.

  ‘See how he bullies me; you’d never have dared do that. Very well, Mark, just one carol and I won’t ask for another.’

  They had learnt at the Academy, ‘I Saw Three Ships’. It was easy to sing without a piano, and Mark liked it. He leant against Grandmother and sang it all through.

  There was complete silence when he had finished. Sorrel did not wonder, for, really, Mark’s singing was a very nice noise. She looked at him with pride. It was a good thing that one of them could shine in this clever family. Uncle Francis was the first to speak, and he used his most caramel voice:

  ‘Beautiful, beautiful.’

  Aunt Lindsey kissed her mother.

  ‘I think that’s the right ending to a lovely evening. We’ve hired a car, you know, and it ought to be here any minute.’

  Grandmother was kissing everybody.

  ‘Goodnight, dears. Goodnight, Francis. Goodnight, Marguerite. God bless you all.’

  10. Christmas Presents

  Looking back it is strange that that very pretty custom, which comes to us from abroad, of hanging a holly wreath on the front door never existed when I was a child. Certainly we never had one and I do not remember seeing one. Stranger still, we never had a crib in the house. There was one of course in the church, but in those days the charming custom of making a crib for the home never reached us. Today, when so many people give immense imagination and talent to building exquisite cribs which they look at with joy until Twelfth Night, I regret that as a child I never had the chance to build one.

  I don’t know about you, but I plan to have a little lit crib in my home next Christmas.

  Before Christmas there never seem enough hours in the day to get through all you have to do. First on the list of course is shopping. All my life I have tried to get ahead with my Christmas shopping, but I have never succeeded. I make careful lists months beforehand and by October I have started to shop, but I never catch up with my own tail. You know how it is – something somebody wants which you could have bought anywhere a month or so ago suddenly disappears. In London, where I live, this means travelling miles from one shopping area to another wearing out both the feet and the temper. I suppose if you live in the country it’s worse for it means going from one town or village to another. It’s worth the effort though if you run what you want to earth. You feel as if you had won an Olympic Gold Medal, and when you see the face of the person you give it to all your labour is worthwhile. ‘Oh, bless you! It’s what I most wanted and I was scared stiff nobody would give it to me.’

  I got my first watch off the Christmas tree, and you know what a first watch means. I must have been about eleven. You would laugh if you saw it today, it was made of what was called gunmetal fastened onto me by a metal bow attached to a pin. A watch like that was all the rage in those days, just as much in fashion as the latest craze in watches is today. I forget who gave mine to me, but I do know however much of a search the giver had to find it, he or she must have thought every second worthwhile if they saw my face when I opened the box in which it arrived. In fact even now, all those years later, if I flag in my search for a special present I see again my little gunmetal watch and I plod on.

  How easy it was when one was tiny. My brother when he was just four gave everybody who had to have a present a sugar mouse. Sugar mice complete with pink noses and wool tails in those far-off days cost one halfpenny each. The only person who did not get a mouse was me. When I asked my brother why he said: ‘I only had four pennies which is eight mice, with you it would have been nine. I like you least so I left you out.’ Even at just four I thought that showed a poor Christmas spirit.

  Present buying is only half the business of present giving. Thank goodness, when I was a child there was none of the elaborate parcel doing up there is today. It was plain brown paper and string with perhaps a piece of holly stuck in the string. How children manage today with elaborate paper, ribbons, bows and sticky tape I can’t imagine. They must be exhausted by Christmas Day.

  Circus Shoes

  When their Aunt Rebecca dies, Peter and Santa face the awful prospect of life in separate orphanages – until they find a Christmas card from their only living relative, Uncle Gus, who works in a circus.

  FROM

  Circus Shoes

  11. The Christmas Card

  Peter and Santa felt miserable. In their way they missed Aunt Rebecca. But they missed her for odd, funny things, and they both knew how the other was feeling so there was no need to keep talking about it. Inside, though they did not talk about that either, they were both worrying. After all they were not babies, they knew what happened to annuities when people died, and though, of course, they also knew that somebody or other is bound to look after children, it might not be the sort of looking after anyone would care for.

  The worst of it was there had to be a time of hanging about. The moment Aunt Rebecca died Mr Stibbings wrote to the duchess’s executors, explaining what had happened, and about Peter and Santa, and asking if something could be done until they were old enough to earn their own livings. Meanwhile it was decided, if the executors said no, then they were to go to an orphanage.


  The letter came a week after Aunt Rebecca died. It arrived at teatime. Mrs Ford, Madame Tranchot, and Miss Fane were all there, but no one liked to open the letter because it was, of course, addressed to Mr Stibbings. It was put on the mantelpiece and they all stared at it. Peter and Santa could not eat any more tea because they wanted so badly to know what it said, which was a pity because there was some particularly good hot buttered toast.

  ‘Do you think,’ Peter suggested, ‘that I had better take it round to him?’

  Mrs Ford looked at Madame Tranchot, who looked at Miss Fane. All their faces said the same thing: ‘Don’t let him do that because I want to know what is in it.’ But none of them liked to say quite that. Mrs Ford got round the difficulty by starting to cry.

  ‘It does seem hard that what concerns the nephew and niece of my oldest friend’ – here she gave a big sniff – ‘should be discussed behind my back.’

  Peter kicked Santa under the table. She saw he was angry and embarrassed about the crying and might be rude. She thought quickly.

  ‘How would it be if Peter and I went round and told him it was here?’

  Everybody thought that a good idea. So Peter and Santa, without giving anyone a chance to change their minds, rushed out. Outside Mr Stibbings’s house they stood still a moment.

  Santa panted, for they had run all the way:

  ‘I feel awful inside. Do you?’

  Peter nodded.

  ‘Like waiting at the dentist’s. I wish we knew what it said. Just suppose it’s an orphanage.’

  Luckily Mr Stibbings was in and said he would come at once. But Mr Stibbings’s ‘at once’ was almost as slow as other people’s ‘presently.’ Although it was April and not a bit cold, it was astounding how he fussed before he would go out. It was nearly five minutes before he found his scarf, though Peter and Santa helped look, as well as Mr Stibbings’s housekeeper. In the end the housekeeper remembered he had worn it in bed one night, and she ran upstairs and found it tied in a black wool bow to one of the bed knobs. When all the scarf (and it was a very long one) was wound round Mr Stibbings, Peter held out the overcoat.