“Oh, Tom, it was about the only thing I could do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I was always so useless at anything physical, where you were meant to hit a ball. I could never play tennis and I was hopeless at skiing … And when I came to watch school rugger matches, everything always had to be explained to me, and I could never get the hang of the game.”
“The great thing was you used to come and watch.”
“Yes, but I always felt so inadequate. And whenever I tried to plan something really exciting, it always went wrong. I mean, that holiday we had here, it was meant to be all bathing and picnics and sand-castles, and all we did was play Racing Demon in the sun lounge and wait for the rain to stop.”
“I liked that holiday.”
“And that terrible time I took you three with the Richard family to Norway to ski. We got caught in a blizzard before we’d even got to the airport, and we missed the plane, and your father had to telegraph us enough money to spend the night in a hotel and wait for a flight the next day.”
“That was an adventure. And it wasn’t your fault.”
“And the time I took you all to the Hebrides, and it was April and the boat hit the worst storm of the winter, and we got marooned on Tiree with a lot of hungry cattle. The awful things always happened when your father wasn’t there. When he was with us, everything went on oiled wheels. No snowstorms, no shipwrecks, and the sun always shone.”
“I think you’re underestimating yourself,” said Tom.
* * *
They were alone on the beach now, away from everybody, out in a world of rushing air and flattened grass and blown sand. They came to a breakwater and Tom said, “Let’s sit down for a bit,” so they did, sheltered from the wind, and in the full beneficence of the sun. Suddenly it felt quite warm. The sun burnt comfortingly through Laura’s coat and warmed her knees. It was companionable, just the two of them tucked into the shelter of the breakwater, with only the wind and the gulls for company.
After a little, Tom said, “You didn’t really think I wanted a hockey-playing mother, did you?”
Laura’s thoughts had already strayed from this line of conversation, and she was surprised to find that Tom still wanted to continue it.
“Not hockey … but something, perhaps. Think what fun you’re going to have with Virginia. You can do so much together. You both swim and play tennis, you’ll probably find her beating you at golf one day. It makes life so much more … I don’t know … complete, I suppose. It makes for friendship. And in a marriage that’s almost as important as love.”
“You never did anything sporty with Dad, and you don’t seem to have managed too badly.”
“No. But we raised a family together; perhaps that was enough.”
“Only if you’re pleased with the results.”
“You wouldn’t, by any chance, be fishing for a compliment?”
“No, I’m just trying to pay you one.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Just that the results may not be all that outstanding, but the job you did certainly was.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“You always treated us like people. I never appreciated this till I went to school and realized that not everybody was as lucky as me. And you never laughed at us.”
“Was that so important?”
“More important than anything. We were allowed to preserve our dignity.”
Laura frowned, determined to keep sentimentality at bay. “It’s funny, growing older. You try to do all the right things, and you think it’s going to last forever, and suddenly it’s all over. You are twenty-five and getting married today, and the girls are living in London and I scarcely see them…”
“But they come home. And when they do, the three of you start gossiping and giggling just the way you’ve always done.”
“Perhaps I should try to be more detached.”
“Don’t try to be anything. Just go on being nice you, and you’ll end up the bonniest granny a baby ever had.”
She began to laugh at the thought, then pulled back the cuff of her coat to look at her watch. “You know, we shouldn’t dawdle. Time’s getting on.”
They got to their feet and climbed back over the breakwater and headed back for the distant hotel. Tom found for her a pair of tiny yellow shells, still joined so that they looked like a butterfly, and Laura put them in her glove for safety, and thought that when she got home she would put them with her other small mementoes.
* * *
With the wind against them there was no breath to spare for conversation, so they trudged in silence, each busy with his own thoughts. As they crossed the links, they saw Roger coming down the fairway towards them. And all at once Laura was caught up in a gust of real excitement, the first she had felt all day. They were all converging, heading for the hotel, to change into their finery, and to drive to the little church where Tom and Virginia were going to be married. The day that they had all looked forward to for so long was finally here, and although she loved her son and knew that she was losing him, she could not feel any regret. He was simply stepping on and out, as they had always encouraged him to do, and she was filled with the deepest thankfulness at the way everything had turned out.
They reached the hotel porch at last, glad to be out of the buffeting wind. They faced each other surrounded by folded sun umbrellas and deck-chairs. Laura said, “That was a lovely walk. The best. Thank you for coming.”
“Thank you.”
“I … I’ll say goodbye now, Tom. I hate saying it in front of people. And, darling”—she took his hand—“you’ve been so clever to find Virginia. She’s exactly right for you, and you’re going to have a great time together.”
He said, “Yes, I know. And I know why. It’s because, basically, she’s like you.”
“Me?” The very idea was ridiculous. No two women had ever been more different. “Virginia like me?”
“Yes, you. You see, beneath the capability and the brightness, and the very pretty face, she’s gentle and she’s wise.”
To hear her down-to-earth Tom come out with this brought a sudden lump to Laura’s throat. Surely she was not going to cry? For a terrible second her eyes pricked and she could feel the tears rising, but she fought them back, and the little crisis was over. She was able to smile and reach up to kiss him. “That was a nice thing to tell me, Tom. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Mummy.”
The baby name for her came naturally, although he had not used it for years. She let go of his hand and went ahead of him through the door, and into the carpeted interior of the hotel.
Gentle and wise. The old-fashioned words filled her with warmth. Gentle and wise. Perhaps she hadn’t done so badly after all.
She headed for the staircase and went up, two steps at a time, to get changed for Tom’s wedding.
SKATES
Jenny Peters, ten years old, opened the door of Mr. Sims’s ironmongery store and went inside. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, already dark, and bitterly cold, but Mr. Sims’s shop was cosy with the smell of his paraffin heater, and all was adorned for Christmas. He had put a notice on his counter, USEFUL AND ACCEPTABLE GIFTS FOR THE FESTIVE SEASON, and to prove his point, tied a red tinsel bow around the handle of a formidable claw hammer.
“Hello there, Jenny.”
“Hello, Mr. Sims.”
“What can I do for you?”
She told him what she needed, not certain whether he would be able to help her. “… they have to be little lights, like the ones inside the fridge. And then clips. Like bulldog clips. To fasten them onto the edge of a box…”
Mr. Sims considered the problem, gazing at Jenny over the top of his spectacles. “Do you want batteries?” he asked.
“No. I’ve got a long lead that plugs into the wall socket.”
“Sounds like you’re going to be electrocuting yourself.”
“I won’t do that.”
“W
ell. Wait a moment…”
He disappeared. She took her purse out of her coat pocket and counted out the last few notes and coins of her Christmas spending money. She hoped that there would be enough. If not, Mr. Sims would probably let her have credit until next week’s pocket money came in.
After a bit, he came back with the makings of exactly what she needed. He opened the boxes, and put all the bits together. There was a little adaptor plug and a couple of yards of flex. The clips were meant for bigger lights, but that didn’t matter.
“That’s perfect, Mr. Sims. Thank you. How much is it going to cost?”
He smiled, reaching for a stout paper bag into which he put her purchases. “Cash down, you get ten per cent discount. That’s, let’s see…” He did a sum with a stubby pencil on the corner of the bag. “One pound eighty-five pence.”
Relief. She had enough. She handed over two pound notes and was solemnly given change. But Mr. Sims could not contain his curiosity. “What’s all this for, then?”
“It’s Natasha’s Christmas present. It’s a secret.”
“Say no more. Spending Christmas at home?”
“Yes. Granny’s staying. Dad fetched her from the station last night.”
“That’s nice.” He handed over the bag. “Too busy to go skating, are you?”
Jenny said, “Yes.” And then, in truth, added, “I can’t skate.”
“Bet you never even tried.”
“Yes, I did. I borrowed an old pair of Natasha’s boots. But they were too big and I kept falling over.”
“Just a knack,” said Mr. Sims. “Like riding a bicycle.”
“Yes,” said Jenny. “I suppose so.” She took the bulky bag. “Thank you, Mr. Sims, and have a lovely Christmas.”
Outside, the cold hit her like a solid thing. A bit like walking into a deep-freeze. But it was not dark, because the street lights were on, and the floodlights which Tommy Bright, who ran the Bramley Arms, had set up in the forecourt of his pub, poured out, like spotlights in a theatre, over the flooded frozen skating rink which the village green had become. For this gratuitous service he was rewarded by a packed bar every evening, and the constant ringing of his till.
The village lay in a bowl of countryside with a line of hills to the south. Houses, church, shops, and pub were grouped around the green, and a small river, hardly more than a stream, flowed through the middle of it. It was this river which had burst its banks. For most of November, it had rained, and the beginning of December had brought the first snows. Old people said that they had never known such weather. The river had steadily risen and finally, unable to contain itself, overflowed and flooded the green. Then the temperature dropped abruptly, the night frosts were cruel, and all was frozen hard as iron.
A skating rink. The ice had held for a week, and now it was Christmas Eve, and if the forecasts were to be believed, looked as though it was going to go on holding.
Standing outside Mr. Sims’s shop, Jenny paused to watch the carnival scene. The skaters, the sledges, the clumsy games of hockey. There were shrieks and shouts of revelry, and whole families had turned out to enjoy the fun, pulling bundled babies on toboggans or skating hand in hand.
She looked for her sister Natasha and saw her almost at once, for she stood out in her bright pink track suit. Natasha skated the way she did everything, with consummate expertise and grace. She was tall and slender, with blonde hair and endless legs, and took any sort of physical activity in her easy stride. Captain of the junior tennis at school and in the gymnastic team as well, but her great passion in life was dancing. She had been attending classes since she was five and had already won a number of medals and prizes. Her single-minded ambition was to be a ballerina.
Jenny, smaller, younger, and a great deal more dumpy, trailed in this brilliant sister’s wake. She went to dancing class as well, but never progressed further than “The Sailors Hornpipe,” or some middle-European polkas. The trouble was, she had difficulty remembering which was her left foot and which her right. Games were little better, and when it came to leaping over the horse at gym, she nearly always ended up the same side that she had started off.
She did not like going to dancing class, but complied with the arrangement, because it was about the only thing that the two sisters did together. Sometimes she dreamed about devoting her energies to something entirely different. Like learning the piano. There was a piano in the dining-room at home, and the frustration of knowing that it stood there, filled with music which she was unable to release, was a constant reminder of her own inadequacies. But piano lessons were expensive. Much more costly than the communal dancing class, and she was too diffident to suggest them to her parents. Perhaps, for her birthday, she could ask for piano lessons. But her birthday wasn’t until next summer. It was all very difficult.
“Jenny!” It was Natasha, sailing by, hand-in-hand with another girl. “Come on. Have another try.”
Jenny waved, but they had already gone, floating away to the far side of the ice. It looked so easy, but she had discovered that it was the most impossible thing in the world. Wearing Natasha’s old boots, she had tried. But every step was agony, and her feet and legs had shot in all directions, and finally, she had fallen and hurt herself quite badly. But being hurt was not as painful as the knowledge that, yet again, she had made a fool of herself.
She sighed, turned, and set off for home. It was nice walking, with the Christmasy feeling all about her, and people’s windows bright with the lights of their trees, shining out into frozen gardens. Her own house had a Christmas tree too, in the dining-room window, but the curtains of the sitting-room were drawn. Indoors, she opened the sitting-room door and put her head around the edge of it. Mum and Dad and Granny were having tea by the fire, and Granny was knitting. They all looked up, and smiled.
“Do you want a cup of tea, darling? Or shall I make you some hot chocolate?”
“No, thank you. I’m just going upstairs to my room.”
Upstairs, she turned on her light, and drew the curtains. It wasn’t a very large room, but all her own. A good deal of it was taken up with her work-table, which is where she did her homework, and her drawing, and set up her little sewing machine when she felt in the mood for making things. Now, however, it was littered with all the bits and pieces needed to make Natasha’s present. Pots of paint, and tubes of glue and bits of cotton wool, and pipe cleaners and scraps of ribbon. The present stood, shrouded under a dust sheet. It had stayed hidden all the time Jenny was working on it, and she had enough respect for her mother to know that under no circumstances would she ever take so much as a single peep.
Now, she lifted off the dust sheet, and stood, staring at it, trying to see it with Natasha’s critical eyes.
It was a miniature stage-set of a ballet. An empty wooden wine crate had given her the idea, and her father had helped her adapt it, so that she was left with a floor and three sides. Two of these sides she had painted green, but the backdrop was a reproduction of an old painting which she had found in a junk shop, and which, with a bit of trimming, fitted exactly. A pastoral scene, wintry and bright, with farm animals about the place and a man in a red cloak pulling a sledge laden with logs.
The floor she had painted with glue and sprinkled with sawdust, and in the middle had fixed a round mirror, from an old handbag, to make a frozen lake.
There were trees as well, twigs of evergreen fixed into old cotton reels, and they sparkled frostily because she had sprinkled them with Christmas glitter. For the dancers she had made tiny people out of pipe cleaners and cotton wool, and dressed them in bright snippets of ribbon, and scraps of white net. Making the dancers had taken ages, because they were fiddley, with their tiny painted features and embroidered hair.
But it was done. Finished. Only the lights to fix. She opened the bag, and carefully assembled all the bits and pieces that Mr. Sims had so kindly found for her. This took some time, and necessitated a journey downstairs to look for a screwdriver. When all was fina
lly accomplished, she fastened the lights with their clips on either side of the little theatre, and then plugged the long flex into the socket of her bedside lamp. She pressed the switch, and the little lights came on. But they scarcely showed, so she turned off the main light, and in the darkness turned to see the full effect.
Better than she had ever expected. Perfect. So real, you could imagine the tiny floodlit figures were about to spring into dance, twirling fouettés across the sawdust floor.
Surely, Natasha would love it.
After a bit, she put everything away, covered the theatre with the dust sheet, adjusted the expression on her face, and went downstairs.
“All right, darling?” said her mother.
“Yes. All right,” Jenny replied, at her most unconcerned, and went to cut herself a slice of cake.
* * *
The best of Christmas was that it was always the same. Carols after supper on Christmas Eve, with Granny playing the piano for all of them, and then bed, and hanging up stockings, and thinking that you would never go to sleep. And then, when you stopped trying, finding yourself awake again, and the clock pointing to half past seven, and the stocking bulging at the end of the bed.
Christmas was the smell of newly peeled tangerines, and bacon and eggs for breakfast. It was walking to church in the bitter, frosty air, and singing “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” which was Jenny’s favourite. And talking to people outside the church, after the service, and rushing home to see to the turkey and light all the fires.
And then, when everything was ready, Dad said, “Ready, steady, go,” and that was when they were allowed to fall on the presents piled beneath the tree.
Natasha’s present had posed something of a problem—how to wrap up a theatre. In the end, Jenny had made a sort of tea-cosy of holly paper, put this over the theatre and carried it carefully downstairs, then placed it on the sideboard where nobody would walk on it.
But, for the moment, she forgot about the theatre in the excitement of her own presents. A new lamp for her bicycle, a Shetland sweater in pinks and blues, and a pair of black patent shoes that she had been yearning for for weeks. From Natasha, a book. From her god-mother a china mug with her name in gold. And from Granny … a large square parcel, wrapped in red-and-white-striped paper. Sitting on the floor, surrounded by the detritus of ribbons and packages and cards, Jenny undid it. The paper fell away, disclosing a large white box. More tissue paper. Skating boots.