It had been such a queer and magical summer. They had spent every minute they could there, together. They had read the Harcourts’ books, and made themselves little meals of corned beef and bread and butter, and brewed themselves tea on the Primus stove. Harry had done his chores around the garden and she had followed after him, picking the fruit from the canes and gorging on it; the sweetness of raspberries and apples, and goosegogs with sugar in the Harcourts’ finest bone china bowls.
And whole afternoons in the Harcourts’ guest bed.
The first time was her sixteenth birthday. Her best present had been a new summer frock in pale blue; her mother had sewn it, so she’d known it was coming, but it had been revealed in all its glory on her birthday morning.
Harry had cut a white rose from the garden and placed it in her hair.
‘Sixteen today,’ he’d said.
‘Now I’m really not a child any more,’ she’d said, and he’d kissed her. She’d known what was coming as surely as he had; hadn’t it been coming all that long, misty summer? She’d taken his hand and led him up towards the house.
Afterwards, she often wondered how they could have been so reckless. She’d been young, but not a fool, she had a brother and older cousins, she knew the facts of life. She’d understood the risks they were taking. And Harry – surely Harry must have known how dangerous it was? Why hadn’t it occurred to either of them to be more careful?
But apparently it never had. To Margot, it had been all tied up with the magic of the Harcourts’ house, its separateness from reality. It had been like a place in a storybook, like Briar Rose’s sleeping palace, like the Beast’s rose garden. And as it happened, their luck had held. The summer had ended, the Harcourts returned full of praise for the state of their garden. Harry had gone off to an army camp, and sent her long, detailed love letters. She had gone back to school, and to the miserable realisation that she was, in fact, still the child she’d always been. In the Sixth Form, her engagement seemed an unreal thing, a summer game, a child’s promise.
If James had happened that summer, there would have been time to do something about it. They might have been married before he went off to France. But James hadn’t happened then.
He’d happened the last weekend Harry had leave, before he’d been sent to the Front. He’d sent a cable to the house – waiting until Friday, when her parents went to play bridge. It was spring half term, and she’d made up a story about a last-minute invitation to stay with her friend Peggy, who’d left school the year before. Then she’d caught the early train to his camp in Sheffield and they’d spent his last day of leave together.
The best bit had been the joy of seeing him on the station platform. He’d been standing there in his uniform, holding a single white rose, and beaming at her. She’d quite forgotten about looking sophisticated and lady-like, and had run into his arms. The feel of his chest against hers, the smile on his face... it had been perfect. A perfect moment.
But it hadn’t lasted. The rest of the weekend was miserable. There was the grey, grimy city, full of men in uniform. Then he apparently had to spend half their precious day together doing last-minute shopping for the trip to France. There was the worry about how much money the trip was costing, and the lingering sense that shouldn’t it therefore be better? What was she doing wrong?
And then – oh, horrors! – he’d pulled a cheap brass ring from his pocket.
‘I thought you ought to wear it. For the – well, for the hotel, you know.’
She’d burned with embarrassment. Pretending to be married so they could spend the night together! It was like something out of the worst sort of cheap novel, about as far away as one could get from the vicarage without actually becoming a chorus girl. What had seemed so magical and precious in the Harcourts’ house suddenly felt dirty and shameful. It had spoilt the whole mood of the occasion.
The evening had gone wrong somehow too – she’d been stiff and cross and he’d been a little drunk and somehow nothing had quite worked the way it had in the Harcourts’ house. They’d fought about nothing at all – though at the time it had seemed incredibly important – and then the next day he’d had to leave early to get back to the barracks, and she’d realised that she only had thruppence left to last her the whole way home. She’d bought three penny buns and eaten them slowly, but she’d forgotten about water and was so thirsty when she finally got back to the village that she nearly drank the water from the taps in the station lavatory. The whole thing was wretched and awful, and she wasn’t sure who she was most angry with – Harry or herself or both. Maybe this was just what happened when things like war got in the way. Maybe this was what being nearly-married to someone was like. Or maybe everything was over and they’d never really been in love after all.
Two days later he left for the Front.
And then a month later the telegram. Missing in action.
It was the end of everything.
Christmas
Holy Week and Christmas were the busiest times of year in the vicarage. The whole family had always been expected to pitch in and help. There were Christmas parties for the children at church, for the Girls’ Friendly Society and the Mothers’ Union, for the children whose parents came to the church soup kitchen, and for the old folk at the almshouses where Margot’s father was chaplain. There was a carol service, a children’s Christmas service, Midnight Mass, a special Christmas Day service, attended by most of the village (up to and including the more pious of the guests at the big house), a Nativity Play, and special Christmas services at the village school and the grammar school. On top of everything, there were Christmas cards to write to all the parishioners, and Christmas presents to receive and return.
Margot’s father got more Christmas presents than anyone she’d ever met. All of the Churchy Ladies gave him something, but so did all sorts of unexpected people – women from the soup kitchen, poor families he’d helped with clothes or money, shut-ins he visited for communion, all the many disconnected people whose lives he touched.
It was a rule in the Allen family that all presents must be reciprocated. For years, Margot and Jocelyn and her mother had spent their evenings sewing simple presents for parishioners. Lavender bags and embroidered handkerchiefs. ‘Plain’ sewing and knitting for the poor – ‘Can people really be grateful for a sock knitted by me?’ Margot had famously once asked, aged ten.
Jocelyn, of course, was busy helping her mother with all the Sunday School affairs. Even Ruth was expected to help cut sandwiches and supervise games. And Stephen would play the piano – he had always been a musical child, though he didn’t have a piano in his digs in Sheffield, and as far as Margot knew he hadn’t played at all since coming back from France.
There were two Christmas parties for the Sunday School children this year – one for children under ten, which included Ernest and James, and would be party games and a party tea – and one for children under fourteen, which included Ruth and would involve dancing – ‘Yuck!’ said Ruth – and slightly more sophisticated fare.