The younger children’s party was held in the church hall. Margot, Jocelyn, Ernest and James went down early to help set out the food and bring across the props for the various games – the blindfold for Blind Man’s Bluff, the gramophone for the musical games and the creased and battered vicarage donkey picture, a veteran of twenty years of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.
When it came to it, however, Margot discovered that there was a limit to how helpful she could be while minding a two-year-old. She had come prepared with a ball and a train and a couple of picture books, but James showed no interest in playing quietly by himself while she buttered bread and laid out plates and glasses. He insisted on her full attention: ‘Play, Margot!’ although this did not involve actual play so much as wandering around the church hall and the freezing garden, exploring every crack and cranny, stopping to investigate every stick and wall and plant and hole.
‘What dat, Margot?’
‘It’s – um – it’s a grating. It’s – well, I’m not sure what it’s for, exactly.’
‘Bird!’
‘Yes, that’s a bird. It’s – a crow, I think. Or a rook, or maybe a raven. Something black. No, James – no, don’t pick that up. Those stones are part of the path, they belong to the church hall. Let’s go over there and see if we can have some of those stones, you can pick one of those up.’
How had she ever thought the walk to the village shop would be a short affair? It took him half an hour just to cross the garden!
Parents and nannies were beginning to arrive with the other partygoers. Margot, who knew a few of them from church, said, ‘Look, there’s Albert and Jane!’
Margot was a veteran of church Christmas parties, of course. It felt strange to be here as a mother, even a disguised one, like crossing an invisible boundary into adulthood. There had been none last year, of course, because of the Spanish influenza. She had thought crossing that boundary would be something which happened once, when she became an adult, but in fact it was something that had happened over and over again; when she left school, when she left home, when James was born, when the telegram came about Harry. She still felt – even now – like a child playing at being a grown-up. She might be living the trappings of a grown-up life, but she knew that if something actually grown-up happened – if Mother or Father were killed in a motorcar accident, for example, and she and Stephen had to deal with the consequences – she would be flung back onto the other side of the boundary and into childhood.
She sat on the edge of the room with the other attendants, most of whom, of course, were older than her. Mary’s nursemaid was there with Mary’s eldest, Victoria – the baby was teething, she explained to Margot, so she was at home. Mary sent her regards.
As well as Victoria and James, there were a few other tiny children, including a fat baby in awful bright pink woollies who crawled all over the floor getting in everyone’s way and cried when anyone tried to thwart it. Its mother ignored it completely and sat as close to the oil-stove as she could get, occasionally shouting at her older child to ‘Stop bothering me, do! Go and play!’
Margot had thought that James might be shy, but after his initial caution had worn off, he was anything but. He ran around the party, trying to join in with the older children’s games, always a little behind but always eager to get it right. He danced about excitedly at Blind Man’s Bluff, thrilled to bits when he was allowed to be the Blind Man (though of course Jocelyn quickly allowed him to catch her, knowing from experience how soon little children got frustrated by this game). His face puckered up with concentration at Grandmother’s Footsteps, saying ‘Shh! Shh!’ like the other children, though it wasn’t clear he understood the rules at all, and had to be told to stop moving when Jocelyn turned around.
Watching him, in his blue flannel rompers and knitted jersey, his fair little head bobbing excitedly amongst the older children, Margot wondered if it was as obvious to everyone else there what a superior child he was. Look at him – so happy still, so eager to join in! How intelligent he clearly was for a child not yet two and a half! How darling! One or two of the little girls with their curls and party dresses might be prettier, but he was far and away the most attractive of the little boys. So sturdy! So sweet! So happy!
How could her mother possibly think it was a comfort to tell her that she could have another child? How could another baby possibly replace this funny little person bobbing about on tiptoes with his hand in the air as Jocelyn called for volunteers for a sack race. A sack race against all these bigger boys! Jocelyn gave him a sack, and of course he came last, hopping bravely behind Ernest and Hilary Connor and Adam Jacobson. But how cheerful he seemed about the whole thing! (Of course it was possible that he hadn’t realised that it was a race.)
How, she marvelled, had someone as awful as she managed to create a little creature as wonderful as this?
It was almost enough to make one believe in God after all.
The Trouble with James
The trouble was, even after all this time, Margot couldn’t decide one way or the other.
Did she want a child or didn’t she?
Margot thought back to the mother and baby home. To the girl in the bed beside her, her breasts bound with black crepe bandages to keep in the milk, screaming and screaming because one morning her baby simply hadn’t been wheeled in with the others. He’d been taken away to his new parents the night before. The girl had known this was going to happen, of course. But she had thought she would be allowed to say goodbye.
When James was growing inside her, Margot had known she was lucky. The other mothers in the home had faced a dreadful choice; a lifetime of shame or an impossible goodbye. She’d had the best of both worlds, or so she’d thought. The very thought of a baby had terrified her, even Harry’s baby, even now Harry had gone. She had felt no connection to the thing growing inside of her. She had not wanted to be a mother. She had not wanted a child. She had not wanted any of it.
But then, when he’d come. When she’d held him. The tininess of him. The perfection, like a cross little old man, all curled up onto himself as he lay against her stomach. The soft, red skin, the fine black hair (it had turned blond later). You thought of babies with curls and dimples, didn’t you? James hadn’t had curls or dimples – he hadn’t looked anything like the babies in a Pears advertisement. He hadn’t looked sweet at all. He was a person. She hadn’t expected that. A proper warm little person.
‘Hullo,’ she’d whispered, and he’d lifted his head and mewled at her, like a little cat.
Her baby. Her son.
She had never wanted a baby. She’d looked at the girls – women, some of them – who were going to keep their children, and had been filled with visceral terror. To live like that! To be disbarred from polite society for ever, to be hissed at and whispered at in the street, the way some of the women from the village whispered at the girls in the home. Margot’s father was fond of sermonising on the way in which God sent lessons designed for the sinner. To the vain woman, he took her beauty. To the strong man, his strength. To Job he took everything. Margot had never been able to forgive God for Job.