Mary answered the doorbell, baby on her hip and Victoria clutching her skirts. Her hair was falling down, and there was a streak of soot across her cheek. She said, ‘Darling! How splendid to see you! Come in! You’ll just have to shut your eyes and pretend everything’s in order – it’s Eliza’s half-day, and I gave Peggy a week off for Christmas – George says I was a fool, and I expect he’s right, but she did so want to go home, and her mother lost both sons in the War so naturally one wants to be kind.’ She paused for breath. ‘She lives in Barnsley, you see. Peggy’s mother, I mean, so it isn’t as though Peggy could go there and back in a day. And I thought, well, what sort of mother would I be if I couldn’t manage the children for a week – Oh, darling! I didn’t mean!’
‘It’s quite all right,’ said Margot. She kissed Mary. ‘I’m not a bit offended, and I don’t know how you begin to manage the girls without a nursemaid, even for a week.’
‘Well, darling, between you and me, neither do I. The woman who does my washing has nine – can you imagine? Nine children, and no sort of help, of course. And she’s a washerwoman. I barely have time to wash my own hands, and – yes, darling, what is it?’ This to Victoria, whose tugging on her skirts was growing too insistent to be ignored. ‘Well, I don’t know! You’ll have to ask her yourself, won’t you?’ Victoria retreated further behind her mother. ‘Though actually, dear, it’s rather rude to ask people if they have Christmas presents for you. What if she didn’t, imagine how awkward it would be!’
‘But fortunately I do, so all our feelings are spared,’ said Margot. ‘Shall we go inside and see what it is?’
The little front room was, as Mary had said, in a state of some chaos. Victoria’s wooden horse was lying on its side on the hearthrug, its wheeled legs up in the air. Mary’s workbox was open on the side table, its scissors halfway through turning a copy of the London Illustrated News into strings of paper dolls. Victoria’s coloured pencils were spread out over the tea table, along with an open jar of jam, a ball of wool, a stuffed bear, a teething ring and a box of cigarettes.
‘Darling, I know!’ said Mary, as Margot took all this in and more; the bookcase made out of orange crates, the mismatched armchairs, the magazines and letters and children’s pictures piled on the floor, the picture leaning against the wall still waiting to be hung. ‘But you don’t know what it’s like with children. I start every day with the best of intentions and somehow nothing ever seems to get done.’
‘I think it’s perfectly charming,’ said Margot. She was noticing other details now: the cheap baubles on the Christmas tree all shining in the gaslight, the tiny candles waiting to be lit, the strings of paper-chains hanging from the sconces.
Mary was one of the very few people she’d told about James – just Mary, her husband George, and Jos and Stephen. After she’d realised she was in trouble, she’d felt so... distant from her school friends. What did the Sixth Form know about babies? But Mary had been different. Mary was nineteen and married with a new baby of her own. She hadn’t had a house then – she’d been living with her mother while George was in France – but Margot had known she could talk to her. That Mary would understand, wouldn’t goggle at her, or tell the other girls. Would know what it meant to have a child, and what it might mean to lose one.
Later, she had hung off Mary a little. She couldn’t help herself. It was a form of self-torture – look what you could have had, if you’d been more careful, if you’d been braver – but also, oddly, a comfort. She had drifted apart from her school friends, although most of them had jobs now, and one or two had fiancés. Friendship with any of the girls in the boarding house was impossible. Mary’s was one of the few places in her life where she could be honest.
‘Now, Victoria, what do I have in here... ?’
The children’s presents were duly distributed; the baby dressed in her new jacket and admired, Victoria’s tea set (‘Margot, you shouldn’t have!’) unpacked, and Bear and Mary and Margot all served imaginary tea with milk and paper biscuits. Then Victoria discovered that she was hungry too, and Baby was handed to her Aunty Margot (‘She’s a perfect duck, thank heavens’) while Mary disappeared into the kitchen. She soon reappeared with a huge brown teapot full of tea, and a plate of muffins, which they all toasted on the fire. Then Baby, who’d been growing increasingly fretful, began to wail, and Mary settled down in the chair by the fire to nurse. Margot lit all the little candles on the Christmas tree, carefully supervised by Victoria to make sure she didn’t miss a single one.
‘What do you think?’ she asked Victoria.
‘Stu-pen-dous!’ said the little girl, and the adults laughed.
‘But, darling, how are things really ?’ said Margot, as Victoria settled down to make tea for Bear and two ragdolls.
‘Oh, well. I know I shouldn’t complain, and we’re very lucky really. But goodness, it is hard work! We only have Eliza mornings, you see, and of course the rough work takes most of her time – I really couldn’t do that – so that does leave rather a lot. And I always was a perfect dunce at domestic science. Peggy does her best, but she’s only fifteen, so she does need everything explained rather, and she tends to think Baby needs feeding when really it’s only wind. And of course one never knows if George is going to be in or out.’
‘Yes, how is George?’ George had been in the Royal Army Medical Corps, but had been sent home in 1917 with nervous exhaustion.
‘Oh – ever so much better. He’s such a good doctor, everyone says so. But he does worry.’
‘How so?’
‘Oh well – like Mrs Higgins’s little boy. They really thought he would die, and though I don’t like to say so, Dr Singer said he thought he would have died, if it hadn’t been for George. But George says he won’t ever walk, and he may not talk. George can’t help but think – if he’d had more experience of childbirth, you know –’
‘But surely nobody thinks...’
‘Oh! Of course nobody does. But he will keep going to see them, and he won’t think of charging, and of course the poor woman is so grateful, which just makes everything worse. I’m afraid,’ she confessed, with a pathetic air of apology, ‘George is rather in the habit of picking up charity patients. The local people know he won’t charge if they can’t pay and word has gotten around, rather.’
‘Father’s just the same,’ said Margot, thinking of the ‘poor cupboard’ by the stairs and the lonely people at Christmas.
‘And of course it’s all very noble of him, I don’t say it isn’t,’ Mary went on hurriedly. ‘Only – well, the butcher does need paying, doesn’t he? And the girls will have to be educated somehow, and goodness, Margot, I never knew how expensive children were until I had my own! Victoria goes through shoes as quick as blinking! I’m sure we never used to grow so fast.’
‘It does sound rather worrying.’