‘Perhaps Father might like to discuss it with me himself, if he’s got a problem with how I behave,’ said Margot, more bitterly than she’d intended. But really! Her father was marvellous at handling the villagers’ problems. How absurd that he should be so bad at dealing with his own.
‘Your father—’ her mother began.
‘. . . Is a wonderful man. I know! To everyone else. He never talks to me! Surely you must see that?’
Margot’s mother sighed.
‘Your father works incredibly hard,’ she said. ‘Particularly at Christmas. Perhaps you could try talking to him yourself?’
Margot flushed. She was... well, not a child, but not exactly an adult either. And her father was her father. The idea that she might mend this breach herself was a new thought, and not entirely a pleasant one.
She turned the conversation back to Harry.
‘What do you want me to do, Mother?’ she said. ‘Exactly? You were so down on him when you found out about – about—’
‘Really!’ Now it was her mother’s turn to be surprised. ‘You couldn’t expect your father and I to be pleased, could you? After what he did to you?’
No, of course she couldn’t.
‘Naturally we were upset,’ her mother went on. ‘And really both of you should have known better! But, darling – you can’t leave him hanging like that. You have to finish it one way or another.’
‘You mean I should tell him about James?’ The thought was alarming.
‘Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far.’ The secrecy around James wasn’t just to protect her, she knew. Awkwardnesess with Mrs Singer about the church flowers wasn’t the only way she might make life difficult for your father. ‘Not unless you were planning on marrying him. But for the boy’s sake, you ought to finish things properly.’
Finish things properly... How bleak those words made her feel. She couldn’t... surely she couldn’t have thought there might still be a chance... that she and Harry might... ?
But perhaps she always had, somewhere inside her. She had never loved anybody the way she loved Harry.
Something of this must have shown on her face, because her mother’s expression altered.
‘Well, darling! That puts rather a different spin on things, doesn’t it?’
‘I didn’t say...’ Margot began.
‘Naturally not.’ Her mother studied her. ‘He’s a nice boy, Margot. I always liked him. He’s had rather a rough war of it, from what his mother said. Being a prisoner and so forth.’
‘You liked him? But you were so fearfully against us marrying, and then...’
‘Well, naturally you were both far too young to even think of marriage. Goodness, Margot! You were fifteen when you got engaged – and rather a young fifteen, at that. And then to get you in trouble and disappear...’
‘He was captured! It was hardly deliberate!’
‘Really, darling! He was being posted to the Front Line. He must have realised it was a possibility that something might happen.’
Margot scowled.
Her mother, noticing, said, ‘Anyway, things are different now.’
‘I suppose they are.’ What a lot of new things she had to think about! ‘I don’t even know if he still likes me,’ she said weakly.
Her mother gave her the sort of look Nana used to give when you said you couldn’t remember if you’d washed your face, or didn’t know who had pushed Jocelyn into the puddle.
‘From the impression his mother gave me,’ she said, ‘that isn’t something you need to be worried about at all.’
Oh heavens! What was one supposed to say to that? She gawped at her mother, who laughed.
‘Think about it. And while you’re here, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about. I don’t suppose you could help me out on Saturday, could you? Only I’m supposed to be organising the Christmas party for the Sunday School, and it’s Doris’s half day, and I don’t see how I’m expected to organise the games and so forth and keep an eye on James at the same time. You needn’t do much,’ she added, piling straw into the nest box. ‘Just show him what to do in the party games and make sure he doesn’t get into mischief.’
‘Of course,’ said Margot. ‘I’d love to.’ She felt a rush of gratitude towards her mother. She didn’t have to do that.
But back inside, she was at something of a loose end. A good daughter – Jocelyn, for example – would, she supposed, be offering to help her mother with all the hundreds of jobs that needed doing in a vicarage in the week before Christmas. There were her own preparations to finish – gifts to wrap, Christmas cards to buy and post, local friends to see, if she could bear to. Yet Margot didn’t feel like doing any of them.
Harry would have got her letter by now. It would have come by the morning post.
Perhaps he’d reply this morning. It would arrive this afternoon perhaps? Or the evening post?
She shook herself. It had been sent. There was nothing she could do about it now.
Fired by this decision, she went up to the nursery. It was evidently time for James’s walk. Doris was wrestling him into a coat – James protesting, ‘No! I do it!’
‘No, Master James,’ Doris grabbed his arm and thrust it into the sleeve. ‘We haven’t got all day.’
‘Why can’t he do it himself?’ Margot spoke more sharply than she’d intended. But really! Manhandling a child like that!
Doris dropped his arm and gave her a look Margot couldn’t identify.
‘As you wish, miss.’
James, released from her hold, wriggled himself around, trying to get his arm backwards and into the other sleeve. Margot watched, trying not to intervene. She hadn’t realised before quite how complicated putting on a coat was.
James was growing more and more frustrated.
‘I can’t!’
‘Here,’ Margot stepped forward, relieved. ‘Let me—’
‘No ! I do it!’
He wrenched his arm back and dissolved into furious sobs.
‘No help!’
Margot glanced at Doris. Her face was carefully neutral, but Margot was sure she could detect an I told you so lingering unspoken.
‘Look – if you’d just let me –’
He was properly crying, his face flushed, tears streaming down his cheeks. Margot watched helplessly. She was used to children, of course, being one of five, but still... Ernest was eight now. She’d forgotten quite how quickly small children went from total composure to absolute despair.
Determinedly not meeting Doris’s eye she said, ‘Can he put his own coat on?’
‘Not really, miss,’ said Doris. ‘It’s just he’s at that age when they want to do everything for themselves. There, Master James,’ she said comfortably, patting him on the back. ‘Your sister doesn’t want to see you upset like that!’