She was behaving very well, Margot thought. She watched meekly as the nanny put James into his coat, helped him do up the buttons and gave him his hat.
‘Now just you show your sister how well you can put your own hat on!’ she said, and Margot made obedient admiring noises.
‘We were just going for our walk,’ said Doris, when this was finished. If she was wondering what Margot was doing in her nursery, she didn’t show it. ‘We’re going to feed the duckies, aren’t we, pet?’
‘Would you like me to take him?’ Margot said. ‘I’d love to, honestly. And I expect you’ve got things to be getting on with here, haven’t you?’
The breakfast things were still spread over the nursery table. Margot winced. She hadn’t meant to sound as though she were criticising her.
But Doris just said, ‘That would be very nice, wouldn’t it, Master James? Would you like to go for a walk with your sister?’
‘We going feed the ducks,’ James said. His disinterest in her was obvious. Margot tried not to show that she cared.
Outside, the air was icy. The little village looked just as it always did – grey stone houses and labourers’ cottages clustered around the green and the duckpond. Smoke was rising from the chimneys, and the grass and roads were stiff with frost. Here and there, Model Ts had begun to appear in front of the houses. But otherwise it could have been any wintry afternoon from her childhood.
Margot walked down the dirt road to the green, holding James’s hand, thinking back to how she and Stephen and Jocelyn had taken this walk with their own Nana, paper bags full of stale bread clutched in their mittened hands. She couldn’t remember being quite as young as James, but she could remember the agonies of being five or six – the awfulness of not being allowed a beautiful ringletted doll like the one Betty Helcroft owned, the agony of being smaller than Stephen, and of Nana taking Jocelyn’s side in battles. Don’t be so naughty to your little sister! A big girl like you should know better!
Had she been awful? She supposed she had. She remembered her frustration that Jocelyn was always thought clever and Stephen brave, and she was... what? Pretty. And difficult.
Once upon a time, she had been difficult.
But James seemed happy enough. He’d forgotten his shyness, trotting along the pavement, his hair extravagantly blond, just like her own.
‘Come on, Jamie-o,’ she said.
He’d stopped by the Warners’ hedge.
‘What dat, Margot?’
‘That – it’s holly. You get it at Christmas. They’ll be decorating Daddy’s church with it.’
‘Want.’
‘Oh – no, Jamie-o, it belongs to the Warners. You can’t just pick other people’s plants, it’s not allowed. Come on.’
She tugged on his hand. His face dissolved and he began to cry. Margot watched him helplessly. They’d barely spent fifteen minutes together and she’d made him cry twice.
‘All right,’ she said quickly. ‘All right, I’m sorry! Please don’t cry, darling. Here you go.’
She reached up and plucked a holly twig off the bush, taking care to choose a piece with berries on. James’s tears miraculously vanished and he held up his hands for it.
‘Careful – it’s prickly.’
‘Prickly.’
‘Yes – it’s got prickles, look –’
She showed him, testing her finger against the prickles. ‘See – ow!’
He laughed and did the same.
‘Ow!’
‘Yes, but do really be careful, darling, you could hurt yourself. Look – where do you want it? On your hat? In your buttonhole?’
They tried the holly twig in various places, before settling on James’s buttonhole.
‘Beautiful!’ she said, and he beamed at her, before trotting off down the road towards the duckpond. He did like being with her.
They crunched their way across the frozen grass – ‘Look, James, that’s called frost – you see, where the grass is all white?’ At the pond on the common, they threw their crusts to the ducks, who gobbled them with satisfactory enthusiasm.
‘More!’ said James.
Margot said, ‘All gone!’ and held out her hands.
James giggled and copied her. ‘All gone!’
It seemed a shame just to go back home.
‘Shall we go and get some sweets at the shop?’ she suggested, and James agreed enthusiastically.
But this turned out to be a bad idea. The village shop was further away than she’d remembered – or rather, it was where it always had been, at the other end of the village, next to the school, but she hadn’t realised how long it would take a two-year-old to walk three quarters of a mile. James seemed to want to stop at every doorway, to pick up every stick, and to investigate every stone in the road. He wanted to drag his hands along every wall and jump in every puddle. Margot could feel her patience draining away.
‘Look, Jamie-o,’ she said encouragingly. ‘There’s the shop – look! Don’t you want some sweeties? We could get some Liquorice Allsorts – or some Dairy Milk. Come on – I’ll race you.’
This worked, and they spent a happy ten minutes in the grocer’s, deciding between the various sweets available, until James settled on a bag of Liquorice Allsorts (he loved liquorice, she had been just the same as a child). Margot also bought some cocoa for the nursery – she knew Doris loved it – and some Christmas cards (she supposed she ought to send them). On an impulse, she also bought chocolate for Ernest and Ruth (their Christmas presents were rather paltry this year – most of her money had gone on James). And then, feeling rather guilty for the way she’d treated her mother, she bought a potted fern as a peace-offering and a packet of biscuits.
They made quite a parcel when the grocer had finished wrapping them. Margot let James sit on the wall outside the grocer’s and eat his Allsorts, feeling rather rebellious (Nana had never let them eat in public). Then they headed back home.
It was now that the trouble started. At first, James began to lag, stooping to pick up bits of twig and stone, and to trail his hands along the walls. Margot tried not to be impatient, but it was hard – she was beginning to get cold, and the vicarage was the other side of the village.
‘Come on, Jamie-o,’ she said. ‘Home time!’
James dropped to his knees on the pavement.
‘Carry me!’
‘I can’t, darling.’ She felt a flutter of panic. ‘I’ve got my hands full – I can’t carry the parcels and you. Look, it’s not that far.’
But to a two-year-old it apparently was. With much cajoling on her behalf and whining on James’s, they made it to the edge of the village green, where he refused to go any further.
‘James, please,’ she said. ‘You made it all the way here! We’re nearly there.’
But James had reached the end of his endurance. He began to cry. She bent down to embrace him, but he pushed her away.