Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (14 page)

Maurice's needs, however, were quickly forgotten when she recognized her own kin. 'Kay,' she called, and ran to the end of the room. 'My darling little Kay. And how is big Donald?'  and then, with a special cry, she flung herself upon the baby,
'Min
lille barnebarn,
'she cried. '"No," he says, "I don't want a grandmother to swallow me up."'

'We're all right here, Mother,' said Kay. 'Don't, for goodness' sake, let us interrupt the singing.'

By now, however, Maurice had burst into tears and a righteously indignant Mrs Gardner had taken him back to his seat. Mrs Middleton was unable to persuade him to resume his solo, and Mrs Gardner was almost at the point of losing her temper when Ingeborg made what she believed to be a conciliatory remark. 'Never mind, Maurice,' she said, 'you are not the only little baby in the room now. See!' she added, pointing towards her grandchild, 'there is another one. But I think perhaps he is a braver little baby than you.'

Kay blushed scarlet; Donald took his usual defensive action on such occasions by carefully analysing the social elements involved; Mrs Gardner got up and took Maurice from the room.

Mrs Middleton, however, was too occupied in announcing the next carol to notice what had happened. The arrival of her daughter had reminded her that her two sons were not yet part of the audience and she determined to prolong the proceedings so that her prayer should be answered. 'And now a little English carol,' she said. '"Lully, lulley, lully, lulley; the falcon hath borne my mate away." '

The obscurity of the words baffled the audience; and they were not much helped by Mrs Middleton's demonstration of a bird in flight. The Vicar felt uncertain whether there was not an impropriety in the whole proceedings: he had not remembered that carols embodied so much of what, if not secular, seemed like an unhealthy mysticism. He feared there might even be some unsuitable element of pagan survival mixed up in the whole proceedings. Indeed, there was something about Ingeborg's Brunhild figure and her general passion for the charms of folklore, Christian or otherwise, that would have delighted Rose Lorimer herself.

When this carol drew to its strange end, the Vicar got up and announced that his Christmas duties forced him to leave. It had been a most delightful occasion, a real unity in rejoicing all too rare in these days when communal life was at a discount. How Mrs Middleton had managed to produce anything so really unusual in so short a time, he did not know. It seemed only yesterday that these charming dresses had just been strips of material, but then he did not profess to understand the powers of feminine magic. The realization that he had said 'magic' embarrassed the Vicar, and he could only murmur, 'A rare and unusual occasion.'

Any further remarks he might have made were cut short by Mrs Middleton, who turned to the children with a knowing look. 'Now just imagine! Mr Bilston thinks he has heard all our carols. He does not know how much little children like to sing, does he?'

But, alas, when she turned again to the audience, many other people had risen to support the Vicar in his signal for departure.

Mrs Middleton played her last card.
'I
know, children,' she said, 'the Vicar is hungry, that is what it is. I expect he has his eye on those meringues. Now, all of you, off! and see who can get there before him. Please,' she said to the audience, 'to eat,' and she pointed to the huge array of food and drink. 'Then,' she added, 'we will all be ready to sing again.'

Kay, watching the gigantic form of her mother bearing down upon her, was filled with affection. Surely, she thought, no one could be irritated with the absurdities of someone so ingenuously kind and in love with life. Donald, seeing his wife's energy fading in the presence of her mother, felt all his hostility coming to the surface. He had resolved to be patient in face of the many difficult situations that he knew must arise during the Christmas visit, but, remembering previous years, he noted that he was unlikely to be able to keep his resolution.

Happily, perhaps, the worst of all such moments came immediately. Mrs Middleton took the baby from Kay and, looking at her daughter's withered hand, she said, 'No,
liebchen,
you will have to be content with your grandmother, poor little Mummy cannot manage the big elephant baby.'

Kay, catching a sidelong glance of her husband's face, said, 'Darling, it's wonderful. I'm just like the Vicar. I can't imagine how you've done it all.'

What Donald did not guess was that as soon as Mrs Middleton had alluded in this way to her daughter's deformity, she was overcome with shame. She could not love her daughter as she did her sons, but it was only when she felt cornered by life that she ever wished to be cruel to anyone. Today, despite Maurice Gardner, everything seemed to be giving way to her, and she felt very loving. 'Darling Kay, you look so pretty,' she said. It was something, at least, to have her daughter's praise.

But wishes gratified never occupied Mrs Middleton so completely as those as yet unfulfilled. 'Where can Johnnie be?'  she asked. 'I knew it was a mistake for him to come with your father. Christmas is not a time for Daimlers and chauffeurs. It is a simple time.'

'Christmas the season of the small owner-driver,' said Donald. But Mrs Middleton did not regard the things her son-in-law said. She knew that they tended to be 'bitter', but then she also knew that he was an orphan, and therefore she felt able to love him just the same.

Contrary to Ingeborg's expectations, refreshment only seemed to strengthen the determination of the audience to leave. She cajoled and cooed, but all to no avail; and, when she found even Miss Butterfield unwilling to return to the piano, she stood on the stairs, looming above the departing guests with a face so dead and empty that she might have been Brunhild in her long sleep. God had not answered her prayer, despite all her assurances, and, as always happened on such occasions, Mrs Middleton remembered that she was getting old and soon must die. 'Not even Robin, usually so faithful, can do this small thing for me. To be here on time.'

As it became increasingly clear that the performance she had been prepared to give would not be asked for, all her histrionic reserve drained away, and even her smooth, doll-like face seemed to crumple and grow grey. 'Goodbye, goodbye,' she called from the stairs in a monotonous, falling tone. 'No more singing - Merry Christmas.'

Donald even passed her on the stairs without receiving any comment. Coming back to the morning-room, where the maids were clearing away the dirty plates, he said to Kay, 'It looks like being a quieter Christmas than last year. Your mother seems less edgy.' Kay, however, when she went out into the hall, was immediately anxious. If she did not fan her mother's energy until John's coming revived the fire, they would be in for a Christmas Day far worse than she had feared.

'Darling,' she called, 'Donald's spoken to Robin about doing something with the firm and it seems there's a most interesting job going for him giving lectures. He's already full of ideas.' She put her arm round her mother's corseted waist. 'It was a wonderful idea of yours, as usual. I really think he may be able to help Robin, and it'll take his mind off things until the next lot of vacancies comes up. He just
couldn't
go on with his book and I was really frightened for him. And now, thanks to you,' she leaned across and kissed her mother very gently on the cheek, 'thanks to you, everybody's happy again.' Why do I have to do it? she wondered. What am I so frightened of?

Mrs Middleton stirred very slightly, as though from a very far distance a faint sound had broken her immortal sleep. 'That is good,' she said, but she could indeed only see her daughter through a deep fog of all the injustices life had brought to her. She was old and tired and Gerald would arrive full of the energy of his selfish life; it was too hard to bear.

'Don't mind me, darling! if you want a good cry,' said Kay, practised as an augur reading the entrails of chickens. 'You do too much for everybody.'

But at that moment the purr of the Daimler could be heard from the drive outside. Mrs Middleton, started into life, pounced on a small girl who was still struggling with her goloshes. 'Winnie,' she cried, 'all the others have gone, but you will stay and sing one little song for my son. We will sing together the
Tannenbaum.'

Winnie, however, took one look at her hostess's face and was out of the front door before another word was spoken. Mrs Middleton, running after her, fell into John's arms.

'Thingy,' he cried, 'you
mustn't
come out into the bitter cold in that thin dress.'

'Johnnie,' she murmured, 'oh! Johnnie, you have missed all the little children and their singing.'

Larwood came in with the luggage and Gerald followed him with many parcels. 'You're here early,' he said to Kay.

'No, Daddy,
you're
late.' She was quite snappish.

Gerald did not notice her tone, he only saw her appearance in an old skirt and jumper and her hair scruffy and dead. More even than her marriage to Donald, it annoyed him that his daughter should let her looks run to seed in that sort of academic dowdiness. 'You've got powder on your skirt,' he said, and went into the morning-room. Seeing only Donald and the baby, he came out again. 'You didn't say you were going to have some sort of show or we'd have come earlier,' he remarked to his wife.

John looked up quite angrily. 'It was the carol-singing,' he said; 'we oughtn't to have been late.'

Gerald thought it useless to remind his son of the reasons. 'I'll get you a drink, Inge,' he said. It was the only contribution he could find to make to his wife after all these years of the children's management of her.

Only once did Mrs Middleton come to life again that evening. Christmas Eve supper was one of her special offerings to the family, the real Danish Christmas Eve dinner, but, unlike that held in Denmark, this was only a prelude to an English dinner on Christmas Day. This evening as usual they sat down to the Danish rice pudding followed by roast goose. Gerald dreaded the effects it would have on his digestion. 'I shan't eat much tonight, old dear,' he said, patting his wife's shoulder. 'I'm frightfully tired.'

Ingeborg put down her knife and fork and smiled at John and Kay. 'Papa doesn't change,' she said, winking at them in special intimacy. 'Even now he believes that he is tired when he is just hungry. Give your father a large piece of goose,' she said to Donald. 'There, Gerald, no one can have indigestion from
my
roast goose.'

But if Gerald was to be forcibly fed, what would be the reaction of Marie Hélène, about to receive the Sacrament? In her present mood, Ingeborg would have no mercy towards hunger-strikers. Donald was the first to think of this and was delighted, when his mother-in-law ordered food to be kept back for the late-comers, to be able to say, 'Not for Marie Hélène surely. I imagine she'll be going to Midnight Mass.'

It was soon apparent that Mrs Middleton was going to insist on the same scene that she played each Christmas. 'But, my dear Donald, why should you think she wishes to go to church with an empty tummy?'  she laughed.

Donald was left by the others to argue the dogma of the Real Presence with her this year. After all, he had raised the subject.

'Very well,' Ingeborg said at last. 'If my daughter-in-law is this kind of cannibal. ... But Timothy will be very hungry, he grows so fast.'

'I expect, Thingy,' said John, coming to Donald's rescue, 'that Marie Hélène will be taking him with her.'

His mother smiled sweetly and shook her head. 'No, Johnnie, no,' she said, and laughed in rippling amusement. 'Midnight Mass is not for children.' Everyone felt that Marie Hélène was the person to sort that one out.

Inge received the 'wishing almond' in her plate of rice pudding, but somehow it did not seem to placate her. 'What is the good of my wishing?'  she cried. 'My wishes never come true.'

CHAPTER
4

J
UST
before they went to bed, Kay whispered to John and Robin, 'Mother's going to have a
Grossmutter
tomorrow.'

It was their childhood way of describing the moods of moralizing and intrigue that descended upon their mother when she felt frustrated and neglected. Her manner at such times became sweeter, more intimate as her fear of isolation became more desperate. Her children had decided that she inherited such reactions from their Bavarian grandmother with her
Gemütlichkeit
and her sense of persecution; this attribution to heredity at once exculpated her from all blame and made more excusable their own acquiescence in her demands. They had learned such acquiescence in childhood; their mother had been a great believer in such character-training. And, as nobody, except Inge, could remember their grandmother, it was not an explanation that could be contradicted.

As the day wore on, Mrs Middleton took her children aside one by one, and tried to reassure herself that no one and nothing came before herself in their feelings.

'Now, little Kay,' she said, 'I am going to show you how to make a real old-fashioned turkey soup. There is no need, you know, to have poor food because one is living on the little, tiny income that my poor Kay has.' She led her daughter into the vast kitchen, which, like everything else in her house, was equipped with the greatest modern simplicity at the greatest possible expense. It was the simplicity only that Mrs Middleton saw, she constantly exclaimed at the frittering and waste of more old-fashioned homes where large capital outlay had been less possible. 'And all that old-fashioned way of living is so unhygienic too,' she would say.

She dispersed the maids from their current tasks. 'Later!' she said. 'Now I am going to give Mrs Consett a cookery lesson. You see, Kay,' she continued, putting herbs into a little muslin bag, 'first the bouquet, so simple and so wholesome. But you are tired, my darling,' she said. 'Tired and sad. That is wrong. A young mother should look so happy. When you were all little babies I used to sing and dance all day. The English neighbours would say "That young Mrs Middleton's quite mad", and look down their noses - so! And then I would dance and sing all the more. It is not right that you should have to worry and save so.'