Christmas Wishes (2 page)

‘
Will
you be quiet!’ she said crossly. ‘Yes, Elizabeth, that’s a very good first memory and I shall be awarding a small prize for the best essay, so remember to write with great care.’

Another hand waved; this time it was Suzanne. ‘Miss, Miss, my first memory’s real borin’, not excitin’ like Lizzie’s. I ’member fallin’ downstairs when I were a little bit of a thing, only I didn’t know I were fallin’, I thought the world had shook up and the house were turnin’ over and over …’

‘Wharrabout us, Miss?’ Gillian interrupted. ‘We’s identical twins, so we’s bound to remember the same things. But I don’t want to have the same memory as our Joy. It’s time I had somethin’ of me own. Even me initials aren’t really me own.’

Miss Jensen opened her mouth to reply, but Joy was before her. ‘I bet our memories are different as anything,’ she said indignantly. ‘And of course your perishin’ initials are your own, because I’m Joy Isabel Lawrence and you’re Gillian Ianthe Lawrence. J I L and G I L are quite different.’

‘Well, they sound the same,’ insisted Gillian. ‘When we get home, I’m goin’ to ask our dad to let me have a different middle name. I want to be Gillian Bridget Lawrence, like our mam. I’d like to be called Bridget!’

‘Well you shan’t; it’s our mam’s name. Don’t you dare try to steal it,’ Joy said, clearly forgetting her usual placidity at her twin’s suggestion and growing pink with indignation. ‘If our dad heard you say that, he’d give you a ding across the lug.’

‘That’s enough!’ Miss Jensen said, her voice rising to something perilously akin to a shout. She descended from the dais on which her desk stood just as the dinner bell sounded and with one accord the class rose to its feet and surged towards the door. The twins would have followed, but by then Miss Jensen’s temper was up and she grabbed a shoulder of each with a thin and bony hand, forcing them to remain seated. ‘Joy Lawrence, I’m ashamed of you! What would your father say if he heard you speaking so coarsely? But because I know you and your sister – and the other children of course – are tremendously excited at the thought of going home, I won’t give you the punishment you deserve.’

‘Thank you ever so much, Miss,’ the twins said in chorus, Joy adding: ‘I dunno why we behaved so badly, and you’re right about our dad: he likes us to talk proper.’

‘Properly, you mean,’ Gillian said reproachfully. ‘Dad says our mam never talked Scouse.’

‘As for you, Gillian,’ Miss Jensen said, ignoring the interruption, ‘you should be even more ashamed of yourself. Only ten minutes ago, you were reminding us that you were the older twin, and therefore more responsible. Now you’re behaving like a five-year-old.’

Gillian cast her vividly blue eyes up to the teacher’s face. ‘I’m sorry, really I am, Miss Jensen, only sometimes it’s no joke being a twin. Sometimes you just want to be yourself … oh, I can’t explain; you’d have to be a twin as well to understand.’

‘I understand a good deal more than you imagine,’ Miss Jensen said grimly, pushing a strand of thin grey hair behind her ear. ‘But I know how you two children have longed to go home to your father and the rest of the family, so just this once I’ll let you off with a caution. I shall expect excellent behaviour throughout the journey back to Liverpool, however, or I shall be forced to tell Miss McCullough that you are troublemakers. I’m assuming that your father intends you to return to St Hilda’s, which is a good school with an excellent reputation, and Miss McCullough, as headmistress, wants that reputation to remain untarnished. Will you give me your word that you’ll behave properly from now on?’

The twins promised fervently to do exactly as they were told, and since, as a rule, they were bright and helpful pupils Miss Jensen dismissed them and returned to her desk as they scampered from the room.

It’s always the bright ones who give the most trouble – and the most rewards – she reminded herself, tidying her desk and heading for the staffroom. I wonder what sort of essay I’ll get tomorrow morning from those two little monkeys, though. One thing I’m sure of – despite Gillian’s remarks, they will be completely different, because though the girls look alike their personalities are almost exact opposites.

For the first couple of miles on the way back to their foster home, which was a good distance from the village and the school, the twins squabbled. There was no malice in it, and Joy had known how it would be the moment the teacher had mentioned ‘first memories’. Gillian had always vowed and declared that she remembered an incident which had happened when they were only a few days old. She said she had been lying in the old Moses basket when a long, weathered face had appeared before her. She said she had been frightened, had clutched at her twin, even as the strange woman – for it was a woman – spoke. ‘Like as two peas in a pod,’ the woman had declared in a creaky, odd sort of voice. ‘Oh aye, Biddy my love, you’ve followed family tradition. As I say, them little ’uns is like as two peas in a pod, same as your cousin Liam’s boys and his brother’s wee girls.’ She had bent even closer, her black, gypsy eyes gleaming. ‘Sure an’ ain’t they the prettiest things,’ she had cooed. ‘Mind you give ’em pretty names.’

Joy herself could remember nothing of the occasion and was convinced that Gillian was remembering not her Irish grandmother’s visit but their mother’s description of that visit to their home in Liverpool. After all, a babe, only days old, could not possibly have understood words spoken in any language. It was tempting to confront Gillian with these facts but Joy, knowing how it would irritate her twin to have the story disbelieved, held her tongue. Instead, she said mildly, linking her arm with Gillian’s: ‘Are you goin’ to tell how our Connemara gran came to visit us and left before we was two weeks old? Only if you do, you can be sure our first memories will be different as different.’

Gillian gave her sister’s arm a squeeze. Joy thought the squeeze probably meant
Thanks for not scoffing
, but she continued to gaze enquiringly at the other girl. ‘I dunno,’ Gillian said vaguely. ‘Perhaps I’ll say my first memory was the day Mum and Dad took us to the seaside. We must have been three or four and what I remember most …’

‘… is how astonished we were when the holes we dug filled up with water,’ Joy said, remembering the incident perfectly. ‘It seemed like magic, as though our little wooden spades had found a secret spring. And then there were ices and that pink cotton stuff which melted away when you got it into your mouth …’

Gillian snatched her arm away from Joy’s and gave her a shove. ‘That was
my
bleedin’ memory!’ she shrieked. ‘Oh, I
knew
how it would be! Whatever I do, you simply have to copy me. Well, Joy Lawrence, that day out in Rhyl is going to be
my
first memory, so don’t you dare try to pinch it!’

Joy giggled; she couldn’t help it. Gillian’s reactions were always the same, but as Daddy had said, she was just like a bottle of pop when you shake it up. It fizzes and froths, then gradually goes calm again. So she simply said: ‘You’re a twerp, Gillian; I was just remembering. I wouldn’t dream of using the same rotten old memory as you. Anyway, it wouldn’t be true. I
think
my very clearest memory is of evacuation day, and Mum pinning the labels on to our coats, reminding us that I was to wear a green ribbon to hold back my hair and you were to wear a red one. She said Miss Jensen had promised to see that we weren’t parted, but she thought folk would be more eager to take us in if there were a way of telling one from t’other. I remember how our mum cried and kissed us, and reminded us to fill in our postcards and send them off as soon as we knew where we would be living. D’you think that would be okay?’

‘It’s better than mine,’ Gillian said, her tone more admiring than envious. ‘Only I don’t
think
it could possibly be your first memory, because we were what, seven or eight? And people of eight remember what happened when they were four or five, if you see what I mean.’

‘Ye-es, but it’s something I’ll remember all my life, if I live to be a hundred, or even a thousand,’ Joy said, after some thought. ‘And Miss said we could choose … at least, I think that was what she meant. Anyway, that’s the memory she’ll get from me, and tomorrow’s our last day in school … last day in the village, really … so if she don’t like it she’ll jolly well have to lump it.’

‘I wonder how she feels, going back to Liverpool and St Hilda’s after so long away,’ Gillian said thoughtfully. ‘Of course she’s returned to Liverpool sometimes, in the school holidays, but she’s always come back to us.’ She looked sideways at her sister. ‘But have you thought, Joy? We went to the baby class at St Hilda’s because Mummy said a good grounding was important and we would get that there. But she also said that she and Daddy wouldn’t be able to afford the fees for the senior school, the one you move to when you are eight, so I don’t suppose we’ll be going. I wouldn’t dream of saying so to Miss J though, because she’s a dear, really. In fact we’ve been really lucky, Joy, to have had her all the time we’ve been here. I’d have hated to have a new teacher every few months, like some kids have had.’

‘Mm … hmm,’ Joy said rather thickly through a mouthful of the little wild marabella plums which grew in the hedgerow. ‘But do you know
why
she’s stayed with us? It’s because she’s so old. She had retired in 1938, but came back into teaching when so many young ones – man teachers and lady teachers, I mean – left to join the forces. I remember Mrs Dodman saying how she admired Miss Jensen for continuing to teach such a motley crew as our class. After all, she was a St Hilda’s teacher and St Hilda’s pupils are all clean, tidy little girls like us, smart as paint and clever as – as the Prime Minister, but she’s had to cope with village kids and evacuees from other schools too. It can’t have been easy.’

It was Gillian’s turn to giggle. It had been dry for a week and the girls had been scuffing through the white dust and dead leaves which lined the lane. Both had mouths and chins purple with plum juice and their skimpy gingham dresses were faded, their cardigans patched. ‘I wouldn’t call us either smart or clean, and only one of us is clever, which is me,’ she said, digging Joy in the ribs with a sharp elbow. ‘Are you going to miss the country and the Dodmans, and our funny little bedroom crammed under the eaves, where we can watch the birds making nests in the thatch of a Sunday morning? I know I am.’

‘I’ll miss all of it, of course, especially the Dodmans,’ Joy said thoughtfully. She ignored the remark about cleverness, because challenging it would have been pointless; Gillian was easily the brainier twin, though her claims to be the prettier Joy thought daft. Oh, Gillian’s hair was a darker auburn and her freckles were less pronounced, and when they stood side by side Gillian was perhaps an inch the taller, but the differences were so slight that only when the girls were together were they ever commented upon.

Now, Gillian chuckled. ‘Do you remember how the Dodmans hated us when we first arrived?’ she asked. ‘Mrs Dodman said she’d never had chick nor child of her own and didn’t fancy sharing her home with a couple of kids from a big city, who would doubtless drive her demented in a week.’

Joy chuckled too. ‘She tried to palm us off on the farmer, but Mrs Goody said that they were getting their land girls, so that didn’t do poor Mrs Dodman much good. I don’t know what they might have done to get rid of us if it hadn’t been for Mr Dodman needing all the help he could get at lambing …’ She sighed reminiscently. ‘Many a time he told us that he was a shepherd, a master of his craft, and not a mere farm labourer. But of course he had to turn his hand to everything when the younger chaps were all called up.’

‘When the land girls arrived, things were easier,’ Gillian pointed out. ‘They were wonderful once they’d learned what was expected of them, but at first half of them were scared of the animals and went into hysterics at the thought of assisting a sheep to give birth to her lambs. That was where we came in. We liked it all and did whatever we were told to help, so when things quietened down a bit and Mrs Goody offered to find us lodgings nearer the school, the Dodmans were horrified.’

‘Yes, I remember it well,’ Joy said. ‘They pretended they were afraid they might get even worse evacuees than us, but the truth was, we fitted in pretty well. If you ask me, they’re going to miss us like anything, though Mr Dodman pretends it will be nice to have the cottage to themselves.’ She turned to her sister. ‘Do you remember the house in Liverpool, Gillian? I think I do, though it’s pretty hazy. Our bedroom was up a flight of quite steep little stairs and there was a long, low window. I remember if you pushed the window open as far as it would go, stuck your head out and looked to the right, you could see Daddy’s fire station. I think there was a rug, with pink roses, and the floor was shiny boards, but I don’t really remember the living room or the kitchen. And of course we’ve never seen the bath and lavvy that Dad’s had put in the little boxroom, have we?’

‘No, and won’t it be grand to have a proper bath?’ Gillian said dreamily. ‘And we shan’t need to use the jerry if we want to widdle in the night. Daddy thinks of everything, doesn’t he?’

‘He sure does; I mean to wash my hair every Friday night, like the girls in the magazine advertisements,’ Joy said at once. ‘Friday night’s Amami night, that’s what they say. But we’re going to start a whole new life, aren’t we, Gillian? No more country lanes, or walks through the woods collecting acorns for the pigs. No more ambling into the village when Mrs Dodman wants some shopping done. No more pond dipping or traipsing round the jumble sales looking for a dress to fit. I know you said Mrs Dodman sold our clothing coupons, but she fed us really well, so she was welcome to mine. Do you remember once, when we were eating that fruit cake, Mr Dodman said it weren’t really fruit cake, it were the new serge skirt Mrs Dodman had had her eye on? They both cackled like anything, because I’m sure they thought we didn’t know what they meant, but of course we did.’

Both girls chuckled at the memory, but when they reached the little path which led down through the trees to the Dodmans’ cottage, Joy stopped and looked around her. ‘It’s rare beautiful though, ain’t it, Gillian?’ she said wistfully. ‘I’m never sure whether I like spring or autumn best, but I think autumn’s the loveliest. Look at the different-coloured leaves on the trees; the wild cherries red, the beeches gold, the chestnuts a lovely goldy green until they turn brown. And very soon the hedgerows will be scarlet with hips and haws … yes, I’m sure we’ll miss the seasons because they don’t happen in the city, do they? It’ll just be roads and pavements and the good old Mersey …’