England's Lane (48 page)

“Yes. Washington. No—I'll just come with Anthony.”

“Right you are, then. And have you got your bow on? Do you need any help with it? My goodness—you're going to be quite the masher.”

“Of course I don't need any help with it. It's only clip-on. What's a masher?”

“A very handsome young man—that's what a masher is. All right Paul, my sweet. See you very soon, then.”

That's if I last that long: oh my Lord, I just can't tell you how over the last few days I honestly have come within an inch of being run off my feet …! It's perfectly extraordinary—no matter how carefully, how very diligently you try to plan the timing of everything, it all just seems to come at you at once. This party—and I do so hope that it all goes well—yes this party, rather surprisingly,
has proved to be the very least of my burdens. But then of course I have been so terribly lucky in having all of the girls helping me out—we've all mucked in together—and Edie and Gwendoline in particular: I honestly couldn't have managed it without them. And I did so laugh when Edie this morning so very eagerly volunteered to put up the paper chains: I think she felt that she just had to be certain they'd be there! The lad who works for Mr. Levy, he'd already rolled across Mrs. Dent's piano, and then he carried over two of the tallest stepladders that Jim had in the shop—and goodness, though: I didn't at all envy Edie being up there. It literally made me shiver just to look at her—because I've never been awfully good at heights, you know—and Eunice, she used to taunt and tease me quite mercilessly when we were little. At home, I couldn't even bear to look out of the attic window, though she forever was making me do it—and then she'd be urging me to climb up the big old conker tree we had in the garden, and she knew I just couldn't: it was all very naughty of her. In later years, we laughed about it all, of course …

And Doreen—she's been in the library all morning with her little Dansette and records and seemingly reams of sheet music … and also her very sallow and unsmiling young man—he it is who works in Woolworth's and is, she simperingly told me, called Derek. His guitar I have to say is rather beautiful—bright shiny red with lots of chromium detailing, rather reminiscent of those terribly long and swish American automobiles looking rather like spaceships that you see at the pictures. Derek, by contrast, is very drab indeed—dressed from head to toe in black, and possessing the dead air of a bloodless vampire. We can but hope that his alarming amplifier doesn't fuse the lights. The boy with the drums seems to be an altogether jollier sort of person, but the noise he was making during what he was pleased to term a “tune-up” was quite perfectly dreadful, and horribly loud. I have told Doreen to limit the amount of time
the group is actually playing because this room—already it's resounding with echo, and any conversation will be a complete impossibility.

Anyway—not long now till the off, and all is looking reasonably festive, I think. And it's just so wonderfully warm in here! All the radiators, you see (and gosh—what utter bliss it must be to have this central heating: just imagine to be rid of the freezing bedroom and the drafty hallway!). The tables, they have been pushed down to the far end—and when I saw them I did feel so terribly foolish because it had utterly escaped me that the library would of course be full of tables, but by then I'd already asked Mr. Bona to lend us those trestles he uses in the shop, and so then I thought I had to go ahead and use them because he'd been to such a beast of an amount of trouble to clear them of all his boxes and barrels and everything, and I felt that if I didn't he could easily be offended. The chairs have been placed in little groups around the edges, and dear Mrs. Jenkins from Moore's has in addition to the balloons also given us quite a few lengths of colored crepe paper which I have draped in front of several of the bookcases, and Edie is attaching to them a series of stars and snowflakes that she has cut from a roll of cooking foil from the Dairies: the stars, yes they're really quite nice, though the snowflakes do not in the least resemble any snowflake I have ever seen, though of course I've said nothing to Edie. And those balloons—I had completely forgotten to ask Jim to blow them up (it was on my list, so I don't know how I came to overlook it) and so this very dingy Derek person is attending to them now: he looks so very pale and puny, you know, that the effort may very well do for him, which could easily be a blessing in disguise.

The keg of beer is looking horribly huge, the worry being that I have no doubt whatever that all the men will see it off with ease. Also on the table there, thanks to Victoria Wine, I can see whisky
—two bottles of that—gin, cherry brandy, sherry and something obviously foreign and the brightest yellow that I am told is called … I think it is advocate: I do hope no rowdiness results. And Mr. Levy has given us such a lovely tree—oh the smell! It is quite perfectly divine!—and both Miss and Mrs. Jenkins have all the morning been very busy decorating it, and extremely beautifully too. It's so much larger than the really rather weeny little thing that late last night I finally got around to putting up in the living room, just to the side of the television set. And it's really so strange—each year when I get out the old shoebox, yet one more little glass ornament is always broken—I just can't understand it because I always so very carefully fold them into tissue and then newspaper; I think I might this year have to buy one or two more, because it does look rather gappy. Usually I eke out the baubles with these little stacks of miniature chocolate bars each in a differently colored shiny paper, and hanging from a little bow: we all eat them all up on Boxing Day. I used to buy them from Stan, but he didn't get them in this year. Paul loves it though, our little tree—and I've already wrapped this blessed tank that he's been on and on at me for weeks on end to buy for him. Fearfully expensive for what it is—it's only plastic, after all—but his heart was so set on it, little lamb. I'll put it beneath the tree this evening, but of course I shan't let on to him what it is. He loves his surprises on Christmas morning, and yet he's forever pleading with me to tell him what is in each and every one of the packages, silly little boy: by Christmas Eve, he's just so ridiculously excited … and I do adore it, to see it in his eyes. Anyway, I'll say to him it's something dreadfully dull such as socks, or to do with school. And although it seems that I've been running myself ragged over all these preparations at home, if I am being perfectly honest I do actually feel quite positively charged with energy: I actually am feeling it pulsing through me—it sometimes is almost as though
I were lit up from within. Doctor McAuley, he told me the day before yesterday when I went to him for my checkup that this can often be the way, following all the pain and nausea that I was seemingly endlessly having to endure: thank the Lord all that's behind me. It did make me smile though when earlier this morning Edie said to me that I was looking “radiant”—that was her actual word—because apart from Jim, I haven't told a soul. I suppose though as the new year progresses—1960! I still simply can't get used to the sound of it—then things will begin to be quite apparent, but until such time I'd far rather keep quiet about it. My little secret. Big secret. And growing within me all the time …! Can barely believe it—have to keep pinching myself. I haven't quite decided when to tell Paul … possibly leave it until he asks me why suddenly I'm becoming so horribly fat! Difficult to project quite how he might feel about it all. He'll just have to take a little time to get used to the idea, I suppose. Well—we all will.

And apart from this tank affair—and I do hope it isn't just a nine-day wonder, because it really did cost a small fortune: the battery alone was seven-and-six and weighs an absolute ton—I've also got for Paul his annuals and a handsome wooden jigsaw of HMS
Victory
, which I think he might like. And a drum of rubber building blocks called Minibrix that caught my eye while I was in Selfridges: rather clever—they connect, you see, but then you can take them all apart afterward and build something else entirely; and it's got roofs, you know, and little doors and windows—quite sweet. For his stocking there's a Matchbox car I know he hasn't got—I do hope he does still like them though, because I haven't seen him playing with them for simply ages—and a yo-yo, a multi-colored biro that I saw in Smith's, a bag of gold chocolate coins, the usual white sugar mouse with pink eyes and his little stringy tail … and of course a clementine for the toe. And I've had to do similar for poor little Anthony:
well I had to, didn't I? Though I was quite at a loss as to what I might buy him for his primary present: there I was in Selfridges, surrounded by the bewildering mayhem that was the toy department, and my mind a complete and utter blank. I almost—I can't even say it!—I almost settled for a football and two little net goalposts, and then I was just gasping in wonder at myself: oh my goodness, Milly—what in heaven's name are you
thinking
of …?! I was covered in shame. So in the end I got him another jigsaw—this one of a racing car, so afterward the two of them can swap about—and a rotating globe on a wooden stand. And the
Beezer
and
Topper
books. Haven't a clue as to whether he'll actually like any of it—but what was I to do? I don't know the boy, do I? And I couldn't ask Stan, could I? (and anyway—he's not allowed visitors: I do hope he's not terribly ill). There was such an endless queue for Santa's grotto—it went all the way out and around the shoe department and well into sporting goods—that I did feel rather relieved that this year I hadn't brought Paul along with me. He did so love it last time, though: Uncle Holly is his favorite, and he cherishes all the badges he's given him, over the years. And after all of that I was in the drizzle of Oxford Street feeling like a beast of burden and waiting for the bus, when I saw this stall on the pavement selling rolls of Christmas wrapping paper at very considerably less than in John Barnes and Smith's or even in Woolworth's, but when I got them home I was perfectly disgusted to discover that each of the sheets was virtually transparent …! Great heavens—what do they imagine to be the point of decorative wrapping paper …? You'd have to cover something in three or four sheets, or else there would be no surprise at all. So now I've simply spread them all across Mr. Bona's trestle tables in the library to jolly them up a little bit, and ended up paying really rather a lot for some admittedly very good-quality rolls from John Barnes—holly, robins and Santa: all very traditional
—and while I was there, I ordered our turkey. Hen bird—sweeter meat, I always find; usually I get it in the Lane, of course. I haven't had the time this year to knit for Paul a nice and Christmassy V-neck, but I did buy a new pattern and five balls of royal blue and primrose two-ply, so I'll have something bright for him at Easter. I daresay I shall be knitting other little tiny things too—oh what unimaginable excitement …! And I know I shouldn't have, but I also got for myself one-and-a-half yards of nigger-brown corduroy which I think might make up into quite a pleasing little bolero: handy for the spring. It did make me remember though with a flood of guilt that I haven't so much as even begun on my winter tweed coat, and I've had the material for positively months. Which is why I'm still shivering in this old thing.

And Jim's stocking—because I do always make one up for him, isn't it perfectly silly?—that's nearly done now too. I've got the socks and hankies (John Barnes) and a pack of playing cards which he probably will never use but they'd got on the backs a picture of a budgerigar which does look a little bit like Cyril, and you know how you can get quite desperate for any new little ideas, and they were only half-a-crown. But I haven't yet been able to buy the special Christmas box of a hundred Senior Service that I always get for him because, well—Stan isn't open, of course: but Sally has just told me that she's going to be there in the morning, so I can get them then (that is if she hasn't yet pulverized the entire stock of the shop). And then I'll round it off with the customary clementine. Normally I'll trim the stockings with little sprigs of berried holly that I cut from this great and overgrown thicket of it that I discovered on the Heath—but this year, honestly, I just haven't had a moment to get up there. I used so much to enjoy those rambles on the Heath—and Hampstead Village too: rather smarter than England's Lane and so full of charm, if occasionally just a little bit
too, um … I think they call it bohemian, don't they? You do see some terribly intense young men and women wearing heavily framed spectacles and duffel coats, all striding about rather purposefully and boldly brandishing Penguin books as if they were weapons. I sometimes would sit outside The Coffee Cup in the High Street, watching the world go by and feeling dreadfully fuddy-duddy for only drinking tea.

The frock I am wearing for the party is quite a nice navy shantung—full skirt, and a neat little Peter Pan collar of plum velvet, with cuffs of the same material at the three-quarter sleeves: soon, I expect, I shan't be able to get into it, for the belted waist is really rather nipped-in. It was the very last thing I ever acquired from the beastly tallyman, and I've never before worn it. I shall not see him again, that very vulgar and abusive little man—now that is a Christmas present, if ever there was one! I must be very dull, you know, for it had taken me rather a long while to comprehend that of course it is not the intention of such people that ever one should be rid of the shadow of debt—and should you come to approach such a state, well then you are first cajoled and subsequently bullied into pledging more and yet more in order to maintain a deliberately unsupportable level of liability. So upon the last occasion that he called—having firmly refused to allow him even to open his case of samples, much to his evident disgruntlement—I asked him quite coldly to write upon a piece of paper the entire extent of my accumulated folly. I tried not to intake my breath too audibly as I focused upon the figure, and then—I hope with a steady hand—I paid the man in full, and insisted upon a stamped and dated receipt. He was shocked—I imagine he has never before encountered such behavior. His greedy pleasure in handling the notes was tempered by the realization that the matter was at an end: that I was free of him for good.