Lord of the Nutcracker Men (19 page)

Mr. Tuttle held his thumbs to his eyes, his hands cupped across his nose. “Good heavens,” he said, very softly.

We were sitting at the table, the little tree standing in the middle with all its ornaments shining. Auntie Ivy took off her spectacles and set them down beside it, and they looked like a pair of glass balls that had fallen from the fuzzy branches. Then she folded up the letter.

I thought she would put it with the others, in the wooden box on her bookshelves. But she reached across the table and put it into my hand. “I think you should keep this with you,” she said.

“Indeed,” added Mr. Tuttle, with a sniff. “You should want to hang on to that.”

Auntie pressed the page into my palm, then closed my fingers around it. But I let them spring open again; I let the paper fall away. “It isn't true,” I said. I didn't want to hold that letter.

“Whatever do you mean?” said Auntie.

#x201C;It's a story,” I said.

“A lovely story,” said Mr. Tuttle.

“But
not true
.” I pushed the letter across the table. It
bounced off the Christmas tree's wooden tub and sat spinning beside it. “Dad
doesn't
sing songs with the Germans.”

Poor Mr. Tuttle looked rather stunned. But Auntie Ivy knew what I meant. She said, “How dare you question your father?”

I got up and ran to the door.

As I pulled on my boots, I heard Auntie talking. “He thinks his father is trying to spare him the horrors.” I grabbed my coat and went out to the garden.

Christmas Eve was ending. I put my hands to my face and made a slot that I stared through, up at the sky. It was as brown and bleak as the mud; no stained-glass windows for me, only a filthy, splattered pane. I turned as I walked, down from the door, under the tree, and its spidery branches appeared between my hands like spreading cracks on the window of clouds. Then I stumbled, and fell to my knees, looking down at the nutcracker men.

For a whole day I hadn't touched them, yet I was sure they had moved. They stood in a double row, leaning back with their painted faces turned up to watch the sky. For a whole day they hadn't fought, and then Dad's letter had come, in an afternoon post that no one had expected.

“The Germans are no longer fighting.”

It seemed impossible, but absolutely true. My wooden soldiers had stopped the war. They had brought a truce, like the one that had come to the Greeks and the Trojans when every man there had prayed for peace.

But then I remembered the billiards table, and the horseshoe pitch that I
knew
didn't exist. And if Dad had invented those, he must have invented the carol.

In Cliffe, the church bells started ringing. They bonged and bonged as I stared down at my nutcracker men, at the others my father had made. Could he really have given them souls?

The bells were ringing the chimes when the door opened and closed behind me. Mr. Tuttle came quietly out to the garden. “The service is starting,” he said.

“Do you go to church?” I asked.

“Not very often.” He walked past me and crossed, in a step, the no-man's-land between my trenches. In another he was standing behind the British lines, astride my wooden aeroplane. He stooped and picked it up.

“I don't know what to think anymore,” I said.

“About what?” he asked.

“Anything.” The bells rang through their chorus, both discordant and lovely. “I was so excited at first. With the war.”

“We all were,” said Mr. Tuttle.

“But I hate it already. And it's just going to go on and on.”

Mr. Tuttle flicked the little propeller. It made a humming sound.

“And what if it's one of those that last a hundred years?”

“I doubt that's the case, Johnny,” he said. “We're getting better at fighting wars. We've got them running like machines now: faster, more efficient.”

“I wish we'd get better at
not
fighting them,” I said.

“That's a fine thought,” said Mr. Tuttle.

The bells stopped ringing, their last tingles of sound seeming to linger on. “I think Auntie would like to go to church,” I said.

“Would she?”

I nodded. “We haven't been there before.” “I'll show you the way,” said Mr. Tuttle.

He carried the aeroplane into the house, and in the doorway he started to fly it. His arm zoomed up and down; his doughy lips made engine noises, a bomb whistling down and bursting. Then he blushed and gave me the toy. I set it on the table, beside the little Christmas tree.

We walked to the church, and Storey Sims's black horse was still harnessed to its wagon. Mr. Tuttle said it was the strangest thing he'd ever done to pass his house and see light inside. “I'd rather thought it was a lonely house, but it looks quite cheery,” he said. Auntie Ivy said she'd always liked it, that she'd wished sometimes that she lived there. Then she laughed, embarrassed, and the sound of it tingled in the air like the last of the bells.

The church was ancient and cold. We found room in the first pew, and Mr. Tuttle—in a whisper—told me I was sitting where Normans had sat, where knights and their ladies had sat, where Dickens himself might have sat. We stood and sang carols, then knelt and prayed for the soldiers.

“We ask God to keep them safe,” said the minister. “We ask that He lay His hand on their heads, each and every one, and bestow upon them His ever-loving mercy.”

My eyes were closed. I saw that huge white hand forming in the clouds, running first down the British line, and then down the Germans'. He would bless them all, I thought; they were all the same to Him.

Then we got to our feet, in a great stamping and a
rumble of coughs. And I sang “Silent Night” with Auntie Ivy piping away on my left and Mr. Tuttle humming on my other side. And I looked up at the altar, higher to the stained-glass windows that someone had made when England was young. They were dark shapes, just holes in the stones. But as we sang they started to glow, the moon coming out for a moment. And red light, and yellow, fell through the church, and I felt as though nothing could hurt me. I felt as a baby must feel.

The moon was hidden when we left for home, as though it hadn't come out at all. Cliffe seemed small and pretty, like a toy village come to life. As we walked through it the rain started, gently but chill as ice. The night was so cold that Auntie Ivy had to reach across me and put her hand into Mr. Tuttle's pocket just to keep it warm.

I didn't go in when they did. I said I had to see to my soldiers, and though Auntie Ivy said she wished I didn't, Mr. Tuttle said a little while wouldn't hurt, and he'd come out and fetch me when tea was made. So I crouched by myself in the garden as Christmas Eve ended, and I brought all the nutcracker men out of their trenches. I brought all the British out of theirs, all the Frenchmen too. And I stood them together in no-man's-land, though one was missing because I couldn't find General Cedric.

When Mr. Tuttle came out, I had them in a big bunch with the old broken model of my father right in the middle. The sleeping soldier, who couldn't stand up by himself, leaned on a nutcracker man. And the nutcracker men mingled in with the Frenchmen. And Fatty Dienst stood next to Dad, beside a messman with his pots.

“What are they doing?” asked Mr. Tuttle.

“They're praying for peace,” I said. “Like the Trojans and the Greeks.”

He nodded, his hands in his pockets. “Is that what you're hoping for?”

“Oh, I don't know if it matters,” I said. “They might only be wooden men.”

“With their own little truce in the garden, you mean?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“That's good enough,” he told me.

Then we went inside, and I smelled the pudding boiling. I heard the chatter of its lid as it boiled in the pot, cooking for Christmas dinner. And I saw that the tree had been moved, from the table to a stool, and there was a small pile of presents below it.

“Are those for me?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Auntie Ivy. “Your mother sent them some time ago. There's a card to go with them.”

“Can you read it now?” I asked.

“Certainly not,” she said. “Only heathens open gifts on Christmas Eve.”

“Well, she's almost right,” said Auntie Ivy, passing the card to me. “At least we have sunshine.”

“And it's sort of snowy,” I said.

The ground had frozen, and the frost was thick and white. It glowed so bright in the morning sun that I had to squint to see it. And a layer of ice covered the trees, turning every branch into clusters of diamonds, each little twig into a sparkling, feathery frond.

I looked at the card, at its picture of a huge old sleigh pulled by horses with ribbons and bells. Then I opened the presents that Mum had sent: red mittens dangling tassels; a mechanical bear that rode on a bicycle; the
Boys Own Annual.

I opened them all in a hurry, kneeling on the floor as Mr. Tuttle and Auntie watched from their chairs. Then I thought of Mum with her hands going yellow, picking the presents out from a shop, wrapping them up to send me. I thought of Dad in his trench, with no-man's-land a big frosty field, with the sun on his face, and his beard all icy. And I started to cry because they were so far away.

“Well, that's a
fine
thing,” snapped Auntie. “Crying on Christmas Day. What a shameful thing to do.”

But Mr. Tuttle understood. “Now, Ivy,” he said, gently. “You must not have been a child who was sent away for Christmas.” He was all rumply from sleeping in his armchair, and he smoothed his wrinkled sleeves. “I remember very well my first Christmas in a boarding school. In all my years, I've never felt so miserable as that.”

“Oh dear,” said Auntie Ivy.

“I'm sorry, Hubert.”

I giggled; I'd never heard his proper name before. “Enough of that,” he said, pretending to be stern.
And then to Auntie Ivy, “I think Johnny should be sent to the pantry.”

“Yes, I think he should too,” said Auntie.

They were smiling at each other, their heads tilted, like a pair of pigeons. “Off you go, then,” said Mr. Tuttle.

“Why?” I asked.