Memories of You (13 page)

When she realized a queue was forming for the tables, Helen reluctantly drained her cup and set off to do her shopping. She had her list and she knew where she was going. First she would go to Marks and Spencer's Penny Bazaar and then she would go to the book stalls where she would have time to linger just a little longer.

 

On Sunday after lunch Helen told her aunt she was going for a walk. There was a moment of silence when Helen could see Aunt Jane was trying to think of some reason why she couldn't go, but eventually she said, ‘Well, just make sure you help Eva with the dishes first. It's her half-day today, you know.'

On Sundays Aunt Jane and Helen had lunch in the dark little dining room at the back of the house. ‘Get along with you,' Eva said as the two girls cleared the table. ‘I'll have these washed up in no time and I can see you're dying to break out of here even on a day like this.'

It was bitterly cold. ‘Too cold for snow,' Eva said, although Helen failed to see the logic in that. She walked briskly and by the time she reached the old familiar streets her cheeks were glowing.

‘How bonny you look,' were Mrs Andrews' first words as she welcomed her into the house next door to where Helen had grown up. They went straight through to the kitchen where Mr Andrews was snoring gently by the fire. ‘Don't mind him,' their old friend said. ‘And don't worry. We won't wake him up with our chatter. He's as deaf as a post.'

Strangely, once they were seated at the table they didn't chatter very much. In fact both found it hard to say anything at all as they sipped the hot sweet tea and gazed pensively into the glowing flames.

Eventually Helen roused herself and asked, ‘What are your new neighbours like?'

‘Nice young couple. He works at the bakery, comes home covered in flour and looking like a ghost. She's a dressmaker of a sort. Alterations and mending. She's expecting. It'll be nice to have a bairn next door again.'

Helen couldn't speak.

‘Eeh, I'm sorry, lass. That was thoughtless of me.'

‘No, it's all right. Life moves on.'

Mrs Andrews gazed at her speculatively. ‘Yes, it does, and whatever happens I have the feeling that you will cope with it.'

They fell into a reflective silence again and after a while Helen had the urge to go. It wasn't that she wanted to leave her old friend so much as that she no longer felt at home here. It nearly broke her heart to acknowledge this but it was true. Before she left she took a small packet wrapped in Christmas paper from her pocket and put it on the table.

‘Oh, no, Helen,' Mrs Andrews said. That's not for me, is it? I haven't got you anything this year.'

‘I wasn't expecting anything. And it's not really from me. It's something my mother would have wanted you to have. Go on, you needn't wait until Christmas Day. Open it now.'

Mrs Andrews' work-roughened hands were trembling as she tore off the wrapping paper. When she saw what was inside she cried out, ‘The little blackbird!' She stared at the pie funnel with delight.

‘You always liked it.'

‘Yes, I did. He looked so cocky there in the middle of your mother's pies, just as if he was saying he'd done it all himself. But how did you manage to save it from – I mean . . .'

‘Aunt Jane wouldn't have wanted it. I took it from the drawer in the kitchen table even before she had a look around.'

‘I can't take it, Helen. You should keep it yourself.'

‘No. I want you to have it. And I know my mother would want that too. Every time you make a pie you'll remember old times and happy days.'

Helen didn't get much sense out of their old neighbour after that and soon she left to go back to Aunt Jane's house and see what Eva had left for her to serve up for tea.

On the Monday, the day before Christmas Eve, the school term came to an end. Although the teachers insisted that lessons should go on as usual until the last minute, the atmosphere was light-hearted with the girls finding any opportunity to laugh and some of the younger teachers joining in the fun. School friends exchanged presents before they left for home, including Helen and her friend Eileen. Sitting on the shoe lockers in the cloakroom, they agreed to open their presents then and there and laughed when they saw what had happened. They had bought each other identical pairs of red and white Fair Isle woollen mittens.

‘I know where you bought these!' Helen exclaimed. ‘The Penny Bazaar!'

‘Well, I certainly didn't knit them!' Eileen replied and they laughed until their smiles faded.

‘I suppose I'd better be going home,' Helen said reluctantly.

‘You must come to our house whenever you want to,' Eileen said. ‘You don't have to wait to be asked.'

‘I will,' Helen replied, but again she had that strange feeling that life was moving on.

Once outside it was too cold to linger and they hurried away in different directions along the pavements where frost sparkled in the fading light of the winter's day.

 

On Christmas morning the postman called with a small parcel for Helen. Aunt Jane was still in bed so Helen took it up to her room to open it. Joe and Danny had sent her a box of vanilla fudge and it had got squashed in the post. Each square had merged into the next one, but Helen knew she would enjoy it more than any fudge she had ever eaten. She left it on top of the dresser and went down to help Eva in the kitchen.

Helen wondered what Aunt Jane would have done if she had not been living there. Would she have had her Christmas dinner all alone, waited on by Eva and greeted by no one?

‘Last Christmas the missus invited a friend along from her bridge club,' Eva told her, ‘but a few days later the woman died.'

The two girls stared at each other through the steam rising from the pudding pan and tried not to laugh. It was no use. Eva cracked up first. ‘And before you say anything it wasn't my cooking!'

‘I wouldn't even suggest it,' Helen said. ‘But has my aunt no other friends?'

‘They come and go but she's always picking quarrels with them. If she's not careful she's going to be a very lonely old woman.'

Aunt Jane insisted that Helen accompany her to church and it was true that not many people greeted her cheerily. They did not stay to gossip after the service.

When they got home the table had been set with the best damask tablecloth, the best silver-plated cutlery, and there was even a cutglass vase in the centre holding a sprig of holly. There was also a bottle of port wine and two glasses. When Eva had brought the food and gone back to the kitchen Aunt Jane poured herself a glassful of the wine and filled half a glass for Helen.

‘Well, then, Helen,' she said with an air of smug complacency. ‘I'm sure this will be the best Christmas dinner you've ever had.' She set about carving slices from the capon and indicated that Helen was to help herself to the vegetables and the gravy.

They ate in silence. By the time Eva came in with the pudding Aunt Jane had had another two glasses of wine and her face was flushed. ‘That was very nice, Eva,' she said and her maid-of-all-work raised her eyebrows at the unexpected praise. ‘Now make yourself up a plate of dinner from what's left of the vegetables and take yourself a slice of the capon. Put the rest in the pantry for tomorrow.'

Eva wasn't coming to work on Boxing Day. Aunt Helen had given her the day off – without pay, of course. She said Helen and she could manage perfectly well on their own. She meant Helen, naturally. She would probably sit by the fire as usual reading her magazines and being waited on hand and foot.

‘When you've finished, wash up what you can,' Aunt Jane added. ‘Helen will do the rest.'

Before Eva left Helen slipped into the kitchen to give her her present. ‘You shouldn't hev!' Eva said as without waiting to be told she tore off the wrapping paper. Her eyes shone as she stared at her gift. ‘A bottle of scent. What is it?'

‘Muguet des Bois.'

‘Come again?'

‘Lilies of the Valley. But it's not Coty. It's a copy, I'm afraid.'

‘I haven't a clue what you're talking about, but thank you, anyway. I've never owned a bottle of scent in me whole life.'

‘Everybody should have a little luxury now and then. That's what my mother used to say.'

‘She was a wise woman,' Eva said. ‘But now, if you don't mind, I'll be off to the madhouse to help me ma with all those dratted kids.'

Eva was only pretending to complain. Helen could see how eager she was to get home and she envied her, for Helen herself faced a long, dreary day with her aunt. She was to make sandwiches at teatime and put up a couple of plates of cold meat and pickle for supper. By the time she had finished in the kitchen Aunt Jane had taken herself and her bottle of port wine to the front parlour.

‘Do sit down, Helen,' she said. ‘Although, wait a minute, you'd better see to the fire first. It's chilly, isn't it?'

Personally Helen thought her aunt kept this room far too warm and the rest of the house too cold, but she did as she was told and sat at the other side of the hearth. Her aunt had already nodded off and Helen had to restrain her giggles at the little piggy noises she was making. She stared at her mother's sister, the coarse features and the network of broken veins on her cheeks, and wondered how on earth they could have been related. Perhaps her mother had been a changeling, a child substituted for another by the fairies. Or perhaps a wicked witch had left her own daughter in Aunt Jane's cradle.

She stared at the woman glumly and remembered how that morning she had given her aunt her present at the breakfast table. Her aunt had raised her eyebrows as she opened the wrapping paper and gazed at the pair of embroidered Swiss handkerchiefs. There was a moment's silence. Perhaps Aunt Jane had actually been embarrassed, but if so she didn't give it away when she said, ‘Very nice, Helen, and I'm sure it's right for you to show your gratitude, but we don't give presents in this house.'

With those words she had dampened any Christmas joy there might have been before the day had properly begun. Well, at least, Helen thought, I can escape into a book for a while. Sighing with an emotion that was akin to contentment, Helen settled back in her chair and opened
The Constant Nymph
by Margaret Kennedy, one of the books she had treated herself to from the bookstall in the market.

Soon, along with the book's heroine, fourteen-year-old Tessa, Helen was living in a rambling chalet high in the Austrian Alps and falling in love with Lewis Dodd, a gifted composer, and worrying dreadfully that her beautiful cousin Florence was going to steal him away . . .

 

On Christmas morning, straight after breakfast, Joe and Danny were among a small group of boys summoned to Mr Ridley's study. Straight away Joe's eyes were drawn to the pile of brightly wrapped presents on the headmaster's desk.

‘Ah . . . um . . . Merry Christmas, boys,' Mr Ridley said.

‘Same to you, sir,' the boys replied in unison.

‘As those of you who have been with us for some while know, most of the boys here do not get Christmas presents sent from outside. There is – ah – no one to send them. But a lucky few of you do have people who remember you.' He paused and eyed the pile of presents sadly. Joe wondered if he was going to tell them that they could not have them. The headmaster's next words seemed to confirm the suspicion. ‘We have discussed whether in all fairness we should pass these on to you . . .'

So why show them to us?
Joe wondered.

‘But we decided that we should.'

‘However, as in previous years I must ask you not to flaunt these presents,' Mr Ridley continued. ‘You may take them up to your dormitory and put them in your lockers. But be quick about it. You can open them later. You must come down and join the other boys in the hall as soon as possible.'

Mr Ridley handed out the presents and the boys hurried upstairs as they were told. Once in the dormitory not one of the boys could resist opening their presents and there were exclamations of delight and disappointment. Joe could see from the shape of the parcels that Helen had sent them a book each – he knew the presents would be from Helen; who else was there to remember them?

‘What have you got?' he asked Danny.

Joe grinned. ‘I've got an island too.
Treasure Island
.'

‘We can read them and swap.'

‘I'm sure Helen meant us to.'

‘What have you got here then?'

Joe looked up to see Tod staring at them. He didn't answer.

‘Books, is it? Don't see the point of books.'

‘Well, why would you when you can't read?' Joe said and saw the flicker of dismay in Danny's eyes.

‘What did you say?' Tod asked.

‘My brother was joking,' Danny said.

‘No, he wasn't,' Tod retorted. ‘He was suggesting that I'm ignorant. Well, let me tell you I'm not.'

Joe would have retorted further but Danny took his arm and tried to pull him back. He might have succeeded if Joe had not noticed that Tod was carrying two Christmas presents. ‘How did you get those?' he asked.

Tod grinned. ‘Sent to me, weren't they? Some kind person remembered me just like someone remembered you.'

‘You're lying.'

Tod's small eyes narrowed even further. ‘I'm what?' he asked quietly.

‘You're lying. You didn't come to Mr Ridley's study with the rest of us. You've stolen those from two other boys.'