Wednesday 25th December 1929, Newcastle upon Tyne
‘Aunt Clara! Aunt Clara! Are you awake?’
Clara prised open her sleep-glued eyes to see three small children sharing her bed.
‘Rosalind,’ she mumbled, ‘what are you doing here? Go back to bed.’
‘It’s wake-up time!’ shouted the twins in unison and bounced up and down, jolting Clara’s weary bones.
‘Stop them from doing that please,’ she muttered, struggling to focus on the bedside clock. It was eight o’clock. She had been asleep for around four hours. She tugged at the blankets and rolled over, hoping that the children would just go away. No such luck. Rosalind, less rambunctious than her brothers, quietly walked around to the other side of the bed and sat down, facing her aunt.
‘Sorry to wake you, Aunt Clara, but we need your help. Father Christmas hasn’t been. Do you think he doesn’t know where we are because we came here?’
‘Where’s your mother?’ mumbled Clara.
‘She’s downstairs with Baby Louisa. And she’s crying.’
‘The baby or your mother?’
‘Both,’ said Rosalind, tears filling her own eyes.
Clara sighed. She wasn’t going to get any more sleep. She pulled herself up and looked at her niece. ‘You say Father Christmas hasn’t been?’
‘No,’ said Rosalind, tears now spilling down her cheeks.
‘And your mother is crying downstairs?’
Rosalind nodded, wiping her nose with the sleeve of her nightgown.
‘What about your grandmother?’
Rosalind’s eyes opened wide with fear. ‘Oh no, we can’t bother Grandmama; we’re never allowed to see her before noon. Nanny always keeps us away. But Nanny got off the train and never came back. Oh, please, Aunt Clara, will you help us? Father Christmas never came. And we’re hungry. Mummy doesn’t know how to make breakfast.’
‘Breakfast! Breakfast!’ chanted the bouncing boys.
Clara groaned.
Viscountess Lady Laura Simpkins stood in the middle of the kitchen, tears streaming down her face, with baby vomit splattered on the front of her dressing gown. The baby in question, ten-month-old Lady Louisa Simpkins, whose every need had, up until now, been met by a team of nannies and maids, sat on her mother’s hip and sucked fiercely on a biscuit.
The smell of a soiled nappy struck Clara as she entered the room with her elder niece and nephews in tow.
‘I found the biscuits,’ said her sister, voice quivering. ‘Why did you have to hide them in such an obscure place?’
Clara, trying not to indulge in too many sweet things, had put the biscuit tin on the top shelf of the pantry. The biscuits had been here since Uncle Bob was alive. Seeing he had died six months earlier, she shuddered to think how they tasted. But Baby Louisa didn’t seem to mind, clutching the biscuit in her chubby fingers and gumming it with vengeance.
‘Is Mother not up?’
‘No,’ sniffed Laura, ‘she’s refusing to come out until someone brings her some tea.’
Clara snorted. ‘Well, she’ll have a long time waiting. Should we get breakfast on the go?’
Laura’s eyes lit up. ‘Is your cook coming in?’
Clara shook her head in disbelief. ‘I told you yesterday, Laura, I don’t have any staff.’
‘What are we to do then?’ cried Rosalind. ‘Mummy doesn’t know how to cook. Do you, Aunt Clara?’
‘I can look after myself,’ said Clara. ‘I’m not a great cook, but I manage.’
‘Can you look after us too?’ said little George, tugging at her hand.
Clara looked down into the dirty face of her four-year-old nephew, covered in dried snot. Her first thought was to pull away, run to her laboratory and lock the door behind her. She would leave her smug sister who had done nothing but put her down all her life to deal with this domestic nightmare on her own. They were her children. She had chosen to have them. She had preached so many times about how getting married and having children was the natural thing for a woman to do – that it was a woman’s duty. She had boasted that, once the unpleasantness of the birth was over, how blissful it was to have children, failing to realise – or admit – that that bliss was provided by paid staff who dealt with all the ‘unpleasantness’ of the child after it was born, presenting it washed, changed, fed and rested to Mummy and Daddy to enjoy for a short time. Then removing it again when it was getting ‘difficult’.
Oh how Clara was tempted to revel in schadenfreude! The voice of young Rosalind was ringing in her ears: ‘Can you help us, Aunt Clara? Please?’
‘Yes, please do,’ sniffed Laura, visibly on the verge of breakdown. ‘I’m sorry, I just can’t do it on my own.’
Clara sighed. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Rosalind, you and the boys open that cupboard and look for the biggest brass-bottomed pot you can find. You do know what a pot is, don’t you?’
Rosalind straightened her little shoulders and looked up at her aunt. ‘Of course I do, Aunt Clara. Cook sometimes lets me help her when Nanny is doing errands.’
‘Good girl,’ said her aunt, patting her on the shoulder. And then, her stomach lurching as the twins hurtled towards the cupboard, she added: ‘But it’s your job to make sure everything is put neatly back in place once you’ve found the pot.’
‘Yes, Aunt Clara.’
‘Good. And while I’m making breakfast your mummy can change the baby’s nappy.’
‘How am I going to do that?’ asked Laura, her eyes widening in terror.
Clara shrugged. ‘I honestly have no idea. You’ll have to figure that one out yourself.’
Twenty minutes later the whole family – sans grandmama – was seated around the kitchen table eating bowls of porridge, ladled with honey, and drinking cups of milk. Laura, who had returned from the bathroom with a slightly sweeter-smelling baby, was now attempting to feed it with a spoon. The other children were wolfing down their food. After serving them seconds, Clara announced that she would be back shortly. She left them and ran up three flights of stairs, stopping, briefly, outside her mother’s door, wanting to barge in and confront the selfish matriarch, but choosing to move on. There would be time for that later. Now she had a job to do for Father Christmas.
Clara made her way to the attic. Uncle Bob had been a great collector and hoarder. Over the last four months she had worked her way through most of the house, sorting out what could be kept, what could be given to charity, and what could be donated to the local museum. There were only two rooms she hadn’t managed to deal with: the dining room, with its collection of archaeological artefacts and geological specimens (now locked, in case the twins got in), and the attic. The attic was filled with what looked like the remnants of a Victorian household. Clara assumed it was what Bob had brought home after his parents had died. One day, while poking around, she had found a trunk filled with old toys from Bob’s childhood back in the 1870s and it was this trunk she was now looking for.
Having found it, Clara, with some difficulty, managed to drag it out of the attic and then down three flights of stairs. She took particular pleasure in letting it slam, loudly, and not too accidentally, into her mother’s door on the way past, while ignoring the alarmed cries from inside the room and the subsequent requests for tea. Finally, she manoeuvred it to the ground floor and heaved it into the drawing room. Laura and the children rushed to see what all the noise was about.
‘What is it, Aunt Clara?’
Clara, puffed and red in the face, managed a smile. ‘Silly old Father Christmas. It’s been so long since children have been in the house, that he delivered it to the wrong room!’
‘Father Christmas has been?’ asked little Harry, quivering with delight.
‘Oh yes he has! Why don’t the three of you open it up and see what’s inside.’
‘Can we, Mummy?’ asked Rosalind.
Laura looked over her daughter’s head to her sister and gave her a tired but thankful smile. ‘Yes, my darling, you can. And thank heavens Aunt Clara figured out where Father Christmas had put it.’
While Clara lit a coal fire, to supplement the heat from the hot water radiators, the children opened the trunk. There were oohs and ahhs and ‘look at this, Mummy!’ as one by one Uncle Bob’s old-fashioned toys emerged. There was a well-worn bear, which Rosalind immediately claimed as her own, some wooden building blocks, which Laura took to play with the baby, some jigsaw puzzles that were set aside as a bit too complicated for now, and finally, to the boys’ delight, a small train set. When the fire was going, Clara helped them set up the track on the floor and chugged and choo-chooed until she felt she’d done her duty.
Checking her watch and seeing it was now ten o’clock, she leaned back on her heels and announced: ‘Right, I’ll leave you all to it. I have to go to work now.’
‘On Christmas Day?’ asked her sister incredulously.
‘Yes, on Christmas Day.’
‘But what are we to do when you’re gone?’ asked Laura.
Work it out for yourself! she wanted to scream. But instead, inspired by the Ghost of Christmas Present, she said: ‘Well, if you can rouse Mother, there’s a church service at St Thomas’ at the bottom of the road. I think it’s starting at eleven.’ However, getting the four children to church without the help of a nanny and a couple of maids might be a bit too challenging for her sister, Clara realised. So she added: ‘Or, at the top of the street, just beyond the public house that Mother went to yesterday, there’s a big park. Lots of space for the children to run around. There’s a duck pond and swings and things.’
‘Swings! Swings!’ chimed the boys.
Laura’s panicked face had returned. ‘Do you have to go, Clara?’
‘I’m sorry, but I do. There was an incident at the theatre last night, after you left – I won’t say what in front of the children – but let’s just say that it’s imperative I help the police pathologist with something. Christmas Day or not.’
‘But what are we to do for lunch and supper if you’re not here?’ squeaked Laura.
‘Ah,’ said Clara, ‘I’ve just remembered that Father Christmas brought something for Mummy too.’
She left the room and returned a few minutes later carrying a book. She gave it to Laura. ‘Happy Christmas.’ It was a volume of Mrs Beeton’s All About Cookery.
Laura paled.
‘Do you like it, Mummy?’ asked Rosalind. ‘Isn’t Father Christmas kind to bring you a present, too?’
Laura stared pointedly at her sister, and then turned to her daughter and said: ‘Oh yes, darling, so very kind.’