1. Christmas with the Chrystals
‘Dear Mum, I saw the enclosed and thought it might suit you and Dad. Love, Ivy.’ The enclosed was an advertisement which read:
Wanted: married couple to take complete charge of kitchen for Christmas. Castle has been rented for large party including several children. Write Box 2060.
Mrs Chrystal read the advertisement at breakfast, and passed it across to her husband, Ted Chrystal.
‘I never thought when I wrote to Ivy saying we might take temporary domestic work we’d be away for Christmas.’
Ted always thought well before he spoke.
‘Nor me neither,’ he agreed at last, ‘but I don’t see no harm in us writing in. We’re used to working of a Christmas, you know, Rosa.’
Rosa took back the advertisement.
‘In our own line, yes, but fancy us spending all Christmas in a kitchen – seem funny, wouldn’t it?’
There was another pause, during which Ted slowly finished his cup of tea.
‘I don’t know so much. We’ve always tried to give kids a good time of a Christmas and this is another way of doing it. You’re a beautiful cook, Rosa, and, though I say it as shouldn’t, you couldn’t want a better kitchen help than your humble.’
Rosa looked rather like an old-fashioned cottage loaf, for she had an almost round body. Now she heaved herself out of her chair, and balanced herself on her short fat legs.
‘Whatever you say, Ted, you know that. I’ll get the inkpot and write straight away.’
Three days later the Chrystals got a reply to their letter. It was written on very grand stiff cream note-paper, with a London address and telephone number at the top.
I am instructed by Mrs Cornelius to reply to your application. You will please both call at the above address on Monday next at 12 noon precisely.
Yours sincerely,
F. SMITH
(Secretary)
‘I don’t know, Ted,’ said Rosa, ‘that I like the sound of this. There’s something about that twelve noon precisely that I don’t fancy.’
Ted took the letter, read it, and held it up to the light to see the watermark in the paper. Then he passed it back to Rosa.
‘I know what you mean and maybe I don’t fancy it myself, but where that paper come from there’s money, and we can do with a bit of that, so we’ll be there at twelve noon precise come Monday.’
Mrs Cornelius lived in an immensely expensive block of flats not far from Piccadilly. Rosa had on her fur coat, a leftover from better-off days. The fur had an out-all-night look, and the coat no longer met in front, so it had to be worn open, but, as Rosa said to Ted, ‘fur gives confidence’. Under the coat she wore what she called ‘me velvet’. This was a plum-coloured dress which had been good once but now, at important places, had a bald look. On her head she wore a small black hat trimmed with a shiny buckle. Ted had on his only suit, steamed and pressed for the occasion, his better shirt carefully pruned by Rosa of threads round the collar and cuffs, and his overcoat. They were not proud of the overcoat, which was definitely past its prime, so it had been their plan to leave it in the hall of the flats while they saw Mrs Cornelius, but the uniformed commissionaire was so terrifically grand and aloof they lost their nerve, and having given the flat number, meekly followed him into the lift, Ted still wearing the coat.
Some women can never make the place where they live look like a home. Others, even if they only spend a night in a room give it a belonging atmosphere. Mrs Cornelius was the first sort of person. Her sitting-room was enormous, with a lovely view from the windows of Green Park. Everything she possessed was rare and expensive; some pieces of her furniture and many of her ornaments should have been in a museum. Every chair and the sofa had cushions without a dent in them, so it was hard to believe anyone sat down. The exquisite desk, though there was a chair in front of it, was obviously never used. In great vases, though it was December, there were formal arrangements of forced spring flowers, which seemed to droop from lack of affection.
Ted and Rosa, having been shown in by a pompous man-servant, waited until the door shut, then they gave each other a look.
‘This isn’t us, Ted,’ Rosa whispered, ‘no money wouldn’t be worth it.’
Ted answered, for him, quite quickly.
‘Shouldn’t wonder if you’re right, old girl. Pity, we could have done with the money, but it just wouldn’t be worth it if we was scared to touch anything.’
A woman came in. She was small, thin, mouse-coloured all over, and nervous as a bird scared, though it is hungry, to pick up a crumb. She spoke in a low, frightened voice.
‘Mr and Mrs Chrystal? I’m Miss Smith, Mrs Cornelius’s secretary.’
‘Pleased, I’m sure,’ said Rosa.
Ted gave a faint bow.
‘Good morning, Miss.’
‘Mrs Cornelius is seeing you herself.’ Miss Smith stated this as if she was telling the Chrystals they were to see the Queen.
Her tone gave Rosa courage.
‘I don’t think we’ll be troubling her, thank you.’ She was going to explain that she and Ted liked nice things round them, but homely, when she was stopped in the middle of a word by Miss Smith, whose face was wobbling as faces do before the owner cries.
‘Oh, please don’t say no. I oughtn’t to tell you this, but you’re the only answer we’ve had, and we’ve been advertising for ages, and it’s almost Christmas, and how I’m going to manage the castle on my own …’ The wobble won, tears began rolling down Miss Smith’s mouse-coloured face.
‘Now, dear,’ said Rosa, ‘don’t take on.’
Ted made shocked clucking noises.
‘Maybe we spoke hasty. Mrs Chrystal and me have never been ones to let others down.’
Miss Smith dabbed her eyes.
‘So stupid, but you’ve no idea what is planned, you see …’ She broke off, turning grey under the mouse colour. ‘Here is Mrs Cornelius. Please, please don’t tell her I was upset, or what I’ve said.’
Mrs Cornelius was a woman who might have been seventy, but her face, hair and teeth had for years been so regardlessly looked after and operated on that she could have been younger. She wore a black dress which appeared simple, but an experienced eye would have told it could not have cost less than a hundred pounds. She had wonderful pearls round her neck and a magnificent emerald ring on her finger, and emeralds in her ears. It was not, however, at these things or the frock at which the Chrystals looked, but at Mrs Cornelius’s eyes. These were a startlingly vivid blue and hard as a calculating machine. Mrs Cornelius had a voice to match her eyes.
‘Are these the couple, Miss Smith?’ Miss Smith made a sound which could have been yes. Mrs Cornelius came into the room and sat down. She pointed to the sofa. ‘You may sit.’
Gingerly Ted and Rosa sat, terribly conscious as they did so of the dents their behinds were making in the otherwise uncreased sofa. Ted could feel Rosa was nervous and that gave him the courage to be the first to speak.
‘My wife is a good cook, but we were just saying to Miss Smith here we were not at all sure we’d be right for this post …’
Mrs Cornelius apparently did not hear that.
‘I must explain the position for which I may engage you. I have married three times. I gave my first husband a daughter before he died. That daughter is now married, a very poor marriage, I fear. She has two children. My second marriage was to an American. I gave him a son before he died; that son is now dead, but there is a widow with one child. Mr Cornelius came from South Africa; I gave him a son who is married and has three children. It is many years since I saw my own children, I have never seen my son-in-law nor my two daughters-in-law nor my grand-children, so this year I propose to see them all. I have rented Caldecote Castle, which is in Kent, and I am entertaining them for Christmas. You will cook for the household.’
Rosa had been counting on her fingers while Mrs Cornelius was speaking.
‘That would mean eleven to cook for, as well as yourself and Miss Smith, making thirteen.’
‘That is correct,’ Mrs Cornelius agreed, ‘but as well there will be Mr Cornelius.’
That surprised both Ted and Rosa, who had taken it for granted Mr Cornelius was as dead as were the other two husbands. Rosa looked round for signs of him, for in her opinion you could always tell when there was a man in the house. She could not see anything male about, but she felt that there was a Mr Cornelius somewhere was good news, for it meant, if they took the job, there would be someone else to work for besides Mrs Cornelius.
‘That makes a difference, doesn’t it, Ted?’
Mrs Cornelius turned the full blaze of her eyes on Rosa.
‘I cannot imagine why Mr Cornelius should make a difference, for it is many years since we met.’
There was a pause, while Rosa and Ted digested that. Then Ted said, ‘Fourteen plus staff I suppose.’
‘Dailies only, so no meals,’ Mrs Cornelius stated firmly.
Ted shook his head, for he was by now determined not to allow his Rosa to endure Mrs Cornelius.
‘All the same, it’ll be too much for the wife.’ He got up. ‘I’m sorry we’ve taken up your time. Come along, Rosa.’
Miss Smith gave a sound between a sob and a moan. Rosa, as she heaved herself up from the soft depths of the sofa, looked at her with compassion.
‘Don’t take on, dear, but fourteen is a lot and we’re not as young as we were.’
Mrs Cornelius gave Miss Smith a look which, had she seen it, would have shrivelled her.
‘Be quiet you foolish creature.’ She held up a hand. ‘One moment, you two. I realize the work will be hard, so if you are willing to go to the castle on Friday next to prepare and lay in stores, and to remain until the 28th, I will pay you over and above all expenses one hundred pounds.’*
One hundred pounds! To Rosa and Ted that was a fortune, magic money which others had but never you. Why, however hard the work, with a hundred pounds they could afford to get over it with a little holiday. Ted nudged Rosa to show she should answer.
‘Very well, Mrs Cornelius, if you would put the offer in writing, we’ll come.’
Miss Smith and the Chrystals arrived together on the following Friday. The castle, they discovered, though it was partly lived in sometimes by the owners, was mostly a museum, and it is difficult to make museums homely for a Christmas party. Mrs Cornelius was using only one wing, but that had thirty bedrooms, a vast drawing-room, a dining-room, which looked as though it should have belonged to a city company, a billiard room, and many smaller rooms. It had, too, a great central staircase and long passages most inadequately heated.
‘The temperature in Mrs Cornelius’s part of the castle is never to drop below seventy degrees,’ said Miss Smith through chattering teeth.
Rosa had her own troubles with a great draughty kitchen, but she still had kindness to spare for Miss Smith.
‘You can only do your best, dear. I reckon if you get the chill off the place it’ll be a miracle.’
But it is wonderful what can be done when there is unlimited money to spend, and by midday on Saturday there were fires in every fireplace, and oil stoves in chilly corners, and an old man who lived nearby was bribed at an enormous wage to do nothing but keep the stoves and fires going.
Miss Smith contrived other miracles. Nobody wants to work over Christmas, especially not housewives with their own families to think of, but Christmas is an expensive time, and so Miss Smith, with persuasion and offering unheard-of pay, organized a small regiment of women willing to work in shifts starting on the Monday morning.
Rosa and Ted would not have any help as they felt there would have to be a good deal of muddling through, and if that was to happen they would rather it was when there was no one watching. One of their troubles was the food. Rosa prided herself on her cooking, but some of the things sent for the store cupboard she had never heard of or seen before. There were tins of strange tropical fruits. There were great chunks of dried turtle – looking for all the world like blocks of amber. Did people really drink soup made of kangaroos’ tails? They had, of course, heard of pâté de foie gras, but how did you serve it? The same applied to caviare; never had Rosa supposed caviare was sold in such enormous tins. Then there were cases of Christmas delicacies. Was the cook expected to arrange all the exotic little eats, and, if so, on what?
‘Thank God I brought my Mrs Beeton,’ Rosa confided to Ted; ‘if I’m properly stuck she’ll see me through.’
Mrs Cornelius arrived in the morning. Until she came into the castle there had been a happy bustle as Miss Smith’s first shift of women came in and began cleaning and polishing. The women knew each other, and there were jokes and whistling and snatches of singing. But the moment Mrs Cornelius came in it was as if the icy wind from outside came with her. She made a tour of inspection, and though she said very little, and even gave a word of praise – ‘Your arrangements appear satisfactory, Miss Smith’ – as she went round the castle, the Christmas feeling seemed to slip out through the doors and windows.
Rosa and Ted had by now made the kitchen their home. It was gay with Christmas cards, for another large batch had arrived that morning, and Ted had found some holly in the grounds and had stuck branches over the clock and on the dresser. Then there was Rosa’s old thumbed Mrs Beeton on the table, and Rosa’s large overalls hanging on the kitchen door. So it was not into an unlived characterless room that Mrs Cornelius stepped when she visited the kitchen, but into a warm, rich-smelling place, full of atmosphere.
Rosa and Ted had been practising for that moment, and though they had laughed a lot they had it planned to perfection.
‘Good morning, Madam, welcome to Caldecote Castle,’ said Ted with a deep bow.
Rosa, for all her cottage-loaf shape, managed a bob of a curtsy.
‘And the compliments of the season, Madam; I hope you have a wonderful Christmas.’
This welcome sounded so like a scene from an old-fashioned play that Mrs Cornelius gave each of the Chrystals a look from her hard blue eyes to see if the welcome was intended as insolence. But it clearly was not, for both Rosa and Ted returned her look with expressions of such goodwill it was obvious, odd though it might seem, that they meant what they had said.
Mrs Cornelius did not reply to the goodwill wishes, but they did something to her, for she did not say the words that had been on her lips when she came in: ‘Take down those cards and that holly. This is a kitchen, not an amusement arcade.’ Instead she went straight to giving her orders.
‘I shall have a light lunch. All my guests will be here for tea. Miss Smith has, I believe, given you the menu for dinner tonight?’
‘Yes, Madam,’ said Rosa.
‘Then that I think is all.’ Mrs Cornelius turned to go, but Rosa stopped her.
‘What about them?’
‘Well, children won’t be eating oysters and that at eight o’clock like you’ve ordered,’ Rosa explained. ‘Are they to have supper, or something for their tea?’
It was so long since Mrs Cornelius had met a child, and even her own she had never seen eat that she could remember, so she did not know what Rosa meant.
‘Something for their tea? What can you have for tea other than cake, scones and sandwiches?’
Ted saw he must help Rosa.
‘Miss Smith told us the eldest child is fourteen and the youngest seven; that means special food, Madam, and a sit-down tea.’
‘A glass of milk and biscuits or that for the little ones in bed,’ Rosa added, ‘but something light but tasty for the others, they won’t want to upset their stomachs with what’s going into the dining-room.’
Mrs Cornelius looked and felt as if she was having something unpleasant told to her.
‘I am really not interested in what or when the children eat. I will instruct Miss Smith to find out from the parents what is required and she will inform you.’
Once more Rosa and Ted managed the bow and bob they had rehearsed. Then, as the door closed behind Mrs Cornelius, Rosa covered her mouth with her hand to hold back the big laugh that rose like a fountain in her.
‘She’ll be the death of me, Ted.’
Ted’s eyes were twinkling.
‘Come on, my old trouble, for she’ll be the death of both of us if her light lunch isn’t served pronto.’
Virginia, the daughter Mrs Cornelius told the Chrystals she had given her first husband, had, by her mother’s standards, made a poor marriage. For she had married Tom Oswald, who not only had no money of his own, but was not much good at earning it. Mrs Cornelius, when Virginia had collected sufficient courage to tell her whom she was marrying, had been so disgusted she had refused to attend the wedding, and had not seen Virginia since. But though her mother might think Tom Oswald a poor sort of husband, Virginia knew him to be a perfect one, for he was warm, loving, and of a happy disposition, all qualities she had been unused to in her own home. Tom was a gardener, a job that was not well paid but at which he was very good. Where Tom gardened there was a cottage, and in it Virginia’s and Tom’s children, Alan and Benita, had grown up to the ages of fourteen and twelve without ever seeing or thinking about their Cornelius grandmother.
It had been one of the few mornings that the Oswalds’ cottage had not been full of laughter when the invitation arrived to spend Christmas in Caldecote Castle. Tom and Virginia, for the sake of the children, tried not to show how depressed and frightened the letter of invitation made them, but they were not successful, for Alan and Benita were intelligent.
‘Must we go?’ Alan asked. ‘She’s never bothered with us before.’
‘Christmas is always perfect here,’ Benita pleaded. ‘Don’t let’s go.’
Mrs Cornelius would not have believed her ears if she could have heard Tom’s answer to his children.
‘Poor old lady. We mustn’t be selfish, we have so much and she’s got nothing. Let’s give her one nice Christmas to remember.’
Mrs Cornelius’s second husband had been a Mr Silas P. Dawson, an American. By him she had a son called James. Mr Dawson had been immensely rich and it had been his intention that James should be rich too, but he had died while James was a small child and so had left his fortune to his wife, expecting her to provide for James. And so she would have done if James had behaved as she expected him to. But James had not, for he had fallen in love with a pretty penniless school teacher, and insisted on marrying her, and a year later had died, leaving behind him a baby son called Gardiner. Mrs Cornelius felt that James’s death relieved her of responsibility. ‘That girl Lalla he married,’ she told herself, ‘supported herself as a teacher before she married him, so I suppose she can continue to do so. I will, however, provide for Gardiner in my will.’
That keeping yourself as a school teacher was one thing, and keeping yourself and a baby son was another had not struck Mrs Cornelius, and Lalla, who was proud, would not write to explain and ask for help. Instead, somehow she managed, and though she and Gardiner lived in two rooms in downtown New York, which were far too hot in summer and dismally cold in winter, they not only managed to survive but to enjoy themselves.
Gardiner had scarcely heard of Grandmother Cornelius, but he was wild with excitement at the thought of the journey by jet plane, which was part of the invitation.
‘Gee, a jet plane! Will that be something to tell the other boys!’
Mrs Cornelius’s living husband, old Hans Cornelius, lived outside Cape Town in an exquisite white Cape Dutch house. Just a couple of miles away his son Jan lived in another beautiful house with his wife Anna and their three children, Peter who was ten, and the two little girls, Jane who was eight and Rinke seven.
Christmas comes in the summer in South Africa, so when Jan drove over with Anna to show his father their letter from Mrs Cornelius, they found him in his rose garden, which was in full flower.
Old Hans smelt a glorious golden rose before he gave his opinion.
‘I would like to say no. Why should we leave our beautiful South Africa to go to cold foggy England? But your mother, Jan, is no longer young and no doubt lonely, so if you can make the sacrifice, Anna, my dear, I think we should all go, for it will be a treat for her to see your children.’
The families arrived at the castle within half an hour of each other. The first to get there were Gardiner and his mother. Miss Smith, trying by the warmth of her smile to build her small mouse-coloured self into a whole reception committee, met them in the hall and showed them to their rooms, and, as she did so, her spirits bounded upwards. For in Lalla she saw not a frightening, demanding American daughter-in-law belonging to Mrs Cornelius, but a tired young woman, with a face prematurely lined from standing too long hours in the store where she worked, and with hair turning grey from the worry of making ends meet. And so Miss Smith did something she had never dreamed she would be doing to one of the daughters-in-law, she put an arm through Lalla’s and said: ‘You must rest while you are here. I shall see you have breakfast in bed every day.’
Alan and Benita, as soon as they arrived, were turned out of their rooms by their mother who, looking at the vast amount of cupboard space, had decided she would unpack for the family, and so, by skilful laying out and hanging up, disguise how few clothes they possessed. So Gardiner, prowling along a passage, ran slap into them.
‘’Lo,’ he said, pleasantly surprised by Alan’s appearance, for he had on his grey flannel trousers and he had supposed all English boys wore short pants. ‘I’m Gardiner. You’ll be Alan and Benita. Gee, this is a big place and unfriendly some way.’
‘Have the others come, the South African ones?’ Benita asked.
Gardiner dismissed the Cornelius children.
‘Naw. Come on, let’s explore.’
It was exploring that took Alan, Benita and Gardiner into the kitchen. They reached it by way of the thickly carpeted front hall, where every corner was set with formally staged groups of pot plants.
‘Like a funeral parlour,’ Gardiner whispered. ‘How say we see what’s through this green door?’
To the children the kitchen was immediately home. Rosa and Ted were having an early cup of tea, and without invitation the three pulled up chairs and joined them.
‘How come,’ Gardiner asked, looking appreciatively at the cards and holly, ‘you’ve got all this out here and we’ve got nothing back there?’
Rosa passed him a cup of tea.
‘You’re seeing your Granny after tea. I’m sure you’ve only got to ask and she’ll send for a tree and holly and that.’
Benita, relaxing for the first time since she had reached the castle, took the slice of cake Ted offered her.
‘It’s not that we need a tree exactly, but it’s not like Christmas without one. At home Dad cuts down a tree and we all decorate it.’
‘I daresay your Dad could do the same here,’ said Ted, ‘there’s plenty of trees in the grounds.’
Alan shook his head.
‘I don’t reckon Dad would face up to that. Out there,’ he pointed vaguely towards the front of the castle, ‘it’s like a posh hotel, you couldn’t mess it up, and you can’t trim a tree without mess.’
The Cornelius children might be small but they were bright. So while their mother was unpacking, cheeping like sparrows and as if they had always known the castle, they hurried along the bedroom corridor, down the main staircase, through the baize-covered door which divided the kitchen world from the rest of the house, straight to Rosa, Ted and their new cousins. They stood in the doorway, beaming.
‘Hullo,’ said Peter, ‘I’m Peter, this is Jane and this is Rinke. We’re hungry.’
Rosa fetched some more cups from where they were hanging on the dresser.
‘Bring up three chairs, Ted. Do you drink milk or tea, dears?’
When the children were fetched by Miss Smith to come to the drawing-room, something made the six know they must not tell Grandmother Cornelius that they had made friends with the Chrystals. Instead they told her about each other, to the great amusement of old Hans Cornelius, who was watching Mrs Cornelius’s face.
After they had all been introduced Rinke said, ‘Do you know, Grandmother Cornelius, Benita’s father is a gardener, which means they can have all the vegetables they need, which is lucky, for they can’t often have meat.’
‘Imagine that,’ Jane added. ‘We have meat every day, don’t you, Grandmother Cornelius?’
‘Gardiner’s mother works in a store,’ Peter piped up, ‘so Gardiner’s always had to get his own lunch. He makes sandwiches of anything that’s in the ice box; when there isn’t much he makes do with bread.’
Gardiner thought that was enough about him. He jerked his head towards the three Cornelius children and gave a wink.
‘They were wondering how Santa gets to find his way in a place this size, but I told them he’d figure it out, that’s right, isn’t it?’
‘We were wondering about a tree, Grandmother Cornelius,’ Benita said softly. ‘I mean, it needn’t cost anything, I’m sure there’s one about Dad could cut down.’
‘And we could make the ornaments,’ Alan suggested hopefully, ‘fir cones and that, painted.’
Mrs Cornelius, who had been silenced by the shower of talk, made a signal to Miss Smith.
‘Order a tree and tell them to send decorations, and people to hang them up.’
‘And there ought to be masses and masses of parcels in coloured paper,’ Jane prompted, ‘there always are.’
Mrs Cornelius had not had a Christmas present for so long she had forgotten about them. She gave another signal to Miss Smith.
‘And order parcels suitably packed.’
Twelve eyes stared at her. Rinke spoke for them all.
‘That,’ she said firmly, ‘is not the way to buy Christmas presents. You choose them.’
Gardiner looked round the beautifully furnished but unlived-in room.
‘Don’t you get cards at Christmas, Grandmother Cornelius?’
Miss Smith caught old Hans Cornelius’s eye. It said: ‘That’s enough for one night. Take them away.’ Miss Smith took the hint.
‘Come along, dears. It’s time you younger ones went to bed,’ and she swept the children out of the room.
The grown-ups’ dinner having been served and washed up, the Chrystals, Alan, Benita and Gardiner sat down to their own supper. A splendid meal where everybody ate something different, and all helped themselves. And it was then that the children learned something strange. It came out when Rosa and Ted were showing them their Christmas cards.
‘Why,’ Benita asked, ‘does this one say “To the best goose that ever laid a golden egg”?’
Ted looked at Rosa, who smiled cosily back at him.
‘Tell them. They won’t say anything and they’ll like to hear.’
‘Well, it’s this way,’ said Ted. ‘I’ve been an actor all my life.’
‘And none better,’ put in Rosa.
‘But my speciality was animals.’
‘More especially geese,’ said Rosa. ‘I reckon there’s never been a goose in panto to touch him.’
Rosa and Ted, helped out by Alan and Benita, had to explain to Gardiner what a pantomime was, and then he found it hard to believe there were such entertainments.
‘The mother’s a man called a dame, the principal man is played by a girl, and you come on as a goose. I haven’t seen nothing yet!’
It was with difficulty Rosa and Ted urged the children to bed, for they knew they must be tired, and they themselves had a long, hard day ahead of them.
‘I tell you what, though,’ said Rosa, ‘tomorrow I’ll get Miss Smith to buy paper for making paper-rings; we always had them when I was a child.’
‘That’s right,’ Ted agreed, ‘smashing decorations they make.’
‘Even the little ones can make them,’ Rosa went on, ‘and while you’re doing it Ted shall tell you about working in a pantomime.’
To the dismay of the adults the next day was hopelessly wet, so wet that even the men could only manage a short walk in the dripping castle grounds. But the children did not mind how much it rained. All the morning they were busy, helping to prepare the lunch; then when they had eaten a splendid meal themselves, the paper for ring-making arrived and they settled round a table with a vast pot of paste made by Rosa, and Ted sat with them, talking in his slow way about pantomimes. Sometimes he demonstrated.
‘Then I’d come to the footlights, like this; wonderful music I had for that bit, and acted like I was heartbroken, see, for I was turned out, me that was part of the family.’
Rosa hummed Ted’s goose music, and Ted, in spite of the fact that he was wearing ordinary trousers held up over his shirt by braces, and an apron tied round him, seemed to the children to become a goose.
During tea, Ted, helped out by Rosa, imitated principal boys they had known, and to see him swaggering up and down the kitchen as if he was a lovely girl with magnificent legs in tights was really something. So it was to a kitchen echoing with laughter that Miss Smith came from the sad bridge-playing drawing-room to fetch the children to see their grandmother. It was after this visit that they decided to keep their decorations a secret.
‘Good evening, children,’ said Mrs Cornelius. ‘What have you been doing today?’
The children had not planned what to answer if they were asked that, so Peter said, ‘Playing.’
‘When is the tree being erected?’ Mrs Cornelius asked Miss Smith.
‘Now,’ Miss Smith twittered. ‘It can be lighted tonight.’
‘Trees,’ said Jane, ‘aren’t lighted until Christmas Eve. That’s when you have your presents.’
Alan disagreed with that.
‘We don’t have ours till Christmas Day.’
‘We don’t get a tree,’ Gardiner broke in. ‘Mum can’t afford one.’
In the little silence that fell after that old Hans Cornelius looked at Mrs Cornelius.
‘We wouldn’t have one either if Dad didn’t get it free,’ said Benita.
On the way back to the kitchen the children had a small committee meeting.
‘Let’s keep our rings for the kitchen part of the castle,’ Peter suggested. ‘It’s much the nicest bit.’
Alan had another idea. ‘And I’ll find a little tree in the grounds, there’s heaps of room for it at the end of the kitchen.’
The Chrystals were delighted when they heard what was planned.
‘Oh, I would like a tree,’ said Rosa, ‘it’s years since I had one. And I tell you what we’ll do, we’ll put the lights out on Christmas Eve and light the tree and leave the curtains undrawn; they say you should always have lights in the window on a Christmas Eve to show the Christ Child the way.’
Rinke put her arms as far as they would go round Rosa.
‘Darling, darling Rosa, could we sing carols round your tree?’
‘It’s the only place we could,’ Alan pointed out, ‘carols would sound all wrong in any other part of the castle.’
The tree, decorated quietly and efficiently by girls and men sent with it, was lit that evening. When it was finished, Miss Smith, who had long ago become ‘Smithy’ to the children, dug them out of the kitchen to admire it.
‘Mrs Cornelius will want to know that you’ve seen it.’
‘It’s a very neat tree,’ said Jane.
Benita looked up at the shining new decorations.
‘It seems as if it felt embarrassed here.’
Alan was looking at the parcels under the tree.
‘Smithy, how will Grandmother Cornelius know which is for which?’ he asked. ‘There’s no labels.’
‘They’ve left a chart, dear,’ Miss Smith explained. ‘Blue paper for men. Green for women. Red for boys. Yellow for girls.’
Jane started to move back towards the kitchen. ‘Just like a Santa does in a shop.’
It was that night that the first grown-up dared to break out from the drawing-room. It was old Hans Cornelius; he was not playing in the rubber of bridge which was going on, so he slipped quietly out of the room, and, like a homing pigeon, found his way through the green baize door. The Chrystals, Alan, Benita and Gardiner were having Welsh rarebit for supper, and while they ate it Ted was describing a night when the curtain had stuck and would not come down at the end of Dick Whittington.
‘And there was Miss Dolores Dear, always one to be upset easily, stepping forward and saying:
“And now we’ve had enough of this and that,
“Let’s say farewell to Whittington …” and that was where I had to come forward for the “and cat”, but the curtain stuck, so she starts again and …’
Old Hans had come in so quietly that at first they did not see him standing in the doorway. Then he said, ‘That Welsh rarebit smells very good, Mrs Chrystal. Could I have a bit?’
Old Hans told Jan where he had been, and Jan told Anna, and Anna told Lalla, and Lalla told Virginia, who, of course, passed on the news to Tom. So the next day, which was Christmas Eve, there was great rivalry amongst the grown-ups to cut out of the bridge rubbers, for it was so lovely and Christmassy in the kitchen, with paper-rings festooned across the ceiling and a jolly little tree in the window.
‘And tonight we’re going to light it,’ said Rinke.
‘And leave the curtains open,’ Jane explained.
‘Rosa says it’s to show Jesus the way to come,’ Gardiner added.
‘If you can get out of playing bridge, Mummy,’ Benita implored, ‘do come here after dinner, for that’s when we shall sing carols.’
‘The kids,’ Alan explained, nodding at Peter, Jane and Rinke, ‘are coming down in their dressing-gowns.’
‘I’ll be there somehow,’ Virginia promised.
‘I wouldn’t miss it,’ said old Hans.
‘Nor us,’ Jan and Anna agreed.
‘Count on me,’ Tom stated firmly.
‘What about you?’ Gardiner asked his mother.
‘I’ll be there,’ said Lalla.
So that evening, after dinner, on one excuse and another, everybody slipped out of the drawing-room and away to the kitchen, until Mrs Cornelius, with the cards in front of her, had no one with whom to play bridge. She rang the bell for Miss Smith, but Miss Smith, enraptured, was in the kitchen and did not hear it. Furiously Mrs Cornelius rang again, and again nobody came. So, determined to tell everybody what she thought of them, she left the drawing-room and marched out into the great hall. She might, and very nearly did, miss opening the green baize door, but something guided her to it.
Standing unseen, looking into the kitchen, Mrs Cornelius forgot the angry things she had meant to say. In the window was the little tree, nothing like so grand as the one in the hall, but bright with lights. All round it stood her family, with Miss Smith and the Chrystals. They were singing ‘Good King Wenceslas’, old Hans’ voice booming as the king.
Bring me flesh and bring me wine,
Bring me pine-logs hither;
Thou and I will see him dine,
When we bear them thither.
Everybody sang the next lines, and then Gardiner’s shrill treble rang out:
Sire, the night is darker now,
And the wind blows stronger,
Fails my heart, I know not how
I can go no longer.
It was as if Mrs Cornelius’s heart had been made of ice, and now suddenly the ice was melting. She was not cross, she was envious. She wanted more than she had wanted anything for years to feel she could join that party round the tree, and not by her mere presence spoil the beauty of the evening for everybody else. She meant to go back to the drawing-room, and would have gone, but as she moved, a board creaked and, just as Mrs Cornelius had feared, the carol-singing faltered. But Rosa and Ted were not having that.
‘Madam!’ Rosa said, making room for her.
‘Come on, Madam,’ Ted added.
Mrs Cornelius came on and found herself singing words she had forgotten she had ever known.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure,
Wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor,
Shall yourselves find blessing.