Katherine’s fiancé James came home just before Christmas. It had been an endless, awful month, a month of dreary days that Eleanor only just managed to drag herself through. Her mother did not manage quite so much; she did not rise from her bed for a week after the telegram came. Mrs Stanton made her beef broth and toast and Tilly brought it upstairs on a tray, as if Anne was suffering from the dreaded influenza rather than a broken heart.
They’d learned from the letter that Walter’s commanding officer had sent that he’d been killed in action in the taking of the Sambre-Oise canal, one of the last engagements with the Germans. He’d apologized for taking so long to send the telegram; things had been confused in the last days of the war, and more than one family had had the bitter experience of opening a dreaded missive after the Armistice had been signed, believing their loved ones to be safe, only to learn the terrible truth. He wrote that Walter’s death was quick, at least, and he wouldn’t have suffered.
Eleanor feared that all officers assured the mothers and fathers and sisters back home that there was no pain, yet she clung to that assurance all the same because she could not bear to think of Walter suffering. For the last four years she’d had nightmares of him coming over the top and running across the muddy expanse of no man’s land, felled by a single bullet or the relentless strafing of a Howitzer; he’d told her a bit about the trenches, although she’d always felt there was far more to it than he was saying, and Mother said not to ask.
She was glad to think he hadn’t lain in the mud for hours, moaning for help. She could at least save herself the torment of imagining that. And yet no matter how it had happened, he was still dead.
She asked Father, rebelliously, how he could still trust God when He’d taken Walter, and her father had looked at her very seriously and said in a quiet, broken voice, “How can I not trust Him?”
Now Eleanor sat by her mother’s bedside and urged her to take a spoonful of broth, but her mother was like a waxen effigy, pale and lifeless. She might, on occasion, manage a mouthful but more often than not Tilly collected the tray with the meal completely untouched.
Her father retreated to his study, losing himself in his books and sermons. Eleanor had had to tell him, that first day; just as with Grandmama, he’d known just by looking at her. He’d come in, hanging his hat by the door, and the smile had faded from his face as soon as he’d caught sight of her.
“Not Walter,” he’d said quietly, without hope, and Eleanor had nodded. She’d wanted, in that moment, for her father to envelop her in one of his bear-like hugs, had craved that comfort more than ever. She’d felt the tears bottling in her throat and burning beneath her lids; she’d stood on her tiptoes, as if poised to hurtle herself into his arms.
But he did not embrace her. He did not even look at her. He turned away and walked slowly into his study and then with an awful, gentle finality, he had closed the door.
Katherine had been little better. She’d come home on the five o’clock train, tired from a day sorting through donated clothes for war orphans up in Carlisle. She’d been cross that morning with Eleanor for not going; Eleanor had been tired of all the busy work of volunteering that she and her mother and her sister had occupied themselves with for the last four years. Rolling bandages in the draughty village hall and knitting lumpy, misshapen socks that they packaged up with jars of sour jam because sugar had been rationed; collecting sphagnum moss and blackberries to send on trains to the Front; visiting war widows and orphans and offering what compassion they could. Mother was so gentle and loving towards every poor woman who twisted her handkerchief to shreds as she blinked back tears but Eleanor had always felt impatient, even slightly sick, as if grief were catching. She’d had enough of it all, and she’d so wanted things to be different. And now they were different, terribly different, and it was all much, much worse than before.
As Katherine came home Eleanor wished she’d gone with her after all. Then she wouldn’t be in the terrible position of telling her, as well as everyone else, about Walter’s death.
Unlike Grandmama and Father, Katherine hadn’t guessed at all. She’d taken off her coat and hat, tidying her hair as she frowned at her reflection in the hall mirror, her hair, the same sandy brown as their mother’s, drawn back into a plain bun that had come undone only a little.
“And why do you have such a long face, then?” she had asked over her shoulder. “You’ve been lounging about all day, I’ve no doubt, eating chocolates and reading novels.”
“Eating chocolates!” Eleanor had exclaimed in indignation before she could stop herself. “We haven’t had chocolate in ages – you know that.”
“Well, I don’t see how you’ve got anything to complain about,” Katherine answered tartly. “I’ve been on my feet all day.”
“I know.” Eleanor had always hated Katherine’s sniping, but she couldn’t feel much of anything now, except perhaps a sudden shaft of sympathy for Katherine, as well as a painful pang of envy. Her sister, for the next minute at least, was living in lovely ignorance. One last moment of innocence.
“Katherine…” she began but her sister was already heading upstairs.
“What is it?” she asked wearily, only half-turning around. “My feet are aching. I must take these shoes off. They pinch horribly.”
“Katherine, it’s Walter.”
Katherine stilled, one hand on the bannister, her back taut and quivering. Then she turned around slowly. “No,” she said, and Eleanor choked out, “The telegram came this afternoon.”
Katherine pressed one hand to the side of her head, as if she’d received a physical blow. Eleanor stood at the bottom of the stairs, her throat becoming tighter and tighter, longing for someone – even prickly Katherine – to come and comfort her. But Katherine didn’t move.
“This bloody war,” she said slowly, enunciating each word and shocking Eleanor, and then she turned around and walked slowly up the stairs.
In the following month it seemed that grief isolated each member of the Sanderson family, reminding Eleanor of Dante’s ninth circle of hell, where those who had committed treachery were each frozen in an icy lake. And wasn’t it a form of treachery, to turn away from each other when they were all hurting so much?
No matter what her mother and Grandmama had said about her being strong, she did not think she possessed the fortitude to comfort others. She felt frozen herself, numb and empty, all her wild emotions and childish passions replaced by nothingness. Life went on, of course; the days blurred into one another and her mother finally rose from her bed, and concentrated on her duties, taking Sunday School classes and hosting teas, planning events to celebrate – if such a word could even be used – the Armistice.
Katherine lost herself in volunteering; she spent most of her days up in Carlisle, working with the aid society that helped orphans. Eleanor knew she should go along; her father had preached on the virtue of self-sacrifice enough for her to know she had a duty to others.
Yet she’d rather spend her days in her bedroom, rereading Walter’s letters, than attempt to smile and chat as she folded winter coats or tied ribbons around donated jars of jam or lemon curd.
She tried to comfort herself with Walter’s letters, yet she found them exquisitely painful to read. His humorous anecdotes, his bittersweet reminiscing, his reflections on the war, “fighting as it seems, for a few feet of muddy ground somewhere in France”… they brought him back to her so wonderfully, and yet then she would look up, blinking, and remember all over again that he was gone, and that awful emptiness would sweep through her once more.
The day James was to return home his parents called at the vicarage, explaining with a kind of apologetic excitement that they’d received a telegram from him and he’d arrived in Dover that morning; he would be taking the train up to Goswell, to arrive after suppertime.
Eleanor had tried to compose her face into an expression of sedate interest, when in truth she’d felt a flash of rage. Why couldn’t they have had a telegram like that, from Walter himself, saying he was on his way home? Why couldn’t he be coming home, instead of jokey, arrogant James, whom Eleanor hadn’t liked since he’d encouraged Walter to enlist?
“Aren’t you happy?” Eleanor asked Katherine, not without malice, after they’d gone. Father had retreated to his study, and Mother up to bed. Katherine looked away.
“Of course I am,” she said.
“You don’t seem it.”
Katherine pursed her lips, as if she’d tasted something sour. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just there is precious little to be happy about these days.”
Her mouth remained tight as she walked off with short, brisk steps. Eleanor watched her go, wondering if her sister regretted accepting James’s marriage proposal back in 1914. She would never ask. Still, she suspected his proposal had been a reckless act on the eve of war; Katherine and James had only been courting for a few weeks before he’d asked her to marry him, and then he’d left. Father had insisted they wait until after the war to marry. Back then everyone had thought the war would be over in a few months at most. It hadn’t seemed a long time to wait.
Eleanor suspected Katherine had been surprised by James’s proposal, but then he had always been a bit careless and bold; it had been his idea to join up, and so Walter, his best friend, had as well.
“You don’t have to go just because James is,” Eleanor had said when Walter had told her. She’d been fourteen years old and furious that he was going; she’d refused to talk to him for two whole days, until Walter had begged her to relent, since he didn’t know when he’d see her again.
“I’ve got to do my bit,” Walter had answered evenly. He looked pale yet resolute, his hair, as dark as Eleanor’s, rumpled from where he’d driven his hand through it. “I don’t think I’m going to much like war, though.”
Eleanor had pouted. “James says it will be great fun and you’ll be home by Christmas.”
“Ah, James.” Walter shook his head at his friend’s folly and then chucked Eleanor under the chin, a gesture she jerked away from even though she’d always secretly liked it. “Let’s hope he’s right, eh?”
A bitter wind blew down the rail line as Eleanor, Katherine, their parents and James’s all waited on the platform that evening. They were all dressed in mourning clothes, for Walter’s sake, although it seemed wrong somehow, with James coming home. The only decoration on Eleanor’s black taffeta dress was a lace insert in the bodice; her father wore a black armband on the sleeve of his coat. A few other parents and sweethearts were waiting as well; several were also in black.
Dusk had fallen hours ago, and the night seemed endless and dark, the sheep pasture that surrounded the station stretching on into blackness. Train times had been erratic, and Eleanor thought how unnerving it was to be waiting in the dark for something but have no idea when it would actually come.
After a quarter of an hour of silence she finally heard the relentless chugging of the train as it came along the coastline from Barrow, the curl of steam from its engine white against the black sky. A wave of relieved murmurs rippled through the crowd; people shifted where they stood, dug hands in pockets to reach for handkerchiefs.
The train came slowly to a halt, the sound of its engine like a laboured breath, a last sigh. The door opened and a porter stepped out, his face set in startlingly grim lines. People shifted some more. The wind nearly blew off Eleanor’s hat, and she clapped her hand to her head, hunching against the bitter onslaught.
The first soldier emerged from the train, dressed in the uniform of the Border Regiment, his kit bag slung over one shoulder. He walked with a limp. Eleanor recognized him as one of the farmers’ sons; after a moment people let out a few ragged cheers; there was a scattered round of clapping that fell away to silence.
Then a woman stepped forward, a mother. She wore her best hat and coat put on over her housedress and apron.
“George,” she said softly. The soldier’s gaze moved to her, and he managed the barest of smiles.
“Hello, Mother,” he said and limped towards her. The woman let out a little cry and clumsily embraced her son.
Next to her Eleanor felt Katherine tense. She could not imagine how her sister was feeling, to have her reunion with her fiancé played out on this unexpected stage. How well did Katherine know James, really? He’d escorted her to a few dances and socials, and spent Sunday afternoons with her in the vicarage’s sitting room, a cup of tea balanced on his knee as they’d made what Eleanor suspected had been no more than desultory conversation.
Since he’d joined up in September 1914 Katherine had seen him only for a few hours at a time, every few months, when he’d come home on leave; once she’d gone to London to meet him there. Eleanor supposed Katherine loved him, although her sister was so coolly unsentimental, perhaps she’d simply accepted his proposal because James Freybourn, Cambridge-educated and soon-to-be solicitor, was a very good prospect. He was even more so now, since so many men had been killed or wounded in France.
Now her sister looked brittle and tense, tightly clutching her handkerchief.
Another soldier appeared from the train. “James!” his mother cried out, and Eleanor watched as she flung herself towards her son, and instinctively James caught her in his arms, staggering slightly. Katherine didn’t move.
He looked the same, Eleanor thought in a kind of dispassionate relief. She saw no scars or missing limbs; he didn’t walk with a limp. He’d been back four months ago, and he was as healthy and whole now as he’d been then. She glanced at Katherine, whose face had gone pale, her eyes huge and her lips bloodless.
“Katherine,” Eleanor hissed, and gave her a little push in the small of her back. Katherine stumbled forward, steadied herself, and moved towards James, a smile curving her mouth even though the knuckles of her hand clutching her handkerchief were white.
He’d been smiling slightly as he’d both greeted and comforted his mother, who had begun to weep, although it hadn’t reached his eyes. Now Eleanor watched as for a second his face went blank when he turned to Katherine, and then his mouth curved in a smile that seemed formal, a thing of politeness rather than warmth.
“James,” Katherine said. Her voice sounded faint.
James inclined his head. “Katherine,” he answered, and after an endless, awkward moment, Katherine stood on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. James went still under the brush of her lips.
They all returned to the vicarage, where Mrs Stanton had laid out a welcoming spread of food in the dining room: bread and butter, potted ham, molasses cake made with precious flour and butter.
Tilly bustled around, filling teacups and offering everyone plates. Eleanor stood in the corner, watching as everyone milled around in a kind of subdued silence; joy was too hard an emotion to dredge up.
Tilly gave her a sympathetic smile along with a cup of tea. “Drink up, Miss Eleanor,” she said. “I put a whole spoonful of sugar in it, just as you like.”
“Tilly, you shouldn’t have. You know how little sugar there is these days.”
In reply Tilly just winked, and with a rather wan answering smile Eleanor took a sip of the hot, sweet tea. Katherine and James, she noticed after a few minutes’ observation, were moving around the room separately, like planets in orbit, keeping a safe distance between each other. They didn’t talk or even exchange glances, which caused Eleanor a ripple of exasperated unease. If they couldn’t even look at each other now, how on earth were they to marry?
Yet perhaps they wouldn’t marry. Was an engagement made in the shadow of war binding? James would certainly think so, Eleanor decided. He might be reckless and a bit arrogant, at least to her former, fourteen-year-old self, but he also possessed a core of honour that would forbid him from breaking any promise. It was why he, along with Walter, had joined up so early to “do their bit”, which to Eleanor had always seemed a rather expensive sentiment.
Katherine excused herself from the room and after a moment Eleanor left her tea on the sideboard and went to follow her. She found her standing by the kitchen door, one arm wrapped around her waist, her hand cupping her elbow.
“What are you doing?” Eleanor asked. “James will wonder where you are.”
“You think so?” Katherine answered tonelessly, and Eleanor raised her eyebrows.
“Are you cross because he wasn’t more welcoming? Because you didn’t seem very pleased to see him, Katherine—”
“I’m not cross,” Katherine answered shortly, her face averted. “What a child you are, Eleanor. You’d think I’d stormed out of the room because someone had taken my toys. We are not children in a nursery, fretting over a spoilt game. It’s not about being cross.”
Eleanor took a deep, even breath, and forced herself not to reply in the childish manner her sister no doubt expected. “Tell me what it’s about, then.”
She didn’t think Katherine would answer; her arm was still wrapped around herself, her hand on her elbow, as if she were holding herself together. She didn’t look at Eleanor. “I just don’t know how to be,” she finally said.
“I don’t think any of us do,” Eleanor answered. “But I can see that you wouldn’t, especially. It’s all so strange, the war over, nothing the way it was…” She could not quite make herself mention Walter.
“The last time he visited,” Katherine said after a moment, her face still turned away from Eleanor’s, “back in the summer, he seemed…” She hesitated, and Eleanor prompted gently:
“How did he seem, Katherine?”
Katherine shook her head. “Just… distant. Walter did too, don’t you think? I thought it was just the toil of war. It seemed to go on so endlessly, and no one could quite believe the end was in sight…”
“You think it was something else?” Eleanor asked after a moment.
Katherine didn’t answer, and a clatter of cups from the dining room shook her from her seeming reverie. She pressed her lips together and nodded once. “I must get back. Why don’t you tell Tilly to bring in a fresh pot of tea?” She moved past Eleanor, her back straight, her chin lifted, everything about her as proud and prickly as ever.
It was that endless evening that gave Eleanor the idea of actually having a proper Christmas. Not, she knew, that Christmas could ever feel truly proper without Walter. The last four Christmases had been subdued affairs, with him at the Front. After dinner – one of the local farmers always gave Father a trussed goose – Mother would bring out Walter’s letters and they’d read them aloud by the fire. Eleanor wasn’t sure she could bear doing that this year.
But perhaps a few treats at Christmas would help to lift their spirits. James and his parents would be coming for Christmas dinner, and they could have roast goose with all – or most of – the trimmings, and play parlour games afterwards. For Katherine and James’s sake, so they could feel just a little normal. A little more like their old selves.
And for her sake too, perhaps. For all their sakes. Because the weight of grief was so crippling, and she wanted to forget it, just for a day. She didn’t think that was being disloyal to Walter; like Grandmama had said, he wouldn’t want them all moping about endlessly.
The week before Christmas her mother had once more retreated to her bed, and her father to his study. Katherine spent as little time at home as possible, preferring to take the train up to Carlisle and volunteer in some freezing hall rather than spend afternoons with her family – or with James. A fortnight after his arrival not much had changed as far as Eleanor could see. James had visited Katherine at the vicarage just twice since his return; they’d sat in the parlour and spoken stiffly about meaningless things, neither of them looking at the other. Eleanor had peeked in and it had seemed awful.
If they were to have a Christmas at all, Eleanor knew it was up to her, and in fact she found it was a relief to have something to throw herself into. She spent hours poring over Foods That Will Win The War and How To Cook Them, to discover what celebratory things she could make with their rations. She made wartime taffy with corn syrup and vinegar; Christmas pudding with beetroot instead of dried fruit.
Mrs Stanton liked having her in the kitchen, despite Eleanor’s slapdash ways with scales and spoons; by the time she was finished there was a dusting of precious flour everywhere.
“It’s nice to see you smile again, Miss Eleanor,” Mrs Stanton said, carefully brushing the scattered flour into her hand, to put back in the tin.
Eleanor found a precious set of Tom Smith Christmas Crackers at Dixon’s in Whitehaven, and put a good amount of care and thought into the gifts she chose for everyone. For Katherine she bought lace-edged handkerchiefs, with her soon-to-be bridal initials stitched, rather clumsily, into one corner. For Mother she’d bought a book of poems, The Wind on the Downs by Marian Allen. Just the first verse had brought tears to Eleanor’s eyes:
I like to think of you as brown and tall
As strong and living as you used to be
In khaki tunic, Sam Brown belt and all
And standing there and laughing down at me.
For Father she’d bought a new pipe, and Grandmama would get a pair of gloves, for even after over ten years in West Cumberland, she still complained of the cold and biting wind. She bought James a set of handkerchiefs as well, and painstakingly stitched his initials in the corner. She’d never been very good at embroidery.
Christmas Day was always a busy affair in the vicarage, with it being a day of work for Father. By the time the Communion service was finished and everyone had filed out into the frosty air it was going on one o’clock, and Mrs Stanton was busy in the kitchen, preparing the Christmas dinner they would have in the early evening.
Eleanor had cajoled Mr Lyman into cutting down a small spruce from the garden and putting it in the drawing room. She’d decorated it with sweets, candles, and a few precious oranges. She’d adorned the dining room with red and green paper chains and greenery taken from the churchyard, and she’d made a centrepiece of boughs of holly and spruce. Next to every plate she’d laid a Christmas cracker.
Grandmama gave her an approving smile as they exchanged presents in the drawing room; it took effort, but Eleanor kept up a cheerful stream of banter, flitting around the room in her best dress, one that was last year’s as there was still precious little cloth for new dresses, and was now, unfortunately, a bit too tight in the bosom. Her parents, Eleanor hoped, appreciated her effort, even though they both seemed subdued. Katherine tried to contribute to the conversation, but her face was pale, lines of strain visible around her mouth. James, Eleanor thought a bit resentfully, seemed as wooden as he had since arriving home. What had happened to the jolly young man with the booming laugh and careless ways, whom Eleanor had found just a bit too loud?
He could try a bit harder, she thought as they all walked into the dining room for dinner. He’d survived the war intact, when so many others hadn’t. When Walter hadn’t. He could at least be grateful for that.
She pushed such thoughts away as she showed everyone their place; she’d written out place cards in her best script, and made sure Katherine and James were seated next to each other.
“And now the crackers,” she said, and Anne gave a soft laugh.
“Wherever did you get them, Eleanor?”
“Dixon’s. We haven’t had crackers for ages, have we, Mother?”
“I don’t suppose we have.”
Tentatively, with a shy smile, Katherine proffered her Christmas cracker towards James. A peace offering, Eleanor thought with both hope and triumph. A bridge. “Shall we?”
He nodded, as stiff as ever, and they both pulled. The sudden explosion of noise as the cracker came apart made James flinch, and there was an awkward moment before his father let out a forced little laugh.
“That was jolly loud, wasn’t it?”
James didn’t answer, but Eleanor could see his hand tremble as he tossed the paper crown onto the table. Katherine held hers in her hand, clearly unsure whether to put it on or not. Eleanor had wanted the mood to be celebratory, even silly, but she knew now it wouldn’t be. Perhaps it was too soon for James, for everyone. Katherine dropped her crown on the table as well, and Tilly began to serve the meal.
James’s mother attempted to start a conversation, talking about a parade planned in Whitehaven to celebrate the Armistice.
“It will be good to celebrate our boys’ return,” she said with a smile for James, who gave a humourless laugh and answered: “And how many of us are there, then? There’s not much to celebrate as far as I can see.”
Mr Freybourn mentioned the upcoming election, to be held in just three days, and James grimaced.
“I don’t trust Lloyd George’s promises or any other politician’s.”
“Let’s not talk politics,” Helen Freybourn implored, her voice trembling slightly. “Not at Christmas.”
“Isn’t it lovely, James, that you’re home for Christmas?” Elizabeth tried. “I read in the papers that thousands of men haven’t been demobilized yet.”
James’s mouth had tightened and he said nothing. Eleanor wondered if he was even glad to be home.
“I’ve heard there is ice skating on Bell Pond,” Katherine volunteered. Her voice sounded both bright and brittle. “It’s cold enough for it to freeze over, finally.”
“We should all go skating,” Eleanor suggested. “I haven’t been in ages.”
She met James’s gaze and nearly flinched at how cold his eyes looked. “I don’t think so,” he said quietly, and then he pushed up from the table. “Pardon me, but I find I’m not very hungry,” he said, and walked out of the room.