Christmas With the Chrystals Other Stories Read online

  ‘You looked much prettier than that lady,’ David observed.

  Grandfather opened a box of chocolates.

  ‘I must say I preferred Susan meself.’

  ‘I can’t think why they have to have that big fat girl for Prince Charming,’ Nicky complained. ‘I suppose at Christmas all the men actors are busy, so that they had to dress her up and pretend.’

  They were most surprised by the time they reached the next interval. They had never been to a pantomime before, because they had missed the one they had meant to go to, by having measles. They never knew that in pantomimes it is the custom to dash about all over the world. So they were very startled when Cinderella, the two ugly sisters, and Cinderella’s mother, who was dressed as an old lady with elastic-sided boots, all came to stay at a smart hotel in Mars. Everybody went to Mars in balloons. There was a very funny scene in a balloon and a very exciting one, of rows of balloons flying across the backcloth. All the same, nobody felt that Mars was the right place for Cinderella to be in. They had to admit that the transformation scene was better done. There were twelve real ponies and a gold coach and proper coachmen, though even then they thought Susan would look much nicer inside the coach than the other Cinderella. The end of the play was better than theirs. All the people that had been to the court ball came marching down a silver staircase. Jim hardly noticed the end of the play, because he was wondering so hard if it were possible to put up a staircase like that in their theatre for next Christmas. They drove home quite dazed with so much dancing and singing and lights.

  ‘Thank you so much, Grandfather,’ said Susan. ‘It was lovely.’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ Jim agreed. ‘’Though I think they ought to stick more to the story.’

  ‘Don’t you think, Grandfather’ – Nicky snuggled against him – ‘there ought to have been a jester in the court scene, like me?’

  David leant against Grandfather’s other side.

  ‘It was all mos’ sumt’us,’ he murmured, and went to sleep.

  8. Preparing for Christmas

  Christmas didn’t begin as early when I was a child as it does now. Shops did not start to decorate before December and you never saw a Father Christmas until about two weeks before Christmas when, as now, you could meet him in toy shops where – in those days – for sixpence you could shake him by the hand and get a present. But of course it was what went on at home which made us feel Christmassy.

  The first Christmas thing we had to do was make the Christmas decorations, they were never bought in shops in those days. We three girls and my brother would sit round the table in what we still called ‘the nursery’. In the middle of the table was a large bowl of homemade paste and we each had a brush and a packet of brightly coloured tissue paper strips which we, by hooking them through each other, turned into chains. You very seldom see paper-chains now, so many pretty things are on the market to take their place. But I can promise you – and any of you who have made them will back me up – there is nothing so full of the spirit of Christmas as making paper-chains.

  Of course the moment the chains were made they had to be hung up. This I think must have been done by the grown-ups, for I don’t remember being allowed up a ladder which was necessary and which I would have enjoyed.

  I don’t think paper-chains went beyond the nursery for downstairs we trimmed everything that was trimmable with holly. Holly was on everything: lights, pictures, clocks, ornaments – it must have driven those who dusted mad before Christmas was over. In the middle of the hall there was a light to which a big bunch of holly and a few sprigs of mistletoe were attached. The mistletoe was put in the bunch surreptitiously by my mother, who thought it looked pretty. My father did not believe in putting up mistletoe because it might turn minds to kissing. But whose minds? We three little girls were too young to have thought of such a thing and who was there to kiss? Only the curate and who would want to kiss him? Perhaps Father thought of visitors and those who worked for us. I shall never know but I do know that, thanks to Mother, mistletoe always appeared.

  Theatre Shoes

  Every family has its secrets but it is a huge surprise for the three Forbes children to discover their grandmother was once a famous actress! Grandmother sends them to stage school, where they are expected to work hard and follow in the family footsteps, even at Christmastime.

  FROM

  Theatre Shoes

  9. Christmas Day

  Christmas Day in every family is built up on little bits of custom. Something happens one year and it is amusing and gay and Christmassy, and so it becomes part of all future Christmases. Christmas Day in Guernsey had been full of things like that. The children’s father had come into their nursery for the opening of their stockings and there were always band instruments in each stocking, and when the stocking opening was finished they played ‘Good King Wenceslas’ with their father singing the solo part of the King and Mark singing the page, and a lot of repeat verses for the band only. There had been visits to friends after morning church and a lovely party with a Christmas tree in somebody else’s house in the afternoon.

  When the children came to live with Grandfather, Hannah did the best she could with Christmas. She managed the band instruments in the stockings and she tried to sing ‘Good King Wenceslas’. This was lucky, because that first Christmas of the war with their father away had felt a bit queer and miserable, but Hannah singing the King’s part in ‘Good King Wenceslas’ was so funny that they all laughed until they felt sick. As Hannah could not sing ‘Good King Wenceslas’, they made her sing ‘The First Noel’ as a solo, with the children helping in the Noel bits; and this, having happened for three Christmases, was now an established custom. There were other things that had happened in the vicarage on Christmas Day that had become customs. There was a party in the afternoon in the house of a big family where there was a Christmas tree, and charades were played, and Christmas Day had finished with a special supper of scrambled eggs made by themselves, eaten in the kitchen with Hannah.

  This year Christmas was going obviously to be quite different from anything the children had known before. They were keeping, of course, a few of their own customs, but mostly they were going to be part of Grandmother’s. Christmas Day was the day when she received her family. She had them all to dinner in the evening. It made the day exciting in a way to be going to meet Aunt Lindsey and Uncle Mose and Uncle Francis and Aunt Marguerite, and to be going to see Miranda and Miriam away from the Academy.

  ‘Proper set-up it is,’ said Alice. ‘I’m worn to a shred by the time I’ve laid the Cain and Abel, and when it comes to dishing up I never know how to drag my plates of meat up the apples and pears. This year it won’t half be a set-up. We’re receiving in style. We’ve got a part. We’re on top of the world. We shan’t half see that we’re number one at our own party.’

  Because of the Fossil scholarships, Sorrel and Holly had a shilling pocket money every week. This, divided into three, made eightpence each. They spent some of their eightpences on their month’s sweet ration, and they each gave a penny a week to the Red Cross; and there was, of course, a penny for the collection on Sundays, but what was over they had saved for Christmas presents. They could not buy much because there was nothing much that was cheap to buy; but they managed parcels all round. Sorrel had bought a party hair bow on a slide for Holly, and some pencils for Mark. For Alice there was a calendar with a picture of people about a hundred years ago drinking round an inn on a very snowy day; for Hannah there was also a calendar, but hers had a little wreath of holly and a verse that might have been part of a carol. Mark gave Sorrel and Holly some drawing pins, which seemed a funny present, but was one of the few things he could afford to buy that was useful. For Hannah there was a little wooden ruler, and for Alice some tin-tacks. Holly had never been able to grasp how coupons worked. Up till almost Christmas Day she hoped to buy soap for everybody, because she liked the smell. When at last she realised that it made no difference what shop you went into
they would all want soap coupons, it was Christmas Eve and the shops were nearly empty, so in desperation she bought buns, not even nice buns, but the sort you would expect to get when you queue up for them on Christmas Eve. For Grandmother the children had put their money together. They bought a white heath in a little pot. It was really a tiny plant and it cost a fearful lot, but it was the best they could manage; so that was that.

  Christmas Day started in a proper way. There were the stockings and there was Hannah.

  ‘Happy Christmas, dear,’ she said to Sorrel. ‘Don’t you touch your stocking now, I’m just popping along to fetch Mark and Holly.’

  Holly sat in bed beside Sorrel, and Mark sat the other end, and Hannah sat on the side of the bed. Of course, the stockings had not got in them the good things they used to have because things like that were not in the shops any more. But the fun of Christmas and stockings and presents is obviously not in what the presents are made of, for though the trumpets were cardboard instead of tin, and the drum was only paper and the triangle was very small, and the mouth organ only had four notes, it was all the funnier trying to be an orchestra with them.

  Alice came as audience.

  ‘Happy Christmas, everybody. I thought I better hear old Hannah sing her carol. I was afraid if I wasn’t here to shout to the neighbours we might have the police in.’

  It was a very nice carol singing, and when Hannah got to the bit:

  They looked up and saw a Star

  Shining in the East beyond them far.

  And to the earth it gave great light,

  And so it continued by day and by night,

  it was as much Christmas Day as ever it had been. Alice wiped her eyes.

  ‘Christmas carols always make me cry, and that’s a fact.’ She laid four little parcels on the bed. ‘You pay your money and you take your choice.’

  How Alice had managed to save the sugar and get the treacle off the points, nobody knew and nobody asked; but there were four packets of toffee, home-made, brown and stiff. There were no sweets in the stockings this year and Christmas Day cannot be said properly to have begun without that sickish feeling that comes from eating sweets before breakfast; so the hat was, as it were, put on the day when they all had a piece of Alice’s toffee in their mouths.

  Hannah’s church was very nicely decorated. There was not much holly, but the decorators had done very well with evergreens and red berries from other plants wired on to look like holly berries. In an alcove there was a beautiful crib, with stars shining through the back of the stable and the Virgin Mary sitting by the manger with the Baby on her knee, and two sheep and a donkey and four cows kneeling in the straw, looking reverent. The hymns met with everybody’s approval. They began with ‘Hark, the herald angels,’ and they sang ‘While shepherds watched’ during the collection, and ‘God rest you merry, gentlemen,’ as they went out.

  ‘Just what we might have had at home,’ said Hannah. ‘I can’t praise higher.’

  In the afternoon it was not a bad day, so the children went over to the Square garden; and there, on the grass, were two boys and a girl kicking about a football. Evidently, what the head gardener had said was true. Now that the chance of bombing was less, the children were beginning to come back. Holly and the smaller boy, whose name was Robert, went off to ride on his tricycle that he had been given that morning, and Sorrel and Mark played football with the other two children. They got very hot and the time passed extraordinarily quickly, and they were amazed when the nurse belonging to the other children came along and said it was nearly time for tea.

  Sorrel did wish she had got something nice to wear. She had her school velvet, but it had been outgrown before Grandfather died, and she had been meant to have another as soon as the coupons would run to it. Although she did not seem to have grown very much, the frock seemed to fit her a great deal worse since she last wore it. She seemed to have got broader. It was difficult to get it to fasten at the back, and when it was fastened it made her feel short of breath. It had luckily got short sleeves, but they seemed disobliging and cut into her arms. It was not so terribly wrong in length, she had thin legs and a short frock did not matter. As well as fitting badly, it was shabby looking. It had thin places where there hardly seemed to be velvet any more, but only the stuff that velvet is made on, and it had lost its colour in places. It was meant to be green, but Sorrel noticed as she put it on that in quite a lot of spots it was much nearer grey. ‘If only this wasn’t the first time that the uncles and aunts are seeing me!’ Sorrel thought. ‘They’re bound to expect rather a lot from Mother’s child, and really, I do look pretty drab. I do hope Holly and Mark will make a better impression. It wouldn’t be so bad if only I could put my bad clothes down to the war; but Miranda and Miriam live in the war too, and I bet they look quite nice.’

  Mark was looking ordinary except that he was unusually well brushed and clean. He wore his grey shorts, a white shirt and his school tie. Alice had said that she thought he should wear white socks and that Grandmother would expect it. Luckily, Mark had not heard this suggestion and Hannah treated it with scorn.

  ‘I know what’s right for Mr Bill’s children, and that’s how things are going to be.’

  Holly looked rather nice. She was at the right age for party clothes, and with her curls she was the party-frock sort. She had, of course, got all the clothes Sorrel used to have and had now outgrown. She was wearing a white crêpe de Chine frock, and the little cherry-coloured bow that was Sorrel’s present in her hair. Hannah would not have said so for the world, but she was very proud of Holly when she had finished with her. Sorrel hoped when she came along for Alice to inspect her that perhaps she did not look as bad as she thought she did, but what Alice said was:

  ‘Well, there’s a war on and you’re at least covered, and I suppose we mustn’t expect more.’

  Which, the more you thought about it, the less encouraging it was.

  To save heating and trouble, dinner was being served at one end of Grandmother’s drawing room. The children thought when they were dressed they would go down, but Alice had given her instructions.

  ‘Nobody takes a step till I fetches them. We are more fussy about Christmas Day than anybody would believe. All kinds of goings on we have. You’ll see.’

  When the children were called down, Alice did not do what she usually did and announce them, but she led them into the drawing room, which they found entirely empty. By the fire was an armchair with Grandmother’s green cushion in it. The sliding doors were closed. Alice, who was rushed because of cooking the dinner, gave Sorrel her instructions.

  ‘You stand round your Grandmother’s chair until your uncles and aunts arrive, and then you’ll do what the rest of the family do, you can’t go wrong if you keep your eyes open.’

  They longed to ask ‘wrong about what?’ but Alice had dashed out shouting to Hannah to come and lend her a hand.

  Sorrel looked at Mark and Mark looked at Holly; and all of a sudden it seemed so silly standing solemnly in a row round an empty armchair that they began to giggle. Mark giggled so much that he had to lie down on the floor. Then they heard the front door bell. Sorrel pulled him to his feet.

  ‘Oh, goodness! There’s the uncles and aunts! Do get up, it’s most terribly important that we shouldn’t be a disgrace. We don’t want them to despise the Forbes.’

  A perfectly strange man dressed as a butler threw open the drawing room door and roared out, ‘Mr Moses Cohen, Mrs Cohen, Miss Cohen.’

  The first person to come in was Miriam. She stood just inside the door, and in a very affected way, that was not a bit like her, said:

  ‘This is my Daddy, and this is my Mummy.’ As the children knew quite well that she called her parents Mum and Dad, and as Miriam was never affected, they stared at her in amazement. Miriam saw their faces and added, in a hoarse whisper, ‘We always work up everybody’s entrance on Christmas Day.’

  Aunt Lindsey came in. She was dark and rather severe looking, and ver
y smart. She stood in the doorway with both hands outstretched, and said in an acting sort of voice:

  ‘Little Addie’s children!’

  She then stood to one side. There was a moment’s pause and there was Uncle Mose with a tiny cardboard hat on the side of his head, rubbing his hands in front of him.

  ‘Vell! Vell! Vell!’

  Evidently saying ‘Vell! Vell! Vell!’ like that was something for which he was famous, because as soon as he had finished saying it, Aunt Lindsey and Miriam laughed.

  Once the laugh was over and the Cohen family safely in the room, everybody began to behave in an ordinary way. Miriam raced across and hugged her three cousins and said ‘Happy Christmas’, and told them what she had been given for presents. Aunt Lindsey kissed them and was very nice, and Uncle Mose told them to feel in his pockets, and out came three envelopes marked Sorrel, Mark and Holly, and in each one was a ten-shilling note! He kissed Sorrel and Holly and rubbed Mark’s hair the wrong way, and told them what he would like them to do would be to buy a book each, but that the money was their own and they could spend it how they liked. They took a great fancy to Uncle Mose.

  The Cohens had no sooner got safely into the drawing room than the Brains arrived. The strange man dressed as a butler said, ‘Sir Francis and Lady Brain. Miss Brain.’ This time Miranda came in first. She stood in the doorway, and said in her lovely voice:

  ‘A merry Christmas, everybody.’ Then she turned and held out both hands, and added in a surprised voice, as if she had not known she was there, ‘Mummy!’

  Aunt Marguerite was shorter than Aunt Lindsey, and thinner. She had an anxious, strained expression. She put one arm round Miranda.

  ‘A happy Christmas.’ And then, holding out her free hand into the passage, ‘Look who’s here! Come to say merry Christmas to everybody.’

  Uncle Francis was a large man with a big, booming deep voice, which sounded as though he kept it mellow by giving it caramels. He looked round the drawing room as if he were surprised to find himself there. He stood between Aunt Marguerite and Miranda, an arm round each.