The Victory Garden(89)
When she came across Christmas cards in the village shop, she found herself thinking again of her parents. Would they be worried about not having heard from her? Even if they thought she was still with the land girls, wouldn’t they be expecting her to come home for Christmas? She picked up a card. Should she send them one to let them know she was all right? But then they’d see the postmark and come to find her, and that could not happen. Instead, she bought a card and addressed it to Miss Foster-Blake. Inside, she wrote that she was well and had been invited to live with a friend, so her future was secure.
“You will be spending Christmas Day here, I hope,” Lady Charlton said.
“I will certainly be happy to have Christmas dinner with you,” she said, “but I don’t want Alice to feel left out. Mrs Lacey has gone up to London to have Christmas with her husband in hospital, and Alice has been left alone running the Red Lion for her.”
“Then invite her, too. The more the merrier,” Lady Charlton said. “I presume the public house will be closed on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.”
“Are you sure?” Emily asked. “She is a working-class woman from London.”
Lady Charlton shrugged. “The war is over, and I expect we’ll find a good many things will change. Since I have no family to share my feast . . .”
“I have tried to find Justin,” Emily said, “but it’s hopeless. How does one start in London? My friend Clarissa has been sent to work in the East End, but I doubt she’ll have time to do any investigating for me. Do you think you should hire a private investigator to track him down?”
Lady Charlton sighed. “I think we have to accept that Justin wants no communication with me at the present. When I die, he will take over this house anyway and can do what he likes with it. Until then . . .”
“Don’t talk about dying.” Emily reached out instinctively to her. “You’ve a lot of life in you yet.”
“One never knows.” She sighed again. “If you’d met my husband, you would have thought him a vibrant, lively man—one who loved life. And yet he sickened and died so rapidly.”
“Just like those with influenza are doing now in London.”
“So one hears. We must pray it doesn’t come to us.”
“I think we’re too remote for anything to find us, including influenza,” Emily said, smiling.
Emily went to see Alice at the Red Lion and extended the invitation to her. Alice gave her a look of horror. “Oh, no thanks, duck. I mean, ta all the same, and it was nice of you to think of me, but I couldn’t see myself sitting at a dinner table with a titled lady. I’d be scared every time I opened my mouth that I’d put my foot in it.” She chuckled. “Anyway, some of us have been invited to Mrs Soper’s to celebrate. Not that we’ll feel that much like celebrating—even those whose men have come home.” She drew closer to Emily and said in a low voice, “You remember Johnny Hodgson who came home, and how happy his wife was to see him? She came to the pub with him the other evening, and she told me quietly that she’s worried sick about him. He wakes up at night screaming and in a cold sweat. He has these awful nightmares, you see. He hears the guns. It frightens the children.”
“How sad,” Emily said. “I don’t suppose anyone gets over being in the trenches in a hurry. But, Alice, I wanted to spend Christmas Day with you, really. But I couldn’t say no to Lady Charlton.”
Alice put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “Don’t give it a second thought. And I tell you what—you come down to the Lion on Christmas Eve. We’re all going to have a bit of a party, a good old sing-song with sausages and hot toddy.”
“All right,” Emily agreed. “I’d like to do that. I’ll bring Daisy with me. Ethel, too, if she wants to come.”
Ethel let it be known that she never went near public houses, and neither did Mrs Trelawney. So on Christmas Eve, Daisy and Emily set off together. It was an almost exclusively female gathering, apart from the two old men and one of the labourers who had returned. Emily noticed he drank a lot and didn’t say much. But the gathering was a merry one.
Alice took Emily aside and gave her a gift of balls of white wool, needles and knitting patterns. “I reckon we all better get started on the knitting if this poor kid is going to have anything to wear,” she said.
“Oh dear, I don’t even know how to knit,” Emily said. “My nanny tried to teach me once, but I was hopeless.”
“I’ll help,” Daisy said. “I’m a good knitter.”
They opened their presents from Emily and were impressed with the hand cream.
“It smells really nice. And my hands still haven’t recovered from all that digging potatoes,” Alice said.
Emily was pleased.
“I don’t have anything for you.” Daisy looked worried. “But I’m going to help you look after the baby when it comes. I would have liked to train as a nursery maid.”
They walked back up the hill together in companionable silence, their footsteps echoing on the frosty ground.
Christmas Day dawned, bright and frosty. It had snowed on the moor, and the uplands sparkled white as Emily walked with the others to church. Whether Mrs Bingley welcomed her or not, she was going to attend on this day. They sang the old carols lustily while Mr Patterson hammered out the tunes on the organ: “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “Once in Royal David’s City,” “It Came upon the Midnight Clear.”