thought that the traditional meal was hideously vulgar, and at her own Christmas table family and guests were served game, and the finest beef that the estate could offer, and her own favourite pudding, syllabub in crystal cups.
‘After the dinner the tables are cleared away and everyone dances. My father leads off with the housekeeper, and my mother with Glass, the butler. Isabel and I take our chances with the footmen, who are always so rigid with embarrassment that they can’t dance at all.’ Amy paused, smiling at the thought. ‘They can’t wait for us to go, and leave them with the maids. My brother Richard dances with the old woman who does the plain sewing and makes her roar with laughter. Then my father makes a little speech thanking everyone for a wonderful evening, and wishes them all a merry Christmas and we tiptoe away. The party goes on for hours after that. Isabel and I …’
Amy broke off and looked across the table at Helen. Her friend was listening, open-mouthed with fascination. There was no trace of envy or rancour in her face. ‘Go on,’ she ordered. ‘It’s just like in a film.’
‘Isabel and I walk across the park to the church. The gravel and the grass is always crackling with frost, but the church is warm. The verger has banked up the coke stove ready for early service. There are white and gold flowers on the altar, and around the pulpit and the font, and there’s always a nativity scene made by the estate children with a doll in the crib and a woollen donkey. It’s so quiet, utterly silent, and there’s that religious smell of candles and flowers and cold stone. Last year it was just before Isabel’s marriage. I remember praying for her to be happy. Oh damn.’ Amy’s hand came up to shade her eyes, but not before Helen had seen the tears. She heaved herself out of her chair and came to put her arm round Amy. ‘Tough, isn’t it?’ was all she said, but Amy felt the depth of her unspoken sympathy. It comforted her at once, but at the same time shamed her. The physical touch made Helen’s emaciated fragility so obvious, and yet the strength was all flowing the wrong way.
‘Oh, bugger it,’ Amy said, sniffing.
Helen laughed at once and let her go. ‘And you supposed to be a real lady. I wish I had something stronger in the house than bloody tea. Look, it’s nearly half past. Shall I yell for Jimmy to go round to the Jug for sixpenn’orth and we’ll have a Christmas toast?’
Regretfully, Amy shook her head. ‘I can’t. I’ve got to be on at six. Blaine’ll flay me if I get there late and reeking of drink as well, Christmas or not.’
They stood up and Helen turned on the single overhead bulb as Amy groped for her coat. The fire had burned low and they had been sitting in semi-darkness. They both winced now at the harshness of the light.
‘It’ll be a week, then?’ Helen asked casually.
‘Five days. I’ll be back to see in the New Year with you.’ Amy kept her voice equally casual, but a new anxiety was stabbing at her. In the bright light she saw that Helen looked ill. There were red patches on her cheekbones, and grey hollows under her eyes.
Amy suddenly thought of the fresh, sharp air at Chance and the soft beds in firelit rooms, and the tables abundantly heaped with the best of everything. How good a few days of that would be for Helen. It wouldn’t be enough, but it would be something. She reached out and grabbed Helen’s thin, hot hand.
‘Listen. I should have thought of it before. Why don’t you come with me? You, and Jim and Freda. I’ve taken guests for Christmas before. It won’t be …’
‘Not like us, you haven’t.’ Helen was laughing again. ‘Are you soft? How could you turn up there with us lot? Thanks, but no. We wouldn’t know where to stand or sit, and I’d be ill with the fright of it. Take me to your London house one day when there’s no one about and let me have a good stare. But not to stay, love.’ Seeing Amy’s face she added, ‘Look. You can’t change anything. I’m me and you’re you, and we’re friends. That’s enough. Don’t try and pretend we’re the same. We both know the difference. Just count yourself lucky you’re on the right side of it.’
There was no bitterness in her words. Helen was simply matter of fact. Amy started to say something fierce, but Helen was quicker. ‘Aw, I know you think you can do something, with all your meetings and leaflets.’ Amy had told her about Appleyard Street, and had shown her the pamphlets until Helen had dismissed it with ‘Your Commie tendencies are all guilt, y’know.’ Helen went on now. ‘But you can’t. The gap’s getting wider, not narrower, didn’t you know? I appreciate the gesture. But I can’t come home to the manor with you for Christmas.’
‘I didn’t ask you as a political gesture,’ Amy said stiffly. ‘I asked because you are my friend.’
‘Nor did I refuse as a political gesture. I don’t believe in politics. But it’s there, isn’t it? And you’re my friend, as well.’
‘I’d better go.’ Amy pulled her cape around her.
‘Here.’ Helen held out the holly-wrapped packages. ‘Don’t go without your presents.’
In the doorway, suddenly, they hugged each other.
‘Happy Christmas.’
‘Happy Christmas.’
As she fled down the street towards the hospital Amy heard Helen coughing, as if she had managed to contain the spasm all the time she had been with her.
The Christmas rituals at Chance were all performed with a kind of mechanical cheerfulness that depressed Amy deeply.
The house was full of the usual shifting crowd of guests who came and went over the holiday. Gerald had mustered a quartet of friends for shooting and cards, three of them equipped with fading, powdered wives who sat in the drawing room after dinner and listened with fascinated disapproval to the fast, cliquey gossip of Adeline’s women friends. Adeline’s set smoked and left the ashtrays full of lipsticked butts and drank complicated cocktails. They talked a great deal about people called Bunny and Buffy and Tiger, and laughed in flurries that baffled their powdered rural counterparts. Watching them, in her depressed mood, as they turned their long necks to listen to a new story or to sip at a champagne glass and their diamonds flashed, Amy was reminded of so many hooded cobras.
It seemed inevitable and yet sharply painful that her parents should pretend that everything was normal and as it should be. Adeline sparkled and clapped her hands to demand charades, or Clumps, or forfeits, and Gerald drank and gambled and went out all through the frosty days with the guns. She reflected that they were adept at it, after all. The keeping up of carefully controlled appearances must be more than second nature after so many years. Isabel’s absence, glaring at Amy through every minute of the day, was neither spoken of nor questioned. Peter Jaspert was never mentioned either. The acceptable match and the glittering marriage might never have been made.
The cobras knew, of course, all of them. But not a word was spoken.
It was almost worse, Amy thought, the way that Isabel had just been allowed to fade away, than if they had all been talking about her. For her sister she was there in every stone of the great house and every white-rimmed blade of grass across the park.
‘I miss Isabel. Don’t you?’ she answered sharply, when Adeline complained of her long face. Surprisingly, they found themselves alone in the drawing room in the mysterious hour between tea and the appearance of the first Lanvin sheath and white waistcoat before dinner. Amy was sunk into the depths of one of the sofas with an unopened book beside her, and Adeline was writing a letter, covering sheet after sheet of crisp blue paper with her leggy, energetic scrawl.
‘Of course I miss her. So what shall we do, sit in darkness and silence until she’s well again?’
‘No. Just not be quite so determinedly gay, perhaps.’
With an exasperated shrug Adeline screwed the cap on her gold pen and folded up her letter.
‘Gaiety is all there is. Without it, you might as well be in the grave, my darling one. Stop looking as if you’re carrying the cares of all the world on your shoulders and who knows? You might even find that