I
, bouncing boyish Katherine, who
would sail the floor in the snowy nimbus, tonight? This Christmas’s
gift from Aunt Kay to me had been a filigree bracelet inset with
coral. How had she known? But that, I found, was not to be Aunt
Kay’s all. When Christmas Day came on to six o’clock, we gathered,
by custom, round Mother at the piano, to sing carols. Our greataunt, standing behind my shoulder, lightly touched my auburn,
unkempt mane. “Before you dress,” she said, “I’ll brush your hair.
One must be shining all over, for a ball. Remember! I’ll wait for you
in my room.”
So, at once elated and timid, aglow from a rain-water tub but
with an uncertain flutter around my heart, I presented myself in my
petticoat at her door.
Our old house, those days, had no electricity. Flanking Aunt
Kay’s mirror, a pair of candles deepened, by contrast, the shadows in
which she stood. From the mahogany wardrobe, not quite closed,
there travelled a scent of orris.
2
By her own austere wish, no fire
burned in the grate:
she
lived, I think, in a climate quite of her own,
which neither summer melted nor winter chilled. However, seeing
me shiver, she draped my shoulders, before motioning me to the
waiting chair. Then, gathering my hair softly in her hands, she
spread it over the wrapper and began brushing, smoothly, evenly,
slowly. I could watch her reflection, over mine, in the looking glass.
“So, Katherine,” she said, “you are growing up.”
“Does it take long, Aunt Kay?”
enough till I’m seventeen!”
“The rest of your life.”
“
Oh
,” I said, puzzled and disconcerted. “To me, it seems long
She paused. “You must not be in a hurry.
I
was; I wanted every
thing all at once.” She was using her own yellowed ivory brushes;
she put one down, as though to give it a rest, and took up the other.
On their backs were monograms, all but rubbed out by time. These
somehow brought home to me, with a shock, the fact of Aunt Kay’s
being of great age. I ventured: “Did you – ?”
She bowed her head. “I
had
everything all at once; and it was too
much. All these years since – shall I tell you how they’ve been spent?
I have spent them reliving that one year I did
not
know how to live,
at the time! Happiness is a matter of understanding, Katherine. Had
it come later, I should have been more ready. As it was, it went by
me all in a flash. I was widowed at nineteen. Did your father tell
you?”
“He told us it was all a long time ago.”
“Not to me,” she said. “To me it is still today.” With a comb she
drew a gentle line from my forehead backward, down to the nape
of my neck. She began to brush between the divided hair. “I did not
completely believe them, when they told me; and sometimes,
though, Katherine, this you must never tell! though I
know
he is lost,
I still can’t accept it. If he came back, I should be ready. I
should
be
ready! How to love, and how to be loved, is a long, slow lesson.
Now, at last, too late, I have learned it. But what’s the good?” For a
moment, Aunt Kay turned away her head.
Confusedly, pressing my hands together, I sought to express the
truth I suddenly saw. I cried: “The good is, your loving
us
!”
“How could I not? You are dear children. But you have each
other, your home, your father and mother. What can I give you,
more?”
Still shy, but with a vision beyond my years, I asserted: “But it’s
the
way
you love us, Aunt Kay. The way
you
love us! Nothing else
is like that. It’s like your having some extra, beautiful power! Like
Christmas,” I added, by inspiration.
“No, Katherine, no,” she faltered.
“I mean it, truly.”
For what seemed an endless minute, Aunt Kay’s reflective,
faraway eyes searched mine, till ultimately she drew a deep, tranquil
breath. “Then perhaps, at long last, that may be the answer? Not in
vain, after all,
not
in vain!” Afterwards, with a sudden lightening of
tone, she asked: “How shall you wear your hair?”
“Oh, up, don’t you think? Right on top of my head.”
She swept it up from my nape, started pinning deftly. Watching
clusters of ringlets begin to flower, I laughed with surprise, delight.
I looked truly
mondaine
! This reassured her. “Katherine, I thought I
had made you sad. Simply, seeing you go to your first ball made me
think of somebody leaving a safe harbour.”
“Aunt Kay,” I confessed, reluctantly truthful, “it
is
really only a
little party!”
“Nevertheless, I see lights in your eyes, candles in the windows!
Take care, take care!”
“I’m still too young, I’m afraid,” I said, though unhopefully, eyeing
myself at all angles – I looked all of sixteen! Aunt Kay, with hardly
less satisfaction, surveyed her handiwork. I stood up. But, “Just a
minute,” she cried, “I have something for you.” She brought from the
wardrobe, undid from its tissue wrappings, a little purse – or, more
exactly, reticule: it had a silver drawstring, and silver embroidery
outlined the floral scrolls of the pale brocade. The lining was of
delicate sea-blue taffeta. “
Oh
!” I cried, overcome. “It’s not new,” she
pointed out. And indeed as I held it nearer the candles, I saw the silk
was faded, the silver tarnished. “No, old – how could it not be? It
has a story. Mine.”
“
Your
first ball, Aunt Kay?”
She inclined her head. “Dear, let it be a talisman,
and
a warning!”
While I wormed my way into my party dress (always with care
for my head of curls), I heard the others still carolling, down in the
parlour. Would Linda remember her promise to come and “fasten”
me? I went to the stairhead and peered down, into the holly-strung
shadowed well of the hall. Up, now more strongly, mounted the
chorus voices. “
Hark, the Herald Angels
.” Our hard-worked piano gave
out vibrating notes, like a harpsichord’s. Then, first one by one,
then in peals and tangles, began the town’s church bells, ringing
Christmas out. The reverberations now heard through the darkened
air, somehow were more disturbing than Christmas morning’s. The
longed-for, beloved Day was nearing its close! Chilled by the look
of the snow on the outer sill of the staircase’s lofty uncurtained
window, I thought of our town blotted out by its drapes of white.
All bells paused, for a second, in which I heard, from the harbour’s
mouth, the insatiable roar of ocean. My young thoughts shrank
timidly from that waste of waters. Inside the ruffled breast of my
young girl’s ball gown, my child’s heart quavered. I gripped the stair
rail, crying out: “Oh, no, no!”
At once, below me, the singing stopped. Out hastened Linda, my
sturdy ten-year-old sister. “Katherine?” she shouted. “Was that you
calling? You needn’t have. I’m coming!” Breathless, she hurled herself
up the stairs.
The dancing party was but five minutes away. To it, I’d have had
to walk, in my heavy topcoat, school hood and overshoes, but now,
because of the snow, I was to be “grand”: the cab we thought of as
Aunt Kay’s had been ordered for me. Ah, I was nervous! I dawdled
up in my attic, retied a ribbon, sat on my bed and crushed my back
flounces, shook them out again, yawned. “Why, my goodness,”
Linda complained, “they’re all
waiting
for you!” So I swept downstairs.
Now came the enormous moment when I must show myself, mute
as a portrait, framed in the parlour doorway.
So here I stood. Why was it that in that moment I saw the red
lamplit walls, the assembled faces, with intensified vision, as though
for the first and last time? Over me, like a wave, broke an all but
overpowering sense of
home
. I looked, with a sort of wonder, from
one to another of those familiar forms. Frederick kneeling on the
hearthrug, absorbed in parading his new toys; Barbara, with her long
braids and coltlike legs, curled into a corner of the big sofa; Mother
still seated on the piano stool, sorting out tattered old sheets of
Christmas music, her velvet skirts flowing round her into a bell.
Linda, having dodged into the room behind me, picked up our cat
and waltzed with it in her arms. Father stood, as so often, with his
back to the fire. “Why, my girl,” he declared, “one would hardly
know you!” He accorded me a teasing, though lordly, bow. Then, as
though moved by some instinct, he went across and put his hand on
the back of Aunt Kay’s chair. “You’re a miracle worker,” he told her,
softly. She, erect in her black dress, smiled from him to me. Then
her eyes, more than ever luminous, came to rest on the small, old
reticule at my side.
Mother spun round slowly on the piano stool. “Come here,” she
said, and resettled my back flounces. “Now, stand back.” Her gaze
took a loving inventory of me, from top to toe. “Yes, you’ll do,” she
said. “You look nice.” Why did she sigh?
“She looks odd to me,” remarked Frederick, somewhat severely.
“She has fifteen hooks down her back,” gave out Linda, know
ingly. She dropped the cat, plump, on the sofa, from whence it, too,
fixed upon me an unblinking stare.
Father took out his watch, which became the signal for all the
rest to turn and look at the clock. He listened. “Yes,” he said, “here
we are!” The cab was heard, crunching cautiously up the driveway.
Everyone rose. I looked round, like a hunted thing, at the row of
china dogs topping the bookcase, the faded woodwork view of
Killarney over the mantle, the Turkey carpet worn by our many feet,
the friendly troughs in capacious chairs. The centre circular table,
under the lamp, glittered with sugary crumbs from the Christmas
cake. “Please,
no
!” I suddenly wailed aloud.
Mother, alarmed, said: “Katherine, aren’t you well?”
Father merely said: “Nonsense. Frederick, fetch Katherine’s coat,
cloak, jacket, or whatever she wears. Not fair to make the cab wait:
it’s busy tonight.”
“I don’t want to go.”
Father bawled, with exasperation: “Then you want
what
?”
“To stay
here
, stay home with all of you!”
“She’s shy,” said Frederick. Reprieved, he felt, of his errand, he
returned to the hearthrug and his tin soldiers.
“Shy!” cried Mother. “She’s never been shy before. Come, now,
Katherine, be a big girl! Why, there won’t be a soul there, tonight,
whom you don’t know! Not a face, my darling, you haven’t almost
grown up with.”
“But I haven’t
grown
up!” I cried. “I
haven’t
grown up!”
“The Patterson boys, the O’Sheas, the Gormans, the Lovells,”
Mother went on, as though repeating a soothing rune.
Barbara, next-in-age of my sisters, had stayed coiled up, cool as a
mermaid, among the cretonne cushions. “
No
fascinating strangers,”
she now said, mockingly.
3
At those words, what made my heart sink? No wild open seas,
ahead, of romance? No beautiful dangers? “No,” I agreed deflatedly,
“I suppose not.”
Aunt Kay had returned to her high-backed chair, composedly as
though not a thing were happening. Her face was turned to the fire,
away from us. She seemed withdrawn, wishful to be forgotten. What
ancient scene did she see, in the dancing flames? Suddenly, vibrant
and certain, her voice spoke out: “There’s a stranger in everyone,
at moments. Life would be a finished story, if there were not.
Mysteries, surprises, and revelations,
those
keep our wits awake and
our love glowing. Tonight, you’re seeming to see a new Katherine,
children. But she’s not
another
Katherine; she’s still yours – yours,
with beauty added, or let’s say the early dawn of it.”
Linda cried: “Oh, make her
go
to the ball!”
Out there, we heard the cab horse stamp in the snow. “Of course
she will go,” said Aunt Kay. “And she’ll dance for all of you. I am
very proud of her.” She turned to me. “Come, kiss me good night,
and start!”
They wrapped me up, and swept me into the cab. Inside, it was
cavernous and smelled musty. Father shut the door; Mother gave a
last, eloquent tap on the glass. Outlined against the glow of the hall
within, I saw my grouped family. They waved; I drove away. Round
me, where were the familiar landmarks? At this hour, seen by the
wobbling light of the dim carriage lamps, our streets appeared to be
those of an unknown city. Past me went unidentified archways,
snowdrifted porches and blinded shopfronts. It was slippery going,
downhill, till we reached the quay. There, we whipped up and went
jouncing over the cobbles. Ahead beamed the festive house; on our
flank, below, lay the water, silent and dark.
I did not know how I felt: I was in a turmoil. Through the tightclosed window I sent a glance up the crowded face of our town.
Then, all was well. Yes, above me still burned the sentinel candles!
Steadily, tier on tier, gleamed those points of light; each flame, on
its coloured wax stem, a symbolic heart shape. Each stood for a
home! It was still Christmas, going with me, encircling me. Nothing
was
left behind.
Happiness
O
ur home is an old farm, in orchard country. Over
night there had been a light fall of snow, on to which, as we neared
the end of our journey, the moon cast shadows of apple trees.
Silvery stretched the landscape, here a big barn, there a small
steepled church, alike hushed in midwinter peace. Streams, not yet
frozen, tinkled under the bridges. In the back of the family car,
Carol and I sat wedged among endless packages: resourceful Louise,
my married sister, having combined meeting us at the station with a
last-minute burst of shopping all around the village. In front, to the
slow-down of her driving, three of her children surged, singing
loudly, “Carols for Carol.” Above the noise, their mother flung back
news items over her shoulder. “Alec brought the tree; it’s as fine as
ever we had – Poor Cissie came in on the bus this morning – You
should see the cake; Mother let Frankie frost it, didn’t she, Frankie?