Grandmother fixed him firmly with her eye.
“And what about that beautiful voice? Is that to be squandered at a horrid little boys’ school?”
Mark’s eyes were every bit as firm as Grandmother’s.
“As a matter of fact, if you want to know, we sang a concert of Gilbert and Sullivan at Wilton House, and that’s very important sort of singing; and our singing master was just as good as Dr. Lente.”
Grandmother threw off the silk shawl that was over her knees, and pushed Mark to one side and trailed across the drawing-room.
“Ambition! Ambition! ‘Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition: by that sin fell the angels!’”
Mark was determined not to let Grandmother recite Shakespeare at him. He caught her by the hand and led her back to her chaise-longue and tucked her shawl round her, and opened the cigarette box and handed her a cigarette and lit it for her.
Grandmother puffed for a little while in silence. Then her eyes twinkled.
“Go to your horrid little boys’ school. I’ve one great comfort, Mark. What an atrocious nuisance you will be to the Royal Navy.” She made an imperious gesture. “Go away, grandson. Go away!”
As a matter of fact, Mark did not go to Wilton House that autumn. The headmaster was terribly sorry; he would have liked to have him back, but the school was full and he could not take him until after Christmas. Mark was not very upset about this because Madame was putting on some more concerts for the soldiers, which would include at Christmas a little version of “Dick Whittington,” in which Mark was to be the Cat.
To Sorrel it seemed a long, dreary autumn term. “The Tempest” came to an end and she was not asked to do another broadcast; and though she had “m’audition” ready, including a dance in which she got on her points, nobody seemed to want to see or hear her do it. She had even got an audition frock ready, for Hannah had decided that she must have a new frock, and the silk one was only suitable for parties and first nights. It had, as a matter of fact, not been worn since the first night of Grandmother’s play, because, owing to everybody being so busy and Miranda being so difficult, Miss Smith had not arranged a party for Miranda’s fourteenth birthday at which party frocks would be worn. Hannah had been very reasonable about the utility frock and had not made any fuss when Sorrel had chosen coral colour, only saying that with the winter coming on they could do with a bit of brightness. There had been a party of a sort given by Uncle Mose and Aunt Lindsey for Mark’s eleventh birthday; but that had been noisy games like “murder,” and not suitable for silk with yellow flowers on it. One way and another, Sorrel felt terribly flat; and because she felt flat she was a prey to miserable thoughts, and the most miserable of all was that there was no news of their father. News was coming through now about other prisoners in the hands of the Japanese, but nobody ever wrote and said they had seen or heard anything of their father. Sorrel tried terribly hard to go on hoping; but little by little a horrid, snake-like fear was settling down inside her.
The autumn was depressing for everybody because the weather was so nasty.
Alice said: “When the fog gets into my old north and south and I can’t see anything in front of my meat pies. I feel a bit off and I don’t care who knows it.”
In spite of the special matinées for the forces, the term dragged and dragged. Almost every day groups of children were waiting in the hall in their best clothes, and everybody called out “Good luck!” “Good luck!” but Sorrel was never among them. Mark and Holly felt this shame as keenly as Sorrel did. They took a truculent attitude about it. Mark said:
“I wouldn’t want to act in an old pantomime, anyway; and that’s all they’re going to the audition for.”
Holly said:
“It’s just because they’ve all done dancing longer than you, and that makes a difference. And who wants to dance, anyway?”
But they were ashamed, no matter how hard they pretended they were not, and felt that the Forbes family had been let down.
Then one morning early, just before the end of the term, the telephone bell rang. Alice ran up the stairs beaming from ear to ear.
“Put Sorrel into that new frock, Hannah. Her Miss Jay has just rung up. She’s to go for an audition. Somebody’s ill in some show and they want a child to take her part.”
Sorrel was the only child going to an audition that morning. She felt very self-conscious as she stood in the hall waiting to be inspected, though she knew she had nothing to be ashamed of in her coral-coloured frock with Holly’s coral bows in her hair. Mark and Holly were so proud of her that they made a point of seeing that everybody in the Academy had a look at her and wished her good luck. Mark raced round, raking out anyone who might possibly have missed her.
“Go and see Sorrel, she’s going to an audition. She looks all right, she ought to get it.”
Sorrel came back from the audition, her face radiant. Someone was putting on the pantomime “The Babes in the Wood”; there was an epidemic of influenza and the girl babe had been very ill and would not be well enough to play this Christmas, and Sorrel had got her part. The part was written in verse and quite easy to learn; but, as well, there was a song and there should have been a good deal of dancing; but, fortunately, the boy babe danced very well, so Sorrel’s dancing could be simplified, and she had learnt quite enough by now to manage what was required of her. As they went home on the night of the audition, Mark summed up their general pleasure.
“There’s Sorrel with a big part in a pantomime, and me being the Cat in ‘Dick Whittington’ and going to Wilton House next term, and there’s Holly playing the Dame in ‘Dick Whittington,’ and she’s the youngest pupil in the Academy that ever played a Dame, and, as well, it’s almost Christmas. I should say we were pretty lucky.”
Christmas was much more difficult that it had been last year. Even though the children, what with presents and pocket-money, and, in Sorrel’s case, earnings, had far more money to spend, presents were absolutely hopeless; there were hardly any of them in the shops, and those that were even bearable cost over a pound.
Sorrel bought books for everybody; books were as scarce as everything else if you wanted a special book, but if you went with an open mind, prepared to take anything that was suitable, you could get some good things. There was a book on aeroplanes for Mark and a book on costume for Holly; and a very grand hymn book for Hannah, with tunes as well as hymns in it; and a novel for Alice. Alice liked reading something that she could cry over. This book had a picture of a girl’s head on the cover and on the inside of the cover it said, “This book will make you laugh and will make you cry, but you will not be able to put it down.”
Mark gave another set of useful presents—nails, tin-tacks, wire, everything for mending. Holly gave everybody notepaper. Now that Sorrel and Mark wrote regularly to one of the Fossils a lot of notepaper was used, and there never seemed to be any. Alice wrote to friends in the theatre when she had time. Hannah was always writing to people she had known in Martins, so notepaper and envelopes was obviously a good choice. Plants were even more expensive than they had been last Christmas; so, instead, they bought flowers. These cost enough, Alice said, to make the hair on a saint curl; but the children said Christmas was Christmas and should be properly kept. They bought flowers not only for Grandmother but for Aunt Marguerite and Aunt Lindsey as well. Nobody gave a present to Miriam, though they would have liked to, because nobody wanted to give one to Miranda, and it might look pointed.
On Christmas Eve, Sorrel went up to bed at the same time as Mark and Holly, so that they could all have the thrill of hanging out their stockings at the same moment.
“That’s the gorgeousness of Christmas,” said Mark. “I know the stockings can’t simply bulge like they used to, but it doesn’t make any difference to how you feel inside when you hang it up. I absolutely know this is going to be the loveliest Christmas we ever had.”
Christmas morning started as usual: Holly sitting beside Sorrel in the bed, and Mark on
the eiderdown at the other end, and Hannah sitting on the side of the bed, and Alice standing at the door as audience. The only unusual thing about this Christmas morning was that Hannah seemed queer. She kept saying she felt all of a jump, and she made three false starts before she began her carol. At last, however, they got her started:
“The first Noel, as the angels do say,
Was to certain poor shepherds in fields where they lay,
In fields where they lay, a-keeping their sheep,
On a cold winter’s night that was freezing so deep.”
All the children took enormous breaths to start to blow into their instruments, when the door opened and who should come in but Uncle Mose. He looked messy for him, and he needed a shave, but he was his usual gay self. He rubbed his hands.
“Vell, vell, vell! Happy Christmas, everybody.”
The children hugged him and asked what on earth he was doing there at that time in the morning. He rubbed Mark’s hair the wrong way and played with Holly’s curls.
“I’ve travelled all night because a present for you three had gone astray. It went down to Martins by mistake and I’ve been to fetch it back to get it to you in time for Christmas morning.”
They all spoke at once.
“What is it?”
“Where is it?”
“Is it for all of us?”
“You shall play it in,” said Uncle Mose. “Come on, start again.”
The children hummed down their trumpets and Mark beat with a free hand on a drum, and Hannah kept time on a triangle.
“Noel, Noel, Noel …” And then they all stopped because someone was singing, a big, cheerful voice coming up the stairs. The door opened, and there was their father!
Such a lot of talking went on. Luckily, their father had been able to gossip to Uncle Mose on the train or he would never have sorted out the jumble about “The Babes in the Wood,” Wilton House, the dame in the pantomime and the Fossils; but as he knew it already, he was able to sit on the bed amongst them and tell them with absolute truth that he was proud of them all and thought every arrangement was splendid. He told them a little about himself, how he had been wounded and hidden in a native’s hut, and finally escaped across India, and how they were meant to have had a cable and he did not know why they had not.
While their father was talking, Hannah and Alice went away. Uncle Mose was following when he popped his head back through the door.
“See you to-night, everybody. What’s the betting this is the best Christmas night this house has ever had?”
About the Author
Noel Streatfeild (1895–1986) was born in Sussex. Her father, a clergyman, was vicar of St. Leonards-on-Sea and then of Eastbourne during her childhood. She was one of five children and found vicarage life very restricting. At a young age, Streatfeild began to show a talent for acting and was sent to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, after which she acted professionally for a number of years before turning to writing. After working through the blitz of the Second World War, Noel devoted herself to the field of children’s literature. She won the Carnegie Medal for her book Ballet Shoes, and was awarded an OBE in 1983. A vicarage daughter, factory girl, actress, model, social worker, writer, and crusader for good books, Streatfeild led a full life. Her experiences enriched her stories, which were so popular that, by her eightieth birthday, she had earned herself the title of a “national monument.”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1944 by Noel Streatfeild
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2104-3
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Noel Streatfeild, Theatre Shoes
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