‘I was the same,’ she whispered now, staring fixedly at a point about half-way down Dai’s broad chest. ‘As soon as I saw you I felt that you were the – the person I’d waited for, only I never even knew I was waiting! Yesterday, when I walked into the dining room … oh, I was so happy, I could scarcely believe I wasn’t dreaming!’
He nodded. ‘Me, too. They’d talked about a new maid, Biddy, but you were the last person I expected to see. You came in with your head bent, and that cap-thing on your pretty curls, clutching the soup tureen as though it were your first-born … I knew it were you at once, though I couldn’t see your face. Oh Biddy, a miracle it is that we’ve met up again! A bloody miracle!’
And Biddy, who disapproved of strong language, who would normally have winced at anyone describing a miracle in such terms, just nodded and looked up into his face once more. ‘It is,’ she said earnestly. ‘It really is a bloody miracle – I prayed for it hard enough!’
And because she had raised her face at last and because he could read the worshipping expression in those big, blue eyes, Dai Evans bent his head and kissed her lips.
It should have been a light little kiss, a friendly kiss, but somehow it was not. Their lips clung, as though they had a will of their own and wished to remain close, and Biddy’s body gradually relaxed until she was leaning against Dai’s broad chest.
They might have remained there for ever, she thought afterwards, only they both heard a distant shout and then the patter of small feet, thumpety-thumping down the stairs.
‘It’s them little buggers,’ Dai said, very reprehensively, Biddy thought. ‘Come out wi’ me after dinner … luncheon, I mean? I’ll meet you outside the Baptist church on the corner … better that way, eh?’
‘Much better. I’ll come if I can, but … oh Dai, you’d better go!’
‘Can’t, they’ll be here in two shakes. Look, gi’s my cup an’ I’ll sit by the fire …’
He was innocently in position when the twins, closely followed by their father, burst into the room.
‘Biddy, Biddy, look what farver Chrissmus give us!’
‘Biddy, Biddy, what a go, eh? See our clockwork choo-choos!’
Peace, Biddy could see, was over for the day. The twins had been partially dressed but lacked shoes and socks and their fair curls stood on end as though they had wrenched themselves free half-way through a hair brushing.
‘Come on aht of it,’ their father said wrathfully, grabbing one twin by his left arm and the other by his right. ‘Your mummy said dress first and she meant it. Leave Biddy alone, she’s gettin’ your breakfast and if you pester you won’t get no grub. What about that for a threat, eh?’
But the twins were unimpressed.
‘Biddy, there was choccy in our stockin’s, an’ a tangerine! Whistles too … see?’ Johnny blew a long blast just to prove the truth of his words. ‘Red for me, blue for Fred,’ he added.
‘An’ we had a rag story book what you can’t tear,’ Fred shouted over his shoulder as he was towed out of the room. ‘An’ a b’loon in the top, red for me, blue for Johnny. An’… an’…’
Dai had slipped unobtrusively out of the room and was half-way up the stairs, his cup of tea in one hand. Biddy
closed the kitchen door on them all and hurried back to get on with her work – to start her work, rather. But the kitchen clock only said twenty minutes to seven, so she was still early and could take her time.
Nevertheless, the breakfast today was to be a big one. Eggs, bacon, kidneys, sausages, bottled tomatoes, fried bread … and that was just what you might call the main course. The twins would have milky porridge and a poached egg each, the adults would have grapefruit first, then their main course and then lots of hot buttered toast and coffee.
It’s a bloomin’ wonder the rich can roll up the stairs to bed each night with all they eat, Biddy told herself, beginning to collect the ingredients for this mammoth meal which would last a poor person two days, if not a week. Kedgeree tomorrow, and I’ve no more idea how to make a kedgeree than fly to the moon. But Mrs Gallagher will show me; she says it’s really easy. And this afternoon I’m going to meet Dai … oh, how ever shall I wait!
But in fact Biddy was so busy that the morning positively flew, and that was with all the women mucking in to get everything ready and oh the table in time.
‘We have our main hot meal at noon on Christmas Day, then a cold supper,’ Mrs Gallagher explained. ‘Then on Boxing Day we have cold meals all day, except for breakfast, which is kedgeree, and the evening dinner is usually served with a hot pudding of some sort. But Christmas dinner is always a bit daunting. Never mind, many hands make light work as they say.’
And with Elizabeth and Biddy doing the vegetables, Mrs Gallagher making bread sauce and stuffing and Mrs Prescott garlanding the half-cooked turkey with pork sausages and keeping an eye on the pudding, making the brandy sauce and laying the table, everything got done in the end, though there were several moments when Biddy was sure they would not eat until teatime.
And the Christmas dinner! Her own plate was brought through from the dining-room by Mrs Gallagher, piled high with good things. Great slices of creamy-white turkey breast, chestnut stuffing steaming on the side, golden-brown roast potatoes, red currant jelly, dark purple broccoli, pale green sprouts, emerald peas … and the gravy, golden-bubbled, over all.
‘Don’t worry about us, we’ll take ages to get through this lot,’ Mrs Gallagher said. ‘Just eat it at your own pace. We’ll come through when it’s time to serve the pudding anyway, because we flame it in brandy, which the twins will love, and that takes practice.’
So Biddy took her time – and then could not eat half what was on her plate. She was terribly tempted to fetch a paper bag and put the dinner inside it and go out with it later, to find some poor tramp or half-starved child, but Mrs Gallagher, seeing her look guiltily at the food still piled on her plate, told her that it would not be wasted.
‘It goes in the pig-bin, just outside the back door,’ she explained. ‘Then it’s given to people who have a pig … Stuart doesn’t believe in wasting food.’ She smiled at Biddy. ‘We’ve all been through bad times, just like you have,’ she said softly. ‘People don’t forget.’
But Biddy, presently tucking into a very tiny slice of Christmas pudding, for she had assured Mrs Gallagher that she would burst if she was given a full helping, thought that her employer was wrong. People did forget, over and over. They fought their way up from poverty to bearable circumstances, from bearable circumstances to riches, and then their early experiences became transformed.
They began to believe they had fought their way up because they were, in some way, better and more worthy people than those who were still either struggling, or fixed at the bottom of the heap. They could no longer remember the ache of hunger, the pain of constant worry over where the next meal was to come from or the worse pain of seeing one you loved in miserable circumstances.
Now, the rich looked back and saw themselves as having been the deserving poor who had struggled out of the poverty pit by sheer hard work. Those who were still poor were condemned as idle and feckless, they drank too much, never saved money for a rainy day, frittered what they earned, when they earned anything at all, that was. Poverty had become, in their twisted minds, a punishment for failure – a deserved punishment what was more – and of course you didn’t give to people like that, or pity them, or try to help. You despised them, pushed them away, preached at them … they were less human than your fat lap-dog, less regarded than the set of your jacket, the way your skirt hung at the back.
But the Gallaghers were not like that. They were caring people who knew all about poverty and remembered their own circumstances still. Mrs Gallagher belonged to the League of Welldoers and worked tirelessly to raise money for them, and Mr Gallagher was a Goodfellow – Biddy remembered how the Goodfellows had helped her Mam when she had first lost her job, and the wonderful food parcel which had been brought round after dark that first, terrible Christmas.
Biddy finished her Christmas pudding and jumped to her feet. Time to start the washing up, if she was to be ready to go out and meet Dai by the Baptist chapel this afternoon.
‘I’ll just make up the fire, ma’am, and then I’ll go out for a bit of a blow, I’m thinking,’ Biddy said, as the last dish was put away and the kitchen was as clean and tidy as though no one had worked in it for days. ‘I’ll fetch some more coke in from the shed.’
‘Thank you, Biddy,’ Mrs Gallagher said. ‘The twins have been put down for a nap, though I think they’re too excited to sleep for long, and the men are snoozing with their feet up in the study, so my sister and I will have a cosy chat in the living-room and tell each other what marvellous husbands we have and how lucky we are with our children.’
‘You mean you’ll have a moan about me Da eating too much and then snoring the afternoon away, and Auntie Lilac will have a moan about Uncle Joe having one too many at the
dockyard pub when his ship comes in and reeling down the road shaking hands with lampposts,’ Elizabeth said, coming into the kitchen and heading for the scrap bag. ‘Can I take some bits of bread and stuff out to the birds, Mam? I took some out earlier and it’s all gone, they’ve scoffed the lot, poor little chaps. And I’ll give them clean water at the same time because it keeps icing over and that isn’t much fun for them.’
Biddy could dimly remember that when her father had been alive they had lived in a tiny house with a tiny garden, but she could not remember her mother feeding the birds. It was, however, a way of life with Elizabeth and Mrs Gallagher, who had told her that not only did they feed the birds three or four times a day, on three very fancy bird tables erected in different parts of the garden, but they had notebooks in which they noted down the species of birds which visited them, and they drew tiny pictures of each visitor to the tables with information concerning the length of their stay in the garden, what food they preferred, and whether they were what Mrs Gallagher called ‘storm-tossed’, which meant that they were not normally found in Britain, or simply a summer visitor.
‘You want to feed the birds?’ Mrs Gallagher looked at her little wristwatch. ‘Yes, no reason why not. Try them with some warm water, it won’t freeze so easily, and see if there’s any dripping still soft in the larder. If so, pour it over the bread because it makes it more nourishing than bread alone. Then what will you do, dear? I’m afraid Christmas afternoon is usually rather flat.’
It had not occurred to Biddy before, but now she realised that despite her beautiful home, her friends and her wonderful family, Elizabeth was probably quite a lonely girl. She was encouraged to bring friends home, to go round to their houses when invited, to socialise in any way she chose, but her parents were very content with one another’s company and there must be times when, with the best will in the world, Elizabeth felt a little bit left out.
‘After feeding the birds? Oh, I dunno, mooch around I suppose.’ Elizabeth glanced across at Biddy. ‘What are you going to do, Bid? Can I do it with you?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Biddy said after only the very slightest hesitation. ‘I’m, going out for some fresh air, we can go together.’
She could have done nothing else, but she felt a real stab of disappointment. She had worked so hard and was so looking forward to seeing Dai alone.… Elizabeth was a very nice girl, but …
But fate, for once, was on her side. She and Elizabeth had fed the birds together, laughing over the antics of a very cheeky robin, who actually flew to the bird-table whilst the two girls were still spreading out the feast and began pecking at the food. The snow was still falling, desultorily, but it was laying too, and Elizabeth had just remarked wistfully that she hoped it would be nice and deep by the time Christmas was over so that she and her friends might go sledging, snowballing and ice-skating, when Joey Prescott wandered out to them.
‘Hello, girls,’ he said. ‘I’ve ate too much, my stomach’s tight as a perishin’ drum. Stuart and I thought we’d walk across to the lake in Prince’s Park, see if the ice is holdin’. Fancy some exercise?’
‘That would be lovely, wouldn’t it, Biddy?’ Elizabeth said at once. ‘We were only going for a walk ourselves.… We’ll go and put our coats and boots on – is Dai coming?’
‘No, the lazy beggar won’t. Well, he says he’s goin’ to pop over to his shipmate’s place so he may not be back for tea, but he’ll be in for supper. What about you, Biddy? Don’t let Elizabeth answer for you, luv, or you’ll never open your mouth again!’
Biddy laughed but seized the opportunity gratefully. ‘I’d really like to go round to my friend Ellen and wish her a merry Christmas,’ she admitted. ‘Umm … will it be all right if I don’t come back for tea, though? She lives on Paul Street, a good walk from here. The trams won’t be running on Christmas Day, will they?’
‘No, not a chanst,’ Joey said. ‘I’ll make it right with Nellie, though I’m sure she won’t expect you back for tea; it’ll only be a cuppa and a bit of cake, seein’ as ’ow we guzzled fit to bust earlier.’
So Biddy hurried up to her room and put her trusty duffle-coat on over her uniform, though she did remove her white apron first. Then she donned Mrs Gallagher’s wellingtons, tied Ellen’s Christmas-present scarf round her head, put on the matching gloves and trundled down the stairs, feeling as hot and excited as though she were going to a party and not just walking down to the Baptist chapel on the corner.
Mrs Gallagher and her husband were in the hallway, both dressed up for going out. Mrs Gallagher was trying to make her husband wear the most enormous, stripy scarf and he was resisting fiercely. They swayed around the hall, laughing and knocking into the furniture, and never even noticed Biddy as she slipped out of the front door.
Out here it was a different world; a white world, with a keen little breeze blowing which ruffled the smooth surface of the snow and sent it up into the air in small, swirling eddies. But Biddy didn’t mind what the weather did; she was off to meet Dai!
They met as arranged. Biddy came round the corner and there was Dai, hunched into a duffle-coat rather similar to hers, with his cap pulled well down over his brow and big boots on his feet. She could see almost nothing of him, yet already she would have known him anywhere, in any disguise. He did not hear her approach and was earnestly staring in the
wrong direction through the whirling flakes when she touched his arm.