The Winter is Past by Noel Streatfeild

Author:Noel Streatfeild
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2018-07-24T09:58:57+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS LESS than three weeks to Christmas, and the village shops trimmed themselves. Mrs. Vidler and Rosie, hearing the news, went down to have a look, and Mrs. Vidler came back so low hearted that she had to keep her head turned away, her blurred eyes looking over the bare brown fields. Christmas! Fancy calling those scraps of paper and crackers Christmas decorations! They ought to see Deptford High Street of a Christmas. That was something like. Everybody jostling and pushing in the shops when the Christmas clubs had paid out, and all, however poor, had a bit to spend. Did you good, that did. They talked a lot about Christmas at Levet, but she’d take a bet what sort of Christmas it would be. Might have a laugh in the servants’ hall and there’d be sure to be enough to eat, but a laugh wasn’t up to much when there were only women to have it, and good food was all right, but it didn’t taste the same when it wasn’t in your own home, and saved up for. Anyway, everything was like a cinder when you hadn’t got your man about. Oh, God! she was fed up with living alone. She’d often grumbled back in Deptford of this and that, but now what wouldn’t she give for even the dirty mean jobs. She shook her head to rid her eyes of tears. It was Christmas that was getting her down. If only she didn’t keep remembering other years. Old Vid coming in with the paper streamers from Wooly’s, and the laugh they had hanging them up. Oh, well, the war wouldn’t go on for ever, and if there were no bombs, Vid, or no Vid, she’d get home next September. It was right to think about the children, but they had themselves to think about, too. Silly old fool, Vid was, he thought, because of his Sundays, when they snatched at a bit of what he called “a little of what you fancy” that they ought to be satisfied, but that wasn’t anything so much to a woman. A woman liked the sudden way a man would act silly, and kiss her over the washing up, and the need he had of her, always something a man wanted that he couldn’t do for himself. Mrs. Vidler gave her head another shake. Shocking the way she was carrying on. What had she to grumble at compared to the wives of the soldiers and sailors? That was something. A few days’ leave and then nothing for months and fear at the pit of your stomach all the time. There were days when she wished the Germans would get going, it had to come, and the sooner it was started the sooner it would be over. This hanging around waiting was what got you down.

Because she was ashamed of herself, and of the backsliding of her courage, Mrs. Vidler, who had now wangled herself out of nursery meals, pranced into the servants’ hall for lunch, with a “I’m on top of the world” flounce.

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