If You Were the Only Girl. Anne Bennett

labour. When Clive was born he was so small and puny the doctor thought he had little chance of survival. However, Clive did survive, but he was doubly precious to his mother. Cook said he was cosseted and spoilt and that was why she didn’t want him to go away to school. Lord and Lady Heatherington used to have up and downers about it. I heard them myself. She maintained Clive was delicate, not strong enough for the rough and tumble of school, and he would say that was poppycock and that the lad was turning into a mother’s boy.’

      ‘And was he?’

      ‘I think he was a bit,’ Clara said. ‘Lady Heatherington certainly pampered him more than was good for him. Anyway, Lord Heatherington won and the boy was sent away to school the following year.’

      ‘So where’s this Clive now?’

      ‘Still at school in England, sitting for his Higher Certificate,’ Clara said. ‘Then he will go to Oxford University where his brothers were all due to go. Mind you,’ she added with a smile, ‘he’s a cheeky young pup, and certainly has a way with him, but you’ll see that for yourself soon.’

      Intrigued by what she had heard, Lucy looked forward to that.

      It was time to decorate the house for Christmas. Clara told Lucy that the attics at Maxted Hall, the Heatheringtons’ proper home in Sutton Coldfield, near Birmingham, had been filled with decorations, but they hadn’t thought of them when they had packed up to leave. So Jerry and Mr Carlisle had to travel to Letterkenny to buy more, and Lucy and Clodagh sneaked out to have a look in the sitting room when Evie told them how beautiful it was. Lucy stood at the doorway, entranced. Garlands of ivy, yew and laurel fell in swags around the room, interwoven with twinkling lights, and holly wreaths with bright red berries decorated the doors. The ceiling was festooned with streamers and paper lanterns that, Evie told them, spun round in the heat from the fires.

      ‘What’s that?’ Lucy asked, pointing to a rather mundane piece of greenery pinned to the ceiling.

      ‘That’s mistletoe,’ Evie said. ‘And Mrs O’Leary told me that if a girl stands under that a man can kiss her, and if a man stands under then he is inviting a girl to kiss him.’

      ‘Goodness,’ said Lucy. ‘If that’s true I would take care not to go near it.’

      ‘You wouldn’t get the chance,’ Clodagh laughed.

      ‘And that suits me,’ Lucy replied.

      The kitchen became a hive of activity. Delicious spicy smells wafted in the air as Cook weighed, pounded and kneaded ingredients. The family still had to be fed, too, and Cook’s temper often got the better of her, especially when she was forced to forego the little snooze she often had in the chair after the family’s midday meal.

      The Christmas cakes had been made weeks before and Cook kept dribbling sherry over them and promised they would look the business when she had them iced. They would all have to have a stir of the pudding, Cook told the staff, and when they did that they could make a wish.

      ‘What will you wish for?’ Lucy asked Clodagh.

      ‘Oh, you can’t say,’ Clodagh answered. ‘If you tell, it won’t come true.’

      Well, Lucy decided, she wouldn’t risk that. She would wish for something to happen so that she could move back home again. As Christmas drew nearer she missed her family more than ever, and that was the only thing she really wanted.

      They all heard the van chugging up the drive and drawing to a halt in front of the house on the evening of 22 December. As they sat down for tea, Mrs O’Leary told them all that Master Clive had arrived home, bringing with him from Letterkenny a huge tree and a big box of baubles and lights to decorate it.

      ‘What sort of tree?’ Lucy asked.

      ‘A Christmas tree, of course,’ Clara said. ‘You must have seen Christmas trees. They have one in the Diamond in Donegal Town every year, and in the church.’

      Lucy nodded. ‘Yes, but I’ve never seen a tree inside anyone’s house.’

      ‘Well, they certainly have one here,’ Clara said. ‘I always think that once the tree is up and decorated then Christmas is just around the corner.’

      The others began to talk about Christmases past. Though Lucy said nothing, her own memories were stirred back to the blissful time when her father had been alive and healthy, a time she had thought would go on for ever. He had made Christmas exciting then, taking her and Danny into the woods to search for holly with lots of red berries to brighten up the cottage, and he had shown them how to make streamers with scraps of coloured paper that he would string around the room. Their mother had laughed at his foolishness and said he was worse than any wean, but her voice had been soft when she said this, and her eyes would be very bright, and the smell in the cottage was fragrant as the goodies that Minnie cooked for the festive season overrode the smell from the turf fire.

      On Christmas Day itself, Lucy’s toes would curl with excitement when she woke to find the bulging stocking hanging on the end of her bed. And there were such delights in store: always an orange and an apple, a small bar of chocolate, a bag of sweets and a toy or two. This might be a tin whistle, mouth organ or puzzle, and maybe tin soldiers for Danny and a whip and top for Lucy. One Christmas day, she remembered with a rush of pleasure she had a rag doll pushed into hers and she had been speechless with delight.

      They would greet friends and neighbours on their way to Mass and ‘Happy Christmas’ seemed to be on everybody’s lips. Back home the cottage would be filled with the smell of the fowl roasting above the fire, and the plum duff that was bubbling away in its own pot above the smouldering turf.

      If the weather was up to it after that delicious dinner, Seamus would take them all for a brisk walk, even Grainne when she was big enough to be swung onto his shoulders. They would arrive back with red cheeks and tingling fingers and toes, glad of the cocoa and gingerbread their mother would have ready. When they were thawed out, Seamus would play dominoes with them, and Snap with his set of playing cards, and end the day singing all the carols they could remember before it was time for bed. Lucy recalled how she loved the rounded tone of her father’s voice.

      But now, for her brothers and sister, Christmas Day had just become a day like any other. If there was a hen that had stopped laying they might eat that as a sort of treat, but there was no money spare for fancy food and she wondered what her brothers and sister would make of the vast array of food in the kitchen in Windthorpe Lodge, and the tantalising and spicy smells that lingered in the air and made her mouth water.

      Cook knew she would be judged on her dinner, especially with visitors in the house, and she had pored over the menu for the Christmas meal with Clara, relieved when Lady Heatherington declared herself pleased with it. Later that day, Clodagh showed it to Lucy.

      ‘So,’ she said, ‘after a full cooked breakfast at nine o’clock, they will be sitting down to Scottish salmon with lemon mayonnaise and beetroot dressing, followed by pheasant soup and warm bread rolls. Then they will be served goose, stuffed with apple, chestnut and sausage forcemeat, cooked in a red-wine-and-gooseberry sauce, roast potatoes and roast parsnips, Brussels sprouts, creamed baton carrots and lashings of gravy.’

      ‘Golly,’ said Lucy. ‘And plum duff after all that.’

      ‘Yeah, and served with brandy butter.’

      ‘I’m surprised they will have any room,’ Lucy said, and added in a low voice, ‘and I can just imagine the temper Cook will be in, ’til it has all been served.’

      ‘Oh, I’ll say,’ Clodagh said with feeling. ‘We’ll do well to keep our heads down. I tell you, we won’t be doing right for doing wrong that day. And she told me that she’s really glad that she is not responsible for any of the drinks, that Mr Carlisle will sort that out as usual, because there is mulled wine before the meal, champagne and red wine to serve with it, followed by coffee, and then the men have brandy and port. But that’s for the nobs,’ she finished with a laugh. ‘I doubt you and I will be fed so well.’

      ‘No,’