With thanks to all you reading and/or reviewing. I can't believe we're at Christmas of 1915 already!


The Siege of Kut was well underway, and General Haig had replaced John French –to the dubious relief, so Anne Blythe's letters had it, of Susan Baker –by the time the girls who pinned hopes emerged from their exams.

There was no question that year of having a Swallowgate Christmas; Faith had taken it for granted that they would, and to that end packed away her French grammar, and devoted a gruelling half-hour to what Una would have called 'housekeeping,' purely with a mind to discerning how much money could be spared on Christmas gifts for the others. Poppy, witnessing this particular battle, had offered help, to which Faith had replied by tossing her head and assuring Poppy that somewhere one of her Meredith ancestors was surely turning in her grave at the thought of talking money with someone not family. That sent Poppy into peals of laughter that proved contagious, and was followed by the suggestion–once her breath had come back –that as Poppy had errands to run herself, would Faith's Meredith ancestors object to her joining in the shopping expedition. It was some minutes before Faith, rosy cheeked and clutching a stitch in her side, could acquiesce, dismissing the Meredith ancestors with the wave of her hand. There was a flash as a circlet of pearls caught the sun.

'You've taken to wearing it properly then,' said Poppy mildly, gathering purse, handbag and gloves together.

'You knew?'

'Well you aren't exactly covert about it,' said Poppy, sorting through so much clutter for mitt thins to be worn under the gloves. Winter that year was cold but dry, and Poppy was not at all convinced that the kind of gloves her mother believed young ladies wore –though certainly nice to look at –were going to do much to keep blood in her fingers, which were prone to losing all feeling without warning even on mild days.

'Your hand was always going to your neck when you wore it there,' said Poppy, emerging triumphant with the desired wool undergloves.

'Trust you to notice. Does anyone tell you that you're terrifyingly clever by turns, Mouse?'

Poppy shrugged diffidently. 'What are you looking for anyway?'

'I might ask the same of you. Have you run out of stuff for tatting?'

'No. It isn't only you who thinks of the holiday, you goose,' Poppy affectionately said and linked her arm through Faith's so that they descended the stair together.

'Good. You can tell me who needs what then. I'm at a loss for ideas, and not so dab as the rest of you when it comes to handicraft.'

Poppy exhaled audibly through her nose, little clouds of white steam rising into the air in proof of this dismissal.

'You've a lovely hand at drawing,' said Poppy, with a sincerity startling in its evident totality.

'Do you think so?' said Faith, torn between embarrassment that her absent-minded sketches of everything from the girls who pinned hopes to her overworked brain's imaginative representation of stem-changing verbs should not have eluded Poppy and pleasure at the compliment. Poppy noticed, her eyes widened owlishly and she squeezed the arm linked through hers as she said, 'Of course. Stop and tilt your head back a minute –there will be ice on your face if you cry.'

'Mummy could draw,' said Faith, startling herself as much as Poppy, whose eyes went so wide that they looked like grey moons. All those nights in the little architectural afterthought of a bedroom they shared and Faith had never mentioned her mother except to say Carl had her eyes, and Poppy, gem that she was had never once pressed her to talk about her.

'Everyone used to say so when they came to the Maywater Manse. She drew flowers mostly –and us as babies, I think, though no one saw those pictures. I mean we tended not to put them on display. I knew I looked like her though without her eyes, everyone used to say that too, but I used desperately to want more than that, because I couldn't see it. Mother had looked like –well she looked like a prayer-book angel, maybe, and I looked like a ragamuffin. So when I started drawing it was of her, because I thought if I could catch her just right I'd see me, or see what people were seeing of her in me. I couldn't do it though, still can't, so I never thought that maybe she'd given me that part of her too.'

'Well I don't know,' said Poppy, 'I've never seen any of her pictures of flowers, and I don't know what she looked like. But you can draw –well –and in the right mood, curled up in that window seat, I bet some unsuspecting soul would take you for a prayer-book angel too. At least,' said Poppy, dimpling, 'until you got that glint in your eye that means mischief.'

'I have not –'began Faith, but Poppy affected not to hear her over the screech of the wind. Tired of walking bent double against the gale-force of it, they ducked under the overhang to the butcher's shop for respite.

'Look,' said Poppy, 'I've got to get chalk, I need it for pattern-tracing and I've run out. Why don't you go and see if there's such a thing as a niddy-noddy in Mr. McPherson's store? Nan's set her heart on one, she's that tired of making skeins by wrapping them round chair-backs, and I don't blame her, but I also can't afford it. We can give it to her jointly though. I'll give you my share of the money when I catch you up.'

Faith nodded and was across the road and deep in the heart of McPherson's Haberdashery before it occurred to her that Poppy could have as easily purchased her chalk there as at the art supply store –more easily in fact. Then Poppy was there talking hatpins for Ruthie and notebooks for Nan, who had expressed a wish to try writing her economies down with the vague thought of spinning them into 'proper' stories, and what did Faith think Di would like?

'Letter paper,' said Faith promptly.

They lost an agreeable afternoon to peering through windows of the more extravagant places and conjuring the things they would buy from them if they could – a new hat for Faith, thick gloves for Poppy –and deliberating over the things they could have. Faith found letter paper well-suited to Di, thick, creamy and plain, the kind that would easily stand up to writing on both sides. Poppy was delighted in a sturdily efficient fish-knife for Mara, the one that had come with Swallowgate being by that creature's accounts at best dull and unusable, at worst possessed of a demon bent on maiming the wielder by method of chopping their fingers off at the knuckle. Faith, observing this purchase said, 'It's going to be a very culinary-themed gift giving if Mara carves anything more for Nan to use baking.'

'Oh she is,' said Poppy seriously. 'I've seen her working on the pieces of a butter dish.'

'Don't tell me, the covered dish we have is somehow defective.'

'I think she thinks Nan will remember to use one that's made for her,' said Poppy, and they walked up the lane to Swallowgate laughing.

They had only got as far as the hall when they were overwhelmed with the aromatic smell of cinnamon and cloves, which perfume they took to mean Mara or Di had got control of the fruitcake. In fact it was Nan, ladling pressed apple juice into a vat on the stovetop and seasoning it accordingly. She decanted some of it promptly into mugs unasked on seeing them, windswept and noses frost-stung.

'We may yet get snow,' said Poppy, nursing the mug of hot cider. Faith, swallowed a mouthful herself, added her assent and leaned against the counter, letting the rising steam settle over her like mist. The cider was a warm golden weight in her stomach and she was glad of it, but it was still too cold to warm up by inches. Poppy seemed to think so too; she came and flanked Nan on the other side of the stove, holding her fingers out to absorb the heat of it. The index finger especially was white and bloodless.

'What I would like,' said Poppy, commencing the form for one of Nan's economies, 'is hot water bottles I could fit in my gloves. What do you think? Can it be done?'

Nan hummed consideration and gave the cider a stir.

'Does it need anything? More cloves? More cinnamon?'

'Nutmeg,' said Faith and Poppy together.

Nan reached across the counter and Faith for the hard ball of the nutmeg seed and began to grate it into the cider, leaving the air heavy with the sweet, nutty scent of it. Faith only half noticed though, her focus was on Poppy's index finger, still white from knuckle to nail.

'Does that hurt at all?'

Poppy blinked owlishly, caught off guard. 'This? A little.' She flexed her finger and grimaced. 'It'll go in a minute, it always does. Mum's hands are the same.'

'Try turning a windmill with your arm –away from the stove,' hastily added by Faith as an afterthought.

Poppy went, and did, and let out a squeal of startlement when blood rushed back into her fingers and left them stinging.

'Oh! How did you know that would work?'

'Lucky guess,' said Faith. 'It had to be faster than waiting on the heat of the hot cider to take effect.' Still, she made a mental note to write to Jem and tell him about it and ask for his opinion. She'd never seen anything like Poppy's hand before, healthy and serviceable bar that one bloodless digit.

'Is it always your index finger?'

'No. Sometimes it's the middle one, sometimes both. Why?'

'She's beginning to sound quite the nurse,' said Nan, lacing an arm around Faith's shoulders and giving them an affectionate squeeze with the hand not stirring the cider.

'Yes, quite,' said Poppy. She took another sip of cider, frowned, assured Nan that no, nothing was wrong with it, and tried ineffectively to look over at Faith unnoticed.

'You're all right Mouse,' said Faith kindly, 'I'm not going anywhere, I promise. As you say, much too much mischief in me –a very imperfect nurse I'd make!'

'Oh you'd charm your way in,' said Poppy loyally, but there was a smile warm in her voice, 'and no doubt cure the patients with laughter. They'd be glad of you. It's the doctors you'd drive to heart attacks.'

'Yes, and then where will the country be?' asked Faith and Poppy abandoned her empty mug to curl up at their feet a ball of quivering, silent mirth.

Then it was Christmas, or near enough for the purposes of Swallowgate. Ruthie came over, arms burdened with edibles and gifts, and they sat down by the fire to unwrap what bounty couldn't be eaten while Pilgrim writhed like a contented snake at their feet, his back to the fire and purring a hearty endorsement of any occasion that gave him so much brown paper and string to tackle. He arched his back and bared his belly so that Poppy laughed and said, 'you weren't wrong about him Mara –see the white spot on his chest! Did you know it was there?'

'Hm?' said Mara, who had been pouring over Di's gift of a dresser scarf in blue and yellow bud flowers. 'One stranded satin stitch takes ages,' she was saying in astonishment when Poppy intervened with the discovery of the mark on Pilgrim's chest.

'Oh that, no. But I did tell you he was a faerie, no?'

'I thought it was you being Romish,' said Poppy laughing helplessly, which revelation effectively caught the other's attention and halted any meaningful opening of gifts.

'I thought you knew,' said Mara 'you knew I wasn't going with you to church on Sunday –what did you think?'

'That you'd found something that took precedence,' said Nan, who had never given this much thought. 'Another committee or something.' She shrugged.

'Or possibly went to chapel,' said Faith, who couldn't remember a time when she hadn't been aware of the vast divide between the Presbyterians and the Methodists.

'Or caught the afternoon service,' this offering from Di. There was a pause Poppy evidently felt expected to fill, because her grey eyes went round as full moons and she said, 'Oh I can be exclamatory if you like, but I don't need to be. I knew. I thought all of us did,' and she promptly resumed her ministrations to Pilgrim's throat. Simultaneously she extracted a clumsily wrapped package from her pocket and handed it to Mara.

'But I've had my gift from you,' said Mara protesting. 'It's not for you. Open it.' Which contradictory sentiments caused such confusion that Mara did, exposing a round wicker ball possessed of a bell and something else at its core.

'For your cat,' said Poppy, still stroking the silky branch of Pilgrim's throat.

'He's yours, not mine,' said Mara, prodding at what looked like a faerie's teabag.

'Not even notionally,' said Poppy. 'I only happened to find him. See?'

Pilgrim had leapt up onto Mara's lap and was now interestedly nosing the ball.

'That thing you're prodding at has silvervine in it. All our cats back home think it's better than catmint.'

'And you thought what we really needed was a means of guaranteeing this devil had at least one mad half hour a day?' demanded Mara, scratching idly behind the more battered of Pilgrim's ears.

Poppy shrugged. 'I wanted to see if I could make it. Robbie was ace at them, and I'd watched him weave them enough.'

'How is he?' Mara set the ball rolling across the floor and Pilgrim tore after it with the look of a badly domesticated tiger about him. Another shrug from Poppy.

'In one piece, as far as I can gather. He doesn't write a straight letter though.'

'Neither does Carl,' said Faith. 'Part of me's glad, because it means the war hasn't touched that fundamental part of himself that makes him Carl, part of me wants to throttle him for daring to make light of things like artillery fire.'

Di rather looked as if she wished Walter had lighted upon this trick, and for a little while they fell to talking about the war, interrupted occasionally by sap popping on the cedar logs in the fire and the chime of the bell as Pilgrim battled with it, paws flailing.

'Jerry's the same –or does he write sensibly to you, Faith?'

'Jerry? Sense? The closest I get from him is the odd sketch of wherever he is. I hope he left off teasing long enough to be properly glad of that jumper you sent though.'

'Yes,' said Nan, who though always apple-blossom in complexion was turning a healthy pink by the firelight. 'He said it was just what was called for and hoped it hadn't cut in very much to the time I spent pulling apart perfectly good narrative or taxed me unduly.' She looked down doubtfully at her hands, blistered over and calloused from hours of spinning, and speckled brown with the pressure points accrued from knitting so long.

'I'm still trying to find a way of dodging that last question,' she said to Faith, rather forgetting the others were there. 'He always marvelled at my hands, at their softness. He wouldn't know them now.'

'I expect he would,' said Faith. 'Jerry's the last person to devalue hard work, certainly not yours,' and she reached for one of Nan's hands, still small and dainty as a child's, and squeezed it between hers.

The silence arising from this declaration had almost reached the boiling point of endurance when Nan said suddenly to Faith, 'You've still a gift left to open,' and recollected the occasion that had brought them together in the first place. It was large and flat, with Popp's up-and-down copperplate on the paper, which came away to reveal a box.

'It's a plant, naturally,' said Faith, apparently sincerely of the flat box on her lap. It was perhaps two inches tall, broader than it was long, and made of good, soft wood.

'Oh yes, that's right, the well-known carton plant,' said Poppy, matching her tone for tone. 'Grows excessively well on window seats, preferably if squashed by students and cats. Do open it, you goose.'

Faith did and the joke, such as it was, went out of her in a whoosh of breath. 'Poppy,' she said carefully, 'Oh Poppy, you didn't.'

But Poppy had; the evidence was there in the box; almost compulsively Faith picked up the charcoals, pencils, and tubes of oils, studying them as if they were strange and alien to her. Faith looked at them, felt the satiny sheen of the lining, and was suddenly aware that her eyes were hot and stinging as if someone had taken one of the nettles Mara was forever battling against in the garden to them, and it wasn't only from the sharp acrid smell of the paints or the charcoal dust.

'I wasn't going to,' said Poppy, 'but what you said that day we went out –I thought –'

And as suddenly as it had come, the stinging sensation was gone and Faith was laughing.

'Chalk,' she managed between waves of laughter, 'you said –you needed –chalk.'

'Well I could hardly tell you to stand about idly while I looked into a Christmas gift for you,' said Poppy reasonably. 'I wasn't even sure they would have what I wanted. Is that the right kind of paper?'

'Exactly. Come here.' Faith put out an arm and snared Poppy, pulling her clumsily but lovingly into a hug.

'Stay that way,' said Poppy, pleased to see her laughing. Quick as a flash she had eeled out of Faith's arms and established herself at the harp, cradling it on one arm, and waking the strings with the other. It was badly out of tune, but no matter; they didn't need perfection, only diversion.

'What shall we have?' said Poppy to Faith over the swell and ripple of the strings. Faith thought, then launched imperfectly into 'Quem Pastores Laudevere' adapting the Latin as and when her memory misgave her, to the entertainment of the others, who were not long joining her. They moved on to 'Green Grow the Rushes O' at Ruthie's request and then 'Here We Come A-Wassailing' at Nan's. Someone suggested 'Away in a Manger,' and Mara, eyes gleaming dismissed it as 'sen-ti-men-tal nonsense,' her natural teuchter deliberately exaggerated to the purpose, much to Poppy's amusement. They sang heartily, and all the while Faith's hands flew unthinking across the paper, growing black with charcoal as she caught here the arc of Poppy's arm against the harp, there Di with her arm around Ruthie's angular shoulders, Nan in the act of stoking the fire, hands braced capably against the heat of it, and in an unguarded moment, the smile that betrayed Mara as she bent over Pilgrim to accept the wicker ball back from him, just visible at the corner of her mouth.

It was, Faith said later as she and Poppy got ready for bed, a thoroughly successful evening.

'Do you think so?' said Poppy around a yawn, and rubbing the stiffness out of the arm that had held the harp.

'Definitely. I wish you were coming back with us. Ingleside would love you –and you it – and we could have our own patch perpetual sunshine. But then,' said Faith, catching a yawn off of Poppy, 'I suppose your family are glad of you for much the same reason. Don't you ever feel laid low by it all, Mouse?'

'Sometimes,' said Poppy thoughtfully. 'At three in the morning when I can't sleep and Pilgrim is going toe to toe with whatever it is that lives in our roof, and all I can hear is his screaming. Then I remember it isn't over yet –or more likely I just catch a snatch of Mara running lines –and think of what you'd do –'

'Me?' said Faith, startled.

'Oh yes. You're masses more capable than me. You do so much more. But then, we always think other people get things more right than we do, don't we? Well, so, I think of you, or Mara come to that, or Di, or Nan spinning that wool…all of you up to your elbows in half a dozen ongoing projects, and tell myself that there's nothing to be gained by dooming all our men to death before it's happened.'

'Write that for me on a sampler, will you Mouse, and stick it somewhere I can see it? I think it would help.'

'Remind me before next Christmas, and I'll give it to you then,' said Poppy drowsily. 'And draw up a tract to pin where I can see it. We'll both remember then.'

There was laughter between them, then. A moment, and then from the depths of her pillow, 'And as I won't be there to say it on the day, Happy Christmas Faith.'

'You too. Happy Christmas Mouse.'