Thank you as ever to those of you reading and/or reviewing.
Swallowgate,
Kingsport,
January 1916
Dear mums,
I am thinking of Ingleside with a vengeance this evening, having just extricated myself from an enthusiastic and derisive discussion of Ford's failed peace mission. We'd all been saying for months it would come to nothing, and I know, because I was home when the failure was announced that Susan was doing much the same. Even Susan though couldn't match the utter disdain Mara managed to inject into the word 'flu' in tonight's discussion.
We have been having one of our gatherings, which always leave me with the distinct impression that the entirety of the university women have congregated in our sitting room, though in fact it is only the members of the College Red Cross. When I crept away Faith and Poppy were deep in discussion with Faith's fellow linguistic acrobats (Mara's name for them, she's what Susan would call 'knacky' with names) about Montenegro, which looks ever more doomed.
Mara was, as you'll not be the least surprised to hear, at the quiet centre of a group of dramatists who were debating the two versions of Marlowe's Faust in-between damning Mr Ford for having the ill-luck to catch 'flu and plotting the best military strategy to be used at Erzurum.
Di and Ruthie were closeted in one of the inglenooks poring over a letter to the exclusion of the rest of us and talking very animatedly to judge from the way Ruthie's hands flapped. In my more selfish moments I envy Ruthie those animated discussions, because I have begun to suspect Di tells her more than she does me. In my better, more gracious moods I am aware that the world turns like that, and that we must all leave our harbours for new horizons eventually. I had supposed Di and I would go together, is all it is.
Besides, I was hardly abandoned to keep my own company. Peter, who reads mathematics with Poppy, and who has taken to joining forces with us, sat talking companionably to me while setting a sock with as much capability as Di or Mara. Something he said makes me think he's taken his share of ribbing for this, but not from the girls who pin hopes; I think we're all quietly glad that –all Poppy's insistences that she isn't being courted to the contrary –at least one of us needn't be made heartsick in the name of patriotism.
Anyway, Peter made a valiant attempt this evening to interweave discussion about the Siege of Kut with Clarissa –you were right, it is a shockingly bad book and length does not equal virtue. I told him I was seriously tempted to write my first essay of this term with great succictness; 'Clarissa dies a virtuous woman. Lovelace is exposed' and wash my hands of it. He dared me to write it and has threatened to take pains to find out from Poppy if I commit to it or not. To this end no doubt he crossed the room to join in with the linguistic acrobats and Poppy strategising on behalf of Montenegro, and I came away to write to you.
You'll be pleased to hear that we saw New Year's in with due ceremony. Mara's family have always made more of an occasion of it than Christmas, which revelation had us demanding to know why she should have left them for it. All she said though was that she had as much right to be away from family as we had. I think that might be Mara-speak for having missed us; she's hardly the world's most overtly sentimental creature. Though from the way she's disappeared into reading Galatea I think it might owe as much to a difficulty in studying easily with six younger siblings and assorted nieces and nephews underfoot. She hasn't said so though; Mara's no more disloyal than she is sentimental.
Accordingly we had as close to a feast as we could manage for New Year's Eve; nothing elaborate, but a good amount of turnips, the last of the broad beans eked out from their corner of the cold cupboard, and a game hen. For a sweet I baked an orange shape that even Susan couldn't have faulted. We ate it all with a prayer for the well-being of all the men we'd sent away at the forefront of our minds but also in a spirit of optimism. There are things that I've learned about myself from this war, and while I wouldn't trade them I would like to know Mara and Poppy under more carefree circumstances.
After we'd eaten we went out into the garden at the appropriate hour and banged pots and pans together. It was cold, but it would have seemed against the spirit of the thing to don coats and gloves, so we stood their watching our breath mist before us, feeling the sting of cold on our exposed throats while our noses and fingers chilled throughly and breathed in the sharp wet scent of mulching leaves under the snow and the tang of nearby spruces. None of that, not even our blue lips and fingers stopped us from taking pains to ensure dark-haired Poppy was the first of us back into the house. This is supposed to secure luck, and as we need all the luck we can get at the moment, none of us was inclined to argue the point with Mara, even had we thought we could win.
When we were allowed back in it held all the satisfaction of something well-earned and fought for. Do you think there is there a nicer feeling than coming back into the warm after being frozen by the crispness of outside, mums? I don't. We had ice melting in our hair and snow on our tongues but my limbs glowed as warmth came flooding back into them. Poppy made us hot chocolate to chase away the worst of the cold and if it was thinner than it might have been in another life that didn't stop it settling in my insides like a rich liquid blanket, and thawing me. We took it into the sitting room to drink by the fire and for a long time after that sat up telling one another goblin-stories, so that the sky was grey with dawn before we kissed each other goodnight. I should tell you that we won't make a habit of it, but if the size and length of Clarissa is anything to go by, I may well find myself reading well into the small hours this term, to say nothing of writing. I shouldn't worry though, Mara's been doing just that for years now and never seems the worse for it.
While I think of it, did you mind very much, mums, our coming away early? I know Di and I said it was all to do with wanting to get to grips with this term's syllabus –and you'll gather from the conversation with Peter that I've been doing just that –but something about the look you gave me as we parted said you guessed it was more than that. Would that I had your ability to survive weeks, even months of those empty places at table. Write to me and tell me how you do it? I feel disloyal saying it was a relief to come back to a full table, but mums, it was. Poppy ran to meet us in the lane, Pilgrim nearly killed us trying to ascend the stairs with our cases, and Mara had foisted tea upon us before he succeeded in the attempt Then we were all sitting around the table trading news of our holidays, shaping the rota for the kitchen over the next term and grousing about impending coursework. It was such a relief to be able to laugh and tease each other again that I thought I'd cry from the shock of it. Then Pilgrim overturned a milk jug in his determination to settle on Mara's knee and I ended by laughing instead. The next minute the others were pestering me for one of my economies –and this admission seems the height of disloyalty to you and dad –I felt the most myself I had since going away.
Was Patty's Place like that to you? Was Anne of the Island more Anne-ish than the Anne of Green Gables or Avonlea, and was the one that came after at Four Winds still more of you? I can't imagine you as anything less than yourself, but this last holiday I tried to join wee Spider in Rainbow Valley and felt so pinched and out-of-place that I began to wonder if it was only I that felt that way. I resolved it by strategically retreating to the garret, where I lost an hour reacquainting myself with that old spinning wheel of grandmother Blythe's. It was a bad hour –I kept treating it like auntie Phil's castle wheel –but I felt better for it, and was further comforted by the knowledge that Spider had seemed to preoccupied with Jims's latest bout of croup to notice much. (For which, by the by, if Rilla will accept non-Morgan sources of advice, Di recommends a concoction of camomile and honey, though Faith argues for lobelia tea.)
They're leaving now, our little clan of Red Cross recruits. I know even from the lofty height of the first storey because someone has left the front door open and the cold air is rushing up the stair and circling my feet. So is the sound of their going, any number of bright gladsome shouts bidding us all a goodnight and wishing us well until the next time. I wanted to tell you about Di's latest theory on the meaning of Wordsworth's Prelude, but either she'll have to tell you herself or it will have to keep until my next letter, because I ought to go down and say my goodbyes too. Besides, I want to be able to tell you what sort of a goodbye Poppy gives to Peter-who-is-only-a-good-friend.
Find enclosed a kiss for now and a spare one for emergencies,
With love,
Nan
P.S. I have discovered from Miss Lacey that the names of the porcelain dachshunds are Augie (who sits on the left) and Buffy (right). As Di says, one presumes Buffy to be short for Elizabeth, but the significance of Augie –never mind its origin –has us all guessing.