Christmas with the Savages Read online

  Contents

  1. My Own Home

  2. The Journey Down

  3. The First Evening

  4. The Garden

  5. Savage by Name and Savage by Nature

  6. Christmas Eve

  7. Christmas Day

  8. Boxing Day

  9. The Wet Day

  10. Lionel’s Play

  11. The Grotto

  12. Escape

  LADY MARY KATHARINE PAKENHAM was born in London in 1907, the fourth of six children. She was educated mainly at home by governesses. When she grew up she became a writer and journalist, and in 1932 published her first book for adults called In England Now under the pen-name of Hans Duffy.

  She was married in 1939 to Meysey Clive, an army officer, and they had two children. Sadly her husband was killed in action during the Second World War.

  Mary wrote several novels, biographies and autobiographies, drawing on her own childhood experiences for her children’s book, Christmas with the Savages, which was first published in 1955.

  She died in Herefordshire in March 2010 at the age of 102.

  To my daughter Alice

  1. My Own Home

  When I was a little girl I lived in a tall London house which you would have thought rather grand and very dull. You might also have thought that my parents were dreadfully old and stiff, but I was used to them; and anyway grown-up people did not scamper about in the way that they do now.

  I was an only child and I was allowed to come into the drawing room a good deal. I believe visitors thought me spoilt and a bore, but I loved getting away from the quiet of the schoolroom to the rustle and chatter of callers. It was a treat to come downstairs, even if I was made to stay behind the velvet curtains which separated the dull back drawing room from the pretty front room. I was quite happy sitting there holding a book which I had read over twenty times, looking out on the chimney-pots of the mews (no two were alike and some of them turned in the wind) and enjoying the murmur of voices. Every now and then there would be bursts of idiotic laughter. I had often listened to grown-up jokes and I did not think them funny, but I looked forward to the time when I should be the first to laugh, instead of coming in at the end with a ha! ha! ha! which was loud but not very natural. Indeed, I longed and longed to be grown-up, and sometimes I used to clutch my skirts when crossing the road and pretend that that happy time had already come. How elegantly I meant to hold my starer-spectacles to my eyes! How graciously would I say ‘charming’ and ‘delightful’! And how mysteriously my mauve dresses would rustle along the passage!

  Mine was an uneventful life, and when my parents went on visits, as they often did, it was duller still. There was nothing to make one day different from another – just dressing and going to bed, meals and lessons and walks in the park. My governess was not unkind, but she was old and sad and wrapped up in her own thoughts, and I got away from her whenever I could.

  But occasionally things happened even to me, and one day, when I was about eight, I remember my lessons being interrupted by something a little unusual. My father and mother had been away on a visit to Scotland and I was very much looking forward to their coming back – in fact, although I was supposed to be learning dates, I was really pretending that I was in the drawing room talking to visitors. I had just opened my mouth to yawn and my governess had just opened hers to tell me to pay attention, when there was a knock on the door and Frederick the footman came in with a telegram.

  In those days telegrams were not sent over the telephone. A special telegraph boy brought them to the house and the butler carried them into the drawing room on a little silver tray. Their envelopes were a sort of dirty orange colour, quite unlike anything else, and when one came I was always dreadfully curious and wanted to know what was in it, but I was hardly ever told.

  On this occasion, as the telegram was addressed to my governess, it was laid on a common wooden tray. She took it with the tips of her fingers and I could see that she was nervous, but as I had been told never to look at a person reading a telegram for fear it was Bad News, I turned away my eyes and stared at the buttons on Frederick’s uniform – no, I’m afraid he wasn’t a powdered footman, but he wore a nice brown coat with brass buttons and green trousers. The buttons were heaving slightly as he was out of breath, having run all the way up from the basement. (There were flights and flights of stairs before you reached the schoolroom landing which was fenced in with wire netting so that I should not fall over the banisters.) At the same time as I watched the buttons I was on the alert, waiting for my governess to faint. If she had done so I meant to dash into my bedroom and fetch the water jug. I was thinking what a lovely splash it would make if I emptied it over her, when she spoke. Her voice was solemn but quite calm.

  ‘Well, Evelyn, this is from your mother. She says your father has fallen ill and has gone into a nursing home in Edinburgh. So they have had to postpone their return. Frederick, will you tell them downstairs that they have had to postpone their return.’

  Frederick said, ‘Oh, they know that already. Mr Benson had a telegram too.’

  My governess got pink. She never really was asked to pass on messages to Mr Benson who thought himself much more important than she was.

  ‘Thank you, Frederick,’ she said, ‘now we must go on with our lessons.’

  I gloomily wondered how long it would be before I was allowed down into the drawing room again.

  ‘What’s father got?’ I asked.

  ‘Something internal,’ said my governess. I knew better than to ask anything more.

  After that, letters came from my mother, some of them addressed to me. I could not read her writing, and when they were read aloud to me I didn’t always listen. One day, when my governess was reading one of these letters, she stopped and said:

  ‘That will be exciting for you.’

  My mind was far away, thinking of the dress in which I meant to be presented at court.

  ‘What will?’ I asked, coming back with a jerk.

  ‘Why, I’ve just read it to you. Your mother says that as she won’t be back for Christmas she has arranged for you to spend it with Lady Tamerlane.’

  ‘Old Lady Tamerlane! Me and old Lady Tamerlane spend Christmas together!’

  Lady Tamerlane often came to see my mother and I knew quite well what she looked like. Although she was old she was brisk, and although she was not playful she sometimes gave me half-crowns. She and my mother used to do acrostics and read Italian poetry together, and I had been told that she was very clever. I did not really believe this as I had heard her make mistakes about quite ordinary things like fire engines and the zoo, and when she came to call, the bursts of grown-up laughter always seemed particularly silly. I tried to imagine what Christmas with Lady Tamerlane would be like.

  ‘I think I might manage the acrostics if she showed me how to do them,’ I said at length, ‘but I don’t think I could bear the Italian poetry.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ll have to,’ said my governess. ‘There’ll be lots of grown-up people to amuse Lady Tamerlane. All you will have to do is to play with her grandchildren. She has a lot of grandchildren – I don’t quite know how many; but there will be the little Savages anyway.’

  ‘Little savages? Will they be cannibals?’

  ‘No, of course not. “Savage” is just their name. They’re ordinary children, and very nice children too, I expect. It will be fun for you having Christmas with the Savages.’

  ‘How do you know they are nice?’

  ‘Lady Tamerlane’s grandchildren are sure to be nice,’ replied my governess.

  I rearranged my ideas. Instead of just me and Lady Tamerlane there would be a huge crowd.

  ‘Will it b
e a house party?’ I had heard of ‘house parties’ and I could imagine people sitting about in trailing clothes and elegant attitudes like the pictures in the fashion magazines. I could also imagine that in the middle of them would be myself playing the harp. I meant to have a gold harp painted with green trees like one I had seen in a shop, and an ivory one for best. Except that there were no wings or clouds, my idea of a house party was much the same as my idea of heaven.

  ‘Well,’ said my governess, ‘yes, I suppose you might call it a sort of house party.’

  ‘Then I shall be very pleased to accept Lady Tamerlane’s kind invitation,’ I said.

  2. The Journey Down

  My governess of course had holidays at Christmas, and so I set off for the house party with Marguerite, my Swiss nursery maid. Marguerite was supposed to speak French to me but she was a poor, frightened creature whom I treated like mud, and who hardly spoke to anybody in any language.

  We had lunch at half past twelve, and the food was rather different from what we generally had – there was fish instead of meat, and cake instead of pudding. I don’t quite know what was the point of this, but it helped me to feel excited and rather sick. Then our luggage was carried down. I had an immense trunk with a rounded top and straps, and Marguerite had a brown tin box tied up with cords.

  I was allowed to blow the whistle for the taxi. The whistle hung in the hall and one blew and blew until a taxi came up. It was a very noisy proceeding, but everyone did it.

  Frederick went with us to the station to see us on to the train. I hardly recognized him in his outdoor clothes, but they seemed to make him very frisky, for he joked the whole way. I laughed like anything, and even Marguerite smiled occasionally.

  Paddington was our station, and as far as I can remember, it looked very much as it does today. In fact the 1.45, which we caught, is still running, although I suppose the engine is a different shape and the carriages are not decorated with so many squiggles.

  Frederick found us a porter and bought us tickets, and then led us along the platform to a group of children whom he had at once recognized as the little Savages. How he knew them by sight I can’t think, but Frederick was very clever at that sort of thing.

  I looked eagerly at the house party. There were two boys, two girls, two nursery maids (in little bonnets trimmed with black velvet), a baby, a nurse and a man who was obviously their footman. They all looked rather fussed – even the baby had a worried frown – and when Frederick introduced us, the only thing the nurse said was:

  ‘Oh well, they must go in another carriage. There’s no room here.’ She then asked the porter which way the train went.

  There was a howl from her children. ‘Really, Nana. Can’t you see!’

  ‘It’s just as well to be quite sure,’ said their nurse. The children stared at me and I stared back at them, and then Marguerite and I got into an empty first class carriage – I always travelled first class for fear of catching something. Frederick went off to watch our luggage being put into the van and came back with Tit-Bits, a paper which my mother always bought for me on journeys. I sat down pretending I was reading it while Frederick stayed at the window to encourage Marguerite with jokes, but soon two of the Savage children came down the corridor and stared in at me, pressing their noses against the glass until the tips went white. They whispered to each other and looked at me and whispered to each other again, and then they opened the door and the girl said very severely:

  ‘Are you a Cavalier or a Roundhead?’

  I did History every day with my governess and if they had asked me about Egbert, Aethelbert or Aethelred I should have known what to answer. But my history book was so long that I had only got a quarter of the way through it, and I knew nothing about the wars of Charles I. It was like being asked ‘oranges or lemons?’, only worse. I looked at their faces but could learn nothing from them, so I gave up trying to guess right and, being anxious to please, said:

  ‘Which ought I to be?’

  ‘You ought to be a Roundhead,’ said the boy, scowling at me.

  ‘No, you didn’t. You ought to be a Cavalier,’ said the girl.

  ‘Can’t I be both?’

  The girl snorted with contempt. ‘You’re as bad as Minnie,’ she said. ‘When she was new I asked her to be a Cavalier and she said she would, only she’d just promised Master Harry to be a Roundhead and she didn’t know what either of them were. And she’s only just left school!’

  I saw that I had made an awful blunder and to change the subject I asked them their names.

  ‘We are the young Savages,’ said the boy. ‘Harry is me, and Rosamund is her. Rosamund is the former girl and Betty is the latter girl.’ This seemed to be a family joke and they both laughed.

  ‘I am Evelyn,’ I said.

  ‘That’s not a girl’s name,’ said Rosamund.

  ‘Yes, it is. It’s mine. And what’s more it’s always been mine. I was christened it.’

  ‘You can’t have been,’ said Rosamund. ‘I expect it’s only a nickname.’

  ‘When girls start using boys’ names,’ said Harry, looking at me sternly, ‘the worst may happen.’

  There was an awkward silence. I found the Savages very difficult to talk to. I was, you remember, an only child and I did not see many other children, but the few I had played with had been much more friendly than these two. I did so want the Savages to like me and everything I said seemed to be wrong. I was glad when the train started.

  ‘Come into our carriage,’ said Rosamund.

  Without a word to poor Marguerite I followed her into the next compartment which was already very crowded, not so much by people as by handbags and baskets which had been unpacked all over it.

  The nurse sat by the window with the baby on her knee. She kept her hand over her face as though the children were more than she could bear, but the baby, wrapped in shawls and a red-riding-hood cloak, watched everything with its big brown eyes. The eldest boy, Lionel, had his head bent low over a book. I had noticed him on the platform and had decided that he should be my special friend, but he did not look up when I came into the carriage. The book he was reading had nice big print and coloured pictures, but I was sorry to see that it was called The Story of Greece.

  The other child, Betty, was a fat little thing with very red cheeks and very white hair. She also had a book, a picture book which turned out to be a history of England written in rhyme. Betty could not really read, but she recited over and over again in a maddening sing-song:

  ‘He fell into the power

  Of Leopold Duke of Austria,

  Who shut him up in a tower.’

  ‘What a hopeless family!’ I thought. ‘How can one make friends with any of them? Even Lady Tamerlane and her Italian poetry would be better than this. At least she did call one “dear child” and gave one half-crowns.’

  ‘Minnie and May have gone third class,’ said Harry. ‘I’m glad we don’t have to go third class. Dada says when the train breaks down, first class passengers stay where they are, second class passengers get out and walk, third class passengers get out and push. Will Minnie and May have to push us if the train breaks down?’

  ‘Of course they will if Dada says so,’ said Rosamund. She could not resist adding, ‘And I expect they will make you push too.’

  ‘They won’t,’ said Harry.

  ‘They will!’ said Rosamund, who was a terrible tease.

  ‘Won’t,’ shouted Harry, and catching Rosamund by the hair, he pulled her head down to the floor.

  ‘Will,’ screamed Rosamund, almost upside down, and her face scarlet.

  I expected the nurse to interfere, but she took no notice. The baby, however, broke into a delighted chuckle. I felt I ought to help Rosamund and was looking at Harry’s sailor suit, wondering which bit of it I should grab, when a piercing scream from Betty made us all look round. She had been fidgeting with the window and had dropped her history book down the slit where the glass goes. Rosamund and Harry forgot the
ir quarrel and rushed to help her. ‘My corns,’ said their nurse mildly but without taking her hand from her eyes, as they stumbled over her feet.

  ‘I expect it’s gone on to the line,’ said Harry.

  ‘No, it will be still in the door,’ said Rosamund.

  They pulled the window up and down twenty times, but the only result was that the carriage became very cold. (It was, of course, December.) Betty looked so miserable that I felt rather motherly towards her. I took her back to my carriage and read Tit-Bits to her for a time, but as it was really a grown-up’s paper with long words in it, she soon stopped listening.

  I had been taught to sit still in a railway train and to bear the boredom in silence, but Betty had not.

  ‘Look at the telegraph wires, Betty,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it funny the way they seem to go up and down and cross over each other?’

  ‘I ’ates telegraph wires,’ said Betty. ‘Aren’t we nearly there? How much longer? What time is it now?’

  She fidgeted so much I sent her back to her own carriage and sat alone with Marguerite. I felt annoyed with the Savages for being so difficult to talk to, and the journey seemed endless. Every now and then Rosamund and Harry looked in with a bit of news such as ‘The Roundheads have utterly crushed the Cavaliers, but the Cavaliers are going to rout them tomorrow’ or ‘Betty’s been sick’. After passing Reading they sang ‘You can’t buy pyjamas at Huntley & Palmers’ for quite ten minutes. Whenever I saw them coming I tried to look haughty, crossing one leg over the other and holding Tit-Bits up to my face. I admired the grown-up way that Lionel sat in his corner reading, and I hoped that he somehow knew that I was doing it too.

  However, even the longest journey ends some time, and it was not even dark when we bundled out at a station. There seemed to be a lot of us when we all were standing together on the platform watching the trunks being pulled out of the van – and you never saw so much luggage as those Savages had brought. Regardless of the other people, they broke out into a chant. Chanting was, I discovered later, a habit of theirs, although they none of them had the faintest idea of tune. The words went: