My Gracious Silence

After an hour's rest, they struggled on until noon. The tents were pitched and supper was issued: cold seal steak and tea - nothing more.

On the same night exactly one year before, after a festive dinner on board the Endurance, Greenstreet had written in his diary: 'Here endeth another Christmas Day. I wonder how and under what circumstances our next one will be spent.' That night he failed to even mention what day it was. And Shackleton recorded briefly all that really needed to be said: 'Curions Christmas. Thoughts of home.'

Will saw there only a gap in the crowd, with beyond it the group of musicians. As he stood there, they struck up once more 'Good King Wenceslas', the carol they had been playing when first he entered the room, through the Doors. Merrily the whole gathering joined in singing, and then the next verse came and Merriman's deep voice was ringing out across the room, and Will realised, blinking, that the verse to come was his.

He drew breath, and raised his head.

Sire he lives a good league hence,
Underneath the mountain ...

And there was no moment of farewell, no moment in which he saw the nineteenth century vanish away, but suddenly with no awareness of change, as he sang he knew that Time had somehow blinked, and another young voice was singing with him, the two of them so nearly simultaneous that anyone who could not see the lips moving would have sworn that it was one boy's voice alone . . .

[...]

On Christmas night, Will always slept with James. Both twin beds were still in James's room from the time before Will had moved up to Stephen's attic. The only difference now was that James kept Will's old bed piled with op art cushions, and referred to it as 'my chaise longue'. There was something about Christmas Eve, they both felt, that demanded company; one needed somebody to whisper to, during the warm beautiful dream-taut moments between hanging the empty stocking at the end of the bed, and dropping into the cosy oblivion that would flower into the marvel of Christmas morning.

And it was the same as it always was, as he lay curled up happily in his snug wrappings, promising himself that he would stay awake, until, until...

... until he woke, in the dim morning room with a glimmer of light creeping round the dark square of the curtained window, and saw and heard nothing for an enchanted expectant space, because all his senses were concentrated on the weighty feel, over and around his blanketed feet, of strange bumps and corners and shapes that had not been there when he fell asleep. And it was Christmas Day.

That night Mr Muller brought home a Christmas tree. Even though the Mullers were to spend Christmas Eve at Grosspapa Muller's and Christmas Day at Grosspapa Hornik's there had to be a tree in their own home. Unlike Santa Claus, Christmas trees seemed to be very important in Milwaukee. The older people were as excited as the children when Mr Muller carried in his huge fragrant bundle.

The next afternoon, which was Christmas Eve day, all of them trimmed it. They put on candles and carved wooden toys and cookies hung on ribbons, and little socks with candles in them, as well as the usual bright balls. They draped the strings of cranberries around the spiraling branches and placed a star angel on the top.

Tib and Fred were very artistic and it was a beautiful tree. They had fun trimming it too, but it seemed strange to Betsy to be hanging the Mullers' balls and angels and to think that at home a tree was being trimmed with the dear familiar ornaments... some that she and Tacy had bough on their Christmas shopping trips.

The tailor lay ill for three days and nights; and then it was Christmas Eve, and very late at night. The moon climbed up over the roofs and chimneys, and looked down over the gateway into College Court. There were no lights in the windows, nor any sound in the houses; all the city of Gloucester was fast asleep under the snow. And still Simpkin wanted his mice, and he mewed as he stood beside the four-post bed. But it is in the old story that all the beasts can talk, in the night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in the morning (though there are very few folk that can hear them, or know what it is that they say). When the Cathedral clock struck twelve there was an answer - like an echo of the chimes - and Simpkin heard it, and came out of the tailor's door, and wandered about in the snow. From all the roofs and gables and old wooden houses in Gloucester came a thousand merry voices singing the old Christmas rhymes - all the old songs that I ever heard of and som that I don't know, like Whittington's bells. First and loudest the cocks cried out: "Dame, get up, and bake your pies!"