A Christmas in Time, page 1
To my nephews and nieces,
McKenzie, Finlay
and Freya.
CHAPTER ONE
CHRISTMAS WITH AUNT JOANNA
“Who comes to a bed and breakfast for Christmas?” said Ruby Pilgrim, staring out of the windows in disgust.
“People who don’t like cooking?” said Alex. He was busy hanging baubles on the enormous Christmas tree which stood in the hall at Applecott House. Their own tree at home had tinsel and knitted snowmen and all the decorations they’d made in nursery school, but this one was very classy – all colour-co-ordinated baubles and white lights. He secretly rather disapproved – he loved their messy, family tree – but he had to admit that Aunt Joanna’s did look lovely.
“Christmas is for family!” said Ruby. “For spending all morning in your pyjamas eating selection boxes! You’re supposed to spend it watching Christmas telly and playing video games and having fights over who does the washing up! Not going on holiday!”
“I don’t think everyone spends Christmas playing video games and eating selection boxes,” said Alex cautiously. “Not grown-ups anyway.” He hung a very old-fashioned-looking reindeer on the tree, careful not to break it. Some of these decorations are over a hundred years old, Aunt Joanna had said to him. There had been Pilgrims living in Applecott House for over two hundred years. Had his father and his grandfather and all his great-great-grandparents hung some of those same baubles on their Christmas tree?
It was rather a nice thought.
Alex didn’t need to imagine those people from another time – he’d met them; well, some of them anyway. Last summer, something mysterious and wonderful had happened to Alex and Ruby. They’d stepped into a magical looking-glass in Aunt Joanna’s hallway, and been transported back in time. They still didn’t know why, but Alex believed they’d been sent there to help solve a historical problem – to find a lost Saxon treasure, and save Aunt Joanna’s house in the process.
He had hoped that perhaps they were connected to the mirror now; that it would use them to right old-fashioned wrongs and solve ancient mysteries. Perhaps they would have a new adventure every time they came to stay with Aunt Joanna! But the problem was, they didn’t come here very often. Applecott House was in Suffolk, and Alex and Ruby lived in a little town in the north east of England, two hundred miles and a long car journey away. They came every summer, and often in the Easter holidays too, but when you’ve been sucked into a magical mirror and transported back to 1912 to solve a high-stakes crime, the Easter holidays is a very long time to wait to do it again.
And then, a week before Christmas, Aunt Joanna fell downstairs and broke her leg.
Christmas at Applecott House was the busiest time of year. Aunt Joanna organised a whole three-day celebration for her bed-and-breakfast guests, with a carol service in the village, a musical evening in the drawing room, and a Boxing Day quiz. There was fizzy wine with Christmas breakfast, and candlelit dinners on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, which Aunt Joanna had to cook. Alex privately agreed with Ruby that it didn’t really sound like Christmas at all, but lots of grown-ups seemed to like it, and she was always booked out months in advance.
And now it looked like she would have to cancel.
Aunt Joanna had called the children’s father in a panic. All of the food and wine was ordered already. She’d paid a deposit for the wine glasses and the musicians. Everyone was relying on her. She couldn’t ask her own children to help (Aunt Joanna had a son who lived in Australia and a daughter who had baby twins, and obviously neither could be expected to drop everything and run Christmas in Applecott House). But perhaps Alex’s family might be able to…
“There won’t be any beds,” said Alex’s father. “All the rooms are booked, so we’ll be sleeping in the living room, I’m afraid. Aunt Joanna thinks she should be able to supervise the cooking – at least I hope will, because you know what our cooking’s like, and Stacey will be in as much as she can.” Stacey was a woman from the village who helped Aunt Joanna out at busy times of year. “It’s mostly getting the rooms ready … and the washing up, and the vegetable-chopping … and the decorations – apparently that’s very important. And I suppose there’ll be lots of tidying up and laying tables and so on. But she’s been so good to us over the years – I don’t know what we’d have done if she hadn’t agreed to look after you children. And… Well. I didn’t really feel I could say no. And it’s supposed to be rather a luxury holiday … I understand people pay a fortune, and of course we’d get to eat all the food and so forth. I think it might be quite fun, really…”
“But it’s Christmas!” Ruby had said. “Christmas Day!”
“I don’t imagine you children will have to help too much on Christmas Day itself,” their mother said hurriedly. (Alex got the impression she wasn’t keen on spending Christmas laying tables and loading dishwashers either.) “I expect you’ll be able to hide somewhere with your presents if you’d rather.”
“I don’t see where,” Ruby muttered. “We won’t even have a bedroom.”
But Alex didn’t really mind. Just being back at Applecott House – his favourite place in all the world – was enough to make him happy. They’d arrived yesterday, just after lunch, and even an afternoon spent making beds and vacuuming bedrooms had been fun. He’d enjoyed hanging up all the decorations, and helping Aunt Joanna ice Christmas biscuits. He was looking forward to eating all this fancy food – and after all, he thought, their father was right. Aunt Joanna was family.
“We’re hardly going to see Mum and Dad all Christmas!” said Ruby furiously. “They’re going to spend all day washing dishes and chopping carrots, just you wait. It’s going to be awful! I wish we were anywhere else. I wish we could just leave and go and have a proper Christmas. Anywhere!”
She swung away from the window to glare at Alex. And stiffened.
“Alex!”
“I know,” said Alex, who’d seen it too. “I think you might be about to get your wish.”
He hurried over to the wall, Ruby close on his heels. The mirror – the magic mirror, the time-travelling mirror, their mirror – now showed a middle-aged woman in a very old-fashioned dress – Victorian, probably, Alex thought – with a woollen shawl and big old-fashioned skirts. She was frowning at her reflection in the mirror, a hatpin poised above her hat. Then suddenly something changed. A look of astonishment passed over her face, as though she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She took a step backwards, staring at the mirror as though it was a ghost.
“She can see us!” cried Ruby. She grabbed his hand. “I didn’t know that could happen.”
The woman blinked, and rubbed her eyes. She took a deep breath. And then slowly, cautiously, arm outstretched, she began to move towards the mirror.
“No!” Ruby cried. “If she touches it, she’s going to come here. No way, old Victorian lady. This is our time-travelling adventure, not yours!”
She pulled Alex forwards, into the mirror …
…. and they landed on their hands and knees on the floor of the Victorian hallway.
The first thing that hit Alex was the cold. He’d known, in a vague sort of way, that the Victorians didn’t have central heating, but he hadn’t realised how cold that would make their houses. Victorians had fires, hadn’t they? The Pilgrims weren’t lords and ladies or anything like that, but they weren’t exactly poor. The Edwardian Pilgrims had servants and things. But the hallway at Applecott House had no fireplace, and it was icy cold. Nearly as cold as being outside would be, Alex thought in dull horror. Was this really what Victorian houses were like?
Beside him, Ruby moaned,
“Oh no! Seriously? It’s freezing! Summer! Can’t we have summer?”
“You did ask for Christmas,” Alex pointed out.
“I take it back! I want a heatwave! A heatwave!”
The woman was staring at them in understandable amazement. Alex wasn’t great at grown-up ages, but she looked older than his mother and younger than Aunt Joanna. She was wearing a dark-blue dress, with a sticky-out bit at the back, which Alex vaguely remembered was called a bustle (their parents liked costume dramas and telling their children useless bits of information). She had a green shawl around her shoulders, and greyish-brown hair done up in a bun with curly bits hanging out at the front. She had that look about her which Alex was beginning to recognise as Pilgrim, something inexplicable which marked her out as a friend and relation among the strangers of the past. Alex wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but it was something energetic, something cheerful, something that looked on the world as a game to be played or a treasure chest to be opened and explored. Even his funny, awkward, serious father had it, even Ruby did, though she sometimes pretended she didn’t. Alex had never heard the phrase intellectual curiosity, but he would have understood it immediately; a sort of interest and enthusiasm for the world and all its doings. Alex knew without being told that he was related to this woman, that she would be pleased and excited to see him, and that once she’d recovered from her astonishment, they would be safe with her.
He wasn’t prepared for what she actually said, which was: “Alex and Ruby! It is you, isn’t it?”
CHAPTER TWO
CHRISTMAS IN 1872
For a moment, all they could do was stare. Then Ruby said, “Do we know you?”
“Why, yes! At least – I know you. And you will know me – or you did – or you’re going to –” She stopped in confusion, then laughed. “Great heavens, time travel is a most peculiar thing, is it
“I’m lost,” said Alex.
“I’m not,” said Ruby slowly. “I think what she means is, we’re going to meet her in an adventure we haven’t had yet. Sometime in our future, we’re going to go back to her past – that’s right, isn’t it?”
“Indeed it is.” The woman beamed at her and held out a hand. “Marian Pilgrim – Marian Barnes as was. Last time I saw you, I was eleven years old. Many a long day I’ve waited to see you again. I’d almost got to the point of believing the whole affair was a childish fancy – and here you are!”
Here they were. Alex looked slowly around the hallway. He’d always thought clutter was a modern thing, but this hallway was full of way more stuff than Aunt Joanna’s. There was a row of pegs against the wall, full of enough cloaks and coats to clothe a whole classful of children. Below them were an untidy collection of boots and rubber overshoes and umbrellas and walking sticks, not to mention several metal hoops, two cricket bats and some stumps, a few mouldy-looking balls, a dog’s lead, and what looked like a whip. Below the pegs was a table, covered in bits of paper and newspapers and brown-paper parcels and handkerchiefs and gloves and all the other detritus of family life. A pile of books and a heap of children’s toys spilled over on to the floor, where an entire box of lead soldiers had been emptied out and abandoned next to someone’s bag. Hung up on strings around the room were Christmas cards, just as they were in Aunt Joanna’s hallway, though these were smaller and duller, and decorated with pictures of angels and robins and Victorian children.
It was also dark. The hallway was lit with what he supposed must be gaslights: actual yellow flames in little brass sconces against the walls. The light of the flames was much dimmer than an electric light. It gave the whole place a strange, rather mysterious air to it; something of the feel of a haunted house, only friendlier.
Above their heads, they could hear children’s voices yelling, a dog yapping, and someone thumping away on a piano. From the kitchen came the sound of a woman singing God Rest You Merry Gentlemen in a strong Suffolk accent. The hall smelt of frost and coal-smoke and tobacco and cake cooking somewhere nearby. Despite the cold, Alex could feel himself starting to grin.
“It’s Christmas, isn’t it?” he said. “It’s a Victorian Christmas! Isn’t it?”
“Victorian?” said Marian. “Oh, yes, I see! After the Queen! How jolly! Yes, naturally you do not know where – or should I say when? – you are. Let me see – it is 1872, and tomorrow is Christmas Eve. This is Applecott House – but you know that, of course – and I live here with my husband, Charles, who is the village doctor. We shall have a full house for Christmas – my harum-scarum lot: five children still at home, Heaven help me. I hope you don’t mind a bit of high spirits, for there’ll be plenty of that, I assure you. Then there’s my husband’s brother, Elijah, and his little girl, over from India.” Marian pulled a face as she said Elijah, and Alex got the distinct impression she didn’t like him. “And tomorrow we’ll have my eldest and his family, and my mother as well! And you,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
“Will we fit?” said Ruby.
Marian grinned. “Come now! As though I’d turn away time-travellers at Christmas. We must hurry though, for if you are to be Christmas guests, it would never do for the servants to see you dressed like this. Come!”
She made little shooing gestures at them and, rather bewildered, Alex and Ruby let her lead them up the stairs, and into another, even more cluttered, box room. This was evidently a storeroom, as most of the floor was covered in suitcases, trunks, and packing cases filled with oddments.
“There!” Marian sat back and looked at them with satisfaction. “We shall be safe from prying eyes here. And now – if my memory serves, you are sent into the past to right wrongs, are you not? So to what purpose have you been sent here?”
“How should we know?” said Ruby. “Don’t you?”
“I have not the first idea,” said Marian promptly. “I would say we are pretty jolly sorts, all told. But, there! Perhaps there is a tiger on the loose and we do not know it. I beg you, when you have discovered your task, tell me instantly, and I shall do all I can to assist you.”
“I tell you what you could do to assist,” said Ruby. “Can you think of a story to explain who we are and why we’re here?
“Why, yes… Ah! I have it! You shall be the children of a poor schoolfellow of mine, newly returned to the country from … now, where shall you hail from? America? Australia? Peru?”
“America,” said Alex quickly. He didn’t think he’d be able to pretend to have come from Victorian Peru.
“America it shall be! And my poor dear schoolfellow, sadly fallen gravely ill just before Christmas, knowing nobody hereabouts, puts you both into a stagecoach and dispatches you to me. How does that sound?”
“Will they believe it?” said Ruby.
Marian laughed. “It matters little if they do not, for this is my house, and I may invite who I please for Christmas. The children will be glad to have more playfellows, for I am sorry to say they find their cousin Edith rather dull company. And naturally I shall tell my husband the truth. He is a great believer in magic of all kinds, and besides, he has met you before, though I wager he will not remember.”
Alex felt a little bewildered. Twenty minutes ago, he’d been hanging baubles on Aunt Joanna’s Christmas tree, and now he was supposed to be an American Victorian (were Americans Victorian as well, or was that just British people?), fresh from his mother’s sickbed. It was rather a lot to take in all at once. Still, he couldn’t help liking Marian. And it was nice to think that there would be a grown-up looking after them on this adventure. Even if she did seem to do everything at about a hundred miles an hour.
“And now!” she was saying. “We must find you something more suitable to wear. I believe I have some clothes of Anne’s put aside for Aquila, which should do you very well, my dear.” This was to Ruby. “And some outgrown things of Harold’s which I fancy he will not remember. Come! For you must dress as we do if our story is to be a success.”
There was a large wooden chest at the foot of the bed. Marian opened it and began pulling out clothes any old how and piling them on the bed.
“Let me see… I am sure we have something in here somewhere, that… Aha! And this! And I believe these will do very well for dinner. There!”
She beamed at them. “Who is to go first?”
“Me,” said Ruby. “This house is freezing. I want all the Victorian underwear you can throw at me. And fast!”
Ruby’s suspicion was right. There was a lot of Victorian underwear. First, there was a chemise: a sort of white cotton tube which came down to her knees. Then, drawers. These were also very simple: two woollen tube legs attached to a waistband, like very baggy short trousers.
“But they don’t…” Ruby blushed, then managed, “But they don’t have any middle!”
They didn’t. They kept the legs warm, but there was a bare space in the middle – perhaps to let Ruby go to the toilet?
“Why, no.” Marian looked surprised. “Why should they?”
“Well, don’t you … I mean, what about when you’re…” She stopped in confusion. “I thought covering your bits up was the whole point of knickers!” she burst out at last.
“Indeed it is.” Marian’s face showed nothing but vague confusion. “It wouldn’t do for a young man to see your legs.”
“That isn’t what I meant at all!” said Ruby.
“To be fair,” said Alex, interested despite himself. “Why do you need … er … the rest of you covered up? I mean, I can understand if you’re wearing jeans or something, but you don’t really need pants when you’re wearing skirts, do you? Why do people wear them at all?”
“I …” Ruby had gone bright scarlet. “Let’s just change the subject, OK?”
Black woollen stockings were next. (Marian’s stockings, Alex noticed with interest, were pale green.) The stockings were like tights, but they stopped just above the knee and were kept up with a strap called a garter. Then a corset. Alex had heard about corsets; girls wore them to give themselves tiny waists, and they were supposed to be very tight and awful. They had strings at the back which someone had to pull and then tie to keep the girl’s body stuffed in. Ruby looked at hers with active dislike.
