A Mother's Gift by Maggie Hope

the room was full to bursting. The young ones sat on the clippie mat leaving the sofa and the chairs brought in from the kitchen for their elders. Billy managed to sit next to Katie and was conscious the whole time of her thigh pressed close to his in the crush. All eyes turned to the corner by the window, where Noah still had his ear to the set. The crackling sounds were becoming longer and louder.
    With an important though abstracted expression he fiddled with the aerial wire running from the back of the set out of a hole in the window frame up to the roof. He moved it slightly then went outside to gaze up at the aerial; came back in and twiddled with the knob.
    ‘Can I give you a hand, Noah?’ asked Will Wright, Billy’s father, starting to get to his feet but Noah waved him back.
    ‘Nay lad, I can manage,’ he said.
    Sure enough the crackling stopped and a voice came over the airwaves. Instantly there was an absolute hush among the listeners in the room. Noah sat back in triumph and looked round at the others with pride.
    ‘We are here in Salisbury Cathedral where the Carol Service is about to begin,’ the voice said.
    ‘Hey! He talks funny, doesn’t he?’ Kitty demanded of Dottie. ‘Do you think he’s one o’ them foreigners?’
    Noah frowned blackly at her. ‘By, woman, you don’t half show your ignorance,’ he snapped.
    ‘I only thought—’
    ‘Well, don’t! He talks like that because he’s a southerner, that’s all. He can’t help it,’ said Noah. Then everyone fell silent as organ music filled the room and the choir began to sing. And they stayed silent for the whole of the programme which lasted forty-five minutes.
    Afterwards Kitty served tea and slices of Christmas cake with Wensleydale cheese. Katie, handing round plates of food and cups of tea, was happy enough to burst. It was the first party she could remember since she was very small. By the time the visitors filed out of the front door rather than the back for it was, after all, Christmas Day it was already dark. Outside, she could see the lamplighter with his long pole over his shoulder walking down the row, pausing at intervals to light the streetlamps. The gas flaring up before dying down to a steady glow added to her enjoyment of the magical day.
    ‘Eeh, it’s a miracle all right,’ said Dottie, lingering on the doorstep.
    ‘What?’ asked Katie, still watching the lamplighter.
    ‘Tch,’ Dottie chided. ‘What do you think? The wireless of course. By, I don’t know what my poor mother would have made of it. Merry Christmas, pet.’
    ‘Aye, merry Christmas,’ the others echoed and Katie went in and closed the door. The light from the gas mantle shone softly on the tinsel streamer wound round the brass rail above the fire and the red paper bell hanging from the ceiling. Oh yes, it had been a lovely Christmas.
1931
    The memory of that day came back to Katie as she wheeled the trolley round F Ward. Christmas Day in hospital was so different from what she had been used to, it was a different world altogether. She certainly had not realised how different when she passed her entrance examination and received the letter of admittance. She had been euphoric about it and her gran had been so proud she had told everyone in the rows. But Katie had worked so hard at night school, she deserved to get in.
    She gazed round the ward; there were some empty beds, their counterpanes lying smooth and green and with the sheet turned over them showing white for the regulation twelve inches. Everyone who could be sent home for the holiday had been but there were still patients who needed to stay. Women who had had emergency operations within the last week; a ruptured ectopic pregnancy case and three who had miscarried. Or had tried to abort their babies, depending on the way you looked at it, Staff Nurse had said caustically.
    ‘A bit too heavy with the pennyroyal,’ the senior nurse had muttered. A bit hard, they were on this ward, Katie