On a Clear Day by Anne Doughty Read Free Book Online Page A

Princess Elizabeth doll, the knitted golliwog with his black face and button eyes, the china baby doll called Ruby who cried when you laid her down, the square dog with the velvet nose that Daddy had bought from some American soldiers during the war when you couldn’t get toys and Teddy, her very first and only Teddy, that she’d been given as a small baby, they had all been taken away and burnt with her clothes and her books.Matron had explained it all and said how sorry she was and how sad it was for Clare to lose her special toys, but until now she had forgotten. Until they went to the Fever Hospital she had never spent a night without Teddy before.
    She tried to think of something different and remembered that the Christmas visit to Auntie Polly’s in Uncle Harold’s car had been a very happy one. Uncle Jimmy was in much better spirits, he had just started a new job with the Ormeau Bakery and was feeling very pleased with himself. Auntie Polly had gone to such a lot of trouble to make them welcome. The decorations were still up and the house was bright and shining. What Clare loved most was the Christmas tree in the sitting room, a lovely big tree with tiny, gilt-wrapped boxes hanging as decorations in among the silver bells and the gleaming coloured baubles. There were little lights that winked on and off. All different colours. Fairy lights Daddy called them when he and Uncle Jimmy had sat down with glasses of the funny-smelling dark brown stuff with the foam on top they always drank when they met.
    Daddy said he was amazed they’d been able to get fairy lights, with everything in such short supply. He hadn’t expected there to be any in the shops. But Auntie Polly explained that she’d brought them back from Toronto with her in 1939.
    ‘I suppose it was kind of a silly thing to bring,but I so loved Christmas in Canada and Jimmy and I were so happy those Christmases we had out there when Davy and Eddie were small. I packed up all the decorations and the garland that we used to put on the door, but the mice got that in the roof space of our old house, before we got the mice,’ she said, laughing.
    Clare’s two big cousins, Davy and Eddie, weren’t at home that Sunday. Polly laughed and said they both had girls now, they’d gone off dressed to kill and were having their tea with them, but Ronnie, the youngest, who was still at that school called Inst. and wanted to go to the university, came down from his room where he was studying for exams and talked to them. He’d given Clare some books he’d picked up for 3d each in Smithfield and insisted they were a present.
    Clare was thrilled. Coral Island , Little Women , Swiss Family Robinson , Black Beauty and Heidi . She’d read Little Women and Black Beauty from the school library box, but she loved to have her favourite books so she could read them until she knew them almost by heart. The other three she had seen in the library but hadn’t read. She could hardly wait to begin.
    ‘That’ll keep you busy for a day or two,’ said Daddy as Ronnie handed them over.
    ‘Don’t believe it, Sam. There’s no stopping her once she starts. She’ll be finished in no time,’ saidMummy, turning to Polly who was watching Clare turning the pages to see if there were any pictures or drawings.
    They sat in the sitting room with the tree and then had a most marvellous tea in the living room. With both flaps of the table up, it was terribly crowded because of the big settee and the brown tiled hearth of the fireplace which stuck out. Clare and William had to sit on the settee on a pile of cushions because there wasn’t room to bring in two more chairs. Clare thought it great fun, but William slipped off sideways and cried until Mummy took him on her knee.
    ‘My goodness,’ said Daddy, as Polly set down steak and chips for Ronnie and the grown-ups and bacon and baked beans and chips for Clare and William, ‘Have you had a win on the pools?’
    ‘No such luck,’ said