My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories

Above the wide right pocket of the justacorps is a fox stitched in red and gold, its foreleg caught in a trap.

“I’m Miranda,” she says. And then, because she’s picked up a Honeywell trick or two herself, she says, “My mother’s in jail.”

The Honeywell looks almost sympathetic for the briefest of moments, then shrugs. Theatrically, of course. Sticks his hands in his pockets. “What’s that got to do with me?”

“Everyone’s got problems, that’s all,” Miranda says. “I’m here because Elspeth feels sorry for me. I hate when people feel sorry for me. And I don’t feel sorry for you. I don’t know you. I just don’t think it’s very smart, standing out here because you’re in a mood. But maybe you aren’t very smart. My mother says good-looking people often don’t bother. What’s your name?”

“If I tell you, will you go away?” the Honeywell says.

“Yes,” Miranda says. She can go in the kitchen and play with the kittens. Do the dishes and be useful. Have her fortune told. Sit under the tree again with Daniel until it’s well past time to go to sleep. Tomorrow she’ll be sent away home on a bus. By next year Elspeth will have most likely forgotten she has a goddaughter.

“I’m Fenny,” the Honeywell says. “Now go away. I have things to not do, and not a lot of time to not do them in.”

“Well,” Miranda says. She pats Fenny on the broad cuff of the sleeve of his lovely coat. She wonders what the lining is. How cold he must be. How stupid he is, standing out here when he is welcome inside. “Merry Christmas. Good night.”

She reaches out one last time, touches the embroidered fox, its leg caught in the trap. Stem stitch and seed stitch and herringbone. “It’s very fine work, truly,” she says. “But I hope he gets free.”

“He was stupid to get caught,” Fenny says, “you peculiar and annoying child.” He is already turning back to the window. What does he see through it? When Miranda is finally back inside the drawing room where tipsy Honeywells are all roaring out inappropriate lyrics to carols, pulling Christmas crackers, putting on paper crowns, she looks through the window. The snow has stopped. No one is there.

*   *   *

But Elspeth Honeywell, as it happens, remembers Miranda the next year and the year and the year after that. There are presents for Miranda under the magnificent tree. A ticket to a London musical that she never sees. A makeup kit when she is thirteen.

The year she is fourteen, Daniel gives her a chess set and a box of assorted skeins of silk thread. Under her black tights, Miranda wears a red braided leather anklet that came in an envelope, no letter, from Phuket. The kittens are all grown up and pretend not to know her.

The year she is twelve, she looks for the mysterious Fenny. He isn’t there. When she asks, no one knows who she means.

The year she is thirteen, she has champagne for the first time.

The Christmas she is fourteen, she feels quite grown up. The man in the justacorps was a dream, or some story she made up for herself in order to feel interesting. At fourteen she’s outgrown fairytales, Santa Claus, ghost stories. When Daniel points out that they are standing under the mistletoe, she kisses him once on each cheek. And then sticks her tongue in his ear.

*   *   *

It snows again the Christmas she is fifteen. Snow is predicted, snow falls. Something about the chance of snow makes her think of him again. The man in the snowy garden. There is no man in the garden, of course; there never was. But there is Honeywell Hall, which is enough—and seemingly endless heaps of Honeywell adults behaving as if they were children again.

It’s exhausting, almost Olympic, the amount of fun Honeywells seem to require. She can’t decide if it’s awful or if it’s wonderful.

Late in the afternoon the Honeywells are playing charades. No fun, playing with people who do this professionally. Miranda stands at the window, watching the snow fall, looking for something. Birds. A fox. A man in the garden.

A Honeywell shouts, “Good god, no! Cleopatra came rolled up in a carpet, not in the Sunday supplement!”

Daniel is up in his room, talking to his father on Skype.

Miranda moves from window to window, pretending she is not looking for anything in particular. Far down the grounds, she sees something out of place. Someone. She’s out the door in a flash.

“Going for a walk!” she yells while the door is swinging closed. In case anyone cares.

She finds the man navigating along the top of the old perimeter wall, stepping stone to stone. Fenny. He knocks a stick against each stone as he goes.

“You,” he says. “I wondered if I’d see you again.”

“Miranda,” she says. “I bet you forgot.”

“No,” he says. “I didn’t. Want to come up?”

He holds out his hand. She hesitates, and he says, “Suit yourself.”

“I can get up by myself,” she says, and does. She’s in front of him now. Walks backwards so that she can keep an eye on him.

“You’re not a Honeywell,” he says.

“No,” she says. “You are.”

“Yes,” he says. “Sort of.”

She stops then, so that he has to stop, too. It isn’t like they could keep on going anyway. There’s a gap in the wall just behind her.

“I remember when they built this wall,” he says.

She’s probably misheard him. Or else he’s teasing her. She says, “You must be very old.”

“Older than you anyway,” he says. He sits down on the wall, so she sits down, too. Honeywell Hall is in front of them. There’s a copse of woods behind. Snow falls lazily, a bit of wind swirling it, tossing it up again.

“Why do you always wear that coat?” Miranda says. She fidgets a little. Her bum is getting cold. “You shouldn’t sit on a dirty wall. It’s too nice.” She touches the embroidered beetle, the fox.

“Someone very … special gave it to me,” he says. “I wear it always because it is her wish that I do so.” The way he says it makes Miranda shiver just a little.

“Right,” she says. “Like my anklet. My mother sent it to me. She’s in prison. She’ll never get out. She’ll be there until she dies.”

“Like the fox,” he says.

“Like your fox,” Miranda says. She’s horrified to find that her eyes are watering. Is she crying? It isn’t even a real fox. She doesn’t want to look at the man in the coat, Fenny, to see if he’s noticed, so she jumps down off the wall and begins to walk back toward the house.