Although his greater height gave him an advantage over the people ahead of him, he felt nervous as he tried to pick out his sister from the mass of travelers crossing the concourse. Around a bushy Christmas tree the station band was playing 'O Come Al Ye Faithful'. They had drawn quite an audience, some of whom were singing along. Two policemen passed behind them, their eyes scanning the crowd. People were moving sluggishly because so many passengers were loaded with parcels or stopping for emotional reunions with arriving passengers. Above them al, the vault of the station was clouded with breath and steam.
He tried to imagine what his sister looked like now. It was eighteen years since she had disappeared to India. War had blocked her intentions to return once her children were less dependent. He could hardly remember her features; it was easier to recal her bossy presence: a big sister both loving and admonitory. He took off his gloves. Two or three women passed him with sons of approximately the right age in tow. He was looking across the platform when he felt a tug on his sleeve.
'Laurie?' asked the woman beside him, smiling tentatively.
He realised in an instant that he would have changed much more than her and felt a surge of warmth at her courage.
'Oh Milie,' he said, holding the sister he recognised instantly—smaler, rounder, but just as he now remembered her—first at arm's length and then pressed to him, so swiftly that her hat was knocked sideways and she had to extricate a hand to hold it on to her head. Her thick hair—pinned up in rather an old-fashioned way and much as his mother had styled hers—escaped in curls. She stil had such a pretty smile.
He was suddenly aware of the boy standing next to her. Taler than his mother, indeed nearly as tal as Laurence, dark-eyed in a way that instantly reminded Laurence of his father. He smiled nervously and shot out his hand. Laurence took it and held it with his other one.
'Helo—Uncle Laurie,' said the boy. He had nearly said sir.
'Helo, Wil.' He was suddenly and simply a man with a family, getting ready for Christmas.
'It realy is so very good to see you, Milie.'
Their eyes finaly met. Impulsively, he flung his arms round her again, then puled back slightly and looked down at her. Her eyes were brimming with tears; she fumbled in her bag. He felt in his pocket and gave her his handkerchief, grateful that he had ironed it.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'About everything,' she added, in a muffled voice, as she wiped her nose.
Laurence imagined the scene through her eyes. At twenty-six she had left England, her home, friends, parents and brother, for the furthest shores of the empire.
He suspected that by then she had begun to think she would become an old maid and was glad to be married even to a man nearly twenty years her senior. However, she could never have guessed how completely her world would crumble behind her. During her long sojourn in India, she had lost not just both parents but a way of life they had al shared. The family home was long gone; friends had gone; the brother she had left as a schoolboy was a widower, not far off middle age.
'And how old are you now?' said Laurence and before his nephew could tel him fourteen, which he knew perfectly wel, he laughed. 'I'm afraid I'm being a complete ass at this—you must be thinking I'm the most pompous uncle you could imagine.'
'No,' said the boy, a smile hovering, 'definitely not.'
'You must remember Henry's brother Norton? Wil's other uncle?' Milie said. 'It's hardly a fair competition.'
Now she had linked her arm through his, yet stil grasping his hand. Hers, gloveless now, was warm and dry. A porter hovered with a trunk and two cases, leading the way as they began to push a path through the crowds.
They were level with the station band when Laurence saw a face he recognised. Standing, listening to the carols, was Leonard Byers. Byers hadn't seen Laurence, who paused, just for a second, taking in the hatless young woman with bobbed hair, clinging to Byers' arm. As the porter parted the crowds, Laurence saw her in profile. She was very pregnant. She said something in Byers' ear, he grinned down at her and she laid her head against his arm.
One minute Laurence, Milie and Wilfred were having to muscle their way through the mass of people and the next, having come through the great arches, they were free, standing on the edge of the shining black street, where streams of cabs and dark cars moved swiftly in both directions. His sister looked from her brother to her bags and back to him again, as if she couldn't bear to raise her eyes and encompass the vastness of the new life around her. The boy looked in every direction: at the entrance to the underground station, the advertisement hoardings, the chestnut-seler, the clerks and shop girls getting off the bus, the passers-by slightly bowed under black umbrelas. His face was alert and excited.
In a way Laurence was glad that proper conversation was stil impossible; the carols had died away behind them but now there was a constant hiss from the wheels of the traffic and a paper boy stil shouting out the late headlines. They found their cab, loaded the bags, he tipped the porter and they were away, sucked into the city and the winter's night, with the bright shop windows and the slanting rain moving faster and faster behind them.
Epilogue
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