Festive Cheer: Her Heart felt as cold as her hands…

 

We’re into December, so it’s time for the annual Clothes in Books project of Christmas in Books – seasonal scenes from random books, for no better reason than I like looking for the pictures, and I and some readers find them cheery and Xmas-y. This one is not cheery, but it does show an unlikely festive trope which may be familiar...

Many of the entries  - this year and in the past – were suggested by clever readers: so if you have a favourite please do let me know and I will try to use it

Ember Lane:  A Winter’s Tale by Sheila Kaye-Smith

published 1940

 

 

The black jacket is said to be by Schiaparelli, great blog favourite and much featured this year, and I don’t think for one moment that Jess, below, or her bridgecoat, looked anything like this. But it’s very beautiful, and I wanted to give the poor woman something nice because she has the most awful time in this book… read on

 

[excerpt]  Sometimes on these cold mornings she had worn her old fur coat in bed while she drank her tea. But on Christmas Day … she would put on her best velvet jacket, a beaded affair trimmed with transfigured rabbit, and described as a “bridge coat” when bought some eight or nine years ago. She kept it in reserve for chilly indoor festivities, of which there had been none since her coming to Woodhorn, so it had hung neglected in the wardrobe till this morning. Greg’s best suit hung beside it, and as she took her jacket off its peg she noticed that something was bulging the pocket of his.

It was not till she had taken out the offending object that she realized she had unwittingly broken into the secret of what must be his Christmas present to her. In her hand was one of the gaily decorated boxes with which the Potcommon Co-operative Stores gave glamour to its Christmas stock. She hastily put it back…

[her husband brings her tea]

He stooped and kissed her as he gave her the tea; then he fumbled in his pocket and drew out a little parcel, which he put in her hands. “Here’s from me with love to you.” For a moment she was too surprised to open it. “But I thought…” mercifully she did not say it aloud, for her mind, working quickly, immediately supplied the explanation. Her heart felt as cold as her hands as she unwrapped the little parcel and displayed a tiny bottle of eau-de-Cologne.

comments: This is a very notable scene for two reasons. It was the Year of the Bridge Coat on the blog, and here’s a rather sad final one: poor Jess lives in a very cold house. And, it links up with bedjackets, another CiB obsession.

 But also, plotwise this is a familiar scene to fans of the film Love Actually, where exactly this happens: a wife (Emma Thompson) finds what she thinks her husband (AlanRickman) has bought her… only to be disappointed. Not only do these women not get the nice present, but they also realize by how much their husband’s affections are engaged elsewhere.

Jess goes way too far in her ‘understanding’ of this. She manages to sneak a look at the rogue present:

It was in the spirit of hope mixed with anxiety that she finally opened the gaudy little box. Perhaps some kindly saleswoman had counselled his inexperience and persuaded him to a gift that at least would not add to his offences. She was reassured to find a quite presentable marcasite clip, the price of which she calculated at from twelve and sixpence to fifteen shillings. This, though certainly more than he could afford, was very much less than in his madness he might have spent; nor had he prepared incrimination for himself with any amorous message. So the prevailing result of her examination was relief.

Perhaps like this?

I don’t think Emma T’s character in Love, Actually would have been so self-sacrificing.

The book is a strange but very compelling read. Sheila Kaye-Smith wrote many novels – she was popular in her day, and her rural settings were one of the inspirations (if that’s the word) of the Stella Gibbons parody, Cold Comfort Farm. And this one definitely ventures into CCF territory, with some particularly un-user-friendly phonetic country talk, and rather surprising interventions by some ghosts.

The setting is a small village in Sussex, and we are looking at a handful of families – the couple above are desperately trying to make  money with their chicken farm, having been on a downward path since Greg left the army at the end of WW1. Note the simple awfulness of her getting the bridgecoat “for chilly indoor festivities, of which there had been none.”

We had some brave un-moneyed women wearing bridgecoats earlier in the year (eg the vicar’s wife in Dorothy L Sayers’ Busman’s Honeymoon - discussed here along with many other bridgecoats), plenty of people making their clothes last for years – but the grimness of this is OTT. It is a good book, but Jess’s story really is too much….

There will be another entry featuring other characters: it is a very suitable wintry book, as in its subtitle.

The provenance of the top  picture is hard to parse, but I found it on Pinterest, and am crediting Ludmila Kravchenko.

Picture of tea in bed from the State Library of Queensland