A Proper Family Christmas (2 page)

None of this would have mattered to William, who would have ignored his son married as happily as he had done single, but Lesley had chosen to take on the role of Dutiful Daughter-in-law. She could not seem to be persuaded of William's total lack of interest in his grandson, and inflicted them on each other at all too frequent intervals. Christmas was compulsory. Three horrendous days loomed before him, to be spent in the company of Stephen and Ratso and the unspeakable Tobias, before he was to be allowed to return to Haseley House.

However, they weren't coming to collect him till Saturday, and sufficient unto Saturday was the evil thereof. Today was only Thursday, and William settled down to make the most of his last days of freedom.

He flicked on the telly. It was the easiest way of finding out what time it was, since no one remembered to wind the clock on the mantlepiece. Somewhere about Countdown, he estimated. He enjoyed that, though he was secretly even more enthralled by the wonderful programme that followed, in which the lower orders of America aired their personal problems with such a spellbinding lack of inhibition.

He waited patiently through an advert break, only to recoil in horror. What was this? Carol singing? Some pop-singer and a bunch of tone-deaf primary school children dressed in Santa Claus outfits, instead of his proper programmes!

“Pah!” said William, who thought Scrooge had been much maligned. “Bloody Christmas!”

“I am
not
going to mind being alone!” said Hilary to the mirror on the hall-stand. She said it out loud, and her voice echoed in a strange way, as if Daniel's absence had caused an unusual space in the house. “It's only for a week. Lots of people spend Christmas on their own.” It was the first sign, wasn't it - talking to oneself? She was beginning to get eccentric already, and Daniel had only been out of the house five minutes.

Never mind, no one could hear her. There was no one to care what she did. She could sing, or take all her clothes off and dance on the table if she wanted to, or break down. She never had broken down when Ben died. It had always seemed best to postpone the moment until a more convenient time: after the funeral, or when she hadn't to discuss mortgage arrears with the Building Society Manager, or look sane and capable enough to be given a job. Somehow she had never got round to giving way, and after three years it seemed a bit late.

The woman in the mirror looked perfectly capable of spending Christmas alone. She stared resolutely back at Hilary, calm, efficient, neat dark curls just hinting at grey. She had the air of a prep-school mistress perhaps, kindly but detached.

“Christ! When did I become matronly?” Hilary glared at the figure, who frowned as if about to give her a hundred lines.

She went down into the kitchen, craving the comforting warmth of the Rayburn. Ben's cousin Julia had been horrified when they first showed her this room, shortly after they had moved in. “Oh dear, a basement kitchen! Never mind, you'll just have to make everything as light as possible. White paint everywhere, with perhaps a hint of blue in the curtains, and you should get away with it…” Instead Hilary had installed dark wooden furniture, with thick plum-coloured curtains and cushions and deep William Morris wallpaper. It was a room to shut the world out of, an underground burrow. Ben had teased her about its womb-like atmosphere, saying she must be compensating for having lost her mother at an early age.

Tonight it suddenly seemed oppressive. She was aware of the weight of the whole house heavy on top of her - layers and layers of empty rooms above her head. She hurried back upstairs, needing at least one floor beneath her to regain some control of the house.

But up here she felt too exposed. She and Ben had deliberately made the living-room as large and light as possible by knocking the two ground-floor rooms into one, with big windows at each end. Now the space looked ridiculously vast, and the dark panels of uncovered glass dangerously expansive.

People had tried to persuade her to move after Ben died. There had been an awful family meeting, when Ben's cousins had decided to ‘rally round' and arrived
en masse
one morning, bearing alcohol and good-will. Still in the coma of bereavement, she had let them in, hoping for some sort of comfort. Instead they rearranged her life as if she had no part in it.

“Darling, you simply must get out of this house!” Julia had looked about her with a shudder. “Every single thing must remind you… Oh, it's ghastly! Tony'll find you somewhere cheap near us in Wimbledon. …Not that I mean…” catching her husband's eye, “but what a pity about the Life Assurance! If only you'd come to us, Tony would have got you a really good deal.”

Tony winked at Hilary, whether in confirmation or reparation for Julia's tactlessness, she wasn't sure.

“Mind you, I suppose there
isn't
anything cheap in Wimbledon - not our end, anyway,” Julia abandoned her scheme regretfully. “What you must do, Hilary, is sell up here - this would fetch a bit, wouldn't it Tony? You are just about in Fulham, after all. You can pay off the loan on the printing business, and buy a lovely little house in the country! It would be wonderful for Daniel. You could grow things, and make your own wine, and we'd all come and visit you.”

“A lot of this stuff could go,” said Lesley, then new to the family and revelling in this opportunity to validate her position. “Stephen and I will help you clear things out if it's too painful.”

If Hilary had had any idea of ridding herself of her last memories of Ben, the thought of Lesley going through their things would have put it to flight for ever. Daniel, with all the outraged fire of seventeen, threatened to rush down to Oxford, when he heard, and turn out Lesley's cupboards. Hilary had laughed in spite of herself, and in a way the incident had given her the jolt she needed.

Certainly she had no intention of losing her home as well as her husband. So much of Ben was in this house - not only the things they had bought together, which would have moved with her, but their positions in each room - little corners of familiarity. She was surprised to realise how much they mattered to her.

She drew the curtains quickly, turned on the stereo and poured herself a drink, then wondered if she should be keeping a clear head. She alone was responsible for dealing with anything that might happen now. Would she be capable of seeing off Jehovah's Witnesses, or mending a fuse, or saving the neighbours from a fire, if her faculties were numbed by alcohol? And with music on, one couldn't be sure what other sounds it was disguising. A host of burglars might be tramping through those supposedly empty rooms above her.

She really had meant it when she'd told Daniel that she didn't mind spending Christmas alone, that evening, weeks ago it seemed, when he'd first mentioned the climbing scheme. Since Ben's death they had always gone to friends or a small hotel, making a rather over-conscious effort not to let the season get them down, but she still found Christmas one of her worst times. The idea of ignoring it altogether had seemed infinitely appealing.

“You'll have to go to someone's for Christmas Day,” Daniel had warned her. “It's all very well saying it's sentimental rubbish, but when there's sod all on telly and you see everyone else in the street playing happy families round the Christmas tree… well, you'll miss Dad like buggery, for a start.”

“As if I didn't already!” Hilary had made a face.

“Phone Julia and Tony. They'd
adore
to have you!” He imitated Julia at her most gushing. “It'll be the real thing - you know how Julia loves all that Christmas crap. You can see it through in an alcoholic haze. Good pressies, too, I shouldn't wonder.”

“Oh yes, and have Tony taking me into corners and asking me how I
am
all the time, and Julia telling poor little Posy not to bother Auntie Hilary, as if I was an uncertain-tempered cat, and everyone avoiding the subject of husbands and feeling guilty if they laugh by mistake…”

“Okay, okay!” Daniel had grinned. “Trash the Wimbledon idea. But I still think you'll want to go somewhere, when it comes to it.”

“Nonsense. I shall just put my head down and let the whole thing pass me by. It'll be heaven.”

Well, here she was, just as she had wanted it - alone for Christmas.

“Sod it!” she admitted out loud. “I'm lonely already.”

CHAPTER 2

William was getting his tea, an operation as full of ritual and long-standing custom as any ceremony in Japan. He had put the kettle on some time ago - the proper kettle, not that stupid electric thing - and now it was spluttering on the old gas stove with just the right kind of hiss that told him it was time to open the toffee tin with the bent spoon he kept for the purpose and get out a teabag.

His daughter-in-law had once spent some time explaining to William that if he didn't fill the kettle completely, it wouldn't take so long to boil. William, as always, had listened with polite interest to her discourse on freshly-drawn water, energy conservation and the prevention of limescale build-up, and continued to do as he always had, quite failing to see the point of making extra trips to the sink, when a good full kettle might last him several days.

Not that he was totally behind the times. William had recently discovered round tea-bags, and he paused a moment to admire the satisfying way the bag aligned so perfectly with the round base of his mug, before taking it out again. Nothing would persuade him that a decent cup of tea could ever permeate a paper wrapping, and he carefully split the bag open and shook out the contents into the mug. He tipped the kettle slowly, watching the water dance into his cup and splurge tea all the way up the sides but just stay within bounds, in a way that he always found immensely satisfying.

Scratch the cat watched the proceedings keenly. Although he had already been fed, he had a strong suspicion that William would be dining on something more interesting than cat food, and he didn't want to risk missing out just because he wasn't really hungry.

William cut himself one and a half slices of bread, and spread the half slice with marmite and the full slice with butter and jam, topping both bits with a layer of strong cheddar cheese. This done, he began the rather precarious journey across the hall. Mrs. Arncott had suggested that if he ate his tea in the kitchen it would mean fewer crumbs for her to clear off the sitting-room carpet in the mornings, and less chance of him tripping over the hall rug and breaking something - whether a cup or a leg she didn't specify. William, who knew she'd do anything to make less work for herself, had pointed out that the T.V. was in the sitting-room, and he could hardly be expected to eat a meal with nothing to look at but his plate.

He turned on
The Bill
, wincing at the statutory Christmas decorations adorning the Police Station despite the suspiciously full-leaved trees in the exterior scenes. Scratch placed a paw against his leg, and when that was ignored, stressed his point with a strategic amount of claw until he was given a bit of cheese and marmite. The pair of them settled down to a peaceful evening.

Something bleeped somewhere. William ignored it. He was beginning to get hold of the plot of
The Bill
. This greasy-haired yob had stolen something from the black one, and the third one, who was really a goodie despite his earring and leather jacket…

The bleep became louder, more and more insistent. William knew what it was - that annoying machine Stephen and Ratso had bought him “because you don't always seem to hear the phone, Dad.” It had buttons and aerials and little red lights, and if you ignored it, it went on and on bleeping louder and louder until you pressed and pulled the right combination of things to make it stop.

But William had discovered an easier solution, and slowly, with a lingering eye on
The Bill
, he went out and picked up the receiver on the proper telephone in the hall.

“Well?”

This uncompromising greeting usually put off any caller persistent enough to get him to answer the phone in the first place. But this one knew William.

“Hello Dad.”

“Huh.”

“How are you?”

“Having my tea.”

Stephen paused in vain for an echo to his polite enquiry, then answered it anyway. “Bit of a panic here.”

There was always a bit of a panic where Stephen and Ratso were concerned. William waited to hear whether little Tobias had caught a snuffle, or whether their local shops had run out of Christmas pudding, and strained to pick up on
The Bill
round the corner of the sitting-room door.

“Seems our damp proof course has broken down.”

“What a shame.”

As he'd thought, they'd arrested the wrong youth, leaving the greasy-haired one free to walk over to that block of flats…

“Yes, it is rather,” said Stephen acidly, knowing full well his father's mind was elsewhere. “The house is quite untenable - you know how dank Oxford gets in winter.”

“Can't you buy a new one?”

“We can hardly move again so soon. And we'd never find such a…”

“I mean a new… What did you say had broken down?”

“The damp proof course, Dad! Apparently they don't last for ever in these old Victorian houses. Lesley's already found mould at the bottom of one of the curtains, and of course Tobias has a tendency to weak lungs…”

William's contact with his grandson so far had given him quite the opposite impression, but he didn't argue. With a bit of luck Stephen was leading up to the news that they couldn't have him to stay after all! He prepared a speech of polite regret and reassurance that he would be perfectly all right on his own.

“So Lesley and I really don't feel we can have you to stay for Christmas.”

“Oh, what a pity! But…”

“…We couldn't risk you catching pneumonia or rheumatism or something while you were here.”