Making Marion (15 page)

I don't think it was unreasonable of me to have been making some noises while Reuben dabbed at my chest with a freezing cold tea towel. Yes, they were quite groany, and it wouldn't be inaccurate to have described them as breathy. If somebody had decided to stand and eavesdrop from around the side of the pantry, yes, they could, with a suspicious imagination and lewd mind, possibly interpret the sounds that I was making as being caused by something altogether different from a scalding accident. Maybe, if that person then decided that they had done enough earwigging and wanted to see for themselves what was going on, and they discovered their boyfriend rubbing the ribcage of a woman wearing only her brand new push-up bra and matching knickers, they might not instantly comprehend what was happening, and form an entirely erroneous assessment of the situation.

Well, Erica did anyway. Reuben turned to face her, one hand still pressing the tea towel against my raw skin.

“Erica!”

“Reuben!”

Erica had blanched the colour of her perfect teeth. She tried to spin around, her heels skittering on the stone floor. Frantic, she
grabbed a metal jug containing meat juices from the table. Before Reuben could move to stop her, she flung it at me. I stood and let the cold blobs of gelatinous stock plop off my shoulders and hair onto the flagstones. Erica wasn't finished.

“Bitch!” She grabbed the large jar of self-raising flour and threw that, continuing to scream insults. Reuben tried to grab her hands, but she fought him with all the fire of a woman scorned. Those next few minutes, as Reuben yelled explanations over Erica's shrieks and Lucy's whining crescendo, and my throat clamped up tighter than an oyster's shell, were akin to a hideous nightmare. To be called a “flabby, fat slut” and an “abnormal, ugly, boring troll”, confirming most of the worst fears I held about other people's opinions of me, felt unpleasant. To have it spat at me from a stunning, successful woman while I stood there in my underwear, my skin blistering – that brought things down to a new low.

Eventually, Reuben managed to drag Erica away to calm down. Disregarding the greasy meat stock dripping from my hair down my burned chest, I pulled on the swimsuit with trembling hands, dragging my jeans on over the top. Hurriedly finding my coat, I put on my boots, and left. This time, however, I left a very sincere note apologizing for making a mess in my host's kitchen and an even greater mess in his personal life.

T
he Christmas trail proved a runaway success. Scarlett began selling mulled wine and mince pies in the evenings, with chocolate cake for “all those regular people who know the reason we eat mince pies only once a year is 'cause they are revoltin'”. She arranged for Jake's band to play jazzed-up carols and Christmas songs, and soon we had parents dragging their teenagers along just to have an excuse to enjoy the festivities (the teenagers then came back bringing more of their teenage friends). Some adults started bringing nieces and nephews, neighbours' kids, even the children of their work colleagues. We added jacket potatoes and hotdogs to the menu, and before long the adults were coming on their own too.

Archie dusted off an old wagon languishing in one of his barns and gave rides through the forest. We decorated it with lanterns, strung battery-powered fairy lights around the wheel spokes, and twisted ivy and red ribbons along each side. I persuaded Scarlett to trust Grace with decorating the ten-foot Christmas tree, and she spent hours creating baubles out of spray-painted tennis balls, weaving ornaments from twigs she also sprayed silver.

Had we known then what New Year would bring, would we have been determined to laugh more? Would we have paused more often to wonder, gaze at the stars, make each moment of her last December sacred? Or would every greeting and farewell, each frosty breath, have been coloured bittersweet, tainted with aching
yearning for what could not be? Is it better to know? To have the opportunity to live your final winter certain it will be your last? Or is there blessing in a swift goodbye?

The 21st December, a Friday, was the grotto's last day. Scarlett, Grace and Valerie were due to fly out to Florida for a fortnight on the 22nd, courtesy of Scarlett's brother, an obstetrician with five children of his own. Grace knocked on my caravan door early Saturday morning.

“Hi, Grace. Come in.”

She grinned.

“Grace!” I clutched one hand to my chest. “You actually have teeth. I was beginning to wonder.”

“Mock all you want. I'm spending Christmas in an actual house, built with real bricks. With a bath and the internet and
privacy
. With palm trees and Disney World and family members who are my age and therefore normal and
interesting.
”

“Careful. It sounds like you might be teetering dangerously close to the brink of a good mood there, Grace.”

“So that's was this weird feeling is.” She flopped onto my sofa, flinging her arms out from her sides. “I thought it must be all the coke I snorted with Archie in the grotto earlier.”

“Are you all packed, then?”

“Yes. I just wanted to give you your present.” She reached into her duffel bag and handed me a shoebox wrapped in Christmas paper. I held it up to my ear and gave it a good shake.

“Um… is it a gift voucher? Or a pair of earrings?”

“Don't shake them too hard!”

I sat on the other sofa and cradled the box as if it were a baby.

“Thank you. I can't wait to open it. But I will. It'll probably be my only present, so I'll resist until Christmas morning.”

“Are you really staying here by yourself?”

I nodded. Scarlett had made discreet enquiries about my plans already, reminding me that with Jake visiting his dad I would be the only person on the site for more than a week.

“Yep. All on my ownsome; and I fully expect it to be my best Christmas for a very long time.”

“What are you going to do all week?”

“I'm going to cook and read and walk off all the mince pies I've been eating. And someone has to dismantle the grotto and pack up the decorations. I'll give Samuel a hand with the pigs and chickens. Well, with the pigs.” The chickens were quite capable of looking after themselves, in my opinion. Samuel wasn't so much looking after them as preventing them from taking over the campsite and turning it into an independent poultry state.

I stood up and went to put my present under the two-foot-high tree I had dug up from the forest behind the caravan and planted in a green and gold stripy pot.

“What do you normally do at Christmas, then? Don't you have any family to go and see?”

“There is no normal in my family.”

“So what did you do last year?”

“I think you'd better get on, Grace. You don't want to miss your flight.” I reached out and hugged her. “Scarlett has packed your present from me. Now go, and have a really wonderful time!”

Last Christmas, I woke late to find my mother huddled in front of our coal fire, a bottle of Guinness in her hand. I made myself toast, and sat across from her on what she still called “Henry's chair”.

“Are you going to open your present, Ma?”

“Are you still planning on abandoning your own mother on Christmas Day? If so, I'll save it for later. It'll give me something to do when I'm on my own. Perhaps it'll stop me feeling so lonely.”

“Ma.” I closed my eyes, ground my teeth a few times. As had happened every single year my mother had been out of hospital for Christmas, Auntie Jean would pick her up straight after mass and take her to their brother Liam's house. They'd have dozens of
relatives coming and going all day, a four-course dinner, games, music and enough booze to keep even my mother happy. For the first time I had been courageous enough to speak up and tell the rest of the family I would not be joining them. This ruffled a few feathers, and provided Ma with buckets of sympathy to wring out from anyone unfortunate enough to blunder into her sphere of bitterness.

The postman must have been sick of hearing about her selfish, stuck-up daughter who would rather leave her widowed mother all alone on Christmas Day and traipse off to that doctor's house. Might as well grovel on her knees and beg that boy to marry her, she's that brazen. Always considered herself too high and mighty for her own family. Too grand for the likes of us. And who'll she come snivelling back to when he decides he doesn't want a weak, freaky sheep for a wife? Who'll be expected to pick up the pieces then?

I spent the morning sitting with Ma while she pointedly looked at the wall behind my head and worked her way through two more bottles. She informed me, several times, that seeing I was ditching her for such a grand family, they could buy me a present while they were at it. This had limited impact since I hadn't received a gift from my mother in eighteen years. There was always something under Liam's tree with a tag stating “To Marion, with all my love, Ma”, but even at eight years old I'd known the writing, and the love, was not my mother's.

Once Auntie Jean had been, I walked across town to Eamonn's house, where I spent the afternoon playing Monopoly and eating chocolate. We ate a late dinner, opening our presents in the early evening. Eamonn walked me home, and we kissed goodnight. As I climbed into my freezing bed, hoping to be asleep before my mother returned, Harriet phoned.

“So, how was Christmas without the screaming cousins and your mother's jolly wit?”

“It was fine, thanks. Peaceful.”

“Boring, you mean.”

“No. I missed the weans, but I had a nice time.”

“And? What did you get? Anything sparkly in a wee velvet box? Is your hand a little heavier this evening than it was when you woke up?”

“No.”

“Disappointed? Or relieved?”

“Neither! I wasn't expecting a ring, Harriet. We're fine as we are.”

“No, Marion. You are not fine. You're hanging all your hopes on this man rescuing you, yet again, from the clutches of the dragon witch.”

“Harriet!”

“Sorry. From
her
clutches. You're drifting about like an empty crisp packet, doing the bare minimum to classify yourself as animal not vegetable. You have a job and a nice boyfriend. Big deal. Your life is not going to change once you marry Eamonn Brown. You'll still be round at your mother's every day, cooking her dinner and absorbing her evil spillage. You'll go nowhere you really want to go, do nothing you actually want to do and carry on pouring your life away like dirty dishwater. There is nothing wrong with living in the same town your whole life, sticking with a good job and marrying your childhood sweetheart. But Marion, you have no peace, no satisfaction and you certainly aren't happy. You walk around this town with your head bowed and your eyes on the ground like that's all you're worth, all you're aiming for. You had a lousy childhood. A really lousy one. So have millions of other people. When are you going to stop letting that be an excuse to waste the rest of your life? Get over it. Move on. It's claws that hold you here, not love. Eamonn is not the answer. He's part of the problem because he gives you an excuse to keep wallowing in your swamp of a life.”

“He loves me! Eamonn loves me even though I'm a complete mess. How can that be a problem?” My voice echoed down the phone. I felt shocked. Harriet had encouraged and cajoled me pretty much non-stop over the years, but she had never spoken to me like this before.

“He might love you for who you are. He doesn't love you for who you can become. Only you can save yourself, Marion. Only you can find a way to look at yourself in the mirror and feel proud of the person gazing back at you. I don't know exactly what's happened to you, or how Eamonn's helped you out, but I do know this: you are never going to be free until you get out of here.”

I didn't want to be free. I wanted to be safe.

Harriet called me back ten minutes later.

“I'm sorry. I've spent the day listening to my parents wondering why I'm not married yet. Ma told me over Christmas pudding that if I was a lesbian that would be grand, as long as I was the girl one.”

“Happy Christmas, Harriet.”

“Happy Christmas, Marion.”

Sunday morning I got up, made myself a flask of coffee, wrapped up a cinnamon bagel and trudged over to the grotto site. The ground was crunchy with frost. Droplets of freezing dew clung to the decorations and glimmered off every wooden surface. The sun shone but the wind slapped at my skin. I ate breakfast inside the grotto hut, perched on the large rocking chair Archie hadn't got round to collecting yet.

“So then, Marion, have you been a good girl?”

I poured myself a cup of coffee, offering a sip to imaginary Santa.

“Oh yes, Santa, ever so good. Well, except for running away from home without telling anyone where I was going, leaving my fiancé in the lurch, and stealing a programme from a mad man's cellar. And having pleasant thoughts about someone else's boyfriend, and unpleasant thoughts about, oh, loads of different people, and – ”

“Steady on, Marion, this isn't confession.”

“Sorry, Santa. I suppose you want to hear my Christmas list.”

“Yes please. I am pretty busy at the moment.”

“Well, let me think. I'd like a new coat to show off my haircut, and some more books. I want to be able to run all the way around
the estate without getting a stitch. But – honestly? What I really want is to find out who my da was. To feel… oh, like I know him again. What he cared about. If he was like me. And it would be great if you could give me enough courage to face the mess I've left back home. And to stop thinking about men who don't belong to me. Oh yes, and a cookbook. Does that sound a bit much, Santa? I could do without the coat.”

I was about to reply to myself, when I heard a bark from the other side of the shed wall. Jumping up, I managed to avoid spilling my coffee, and looked up to see Lucy poking her head around the shed door, Reuben right behind her.

His eyes glinted. “Is it just you in here, Marion? I thought I heard the sound of voices.”

I straightened my spine and pointed my chin up toward the roof. “Yes. That would have been me. I was reciting poetry. It's good for one's soul.”

“Of course.” He nodded his head gravely. “Good idea. What's your poem of choice for, um, soul improving?”

I stared at him for a moment. “That would depend. But today it was, of course, a Christmas poem. By Christina Rossetti, actually: ‘Love Came Down at Christmas'.”
Thank you, Ballydown library Christmas recital evening.