Easy Peasy

by Lesley Glaister

  Hazel raised her eyebrows at him. ‘Sometimes I think you come from a different planet.’

  ‘Let’s have a butcher’s,’ Colin leant forward.

  ‘But they’re not legible,’ Hazel let him take them, wiped her fingers on her sleeves. I noticed that she was dressed almost the same as Mummy, both of them in stretch pastel slacks and sweaters, both sleek and slim and discreetly jewelled. I was wearing a green taffeta dress with a nipped-in waist that, at home, had seemed Christmassy and right. But now I just felt silly and overdressed.

  ‘I could do with a drink,’ Hazel nudged Colin.

  ‘Good idea,’ Mummy stood up. ‘Dinner won’t be long.’

  ‘Lutfisk?’ Hazel guessed. ‘Remember how we used to hate it, Grizzle, and we always had to eat it on Christmas Eve?’

  ‘Afraid so.’

  ‘Colin’s come to rather like it, haven’t you darling?’ Hazel put her hand on his knee. Even after five years’ marriage she can’t keep her hands off the man.

  ‘Yes. Quite illegible,’ he pronounced.

  I will never understand what she sees in him, pompous little hamster of a man with his puffy moustache and plump pink cheeks.

  ‘They’re not,’ I object. ‘You can make bits out.’

  Colin went to the sideboard for the sherry.

  ‘Listen …’ I read out a snatch: water, mosquitoes, disease. Subjects that sat uneasily among the trappings of festivity. My voice faltered. I was going too far.

  ‘Please,’ Mummy’s voice, quiet, ‘do you really think your father would want you raking all this up? Tonight of all nights?’

  ‘But …’ I stopped and put the papers down. Hazel pulled a face at me, Mummy went off into the kitchen closing the door behind her with a firm click.

  ‘I’ve got several large sherries here,’ Colin said, ‘do I have any takers?’

  ‘Sorry Griz, but I do think Mum’s right.’ Huw picked up the papers and slid them back into their envelope. Then he bent down and kissed me on top of my head.

  ‘Fancy you not knowing he was a prisoner-of-war.’ Hazel frowned at him.

  I looked up, saw expressions pass like shadows across his face, ending with a grin, a shrug. Lucky, incurious, easy-going Huw. My baby brother. How he managed to grow up so uncomplicated in our family, I’ll never know. I felt like a child in a roomful of adults. Stupid, gauche, incapable of judging a situation. Guilty of bad taste. I sipped my sherry and shut up.

  Late in the evening. The turkey was stuffed and snuggled under bacon rashers in its tin. Scrabble finished – Mummy victorious as usual – we sat round the fire finishing our nightcaps. Snowballs, for Mummy, Hazel and me, something I would never dream of drinking in any other setting, on any other occasion, with any other people. There was even a glacé cherry stuck on a cocktail stick to fiddle with. In the absence of my father, Colin, a stickler for detail, had put himself in charge of drinks. My misjudgment had been glossed over. It was like any other Christmas Eve – with one omission.

  Hazel finished her drink and yawned. ‘I’m going up.’

  ‘Wait,’ Mummy said, ‘one thing I want to do tomorrow, is go to church.’

  I relaxed a bit, almost relieved that at last something was different. A little smear of red from the cherry floated on the surface of my drink.

  ‘Church?’ Huw said. ‘What that grey thing with the pointy roof?’

  ‘Huw!’

  ‘Hey, Mummy’s got religion!’

  She laughed. ‘Not at all. It’s just …’ She fingered the pearls around her throat. I noticed how old her neck was growing and that made me sad. She met my eyes and smiled. I felt forgiven. ‘It’s not that I’ve suddenly become a church-goer or anything … I just feel …’

  ‘If you want to go to church then, of course, we’ll all go.’ Hazel looked at me.

  ‘I know Ralph’s not buried there or anything. It’s got nothing to do with him, that church. I don’t think he even went in it.’ She was referring to the flint-walled village church.

  ‘I walked round the graveyard with him once,’ I remembered. ‘There’s all these grave-stones for sailors lost at sea – bodies never found.’

  ‘So sad.’ Mummy let go of her pearls. ‘He didn’t believe in anything of course, but …’

  ‘Well, that’s agreed then,’ Colin said. ‘Top up anyone?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘But somebody,’ Mummy drained the last eggy dregs from her glass and looked at me, ‘needs to stay and look after the lunch.’

  ‘Bagsy me!’ I shot my hand up like a child.

  Hazel raised her eyes to heaven.

  Bed-time on Christmas Eve. I stood by the window looking out between the curtains at the sea. The wind lugged bulky soot clouds across the sky, edging them with silver as they crossed the slice of moon. I opened the little top section of the window and the raw, foaming, gull-screaming breeze made me shiver. I left the window open, and the curtains, so that I could lie in bed and watch the changing sky. The bed was the bottom bunk from my childhood. I don’t know what happened to the top one, where it got left behind. The mattress was thin and dipped in the middle. I had expected the bed to be cold but when I climbed in there was the lovely surprise of a hot-water bottle in a soft crocheted cover. The smell was of hot rubber and frowsty wool. I snuggled into the warm space and pushed the bottle down to my feet.

  Thought, Foxy always has cold feet.

  Switched off the light. The plug gone from the night-light. Could hardly trouble Mummy for a screwdriver and a plug. Not quite dark though, watery moonlight rippling on the floor and on my bed. Before I got in I stuffed the diary back in my suitcase. Lay wondering why I can’t get it right. Foxy makes curiosity a virtue. My curiosity seems a vice. Practically a weapon. All I seem to be able to do with it is hurt people. But all I want is to know. I want to know about Vince. I’d pored over the diary mentions of him many times and speculated with Foxy. Obviously he was important to Daddy. I just wanted to know why exactly. What had happened to him – and why the dreams? I just wanted to know who my father was.

  I tossed about in the bed, trying to get comfortable, to fit my adult body into the childish space. I was grateful for the narrowness of the bed – no emptiness beside me.

  I never could get to sleep on Christmas Eve. Like children everywhere I lay for hours awake.

  There was the waiting for Father Christmas.

  But there was something else too.

  A horrible thing that cast a pall over all our Christmases.

  Every Christmas Eve, Daddy would dream. The worst of his nightmares would come. Deep tongueless screams that split the night and made my eyes stare and my heart hammer. One time when I had fallen asleep and was woken by the scream, I saw my stocking was already filled. It lay on the end of my bed, a heavy, bulky, bulging thing, like a chopped-off leg. Father Christmas had been before Daddy woke us with his dream. Woke me at least – Hazel made no sound or movement. I eased my legs down under the blankets and under the stocking and heard the rustle of the things stuffed in there. I smelled, very faintly, the scent of tangerine and chocolate but I did not reach for the stocking. Not daring to disturb Hazel, I lay still. I listened to the footsteps on the landing, the water running in the bathroom, Mummy’s soothing voice.

  And I did not believe in Father Christmas any more.

  Lying in the old bottom bunk, remembering that, I remembered something else: the pencilled dates on the wall by Hazel’s bed. The dates that had seemed random except for one date – December 24th. It seemed so obvious now that she had been awake too, she had heard Daddy and she had wondered. She too had tried to make sense, make a pattern of it. I had not been alone in that.

  The curtains flapped damply against the open window; my breath was a ghost in the almost dark. I did drift off to sleep, a shallow sleep from which I woke quickly, oppressed by a realistic dream. For a moment I could not shake off the sensation that there was something above me – a top bunk with a girl inside it. And that the
girl was me. It was the child Griselda, the guilty child and her guilt weighed heavy on me. More, was a part of me. I had to blink and blink away the top bunk, the sensation on my face like hairs hanging from a wire mesh above me. I had to stretch out my arm from beneath the blankets and fumble, sweatily, with the lamp switch to be certain that all that was above me was the ceiling. My heart was beating like it did on the night of Daddy’s dreams. But there would be no more dreams. Not Daddy’s. Only mine.

  I saved Foxy’s present until last. We sat around the fire on Christmas morning – although it was sunny and mild, too mild for a fire – sipping champagne and opening our presents. No one sat in Daddy’s leather armchair, and it seemed to have a real presence that morning. The flames were pale, almost invisible in a shaft of sunlight that lit up a furry coating of soot in the chimney. I unwrapped layers of gold paper and bubble-wrap. Inside was an oval mirror on a china stand, a swivel mirror, magnifying glass on one side. The stand was encrusted with china roses.

  ‘Isn’t that exquisite!’ Mummy exclaimed.

  ‘Exquisite.’ I gazed down at myself in the magnifying side. I could see all the pores of my skin open in the stuffiness of the room, the eyebrow filaments that needed plucking, a patch of dry skin, shadows under my eyes.

  ‘That’ll take some dusting,’ Hazel remarked, running her finger-tip over the stiff petals. ‘Antique?’

  ‘No doubt.’

  I put the mirror down beside the pile of books, chocolates and bath-oils that was my haul. Mummy looked at me quizzically, I took a swig of my drink to stop my bottom lip from turning down like that of an ungrateful child. Foxy should have given me something more … intimate. I don’t know what I’d expected, what could possibly have been inside those elaborate wrappings to make me feel better.

  Mummy gave me detailed instructions about the basting of the turkey, the timing of the vegetables, the steaming of the pudding. Her GP friend, John, appeared just before eleven o’clock to accompany them to church. And then suddenly the house was empty and quiet but for tiny rustlings as screwed up balls of wrapping paper loosened. I wandered outside. The church bell began to toll, a simple and regular clang that made brassy shivers in the air. I thought of that sound carrying over the water, how far would it travel? Who would be hearing it miles across the water? The sun was shining tenderly on the calm sea. It was almost warm.

  I thought about Egypt where it might be dark. What time exactly? No idea. Foxy was not in my time any more. I’d sent her off with my present wrapped in the same gold paper, and inside the gold paper, folded in black tissue paper, was an orange silk kimono most exquisitely embroidered with fantastic birds: emerald, crimson, lapis lazuli. Bought months before, before the summer, when my father was still alive. As soon as I’d seen it at a sale in Leeds I’d thought of her, how she would look in it, how she would feel in the silk of it. I had wanted to give it to her straight away but been strict with myself, hidden it, saved it up. I wished I hadn’t bothered.

  Next door’s children came whooping out of the house, new roller-skates, a kite to fly, though there was not a breath of wind. I wished them Happy Christmas and went back into the kitchen where the smell of turkey was beginning to seep round the edges of the oven door. I looked through the glass into the hot light space. The bacon fat had gone clear and beads of sweat stood out on the pimply white flesh. I lifted the lids of the saucepans where pale sprouts and carrot sticks floated and put them back. Too early. I looked at the clock and lit the gas under the pudding. It was a bought pudding. The first Christmas pudding my mother had ever bought. Another difference. A sudden memory: the smell, the steamy brown-stained pudding cloth; between my teeth, amongst the dense sweet fruits, the thin bite of lucky silver. And stirring the pudding way back in the autumn, making wishes. Fragments of childhood, muscling voraciously up inside me.

  Too quiet. I switched the radio on, something old and funny: Kenneth Williams’s sneery voice and a rattle of tin laughter. I almost wished I’d gone to church. I collected the glasses and ran hot water into the bowl, squirted in detergent and watched the bubbles mound. The doorbell rang, such a sudden loud blurt that I jumped.

  On the doorstep was a tall man with thick brown hair.

  It took me a moment.

  ‘Happy Christmas.’ The voice a bit too loud, careful, the emphasis slightly wrong, familiar. I looked up into his face and saw but couldn’t quite believe. An interesting face, narrow cheeks, faintly bristled, a pointed chin.

  ‘Vassily?’

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask me in?’

  ‘Oh …’ I stood back to let him step in, turned away for a moment to control my face, calm the sudden rainy patter of my heart. He was standing, quite unwittingly, under the mistletoe. I couldn’t speak. Nothing would occur to me, not even a greeting.

  He watched my face intently, waiting for my words.

  ‘This is a surprise.’ I managed.

  ‘Just passing.’

  ‘Just passing? Here?’

  He chuckled. ‘Well, to stretch a point.’

  ‘Does Mummy expect … I mean she never …’

  He shook his head. ‘No, my mother-in-law lives up the coast – we’re there for the holiday. When I realised how close I thought … Thought I’d say hello to your mother but …’ he looked towards the empty kitchen.

  ‘Everyone’s at church,’ I said, my heart slowing, my composure recovering. ‘Sorry, Vassily, drink? I haven’t even said Happy Christmas.’

  It was hard to look at him. So big now, inches taller than me, and good looking. But Dog-belly was there like a speck in my eye that I could not blink away. We went into the sitting-room. He stood looking out at the view while I poured him a glass of Scotch – Colin’s Glenmorangie, a present from my mother.

  ‘They look precarious.’ He nodded at the holiday shacks.

  ‘See that gap …’ I pointed, ‘that one had just gone last time I came.’

  He nodded solemnly and we fell quiet for a moment.

  Then he turned to me again. ‘I was truly sorry to hear about your father,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ The fire was getting low. I knelt and put on a log. It spat and steamed, too wet. A spray of applause from the radio in the kitchen filled an awkward gap. We stood amongst the screwed-up paper and the stacks of presents. I could think of nothing to say. I could not make small talk with this man, with the memory of that little boy intruding, with the sharp splinter of shame pricking away inside me. I poured a sherry I didn’t remotely want, just for something to do.

  ‘My mother is ill,’ he said. ‘Ovarian cancer.’

  ‘Oh.’ I sat down quickly on the sofa, my knees suddenly weak and rubbery. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘She’d like to see you.’ He sounded as if he was surprised.

  I nodded, not imagining then that I ever would see Wanda, supposing that I’d never see her again. I thought of asking him to sit down, but that would only prolong this awkward agony. I wanted him gone. He looked taller than ever now that I was seated. He was wearing a beautiful silver-grey moleskin jacket. His fingers were long and flexible, gold hairs on his wrists, a wedding ring.

  ‘You’ve done well, I understand,’ I said, appalled to hear myself.

  He nodded, finished his drink, put down his glass as if suddenly impatient. ‘Well, good to see you Griselda.’

  ‘You’re going already?’ I stood up to urge him on his way. ‘You could wait for the others …’

  ‘No.’ He went to the door and I followed him. ‘Must get back, just nipped out for a breath of air. Lunch, you know, the family …’ I should have asked him about his child, I thought, I should have asked him about his wife. ‘Say hello to Astrid,’ he said, ‘and Happy Christmas.’

  ‘Yes.’ I stood at the door and watched him go. He waved his arm, got into the pale Saab parked behind my Beetle. I listened until the sound of his engine had died away and went back into the kitchen. The pudding was fidgeting and bumping in its pan. I turned down the gas.<
br />
  4

  In someone else’s kitchen, I lose my self-confidence. Whether to put the eggs on the toast or serve them separately? Whether to add pepper or leave that to Wanda? I don’t know. The eggs are growing cool before I decide to pile them in a white china bowl and cut the toast into fingers. I choose her a fennel tea-bag for a change.

  Wanda smiles as I push the door open with my elbow and manoeuvre my way in with her tray. ‘I would have got up if you’d yelled.’

  ‘Sorry. Would you rather …?’ I step back towards the door.

  ‘No, that’d be stone cold by the time I got down.’ She pats her lap and I put the tray on it.

  I hear a key in the lock downstairs. Before she can say it I know whose key it is. Hasn’t he already travelled into my mind this evening?

  My immediate thought: what a fright I must look, what a cheek to be wearing his sweater over my clothes. My hand goes to my hair.

  ‘Now you’ll have company while I eat my tea.’ Such love in her voice, such expectation on her face as she watches the door.

  His footsteps on the stairs, the bigness of him in the room, a charcoal grey overcoat. Cashmere, I suspect, a smell of night.

  ‘Mum,’ he stoops and kisses her. ‘Griselda.’ He nods at me, no smile, I am not liked. Why should I be?

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘I just came to …’

  ‘No need to apologise. Mum wanted to see you. Glad you’ve come.’ A slight lifting of the corners of his mouth.

  ‘A new face.’ Wanda does smile at me. ‘Not new, but …’ She has not touched the food.

  ‘Do eat up,’ I urge. She takes a tiny scrap of scrambled egg and lifts it slowly to her mouth. She parts her lips. I can feel just how enormous the morsel of egg seems, how Herculean the effort of putting it into her mouth. But she does so. She closes her lips and tries to smile with it inside her, the cool, damp scrap that she must swallow, that her throat rebels against swallowing.

  ‘Shall we leave you alone?’ I ask.

  She nods. Her eyes are very shiny. I see a rising in her throat as if she wants to retch.