‘I know, perfume, when it’s a stab in the dark,’ said Charlie. ‘No one should ever buy perfume for someone else without knowing what will suit their skin chemistry. Arpège smells divine on Robin and I love it, but on me it smells like cat pee.’
‘Charlie always gives the best presents,’ said Robin, twinkling his newly decorated hand. Luke wolf-whistled at it again; Robin had been showing it off since he and Charlie came downstairs.
‘Does Jack give good presents? I do hope so,’ Bridge asked Mary, eyes glittering with impishness. Mary could have thrown a cushion at her.
‘Er, yes,’ she answered. ‘Really nice. Anyone for a fill up?’
‘I’m going to check on my trifle,’ said Luke.
‘You’ve made a trifle?’ Charlie gasped with joy. ‘Please tell me there’s sherry in it.’
‘Of course. You can’t have a Christmas dinner without a trifle and you can’t have a trifle without sherry in it,’ came the reply.
‘More sherry?’ said Robin. ‘Haven’t you had enough, Charles?’
‘Never. Put some cherries on the top please, Luke.’
‘Especially for you, Charlie,’ said Luke and pushed himself out of the chair. Since Mary had told them about Charlie, Luke had gone over and above the call of duty in the kitchen.
‘Remember those bath cubes you used to get that you had to take a mallet to?’ said Bridge. ‘The ones that never dissolve properly.’
‘Yes, that’s what Charlie’s niece buys me every Christmas.’ Robin sniffed. ‘If you happen to sit on them, they embed themselves in your arse like shrapnel.’
Mary giggled and followed it up with a cough because sherry came down her nose and it stung.
‘Now our cleaner Dotty always gets us a big tub of Quality Street, doesn’t she, Charlie. We love those.’
‘When you open up a tin of Quality Street, the smell of Christmas rushes out at you, doesn’t it,’ said Radio Brian, as if he were joining in with the conversation.
‘Sadly you don’t get that effect from the plastic tubs they come in nowadays, Brian,’ Robin replied to the radio. ‘It’s not the same.’
Bridge nestled back into her armchair. It was Christmas Day and it felt every bit like a Christmas Day should. The only thing missing from the scene was some chestnuts roasting on the open fire, which was crackling cheerfully. The sherry was mellowing her like she couldn’t remember being mellowed for years and her thoughts strayed south to Ben. She’d bought him a Mont Blanc pen for Christmas, something he’d always wanted but would never have bought for himself. He deserved it; he was the kindest, sweetest man she knew. She hoped he wasn’t eating his Christmas dinner alone and had braved the elements to go and join his sister and her family who lived less than half a mile away.
Charlie dropped a fork and almost toppled over trying to pick it up. Mary leapt up to retrieve it for him.
‘Thank you, Mary. You know, I never had children but if I had, I would have wished for a daughter like you. I think your parents were a very lucky couple.’
Mary beamed. ‘Oh, thank you, Charlie. That’s such a lovely thing to say.’
‘It’s important to say all the things that are sitting waiting in your heart to be said,’ he replied. ‘You never know what’s around the corner.’
Robin nodded in agreement. He was so glad he’d had ‘that’ conversation with him this morning. It hadn’t been as morbid as he’d been expecting and he knew it had given Charlie great comfort. And himself. He wouldn’t have regrets now that he hadn’t told Charlie how much he felt about him; he’d said important words that had been sitting in his own heart unspoken.
‘I’m presuming neither of you have children, then?’ asked Bridge.
‘No, but I would have liked them,’ said Charlie. ‘When I was young, the idea of a gay man raising a child was not something to be considered. The world is a far more tolerant place for us now than it was back then. When I was eighteen, I smiled at a man in passing in a park. He not only beat me up very badly but had me arrested, said I’d accosted him, which was a lie. I spent three months in prison. The judge said I was in danger of infecting men with homosexuality, whatever that means. So, never in my wildest imagination did I think during that horrific time that one day men would be able to marry each other and bring up children together.’ He shuddered as terrible memories were nudged to the surface.
‘Did you have families who supported you?’ asked Mary to both Charlie and Robin. It was horrible to think such archaic attitudes were actually just over the leaf in history’s book.
‘Not me,’ said Robin. ‘I was an only child, a great disappointment. We skirted around the elephant in the room when I was growing up. My father forced me to box and play football. If he could have injected me with testosterone, he would have. Then one day, when he’d had too much to drink, he asked me if I preferred boys to girls, he told me to be honest with him. And so I was. And within the hour I was thrown out with my suitcase. I was seventeen. They carried on being Christians, going to church, collecting money for the poor, listening to sermons about kindness and tolerance while turning their back on their only child. My cousin let me know when my father died, but he’d had it written into his will that I wasn’t to come to the funeral. I reached out to my mother after a respectful waiting period but…’ He paused, breathed. ‘She didn’t want to know me. I was dead to her. She’d also had it written into her will that I wasn’t to come to her funeral either. And that was in the 1980s.’
‘And yet my mother couldn’t have been more different,’ said Charlie. ‘She was a Londoner who had moved up to Yorkshire when she married my father, but after he died when I was eight she went back home to live with my grandmother, and the two of them brought me up between them. I think it was quite obvious from an early age that I wasn’t going to marry a nice girl one day and continue the family line. They hoped I’d grow out of it but when they realised it wasn’t to be, they both came to terms with it and accepted me for who I was. Mum married again. She met a charmer of a man who whisked her up the aisle after getting her pregnant with my sister. After their wedding, he changed from Dr Jekyll into full-on Mr Hyde and decided to thrash my sexuality out of me. When my mother found out, she thrashed the living daylights out of him with her best frying pan and that was the end of that marriage. My mother and my grandmother stood by me when I went to prison and they were both waiting at the gates to take me home when I came out, battered and bruised.
‘I worked my bones off to give them everything they deserved for their unstinting love. Years later, I took them to a Royal Variety performance in the London Palladium, dripping in diamonds they were. They had their picture taken with the stars of the day since I knew most of them personally, because I’d loaned or sold them jewellery from my shops.’
‘We’ve got pictures of them all over the house,’ said Robin. ‘I never met Charlie’s grandmother but his mother became every bit my mother too. She was the best lady who ever lived. That’s where Charlie gets it from.’ Robin’s face melted into a soft smile.
‘And my father,’ said Charlie. ‘I’ve often wondered if he knew, even then, because I remember him saying to me, “Charlie, you are what God made you, don’t you ever forget that.” ’
‘How the world has changed,’ said Bridge.
‘I don’t much like the world as it is,’ said Charlie. ‘There’s so much hate flying around. And that’s why I’m enjoying this glorious bubble so much, just us, new friends and nothing but loveliness in the room.’
‘Anyone for Yorkshire puddings while I’m in the mood for making some batter? Speak now or forever hold your peace,’ called Luke from the kitchen.
‘YES,’ came the united answer.
Chapter 25
Luke had made everyone hats out of old broadsheet newspapers. Bridge hadn’t got him down as the origami type, but then she didn’t really know this version of Luke Palfreyman at all. Mary’s hat had tinsel around the top. The birthday girl hat, Luke called it
. Charlie looked like an admiral, Bridge like a nurse. They put them on before taking their places at the table; Robin draped a tea towel over his arm and assumed the role of sommelier, filling everyone’s glass with red, white or rosé wine, according to their choice.
Jack and Luke brought out the turkey and bowls full of vegetables, Yorkshire puddings, stuffing, various sauces and pickles, everything that a Christmas dinner should consist of and more. There was barely enough room for it all on the long table, which Charlie had made an excellent job of dressing. He’d found a surfeit of red tablecloths and Christmas-patterned serviettes in a wooden sideboard, waiting in readiness for the paying diners who should have been turning up today. He had also found some ‘luxury’ crackers – according to the box – in there too, but seeing as Luke had gone to so much trouble with his home-made ones, he’d left them where they were. Also in the sideboard was a box of long, tapered red candles and an elaborate five-armed candelabra worthy of a place on Liberace’s piano. It made a fitting centrepiece. Luke’s newspaper crackers didn’t look at all out of place, positioned by the forks. In fact, co-ordinating with the hats, it could almost have been a designer ploy. But then Bridge had the belief that ‘shabby chic’ had started because someone had made a total cock-up of painting a chest of drawers and sold it with sales patter bullshit as a style that could really take off. And it did. You could pass anything off as anything else and charge a fortune for the privilege if you had enough chutzpah – and a fool with a fat wallet to fall for it.
There wasn’t a more festive room in the whole of Christendom: lit candles, log fire, soft snowflakes falling outside, snow on snow; Perry Como, Frank Sinatra et al singing in the background; a table groaning from the load of Christmassy food with its heavenly host of aromas competing with each other for dominance in the air; and most importantly there was a cornucopia of conviviality. Charlie’s heart felt as Christmassy as if it were stuffed with Radio Brian’s carols. What a precious memory in the making this was. The others wouldn’t feel the intensity of it as he did, but he hoped they’d keep this picture in the treasure boxes of their minds, bring it out to look at occasionally, remember it all – and him – with a smile.
‘We would like you to say grace, Charles, before we plough in,’ said Luke.
Charlie got up from his chair, a little stiffly but he wanted to stand. He thought for a few moments before he began to speak. Heads dipped, eyes closed.
‘Dear God in heaven, thank you for the food we are about to receive. Look after the loved ones whom we cannot be with today, keep them safe and may we be reunited with them soon. And may the people around this table here be joined together by the spirit of Christmas in peace and love and take everlasting happy memories of this time with them, wherever our journeys take us. Amen.’
They opened up their eyes, no one saying a word. Charlie’s prayer had touched them all deeply, they knew he had chosen every word with care.
Jack picked up a cracker, held it out towards Mary. It was made out of newspaper and the inside of a toilet roll, the ends twisted and tied with red string that Luke had found under the bar.
‘You have to say “bang” when you pull,’ Luke commanded.
‘Really?’ said Bridge, her nose wrinkled.
‘Yes, really,’ said Luke, adding proudly, ‘I had to decimate six toilet rolls in the store upstairs to make them. I came over all Blue Peter and channelled the god that is John Noakes.’
Bridge shook her head, bit her lip to stop herself grinning. They’d had a framed photo of John Noakes and his dog Shep in their bathroom. The mad-bonkers presenter had left Blue Peter before they’d even been born, but he was one of Luke’s idols nevertheless. This new Luke reminded her a little of John Noakes: fearless, magnetic, hair that defied a comb.
‘Okay, I’m ready,’ said Jack.
‘Yep, me too.’
Everyone shouted ‘BANG!’ Jack won the lion’s share. He offered it to Mary but she pushed it back at him saying he’d won it fairly and squarely. Jack pulled out the joke, scribbled on a rectangle of paper. He read.
‘What did one snowflake say to the other?’
He was met by a sea of faces eager for the punchline.
‘He didn’t say anything in case it offended him.’
A tumbleweed silence and then groans of laughter rapidly ensued.
‘Or her,’ put in Bridge, with mock indignation.
‘Oh shut up,’ said Luke, picking up a sprout and pretending to lob it at her.
‘What’s the present inside, Jack?’ asked Charlie.
Jack poked around to try and extract it because whatever the present was, it had lodged inside the toilet-roll inner.
‘Oh, it’s one of those things that you put your fingers and thumbs in and open and close. We used to make them at school,’ said Bridge, when Jack had succeeded. ‘What were they called?’
‘Not sure I ever knew they had a name,’ said Mary. ‘Fortune tellers, maybe?’
‘What do I do?’ said Jack.
‘Oh come on,’ said Bridge with incredulity. How could anyone not know that?
‘I’ll show you.’ Mary reached over, pushed her two index fingers and thumbs into the paper corners. ‘Pick a number between one and four.’
‘Four.’
She moved her fingers in and out. ‘One, two, three four.’ She read from the choices that were revealed when she stopped on ‘four’. ‘Pick from a car, a plane, a helicopter or a bus.’
‘A helicopter.’
Mary unfolded the paper, lifted the flap. ‘Oh.’
‘What does it say? Come on, Mary,’ urged Charlie.
It couldn’t have been any worse.
‘ “I love you”,’ said Mary.
Bridge noticed Mary’s cheeks had started to flush. She grabbed the fortune teller from her hands in an effort to divert attention from Mary and onto herself.
‘Luke, pick a number.’
‘Four. Then I pick a helicopter.’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Okay, three.’
‘One, two, three. Bike, ship, skateboard, submarine.’
‘Submarine. And I swear to you, I have no idea what I wrote behind it.’
Bridge unfolded, swallowed hard.
‘What does it say? Come on, Bridge,’ urged Robin this time.
‘You never left my heart,’ she said, reading automaton style, distancing herself from the words with a deliberate lack of emotion. ‘Word of advice, Luke, don’t take up fortune telling if your company folds.’
Or do. Because his prophecies had just hit two bullseyes.
‘I want to pull my cracker,’ said Charlie, holding his out to Robin.
‘BANG!’ everyone yelled.
Charlie won, unfolded his joke first, read it silently and then began to giggle in the way a schoolboy might while looking at an old page three of the Sun.
‘Come on, share it,’ said Robin, catching Charlie’s laughter.
‘What do you call snowman poo?’
‘I don’t know,’ everyone chorused. ‘What do you call snowman poo?’
‘Marshmallows.’ Charlie dissolved into fits. The others laughed more at his reaction than at the joke. Tears started to roll down Charlie’s cheeks as he kept reigniting his hysterics by repeating the word ‘marshmallows’.
‘That’s the worst joke I’ve ever heard,’ said Robin, rubbing his sides in order to relieve the ache in them.
‘It’s terrible,’ agreed Jack, consumed by hilarity to the extent that he had to wipe the tears spouting like a leaky tap from his own eyes.
So that’s what he looks like when he really laughs, thought Mary. She hadn’t ever seen the phenomenon before and was fascinated by it. The sight of Jack’s lips stretched wide, teeth showing, the crinkles gathered at the corners of his eyes… he was so perfect. Something pinged against her heart, like a thick elastic band, causing a sharp sting, a dilemma. She had decided what to do about Jack, but suddenly she wasn’t so sure any more.
r /> ‘Oh dear, Luke, you really have missed your way,’ said Robin. ‘You should be a comedian, not a Plant Boy.’
‘He absolutely shouldn’t,’ said Bridge, in near paroxysms.
They couldn’t stop laughing. As soon as they tried, the silence felt like a pressure bubble that needed to be burst. Then Charlie pulled out his cracker present, which was a marshmallow and that set them all off again. Minutes passed, joyous wonderful minutes in which nothing else seemed to exist but these six people laughing at the word marshmallows in an inn on the snowy moors of Yorkshire.
Eventually they were spent, everyone else pulled their crackers and the jokes were as bad if not worse. The other ‘presents’ inside were a shower cap, purloined from the stock cupboard upstairs, a pickled onion wrapped in clingfilm, a long green balloon with green lines drawn on it and a tag reading: ‘Grow your own cucumber’ and a keyring, made from a square of corrugated cardboard and a reshaped paperclip for a hoop. Luke had written ‘Figgy Hollow Six’ on one side, today’s date on the other. Robin had been delighted to win it and said he would treasure it for all time.
The Figgy Hollow Six. That’s what they would be forever, Charlie thought. He liked that. Their collective essence was woven into the air of this place now, their little gang was part of its history. Even when he was gone, he would still be one of them. For always.
Everyone declared Luke’s crackers the best, worst ones they’d ever had. It would be difficult after that to go back to shop-bought ones, said Robin, and asked if Luke would give him his email address so he could put in an order for next year. It was a joke that was immediately punctured by the burden of knowing that there would be no Charlie next Christmas. He drowned the thought with a throatful of Pinot Grigio blush.
‘We’d better eat before all this food goes cold,’ said Bridge.
‘I’ll carve the turkey,’ said Robin, jumping up.
I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day Page 20