by Fay Weldon
‘This is Ishtar,’ she was saying to Seb. ‘I share an office with her. She had nowhere to go for Christmas, so we’ve all agreed she can be this year’s Outsider.’
Well, thank you very much, Marigold. Who wants to be labelled as an Outsider, an object of pity, the one invited to the Christmas festivities because otherwise they’d be on their own? It seemed to me a gross abuse of the laws of hospitality and if thereafter I did not behave like a perfect guest who can be surprised? Nor had I liked the way Seb’s eye had drifted over me and away, even before he heard me described as the Outsider. Prada, to the uninformed eye, can sometimes look too plain, too dowdy.
But what did I do, you ask me, to justify some twenty people and a host of sticky little children bearing false witness against me? Firstly, remember that the Walpoles as a family are notoriously mentally unstable: they have become so through generations of mismarriage, drug-taking, miscegenation and eccentric social mobility. Rest assured that a girl who goes to the best school in the country is more likely to end up with a Rastafarian or a truck driver than a stockbroker or a prince. Secondly, although Marigold maintained that what kept the family together was their adoration of Lady Hester and their reverence for the Christmas ritual, it seemed just as likely to me that all were simply hoping to be first in line for a legacy. Or is this too cynical of me? I hate to be thought cynical, when all I am is realistic.
What did I do to annoy so much? Very little, by my standards, but what I did I made sure was noticeable. Shown to an attic room with three makeshift truckle beds in it, with twigs and soot tumbling down into the empty fireplace every time the door slammed – the chimneys were not even netted against the rooks – I explained that I would have insomnia if I did not have a bedroom to myself, and that I needed sheets and blankets, not a duvet, and after much apology and discussion ended up sleeping in Marigold’s room, and her on the sofa under the Christmas tree, so that Seb was unable to join her that night – I am sure that had been their plan – and the children did not get their normal sneak 2.00 a.m. preview of the presents. People should not invite guests if they cannot house them adequately.
Earlier I’d found a gold dress in Marigold’s wardrobe and put it on. Well, she offered.
‘Isn’t that one too tight?’ she asked. ‘The navy would be more you.’
‘Oh no,’ I said. It was tight, of course, and incredibly vulgar too, but what does an Outsider know or care? I draped myself round Seb once or twice and pole-danced round a pillar for his entertainment. Then I let him kiss me long and hard under the mistletoe, while everyone watched. Marigold fled from the room weeping and flinging her engagement ring on the floor. People who put up pagan mistletoe at a Christian ceremony must expect orgiastic behaviour.
Before going to bed I used the machines in the utility room to launder the damp towels I had found on the floor of Marigold’s bathroom. I had searched the linen cupboard for fresh ones but found none; what else could I do? The washing machine was faulty – there was no warning note to say so: is one meant to read the mind of machines? – and overflowed and caused some kind of electrical havoc to the kitchen electrics, so the deep freeze and the fridges cut out. This was not discovered until well into the next day. People who stuff turkeys with packets of frozen pork and herbs deserve what they get, and must risk E-coli if the power goes off.
* * *
On Christmas morning, leaving Seb in the bed, I rose early when only small hysterical children were about, and restrained the ones who assaulted me too violently, or made me sticky, and escorted them by ear to where their parents slept in their drunken stupors, and asked them to take charge of their offspring. People should not have children if they do not have the moral wherewithal to control them.
I spent the morning assuring enquirers that Seb was nothing worth Marigold having, and in all probability, was not her cousin but her half-brother, and preserving the Christmas presents from the ravages of the children, standing up to their wails and howls. Then came the adult giving ceremony. The custom was for every adult Walpole to bring what they called a tree present, a gift acceptable to all ages and genders, to the value of £15, to place it under the Christmas tree, and when the time came to take another out for themselves. Thus everyone came with a gift and left with a gift. It was a system fraught with dangers: simply by taking one out and not putting one in, I caused mayhem. The nun Cecilia, being slowest on her feet, was left without a gift and made a terrible fuss.
Lunch did not happen until three. Some thirty people sat in a triangle formed by three trestle tables. The table setting, I must admit, was pretty enough, and decorated with Christmas crackers and the heavy family silver had been taken out of storage. But thirty! How this family bred and bred! I had been seated at the jutting end of one of the tables, as befitted the Outsider. This did not improve my mood. I declared myself to be a vegetarian just as the three turkeys – one at each side of the triangle – were being carved. People who have thirty to a meal must surely expect a certain proportion of them to be vegetarians. I mentioned the deep freeze débâcle and a number of the guests converted to vegetarianism there and then – all of these, I noticed, had married into the Walpole Delingros; those born as family were hardier.
* * *
Next to me was Cecilia, rendered incontinent by the morning’s upsets. When all were finally served I enquired of everyone what the strange smell could be. A faulty drain, perhaps? Or one of them? A few rose to their feet and the children, seeing the adults rise, found the excuse to leave their chairs and run hither and thither, sniffing around under the table, overexciting the dogs, and pulling crackers out of turn. People should look after the elderly properly and make sure they do not drink too much or lose control of their bladders.
It was at this point that Lady Hester Delingro rose to her feet and, pointing across the festive triangle at me, arm fully extended, asked me to leave her table since it was clearly so unsatisfactory to me. I too rose to my feet.
‘Thank you for making me your Outsider,’ I said, ‘at the annual feast of the Walpole Delingros. I would hate to be an Insider.’ Which was no more than the truth. Lady Hester’s noble horseface contorted, reddened and went into spasms. She grabbed her heart; her hand fell away, she fell dead into her plate. It was over in five seconds. She can hardly have suffered. Rage and pain get confused. Nevertheless, it was a shock. Silence fell. Even the little children returned to their seats and sat silently.
And then something to me even more shocking occurred. A group of male Walpole Delingros carried off the body to the next room, without so much as checking for a pulse, and stretched it out on the sofa under the Christmas tree. They closed the door, returned to the table, and behaved as if the death had not occurred. Lady Hester’s plate was removed, her daughter, Lady Rowan, Marigold’s mother, filled her chair. Everyone moved up one, even Cecilia, leaving me isolated, but with one damp, smelly chair next to me.
‘Shouldn’t someone call a doctor, an ambulance?’ I asked. No-one replied. ‘You can’t just eat Christmas pudding as if nothing had happened.’
* * *
But they could: curtains were drawn, lights put out, heated brandy poured over hot Christmas puddings to be set ablaze and carried in with due ceremony. I was offered none. It was as if I had ceased to exist. Only after coffee had been made and served and crackers pulled – those the children had left – and the dreadful jokes been read out and scorned, and the ritual been declared complete, were the doctor, the ambulance and the police called.
And that, I swear, is what happened. Even if thirty, not twenty, Walpole Delingros allege that the death happened after dinner, and that I took Lady Hester’s head and deliberately banged it into the edge of the marble fireplace during the course of an argument about the cause of smoking fireplaces, so she fell dead, suffering a cardiac infarction on the way down, I cannot help it. This was not what happened. If there is, as you say, a nasty dent on the side of Lady Hester’s head why then one of the family did it wh
ile she lay dead on the sofa, with a blunt instrument, the better to incriminate me. The Walpole Delingros are famous for sticking together, and I would be the first to admit I got up one or two people’s noses, even to the extent of their feeling that prison hereafter would be the best place for me. And others might feel that by being so rude to Lady Hester I had caused her death, and natural justice should prevail. It is not the first time people have borne false witness against me. Or again, perhaps one of their number, finding the old lady was still just about alive, and simply wanting to inherit, finished her off and the others closed ranks and decided to get me, in passing? Or is that too cynical a view of human nature?
It won’t work, of course, one of the children must surely blab, or perhaps Marigold will remember she is my friend. I believe she is back with Seb. In the meantime, while I wait for my mother’s call, I am happy enough in this cell. But perhaps you could arrange to have The Times sent in, so I can do the crossword? And if you could ask the Governor, or whoever he is, to stop people playing their radios and TVs so loud? Or at any rate to tune them to the same station? I am feeling a little insecure. I am accustomed to having enemies – the honest and righteous always are – but it was my bad judgement to make so many, in one place, and in that particular season. It is never safe to disturb the ritual, however much fun it may be.
2001
Happy Yuletide Schiphol
And we’d been so clever. We would catch the 15.40 from Schipol on the 24th, and be back in Bristol by 17.55. We’d pick up a hire car and be down the M5 to Okehampton in good time for Christmas Eve dinner with goose, mashed potatoes, red cabbage and a fine Rhone wine. Christmas dinner the next day would be turkey, roast potatoes, sprouts, cranberry sauce and good claret. My daughter and her husband live in Devon and are traditionalists. Chris and I tend to go for salad and a slice of quiche, but that’s the way it goes, these days. You go forward into a quicker, lighter future, and the children hop off backwards into the past, staring at you and muttering weird. But we love to see our daughter, and we have a new grandchild, and our son and his new fiancée would be joining us.
We’d finished work in Amsterdam and had a host of presents already wrapped, which we’d pack into the suitcase. Yes, very clever. Well organised. My husband does all that. It’s his thing, dates and timetables and being at the right place at the right time, and I trot along behind. He does consultancy work for a Dutch property company: I’m a writer: I fit in.
Too clever by half, of course. We’d reckoned without Christmas, or at any rate Yuletide. We’d reckoned without the waywardness of humanity. We had not taken into account the seasonal urgency which sometimes catches us up like a tide, so we move as others do, in a group, and do what we must, not what reason says. Princess Diana’s funeral, trolley rage at the supermarket just before the bank holiday. Just the same when Thor cracked his thunder over Northern skies, and everyone jumped the same way at his command. Rituals must be observed. They have their own imperative.
Amsterdam is far enough North to still be partly the land of the Nordic Gods, and Christmas is still Yuletide, their mid- winter festival. I have always suspected Schiphol Airport to be Thor’s own place, all that cracking of the skies, the low thunder of aircraft breaking through the clouds, the tremble of the ground as the big jets land. Thor likes it; he hangs around. This year Christmas Day falls on a Thursday, (donderdag in Dutch) Thor’s day: all the more likely for him to put in an appearance. When the God roars out over the flat damp land that it’s time to shut the doors and bring out the drink, people do as he commands, and who cares what the timetables say. They go home, as instructed.
We got early to the airport and checked in the baggage. We’d allowed ourselves twenty minutes to look round the Rijksmuseum annexe situated between Piers E and F before going to the gate. We like to do that. There is something refreshing, like cool clear water on a hot day, about looking at paintings in an airport. It restores you to sanity. There’s currently an exhibition of Rembrandt prints, which Chris particularly wanted to catch before it closed on January 3rd. But my attention was caught by a farmyard painting by Melchior d’Hondecoeter, 1636-1695. Two vain and disdainful peacocks look down their nose at a little pretty silly hen with four fluffy chicks, while a great gobbling turkey, stupid and amazed, looks on. I wondered which of them was most like me. I asked Chris, hoping, I suppose, for some kind of compliment or reassurance, but instead of answering he said ‘We can’t be too long here. We don’t want to miss our flight. Shall we go?’ Now I can’t bear to be hurried, Chris can’t bear to be late. And I was feeling tetchy and tired: we’d been shopping and wrapping all morning. ‘Don’t panic.’ I said, meanly. ‘You are so neurotic about time. They have our luggage, they can’t go without us.’ And for once I didn’t relieve him of his anxiety and turn to go, but lingered, and let him fret. It is the kind of cruelty even the fondest couple sometimes practice on one another. Putting the other in the wrong, creating a double bind, pressing their buttons: it may fall short of an outright row, but it verges on it.
The elegant girl from the Rijksmuseum shop, the only member of staff left on the premises apparently still resistant to the Gods, was beginning to hover and look at her watch. That irritated me too. I am a customer: I have my rights. It was only ten past three: there was a full five minutes before the place was due to close for the six days of the Christmas holiday. I was looking at Art. I shouldn’t be hurried.
It was almost twenty past three by the time we left and the poor thing could hiss the doors shut behind us. She stalked past us as we left, long legged: she carried crimson and gold parcels, prettily tied with Rijkmuseum ribbon. She was one of the peacocks, disdainful.
In the space of fifteen minutes Schiphol had stopped being a busy, noisy, excited place and become a lonely expanse of empty walkways. Shops had closed, passengers gone their ways. Lights were muted. Even the all-pervasive smell of coffee was fading. Yuletide! said the notices, Happy Christmas! Bon Noel, but here and there New Year Sale signs had gone up. The passport booth was closed and empty: barriers were up. We had to find another one, and the Information desk was closed. Chris began to run. The moving walkway slowed and stopped while we were on it. The girlish warning voice dropped a tone and was silent. I ran too. We loped down a flight of steps – the escalator had stopped – to gate C4, where our flight was closing. Even as we ran we heard a gate change. Now it was Gate C6. We ran some more. And then we sat, because when we got there, there was no urgency, the flight was delayed. One minute we were racing: the next we were staring into space. Airports are like that. And we sat, and sat and sat.
‘We could have taken our time,’ said Chris. He is very good. He could have said earlier, as we ran ‘told you so.’ But he didn’t. There were six of us. One little old lady who had been drinking, one shabby business man who looked as if he had been up all night, and a young engaged couple. She was plump and blonde and fidgety and reminded me of the busy little hen in the painting. He was the turkey, cross and awkward, with a nose too big and a chin too small. But he loved her. He kept trying to hold her hand but she’d push it away. She was upset. There were tears in her eyes. I don’t know what they had quarrelled about but it seemed quite bad. Two hours passed.
Pretty soon I had tears in my eyes too. The flight had been cancelled. There had been a technical fault. Thor was punishing me. I had been mean to Chris: I had been mean to the girl in the shop. I had not heeded the clarion call to the midwinter ritual. The last flights to Heathrow had gone. There was no way we could leave Schiphol that night. They were running a skeleton service. They would put us up in the airport hotel. They apologised for the inconvenience caused. We would be compensated. No, baggage could not be returned. There had been an industrial dispute, and the baggage handlers had gone home. There was a strange underwater feeling to everything. I could hear Schiphol breathing, or was it the air conditioning in the great echoey empty halls. In and out, very slowly. Thor’s breathe. Airline staff were polite, but
looked at their watches. Everyone wanted to be off. Christmas. Yuletide. Donderdag coming.
We were all silent. ‘A Fokker 70,’ said the business man, looking out the window, as it taxied away, cute and ansty, as if the brand made a difference. There was a crack of thunder from outside and lightning – only one second between the two – but no rain. ‘Nice little aircraft,’ he observed. I think he was stunned. So was I. ‘Cityhopper. Doesn’t usually go wrong.’
But that was no comfort to us. The blonde girl, whose name was Penny, threw the engagement ring across the floor. It skittered and bounced. The boy, whose name was Darrell, set his jaw and didn’t go after it. ‘That’s it,’ Penny said. ‘That’s it,’ ‘Yes it is,’ he said. ‘Goodbye you and goodbye Christmas.’
It seemed a great pity to me, the way the whole world had to suffer from the weight of my sin. The ring glittered under a plastic chair. I thought it was diamond. The old lady said it was all right by her, she didn’t like Christmas anyway. I longed to be at home in bed.
They bussed us to the airport hotel. The rain broke as we stood outside waiting for it to arrive. We were soaked. Thor was letting me know who ran things round here. I had no face cream: Chris had no sleeping pills. The young couple still weren’t talking. I was distressed for them. It seemed such a waste of life. They’d never find anyone better than the other. I told Chris so. He said it was projection, personally he was distressed for us. The hotel was crowded. Industrial dispute, fog and storm had wreaked havoc with flights. They gave us tickets so we could be called in order to the reception desk. A girl from the airline came over and said they would try to get us out first thing the next morning. Christmas Day. She was the other peacock from the painting, disdainful. They go round in pairs.