How Hard Can It Be?

by Allison Pearson

  ‘S’okay,’ she says, walking backwards away from the house. As if she suddenly got cold feet. Don’t know why, I was perfectly nice. I can see her red bike leaning against the fence. ‘Don’t worry. It can wait. Sorry to bother you,’ she says.

  ‘Not at all. I’ll tell Richard. It’s very nice to …’ But she disappears as suddenly as she appeared. Emily, too, has gone.

  ‘Who’s that girl?’ my mother asks dubiously. ‘She’s not dressed for the weather.’

  ‘Oh, she’s a colleague of Richard’s. Mum, please can you look in that cupboard next to the Aga for the big glass trifle-bowl?’

  How long would it take for me to see? Not to look (I’d been looking all along), but how long would it take me to see. To see what the fabled Joely was doing turning up at our door unannounced on Christmas Eve; to see what lurked behind that sweet, billowy, brown-needlecord pinafore? Amazing what we don’t notice if we don’t care to notice or, let’s be honest, if we simply don’t care.

  Too busy and preocuppied, I suppose. A lot on my plate right now, or, rather, a lot to get onto plates, starting with smoked salmon and blinis.

  ‘Did I remember sour cream, Roy? Where did I put it?’ Normally I pride myself on being quick, but it’s Christmas, and Roy seems to have gone off duty. I try him again.

  *‘Roy, is there something I should know about Rich’s pixie colleague Joely, who sleeps in a buttercup? Roy? ROY?’ No answer.

  Eventually, Roy comes back from the stacks at the back of my mind, just as I’m stirring the double-cream custard for the trifle and waiting for it to thicken (if it boils you’ve had it, six egg yolks basically thrown away). I am concentrating hard.

  ‘I am experiencing a high volume of calls,’ says Roy. ‘Your patience would be appreciated at this busy time.’

  ‘Excuse me, Roy, you’re what passes for my memory since my brain became a sieve. Don’t do this to me. Roy, get back here please. You can’t have Christmas off just because I’ve had two glasses of mulled wine and my mind is a mess because all I can think about is Jack.’

  ‘Abelhammer is filed under Joyful/Painful Life Experiences. Do not open file till 2029.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that, Roy. It’s just that he’s turned up again and I don’t know what to do … And now someone else has turned up, not merely in my life but at my bloody back door, if you please, and I can barely place her. And what does she do, anyway, little Joely, apart from sit on her toadstool and practise bending her right toe until it touches her left ear? You know what, Roy? Forget it. Forget I asked. Drop the whole thing. Right now, I just need to get through the next forty-eight hours without an act of domestic homicide. And I need Richard to help me bring in the logs and get the mistletoe up.’

  ‘Kath, where will I find the potato peeler?’

  Sometimes my mother’s helpfulness is more than I can bear. ‘Mum, please sit down, will you? The potatoes don’t need doing till later. Not now.’

  ‘But what about the parsnips? Why not get ahead. Stitch in time saves nine, you know.’

  My mum will be the last person in Britain who truly believes in all the ancient sayings and saws, and runs her life accordingly. She eats an apple a day, for one thing. I have never seen her suck eggs since she became a grandmother, but I bet she could manage it. If we were having a goose for Christmas, she would insist on making sauce for the gander, too. Enough, naturally, is as good as a feast, although not at Christmas in our house it isn’t; it feels like feeding the five thousand. I always buy far too much veg, and find it in the garage in March, rotted to primeval soup. What’s so touching is that Mum is genuinely happier for keeping the faith with former times, and with all the old wives who have come before her and told the tales. Happier than the rest of us, certainly, whose idea of collective wisdom is a thread of peevish comments on TripAdvisor.

  So, I know exactly how to feed her the next line, like a stooge in a Vaudeville act.

  ‘Fine words, Mum.’

  ‘Fine words butter no parsnips, Kath.’ And she actually winks, bless her. ‘But I do want to make myself useful.’

  ‘Well, if you really want to cut little crosses in the bottom of every Brussels sprout …’

  It’s like a starting pistol. She almost breaks into a doddery run to reach the vegetable drawer and get cracking. Poor innocent sprouts. No mercy will be shown.

  Every year, my mother makes us a Christmas cake. I don’t like any Christmas cake except hers. It has just the right balance of fruit and crumb and brandy. It’s occurred to me that, one day, maybe not so many years from now, I will have to make the cake myself because Mum will no longer be here to do it. I bury that thought like Lenny buries his bone in the garden, but my mind keeps going back to it, as if to prepare myself. Once you’ve lost one parent, you know what’s coming. Losing Dad was different, though; mostly he was a gaping hole where a parent should be. My mother is the earth beneath my feet.

  ‘Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without your cake, Mum.’ I say it aloud when she’s over by the sink starting the sprouts.

  She gives a little shake of the head. ‘Not sure it’s quite up to the usual standard this year, love.’

  I don’t think I’ve told her enough what the cake means, what she means. She’s never been one for saying ‘love you’, my mum, as her grandchildren and their friends do every five minutes. A different generation, my mum lets the cake say ‘love you’ for her.

  ‘Please will you teach Emily to make your cake, Mum?’

  4.27: pm. Carols from King’s on the radio, making a matchless Christmas mood, both holy and hopeful. Peter and Cheryl have driven Donald and Barbara down to us, so everyone is here safely. Well, just about. Barbara is making anxious circuits of the kitchen and I see her put two smoked salmon blinis and a lemon squeezer in her pocket.

  To be fair to Cheryl, she waits as long as eight minutes before confiding to us that poor Barnaby is having terrible trouble deciding between offers from Princeton and Cambridge. Rich nods sympathetically at his nephew’s predicament. I disembowel a pomegranate. Debra, who is making coleslaw for me, and who has already, to my knowledge, drunk a bottle of Baileys, says, ‘Oh, poor you. It must be terribly difficult deciding between two such great universities. Looks like my son, Felix, will be choosing between shelf-stacking at St Tesco and Pentonville prison.’ My sister-in-law ignores this; she walks around, cooing, ‘Oh, Kate, this house has so much potential.’

  I don’t care. Piotr has built us a wonderful kitchen. Praise be to Piotr. I gave him a Christmas bonus tucked inside a card, and he said he might not see us for a while because his father was dying back in Poland. ‘Only age he’s fifty-nine, Kate. That’s not correct, isn’t it, lose your father like that?’

  No, that is most certainly not correct. I kissed Piotr on the cheek and hugged him. He has been such a comfort to me since we moved here that my eyes filled with tears when we said goodbye – but then tears seem to have been my personal weather system these past few months. There’s been more flooding than over the Somerset levels.

  Mum has finished the sprouts. Now she’s asleep in the chair by the Aga. Miraculously, there is no sign of a present from Dickie on the newly hoovered carpet. Ben and his boy cousins are playing Monopoly at the table – no electronic devices in sight. Yay! Even Emily has condescended to get out of the foul leggings to which she is surgically attached, and put on something pretty for her grandparents; true, what she is wearing resembles honeymoon lingerie more than an actual dress, but nonetheless, an effort has been made. Donald took Barbara to the hairdresser to get her hair permed before the drive down South, and she’s wearing a smart red Jaeger dress with gold buttons that I recall from previous festivities. It hangs on her, these days, rather than fitting; you can sense the fragile frame beneath. The sharpness of old bones. We all know, though, that Barbara would be pleased to know she had made an effort.

  I used to wince, every Christmas, when Barbara told Richard, as she always did, that he shouldn’t have go
ne to so much trouble, when all he had ever done was to buy a single present, at four o’clock on Christmas Eve (for me), plus one very smelly Camembert and some red wine. How I miss that Barbara now. She says next to nothing. Does she think next to nothing, too, or is her mind trembling with thoughts that she cannot voice?

  So, this Christmas Eve she sits there, with half a smile, near the fire, clutching Emily’s hand. They look like a Victorian watercolour of a parlour at peace, although few Victorian young ladies wore glittery pedal-pushers under their party dress. Or, for that matter, disclosed to their fond mamas that portraits of their rear ends had been passed around the general population, like a keepsake. Thank God that hateful belfie business is over and done with.

  ‘Here, Grandma, I got you some soap. Sort of an early Christmas present. You can use it tonight if you like. It’s lily of the valley. I tried them all out in Boots and this one smelled the nicest. Like you. I mean, like you like. Whatevs.’

  And on that elegant note, Emily hands Barbara a present. Three soaps in a box, badly wrapped, but still. In this case, it truly is the thought that counts. (I glance across at Cheryl, who is sitting on the sofa next to her husband. As she sees the box, she nudges him in the ribs – just a quick jab of the elbow, but enough to indicate her satisfaction at the lowliness of the gift. Precisely what she would expect of this household. Cow.)

  To our surprise, Barbara lifts the box to her face and inhales deeply. A puzzled look, which very slowly clears, like the lifting of a fog. Then, to our even greater surprise, she speaks.

  ‘I used this the other day, love.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Grandma, I’m sure I can swap it for another one.’

  ‘In France.’

  ‘France?’

  ‘We were in this lovely place in the countryside.’ She turns to Donald. ‘You drove all the way, love!’

  Donald looks at her, then down at his hands.

  ‘There was a bathroom, we had to share, it was down a corridor, but ever so clean. And I had a bath, with lily of the valley. You said I smelled nice afterwards. Only last week. What a coincidence! And now I have this. Thank you, Kate.’

  ‘Emily.’

  There is a long silence, during which Richard puts a log on the fire and kicks it into place with the toe of his shoe. Barbara’s eyes slowly close.

  ‘Our first holiday abroad,’ Donald says, almost whispering. ‘June nineteen fifty-nine. Barbara’s right, we did drive all the way. In our Austin Cambridge. Broke down just outside Calais. “Welcome to Europe”, she said, and we sat there laughing.’ His eyes are rheumy and moist. ‘And there was this little place, middle of nowhere, we were just tired by all the driving. With those sausages they have instead of pillows?’

  ‘Bolsters.’

  ‘Bolsters. And the bidet, that was different, she couldn’t so much as look at the thing without laughing. And all the things on the menu we couldn’t understand.’ He smiles, and looks at Emily. ‘Sometimes, you know, it’s funny, sometimes I envy her. Your gran. Thinking it all happened last week like that.’ He clenches his fists tight, like a small child making a wish. ‘If only, eh?’

  Peace and goodwill. Laying down memories for the children, passing on recipes for cake, so that they, in their turn, will lay down memories for their children. And maybe one Christmas forty years from now, Emily will remember the lily of the valley soap which, for a few precious minutes, brought the grandmother who loved her so dearly back by her side.

  The only sounds are those of the fire’s crackle, the soaring harmonies of the carols, and a delicate descant of snores. The King’s choristers are bang in the middle of ‘Angels from the Realms of Glory’ – one of those endless Glo-o-o-ooo-rias – when Cheryl lets out a shriek.

  ‘Good grief, Kate, is that a dog out there in your garden with a huge great bird in its mouth?’

  From: Candy Stratton

  To: Kate Reddy

  Subject: The Dog Ate My Turkey

  Honey, you’re kidding, right? That has got to be the best Christmas disaster story EVER. Please tell me you got devil-dog Dickie euthanised? And how about getting the bitch sis-in-law euthanised too?

  What did you give them all to eat – Heinz beans? Trust me, you’re gonna see the funny side one day.

  What’s the score with Abelhammer btw?

  XXO C

  From: Kate Reddy

  To: Candy Stratton

  Subject: The Dog Really Did Eat My Turkey

  When will I see the funny side? In about 30 years, if I’m lucky. Rich chased Dickie down the garden and managed to wrestle the turkey out of his mouth. Seems that Rich had been inspecting the turkey in brine and didn’t put the lid back on properly. Typical of him: interfering, ‘trying to be helpful’, and causing chaos. I cut the turkey leg off and thought I could salvage the rest.

  Then I looked in the bucket and smelt the brine. It stank. I have a horrible feeling that a corpse would smell this way, left on a battlefield. Cheryl said that it was ‘unseasonably warm’ for December and that it was all my fault because the brine needed to be kept cold. I should have put it in the fridge. Thanks a lot, bitch. Pardon me for not having a fridge the size of an airline terminal, like you and Peter do. Sorry about that.

  And I couldn’t blame Dickie because my mum loves him more than her children so I said it would be great to have a change and eat ham and roasted vegetables for Christmas dinner.

  Does this ever happen to Nigella?

  Don’t bother to answer that.

  Kxxx

  PS Abelhammer showed up at the office party and I am helplessly hopelessly in love with him and we almost did it, hallefuckinlulia, but the hotel room key didn’t work. And the whole thing is impossible because my Sandwich can’t take another layer. And now he probably hates me. I’m so confused.

  11.59 pm: *Six hours late, Roy shows up. I am still wrapping stocking fillers, even though no one believes in Father Christmas and everyone else has gone to bed. Roy says, ‘Disguise, I see thou art a wickedness, Wherein the pregnant enemy does much.’ What on earth is he on about? ‘That was Emily’s Twelfth Night essay, Roy. Wrong memory! You really need to get a grip.’

  NEW YEAR’S EVE

  Drinks with Sally and her family. Drinks beginning at a civilised time, thank God, not a late-night binge starting at 10 pm and going on till four in the morning. There was a time when I would have been content to sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ around the piano, and get pawed by complete strangers on the grounds that all concerned had made it through another year on Earth, but, frankly, I’m too bloody auld for that. Fine if you’re standing by the Thames and watching the Mayor blow half his annual budget – quite rightly, in my view – on an eye-scorching firework display, but not when you’re stuck in the countryside with the roads turned to skating rinks by midnight.

  So, at half past seven sharp, or as sharp as you can get when herding teenagers, we pile into the car, with varying degrees of reluctance (prize for most remorseless moaner: my son), and arrive at Sally’s place. My first visit to what she calls her HQ; until now, Sal and I have always met on neutral ground – the best and only spot, oddly enough, for the sharing of confidences, and the gradual unveiling of hidden truths. Home, for some reason, bites the tongue.

  ‘You must be Kate. We meet at last. Come on in!’

  ‘And you must be Mike?’ A fully fledged Mike, by any standard. Bearish, beaming, and a bit cumbersome, garbed in a formless russet cardigan that was, I trust, knitted by canny crofters in the Hebrides.

  ‘Richard, hi. Mike. Ben, hello. Brilliant. Emily, gosh, just like your mum.’ Flames dart from Emily’s eyes, but Mike rolls ever onward. ‘I mean, lovely, God, come in, all of you, coats there, drinks in here, Sally somewhere around, excellent. Welcome all.’

  Handshakes that sprain your wrist before you’ve even made it through the door. If this was Dickens, there would be a punchbowl. Enter the living room, buzzing with chatter. Oh, look. There’s a punchbowl.

  Is it a sign of mid
dle age, or has it just got worse – that sudden lurching wish, upon entering a room and seeing wave upon wave of unknowns or unremembered knowns, to back off and try your luck elsewhere, or, failing that, to hide behind the sofa until somebody blows the all-clear? Never mind. It’s not a habit to hand down to the children, certainly, so on we go, into the throng, searching in rising desperation for a friendly face.

  ‘Kate, you came!’

  ‘Sally.’ We embrace.

  ‘Late Happy Christmas. Early Happy New Year. Happy something, anyway. How was it?’

  ‘A dog ate my turkey. No, it was really good, I’ll explain later. Sally, this is Richard. And Ben. And Em— hang on, Emily was here; she seems to have disappeared.’

  Full disclosure. We had a last-minute Emily crisis. Complete meltdown. She wasn’t supposed to be coming with us tonight, being officially too old and too cool to spend New Year’s Eve with her boring family. Then, this afternoon, I found her curled up tight as a shell in bed. After a bit of coaxing, she admitted that Lizzy Knowles was having this huge New Year’s Eve party, and only two girls from the whole year weren’t invited. Emily and Bea. Emily was devastated. She had arranged to stay over at Ellie’s house. ‘Ellie was invited to the party, so Ellie texted Lizzy to say, “Can Emily come because she’s staying at mine?”, but Lizzy still said no.’

  I was spitting with anger, but not a bit surprised. Em said Lizzy had started being weird to her after Emily’s own party was a big success.

  ‘Seriously, what kind of kid does something that malicious?’ asked Richard when Em was upstairs taking a shower.

  ‘Oh, a Queen Bee who doesn’t like one of her drones taking the spotlight away,’ I said. My daughter was frozen out by her alleged best friend. This was revenge served icy cold. It was too late to make another plan so, between us, Rich and I managed to persuade Em to come to the Carters’. I told her I was sure there’d be loads of kids there – I wasn’t sure, but I had a bad feeling about leaving Em alone in the house.