The Queen's Margarine

by Wendy Perriam

  Unlikely. In fact, no more realistic than the improbably blue skies and impossibly blue sea preening in the photographs. Far from a family atmosphere, the reality would be moaners and complainers, like that blonde grouch at the desk, still bleating to the clerk about how she couldn’t abide the ‘Welcome Parties’, laid on as part of the trip. Whatever it was – Welcome Parties, meals or staff, rooms or even sea views – would all be judged sub-standard; indeed the very air would fail to come up to scratch. Better by far to stay at home than be stuck with such companions. Her wisest course would be to treat Christmas like an ordinary day; a chance to catch up on the list of chores she had been postponing since October. No need for elaborate cooking – a sandwich would do her fine – and, once she’d finished her work, she’d spend the evening watching strictly non-festive television.

  ‘Thank you, Blondie,’ she whispered, sotto voce, to the woman, as she rammed the brochure back into the rack. ‘You’ve just saved me a mint of money, not to mention four wasted days.’

  She glanced around the neat and shining flat with a certain sense of achievement. Christmas Eve had proved as good a time as any to tackle the spring cleaning, and at least she’d cleared the decks for tomorrow’s marathon, when she intended to update her software, sort out her database, send a shoal of emails, and generally bring order out of chaos.

  Part of the plan was early bed tonight, if only to stop herself from dwelling on last year’s Christmas Eve: her mother decorating the Christmas cake; her father, in a frilly pinny, making his mulled punch (with no hint of the pneumonia that was to kill him four months later). And she, the forty-year-old child, continually offering to help, but being instructed to ‘recover’ after what they called her ‘stressful’ job, and just let herself be pampered.

  ‘That’s finished,’ she hissed. ‘Over and done with. You’ve enjoyed all that indulgence for forty feather-bedded years. Now it’s time to move on.’

  The flat was mercifully quiet, so at least she wouldn’t be disturbed by next-door’s music pulsing through the walls, or the usual footsteps clack-clacking back and forth across the wooden floor above. Both those sets of neighbours were away, and the old codger in the flat below never made a sound, so she could catch up on her sleep, as well as with the jobs.

  Having undressed and cleaned her teeth, she wished herself goodnight, and pulled the duvet right up to her chin. Outside was frost and snow – traditional Christmas weather. Except for her it wasn’t Christmas, so, as she settled down and closed her eyes, she forbade her mind to wander along beguiling Christmas byways, but kept it strictly counting sheep (and Muslim sheep, at that).

  Five-thousand sheep later, she was still maddeningly awake, so she dragged herself out of bed again to make a milky drink. In the kitchen, she caught sight of the home-made Christmas stocking, which she had deliberately left lying on the table. But perhaps it was unfair to Tara not to hang it up, when the child had taken such pains with it; gluing contrasting strips of felt around the top, and attaching a coloured bead to each wonky, lurching letter of the HANNAH.

  In the end, she took it back to bed with her, and sat sipping her drink, while gazing at it hanging from the footboard. The only trouble was, it brought such floods of memories: the pre-dawn excitement as she reached out in the dark, and found the empty stocking transformed with bulging booty. She was allowed to unpack it while waiting for her parents to wake up. (Proper presents came later, and were opened around the Christmas tree, after a breakfast of stewed figs and coddled eggs.) First, she’d tip out all the contents, so she could reach the tangerine nestling in the toe. She could smell the zingy citrus tang as she dug her thumbnail into the peel; felt a spurt of juice on her face; heard the crunching of a pip she’d somehow swallowed in her haste.

  Next came the chocolate coins, each encased in gold foil; the foil embossed with magical things like prancing lions and dragons, and the Three Kings, in fancy crowns. Chocolate tasted weird combined with tangerine; the one bland and smooth and velvety, the other sharp and fresh. But both tastes were soon deliciously swamped by the chalky crunch of sweet cigarettes, which came in a proper grown-up packet, with WOODBINES stamped across it. Having wolfed a couple (teeth aching from the sweetness), she would smoke a few more, at leisure; inhaling like her Dad did, tapping imaginary ash into the non-existent ashtray, and blowing pretend smoke-rings at the ceiling. And, once she’d extinguished the butts, it was time to unwrap the tiny gifts, feeling them first through the paper, trying to guess their contents from the shape. Sometimes, it was bath salts, the gritty sort, in psychedelic colours like puce-pink or peacock-blue, which never quite dissolved in the bath, so she’d find herself sitting on a little pile of gravel. Or there might be a new hair slide she could wear for Christmas lunch: a red plastic flower or turquoise butterfly. And always a glass animal; triple-wrapped in tissue, so its frail legs wouldn’t break. And, usually, a diary – one year a Barbie Diary, the next a Hungry Caterpillar, or maybe Raold Dahl, or Tolkien, or the Nature-Lovers’ Companion. And, her favourite of all, when she was eleven-and-a-half, a leather-covered beauty in a padded pink-plush box, with its own tiny lock and key.

  But whatever diary it might be, she always did the self-same thing: flicked swiftly through the pages, almost to the end, until she reached Christmas Day the following year, and wrote HAPPY CHRISTMAS HANNAH!, in big capitals across the page. She wasn’t sure exactly why – perhaps to remind herself that, once this current Christmas was over (indeed fading to a blur), another one was waiting to explode in all its glory, with pantomimes and carols, new toys and games and books, huge crackling, golden turkeys, squidgy-sweet mince pies.

  It was only as she drained her milk she realized that she’d been awash in forbidden Christmas thoughts – in fact, so lost in childhood memories, she had forgotten bleak reality. With a sigh, she switched off the lamp, so she could no longer see the stocking, and, having settled down to sleep again, forced herself to resume her task of sheep-counting.

  However, by the time another hour had passed, her antipathy to sheep had increased to such proportions, she would have happily asphyxiated every ewe and ram in the known world and beyond. Wearily, she got up once more, to find a magazine. Reading an undemanding piece about fashion or celebrities might help her to relax.

  In the lounge, she stopped to look at her parents’ photograph, taken just a year ago. How spry they still looked, despite their total age of 176 years! They had never become doddery, or vacant and confused, but remained vigorous and sharp until a few months before their deaths. Pressing her lips to each face in turn, she gave each a tender kiss; relieved that none of her friends were there to see. She was already considered peculiar for having loved them so immoderately, when it was more fashionable these days to accuse parents of abuse, or at least of negligence. She gazed at her mother’s mild blue eyes; the gnarled, veiny hands folded on her lap; the hair arranged in soft, white, Mr-Whippy waves, and freshly permed for the occasion of the photograph. Next, she studied her father: his shy, unassuming expression, as if overwhelmed by the honour of a professional photographer actually coming to their home, with a camera on a tripod, and special lights and filters. She was the one who’d organized the session, as a present to herself; wanted her parents immortalized on a scale beyond the casual photos taken on her mobile.

  She tucked the gilt frame under her arm, then, having fetched some magazines, stood it on the dressing-table, where she could see it from her bed. Her parents could keep guard while she read her Cosmopolitan. Soon, she was deep in an article on fashion, although increasingly annoyed by the stress on ‘must-have’ items – ‘must-have’ knee-high boots, ‘must-have’ beaded evening-bag. She glanced at the Christmas stocking: flat and empty still. It was way past midnight, yet Santa hadn’t come. And he wouldn’t come; had completely failed to grasp her own personal list of ‘must-haves’: a decent man, and marriage, a brood of lovely children, commitment, lifelong love.

  Flinging the magazine on the floor, she s
tumbled out to the bathroom to find the sleeping pills. Her GP had prescribed them after the two bereavements. But she hadn’t wanted her grief dulled; felt it only fitting that she should lie inconsolably awake after such a loss. She took a couple now, though. They would make her pretty dopey in the morning, but she no longer even cared. She had nothing to get up for – no one to get up for – and the jobs she’d planned would simply have to wait.

  As she returned to her room, she almost ripped the Christmas stocking from the bed. All it did was emphasize her empty, fruitless life; nothing of any value in it; not even sweet frivolities.

  ‘Thanks for nothing, Santa,’ she muttered, pulling the duvet right over her head and praying for total oblivion.

  Her mind felt slack and soupy as she opened her eyes to darkness. She sat up in a daze, and suddenly glimpsed the Christmas stocking hanging at the end of the bed – a bulging Christmas stocking.

  She rubbed her eyes in disbelief. It must be some trick of the light – except there wasn’t any light; just the gleam of a tangerine, winking at her from the bottom of the stocking.

  Her hand groped out towards the bedside lamp, only to pause as it found the switch. OK, she might be mistaken. The sleeping pills could well have blurred her faculties, especially as she had taken them so late. But that first miraculous glance had showed the stocking full to overflowing, just as in her childhood, so why check on its reality, try to prove it an illusion?

  She lay back, closed her eyes, began the wondrous process of unpacking all the treasures. First, the tangerine, tingly in her mouth, than the overlay of chocolate, velvety and smooth, followed by the sugary crunch of the WOODBINES. Next, the bath salts – gritty and puce-pink; then the hair slide: black and white, in the shape of a cat, with twinkly emerald eyes. Then the tiny glass giraffe, triple-wrapped in tissue, so its long neck wouldn’t break. And the most perfect diary in the world, a big, important, scarlet one, its pages edged in gold, like a Bible or a Prayer Book, and with a matching gold-and-scarlet pen attached.

  Having uncapped the pen, she flicked swiftly through the pages, almost to the end, until she reached Christmas Day next year. Then she wrote in big, bold capitals, HAPPY CHRISTMAS, HANNAH!, right across the page.

  And, suddenly her grown-up self knew, beyond all doubt, that next Christmas would be happy. Impossible to explain. In fact, in the absence of her parents, she would surely still feel aching loss. Yet, that inner voice continued to assure her that, despite the grief, despite the loss, things would be transformed.

  She lay mystified, head muzzy from the pills. None the less, she couldn’t help but entertain the faintest gleam of hope – like the orange gleam of the tangerine she thought she might have seen.

  Had she seen it? Truly? It was just possible, perhaps. As was the hope of happiness.

  Just possibly.

  Perhaps.

  Turning Point

  ‘Do you have to go, my love?’

  She nodded, already sitting up and throwing off the duvet. But he caught her by the waist and drew her down again, pressing his hot, damp body into hers.

  ‘The time always goes too quickly,’ he whispered, twisting his fingers through a strand of her hair, as if to hold her captive.

  Not for me, she thought, hating her own edginess. Couldn’t she enjoy a few brief hours of pleasure without the continual worry that clamped her in its jaws these days? Her body might be here, with Rory, but her mind was still at home. She kissed him, in compensation – a long, tender, lingering kiss.

  ‘Please stay a wee bit longer.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Rory darling, but I can’t.’ Determinedly, she slipped from his embrace. ‘I’ll shower first, OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  The shower seemed a vital part of the affair: washing off not just his sweat and smell, but her anxiety and guilt. She ran the water as hot as she could bear, then used the balding nail-brush to scrub his traces down the sluice. Returning to the bedroom (the skimpy towel covering only her bottom half), she found Rory still sprawled full-length on the bed, clearly intent on luring her back.

  ‘Just one more kiss before you go.’

  She shook her head. Wonderful to be adored, but he didn’t understand her situation. ‘Shower’s all yours. I’ve left you the decent towel.’

  ‘I’m sorry things are so basic here.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I don’t mind.’ It amused her, actually, that they should meet in this bare, shabby room above a charity shop. It seemed fitting, in a way, that below them should be stacks of stuff – faded, old and second-hand – when they, too, were past their prime. And at least they were safe from discovery, since the flat was vacant at present, and Rory had an arrangement with the owner – an ancient, unsuspecting guy, who asked no awkward questions. And, as the shop was a good twenty miles from both their respective homes, there was little danger of running into anyone who might gossip or tell tales.

  As she towelled her hair, she peered down at the street: people bustling along the pavement with shopping bags or pushchairs; couples taking tea in the café opposite; a group of children wobbling past on bikes. This small, pretty town didn’t seem quite real; merely the backdrop to their monthly meetings, and comprised of just one room; its other streets and whole civic life mysterious and closed to her. Rory, too, was something of a mystery, since he had told her almost nothing about his job or wife or home. She knew only part of him – the lover, not the husband; the playmate, not the boss. Having never had an affair before in thirty years of marriage, she’d had to learn the rules: don’t discuss your spouse; leave your problems and your guilt behind.

  Easier said than done.

  She squinted in her powder-compact to re-apply her lipstick and comb her tousled hair. There was no mirror in the room, let alone a dressing-table, so she did her toilette sitting on the bed. Then she smoothed the sheets and duvet, plumped the one thin pillow and tidied their few things away: wine bottle and glasses, half-eaten chocolate bars, two empty Durex wrappers. She it was who insisted on the condoms, fearing pregnancy as much as infection, despite being fifty-one. Four children were enough, and, as yet, there hadn’t been the slightest sign of the menopause. Perhaps she was a freak of nature and would avoid it altogether, while her less fortunate contemporaries burned and drowned in hot flushes and night sweats.

  ‘Delia, are you sure I can’t drive you home?’ Rory reappeared, damp-haired from the shower, the large, purple towel looped around his neck.

  ‘Positive.’ His body still intrigued her. Naked male bodies had featured very rarely in her life – other than her husband’s, of course. Indeed, she hadn’t even realized that penises could vary quite so much. Morris’s was thin and long and now retired from active service, whereas Rory’s was short and squat and supercharged. The two men were different in other basic ways: Morris tall and skinny, his pale, myopic eyes half-hidden behind spectacles; his soft, white, straggly hair thinning with each passing year, whilst stocky, thickset Rory had emphatically dark hair (barely tinged with grey, as yet), which grew exuberantly thick and strong, and required constant taming and trimming by the barber. He was combing it now, the small, brown, plastic pocket-comb no match for its unruly strands.

  ‘I hate to think of you struggling on the bus.’

  ‘I don’t struggle – I just sit and read. When you’ve never learned to drive, Rory, you get used to public transport.’ In truth, Morris had been her transport all these years, and the fact he could no longer drive had been something of a shock – one of many, recently.

  Rory came up behind her, ran his fingers sensuously along the nape of her neck. ‘They forecast heavy rain for later on, and I don’t want you getting wet. I know you always worry about people seeing us together, but I could drop you half a mile away – that should be safe enough.’

  ‘No, it’s still a risk.’ She couldn’t really tell him that she preferred to travel back alone; needed time to change from the role of mistress to that of wife and carer. ‘And I’m well prepared, i
n any case, with an umbrella and a mac. In fact, I’d better get off right away. It’s already clouding over.’

  They always left separately, in case anyone was watching. Unlikely, in a strange town, but she was determined to be ultracareful.

  ‘OK, but I insist on a nice kiss goodbye.’

  Rory held her both too fiercely and too long. Occasionally it irked her to be needed quite so desperately by yet another person in her life. ‘Must go,’ she repeated, squirming to extricate herself.

  ‘Promise one day we’ll have longer together, so we can try out lots of wild, exciting things. I’d like you to get here first thing in the morning and stay all afternoon. Go on – say you will.’

  ‘I will,’ she mumbled anxiously, wondering how, for heaven’s sake.

  ‘Morris!’ she called, preparing her lies, as she let herself into the house. Not that lies were really necessary. He would have long ago forgotten where she’d pretended to be going. Indeed, even were she to admit straight out that she’d been in bed with a lover, that, too, was bound to slip his mind, given half an hour. Yet shame and apprehension were fluttering through her stomach – inevitable when she returned from these assignations.

  She shook out her umbrella and removed her dripping mac, hoping Morris hadn’t opened any windows. The forecast had been right; the late-September sunshine giving way to blustery wind and rain, as if even the weather was mourning the fact that she and Rory were now parted for four weeks.

  ‘Morris!’ she called again, surprised to hear no answering shout. He wasn’t in his usual chair in the sitting-room, nor in the kitchen, or the room they still called his office, nor upstairs in the bedroom. She checked the bathroom and the lavatory, beginning to feel seriously alarmed. Surely he wouldn’t be outside in such a deluge, although she tried the garden anyway, getting drenched in the process. She even peered into the potting shed – despite the fact his gardening days were over – found nothing but a spider and the remains of a dead bird. He must have left the house, but that, too, was inexplicable, since he never went anywhere without her. Having lost his confidence together with his memory, he now relied on her as chaperon and nanny, and always waited till she was back before venturing out, even just down the road. Could he have popped next door, perhaps, tired of his own company?