by Fay Weldon
On Christmas morning, before they opened their presents, stacked all silver glitter at the end of the bed, Adrienne wrapped her long legs round Tyro’s and forgave him, but he didn’t seem to have his heart in it.
‘What’s the matter, my sweetheart, my darling, my genius, love of my love, light of my nights, my life?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. Well, of course he did. It never does to ask men what the matter is because they either refuse to say or don’t know, or offer the wrong answer. So Adrienne sensibly just coaxed him back to happiness, and to focusing on her, which came to the same thing. She’d bought him a brilliant new suit for Christmas, for the party, made of a new washable silk which was meant to look crumpled even before it began. And he gave her a lapel brooch made of glass, diamonds and platinum, which was actually rather lovely but when she looked closer she could see it was made in the shape of a teddy bear, and who wore lapel brooches anyway? Men were always hopeless with presents. A teddy bear! They tried to turn you into a mother, and when you were a mother they got fed up and left. That’s how her own father had been. She felt a surge of love for Tyro: the emotion made her helpless, and afraid, yet agreeably dependent, as if she were a child again. She put a little honey on a little square of toast and fed it to him: which was a real gesture since honey was so sticky, and it was only because Tyro insisted that she ever even had it in the house. But still he seemed somehow cut off. She hoped she hadn’t overdone the no-sex run-up to Christmas: she’d made it all right now anyway. She loved him. He knew that.
He ate the proffered morsel—really he had no choice—but then he got up and dressed. He put yesterday’s socks back on.
‘I’m going now,’ he said.
‘Where?’ she asked, startled.
‘To see the children. I’m going to spend the morning with them.’
Afterwards she seemed to remember screaming: she hoped she remembered wrong: people should be civilized. But Christmas Day, their Christmas Day. How could he? But he did. Why? She couldn’t understand. She must have been stunned, in shock. She wandered around the apartment alone and she wasn’t wearing any clothes at all, and yet everything else was normal; just quiet and empty. She wanted to pick up Tommy but he wasn’t even there: she hoped he was all right: of course he was all right. Bloody Nanny was trained to her eyeballs which was half the problem: Adrienne had had to give in over time off at Christmas for fear of losing her: at least she’d insisted the baby went with the stupid girl: a half-victory if not a whole one. Anger rose through shock: indignation: outrage.
She locked the front door against Tyro’s return. She pushed his Christmas tree right over, she didn’t know she was so strong: and there were needles everywhere and splintered bits of glass and she ground the awful crude chocolate nicknacks into the carpet—and then she picked up the phone to ring Cynthia but thank God, thank God, had the sense to put it down again. She started calling her friends instead: but they seemed cool, ever so cool.
Anthea said, ‘So Tyro should see his children. It’s Christmas,’ and, ‘I was going to call you. Philip and I won’t be able to come on New Year’s Eve—’ and Philip was head of the Philharmonic PR.
And Dulcie said, ‘Look, I’m busy. I haven’t even got the turkey in the oven yet; you wanted Tyro, you got him, don’t ask me to sympathize. And Sam and I can’t come on Thursday night. Sorry and all that.’ Sam owned the biggest chain of bathroom design shops in the country.
And David said, ‘Darling, this isn’t the time. I’m a bit busy,’ and she knew what that meant and it upset her even more. She was used to David waiting and adoring in the wings.
And Maureen said, ‘I don’t want to hear anything more against poor bloody Cynthia. She isn’t perfect but who is? Actually she and I are good friends nowadays, and Darryl and I came to a decision we somehow didn’t come to when we should have and we’re going to Cynthia’s on New Year’s Eve—’ and Maureen practically ran Paramount, but that was nothing compared to the treachery.
And then there wasn’t anyone else to ring; so she got through to Nanny who sounded surprised and said of course Tommy was fine, why shouldn’t he be?
She rang her mother whom she hated and said Happy Christmas and hated her a little less. But her mother only seemed to care about Tommy, and made a fuss about him not being there, as Adrienne had known she would. Why had she even bothered? And where was Tyro, Tyro, her one true love: at least with three children in a poky flat he couldn’t be in bed with Cynthia? Could he?
She rang Cynthia. The phone rang and rang. Perhaps he could. Perhaps Cynthia had dropped the children off somewhere—Adrienne was helpless: there was nothing she could do.
Adrienne wept till she was ugly. Adrienne put her teddy-bear brooch through the waste-disposal unit. Adrienne put Tyro’s new silk suit through the heavy-soil white wash. Adrienne, by the time it was on the final rinse, thought, ‘I’ve gone mad.’ The thought calmed her down. It was madness to believe you could possess other people: re-create the world in your own interests. All the same, she tried Cynthia again. One of the children answered. ‘Is that Alec, Alison or Edward?’ she asked, quite nicely. ‘Because this is Adrienne.’
‘It’s Edward,’ said Edward. ‘I don’t want to speak to you. You’re horrid.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Adrienne. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh well,’ said Edward. ‘Sometimes I’m horrid too. Everyone says so.’ That made her laugh, and laughing, after so much crying, melted a block of ice in her heart, or that’s how she described it to Tyro afterwards. Cynthia took the phone.
‘I didn’t ask him to come round here,’ said Cynthia, before Adrienne could speak. ‘In fact it’s a bloody nuisance he’s round here, because I’ve got a friend coming to dinner. Men always get their timing wrong. Still, the kids seem pleased. Mess everywhere. Why is it that the happier kids are the messier they are?’
‘I really wouldn’t know a thing like that,’ said Adrienne.
‘That figures,’ said Cynthia. ‘And what’s the matter with you? You haven’t said one nasty thing to me so far.’
‘The Christmas spirit’s got my tongue,’ said Adrienne.
‘Tyro’s just leaving to get back to you,’ said Cynthia. ‘He wouldn’t let me answer the phone the first time; he knew it would be you and he’d have to go. And this time Edward just picked it up before I could stop him.’
‘Tell you what,’ said Adrienne, ‘if the children want to come back with him they can. If that helps you out, it’s okay with me. It’s a stupid sort of Christmas dinner with caviar and stuff, but there’s lots of it. Only perhaps they want their turkey with you.’
‘Well!’ said Cynthia. ‘Well, well! I’ve gone vegetarian so it’s only mock turkey and lentils here; they won’t mind missing that one bit. They’re on their way.’
And so they were. By the time next Christmas came there was turkey for dinner, Tommy, under Adrienne’s feet as if she were just any ordinary mother, played on a deep-rose carpet getting pine needles in his hair, and the nursery suite had been converted to bedrooms for when Alec, Alison and Edward came to stay.
‘It’s just so exhausting saying no,’ said Adrienne, wearing the teddy-bear brooch Tyro had bought her to replace the one she’d somehow lost. Her new habit of saying yes brought its own problems, of course, but that’s another story, for the summer holidays.
The Search for Mother Christmas
‘FATHER CHRISTMAS AND I,’ said Ruby to her children, ‘have a special relationship.’ That was in 1971, when the boys were twelve, ten, seven and two respectively. Billy, Joshua, Jason and little Ben.
‘Does that mean no presents this year?’ asked Billy, who had a nervous disposition, and red hair like his father. Sometimes he was difficult to like.
‘You mean a special relationship like between Britain and the US?’ asked Joshua, who had been categorized as a gifted child. It had its drawbacks: he got called brainbox and was bullied in the playground.
‘Does that mean he’
s going to be our new Daddy?’ asked Jason, who lived in fear of some terrible event, which would come along and confound his life yet further.
And little Ben said nothing at all. He wasn’t speaking yet. The clinic recommended he see a child development specialist and Ruby was putting it off. She had enough to do, as it was.
‘It means,’ said Ruby, ‘Father Christmas may put the presents down the chimney on New Year’s Eve rather than Christmas Eve because I don’t get paid till the last Friday of every month.’
Ruby had a part-time job. She worked in the office of the local secondary school. The family lived in Garton, a small town in the new County of Avon, as unexciting as its name.
‘There’s no such thing as Father Christmas anyway,’ said Billy.
‘There is so,’ said Joshua.
‘Fancy you being ten and believing that,’ said Billy.
Jason said, ‘I know there’s no Father Christmas because I waited up one night with a torch and it was Dad dressed up in a red gown with cotton wool.’
‘What you saw,’ said Ruby, briskly, ‘was Father Christmas dressed up as Dad.’
And little Ben said nothing at all.
‘Anyway,’ said Ruby, ‘he told me he’d come on New Year’s Eve, and he wouldn’t lie to me because I’m his wife.’
‘Is that the special relationship?’ asked Joshua.
‘Yes,’ said Ruby. ‘I’m Mother Christmas and you can see I’m true.’
And she washed through eight socks and a pair of tights and draped them over the backs of chairs to dry by the morning. She couldn’t afford to use the washing machine too often. She didn’t own a dryer. In any case dryers shrink socks, ruin tights and help to deplete the ozone layer. There is some comfort to be gained from hardship, if you try, but not much.
Oh yes, that was the winter of ’seventy-one, when Ruby was thirty-four and two years widowed, and this was the pattern of her day:
Ben, waking at six, would wake his mother, and she would pot him, change him, dunk the drenched nappy, and give him a bottle to get on with (prepared the night before) and pack his bag for the nursery school where he had a free place. That put Ben on hold.
Ruby fed Pussy the cat to put an end to her yowling, and cleaned up after her. Pussy would not, would not, use the cat flap when it was cold. Ruby got the older boys’ clothes laid out and mended and their socks sorted. If everything was in order it saved quarrels, argument and noise. (The three big boys shared a room. As they grew older it grew too small. Presently Ruby would have to move out of her bedroom and use a Put-U-Up in the living room, but she put that off too. Ruby was Canute sitting on a shore keeping back the tide that was her children.)
Then Ruby set the table and laid the breakfast. ‘Sit down to breakfast, boys. Don’t eat it standing up. Widows and orphans must make an effort.’
‘Talk about it to them, Mrs Halter, talk about the accident. They’ll get over it quicker.’ All very fine, but what about me? Can’t I just forget it? I have to peel my own mind raw for the children’s sake? Apparently so.
Well, boys, it was like this. Your father was killed reversing through red lights at the crossroads at two a.m. one morning. Walk round the corner and to this day you can see the dent in the lamp-post where his car ricocheted. Who was in the car with him? Why, Muriel his secretary. You know Muriel, she gave you knitted scarves for Christmas for years! Where are the scarves these days? They got the moth. Your mother threw them out. Yes, Muriel was killed too. Why was she in the car with your father? I expect they had some work to do together. Why two in the morning? It must have been very urgent. Very urgent. He’d rung me a couple of hours earlier and said he was in Edinburgh and described his hotel room to me. Can you get from Edinburgh to Bristol in two hours? I expect you can, if there are wings on your feet. No, dear, there isn’t an air shuttle. I was speaking metaphorically. Then why did he, what was he, how was he—why was he reversing? Did he change his mind? What was there for him to change his mind about? Yes, I’m sure he said it was Edinburgh he was calling from. You wish to misremember but some things will not let themselves be misremembered. The fact of the matter is, my boys, my dears, some things will never be known, some questions never answered, and the more I think about it the more upset I get, and long for the Day of Judgement when the dead will rise up, when all will be made clear.
The truth of the matter being, lads, that whenever I got pregnant your father would find solace outside the marriage; and here I was pregnant with you, little Ben. Speak to me, Ben. What, speechless?
Once the child was born he would return; but of course this time, being dead, he could only send his ghost. If you are very good, sit up at the breakfast table, he may forgive you: not blow his cold breath through the broken windowpane. Billy, will you measure up and cut the glass? I will putty it in. We have no money to pay the glazier.
Yes, and I am sorry for the girls he took up with. Bit-part players in the drama of a marriage, thinking they were centre stage. Is that enough talk now, boys? Or would you prefer silence?
Never mind, never mind: the cereal running out and never enough milk: will four eggs make scrambled for five or shall mother go without again? And she missed him, she missed him: how could he go without her, taking someone else, not her? And where was his replacement? She saw no sign of him. How could he appear? She flew no flags saying, ‘Here I am, take me!’ There was no time, no energy, no money, to run one up the flagpole. Ruby’s grey streaks stayed grey; Ruby got round quicker in low heels; how could Ruby buy nice clothes when the boys needed shoes? Ruby wouldn’t go on the State, not she: Ruby wouldn’t take handouts from anyone: Ruby would manage, yes she would. Oxfam helps the widows and orphans.
At seven thirty Ruby would wake the boys, remember whose turn it was to use the bathroom first, stop Joshua using the lawn, and if Jason had wet the bed strip it. Jason slept too soundly, the Clinic said. What’s the answer? Pretend it isn’t happening: poor little Jason, he’s had a hard time. But so has Ruby, filling the washing machine and lucky to have it. Does no one care? Who’s to care, now Jack is gone? A widow’s an embarrassment. People cross the road. Misfortune might be catching. And wasn’t there something odd about the death, wasn’t he with some girl—never mind, never mind, what’s the use of wasting emotion. I loved Jack and he loved me, most of the time, and we had children.
Seven forty-five. While the boys eat, make their beds so that when they get home from school all is orderly and cheerful, and a quick wipe round the sink, and a quick floor-sweep likewise. Then while the boys get their act together—Joshua has to have his books found for him every day—brilliant he may be, hopeless he is—and Ben and the cat have to be disentangled, and everyone got into coats and shoes which with any luck she remembered the night before to fill with newspaper and prop up against the Rayburn so they’d be dry, and Jason’s cut his finger opening the cat food and needs a plaster—he always cuts his finger and there’s an open tin unfinished and the cat’s already been fed but never mind, never mind, if you shout at Jason he cries, and cries, and cries—and Billy puts an expression on his face which means he’d leave home yesterday if he could. Then distribute dinner money in the right change for everyone (it’s every day now, not once a week. Someone broke into the school office one Monday and took the lot. Now it’s collected daily, banked daily: people have to be so careful) and it’s Billy’s turn to clear the table but he’s in a bad mood: better if she does it herself, she hasn’t the energy to insist.
Eight fifteen and everyone leaves the house. Ten minutes at the bus stop. Off the bus to take Ben to the nursery (he’s grizzling again. Ruby fears he hates the place: sometimes she’s glad he can’t talk. It stops him telling her) while Billy, Joshua and Jason continue on their own to school. They’re too young. Ruby sometimes thinks of child molesters and child murderers, but not often and not for long. What can she do about it? Ben puts his arms around Ruby’s neck and clings: he has to be dragged off: he wants to be at home with her, of
course he does. And Ruby wants to be at home with him, of course she does. Or even without him.
Ruby wants her life back.
And it’s still only eight forty-eight and Ruby’s working day hasn’t even begun: and Christmas is coming up.
‘Ruby,’ said her friend Margaret, ‘why did you have four?’
‘I wanted to get it right,’ said Ruby. Ruby wanted a pregnancy in which Jack didn’t fall in love with someone else. Ruby thought she’d got it made when she was eight and a half months’ gone with Ben, until the news came about the crash, and her first thought had been if the car’s a write-off how am I going to get to hospital? Ruby once told Margaret that Ben was an accident, but it wasn’t true. The house just felt empty without a baby in it. Good God, why do women have such feelings: and worse, having them, why do they then act upon them?
As it happened, for the Christmas of 1971, Ruby’s parents, though they disapproved of large families, helped her out. Father Christmas came down the chimney on the proper day. Ruby wanted the children to believe in Father Christmas. Ruby knew it was absurd: but it was her luxury, she needed it. And that Christmas Billy taught Ben to speak—only to say ‘no’, admittedly, but better than nothing. Perhaps. Was Billy disturbed by Jack’s death? Not disturbed by his death at all but born to be like that anyway? How could one ever know? All Ruby could do was lay the table, light the fires, get them to school, make the beds so the place felt cheerful, keep everyone going, earn the money, work in a school so as to have school holidays, and dress up as Father Christmas once a year.