by Maeve Binchy
They all agreed that it had been the happiest Christmas they had spent.
‘Since your father died,’ Mrs Doyle said.
‘Of course,’ Michael said hastily.
‘Naturally we meant that,’ Cathy said.
‘Obviously, since Daddy died, that’s what we meant,’ Brenda said.
They were surprised. Normally she never mentioned Daddy at Christmas, but she didn’t seem upset. It was as if she was saying it for the record.
This time they didn’t all rush home. The washing-up was done in relays, with others staying by the big, roaring fire talking to Mrs Doyle. There was some television viewing, a walk for everyone except Cathy and Rose who minded one baby and talked about the next. There was tea and cake, and much later a small plate of cold turkey with some of Brenda’s excellent homemade bread. They all said he would be a lucky widower if Brenda trapped him.
They were gone and the house was warm and tidy still. The wrapping paper had been folded up and stored in the bottom of the dresser. Mrs Doyle could never decide other years whether they should keep it or not; this year, the decision had been made for her. Her presents were all on the sideboard. Perfume, talcum, a pen and pencil set, a subscription to a magazine, a hand-embroidered cover for the television guide, a bottle of oranges in Grand Marnier—gifts to a woman who was always remembered at Christmas.
Why did they make her feel a little uneasy? Perhaps it was the list beside them. Brenda had written out who had given her what. So that there would be no confusion, Brenda had said, when writing to thank. Well, yes. It was useful, of course, but she was sixty-two, not ninety-two. They didn’t have to put a bib around her neck and feed her. They didn’t talk baby language to her. Why write down who gave her what? She had little enough to hold in her mind today. She might have enjoyed thinking over who gave which gift.
Normally Mrs Doyle went to bed exhausted on Christmas night. This year she sat on long at the fireplace and took down the picture of Jim again and wondered why, if God was so good like the priest had said this morning, he had let Jim suffer for all those months and be so frightened and then let him die. She found no answer to the problem, only guilt at thinking badly of God. She went to bed and lay with her eyes open in the dark for what felt like a long time.
They all dropped in over Christmas week. This had always been the way, they would pop in and out as they felt like it. Usually she would fuss and say she had been about to make scones, but this year it was organised like some military campaign. When Rose and Michael came in the morning, they took her a plate of ham sandwiches just in case anyone dropped in. Then when Cathy and Brian came in the afternoon, hey presto, there was their tea! And Cathy brought a bottle of something that was lemon and cloves and whiskey, you just added hot water. So, lo and behold, when Brenda came by there was a nice, unusual, little snack for her to try.
But they all thought that something was wrong somewhere. Their mother was too quiet. It wasn’t natural for her to be so quiet. She didn’t speak until somebody spoke to her. She didn’t have any views or complaints, or in fact, anything at all much to say. They conferred with each other. It didn’t look like flu. She assured them she had no pains and aches. They began to notice it on Stephen’s Day and on Thursday it was still there. By Saturday she was positively taciturn.
Brenda worked it out. She had nothing to fuss about, but she also had nothing to do. The central core of their mother’s life had become fuss, like the epicentre of a hurricane. Take that away and she was left with nothing. The others wondered if Brenda was being too extreme. After all, it had been a wonderful Christmas.
‘For us,’ Brenda said darkly. ‘For us it was.’
On Saturday afternoon she called to see her mother. She had given her no warning and there was nothing prepared. She waited patiently until her mother revved up the fussing batteries and got into the mood where she would sigh and groan and complain about shops being open and not being open and how you never knew which they would be. Brenda nodded in sympathy. She did not produce food from her own well-stocked freezer and larder as she had been about to do. She allowed the fuss to blow up into a good-sized storm.
Then she played her trump card.
‘Are you going to the sales?’ she asked. ‘They’re always so crowded, so hard to decide what to get.’
Mrs Doyle showed a flicker of enthusiasm.
‘I don’t know why we do it,’ Brenda said. ‘They’re real torture, but on the other hand there are great bargains. Now would you think that it’s best to go in the first thing on the very first morning with the queues, or do you think that it’s better to wait till the rush has died down a bit?’
She was rewarded. Life, a sort of life, had come back to Mrs Doyle’s face again. She entered eagerly into the confusion of it all: the exhaustion, the value and the lack of value, the problem of knowing what was rubbish just brought in for the sale and what was a genuine bargain, and as she went to rummage and find the pieces of paper she had cut out during the year about things that would be good value if they were reduced by a third, Brenda sighed and realised that the season of fuss had returned and all was well again despite the setback of the perfect Christmas.
Christmas Timing
THIS WOULD BE THEIR FIFTH CHRISTMAS TOGETHER, OR NOT together. But the principle was the same. Chris hated the smugness of married people who went on and on about anniversaries, as if a thing could only be celebrated when it was legit. She couldn’t believe her friends didn’t know that she and Noel had got together in the winter of 1984. A magical winter when they kept finding out how much they had in common. They were both Christmas babies, one called Chris, one called Noel in deference to the season. They had both been bored rigid by the Olympic Games and never wanted to hear of a decathlon, a javelin or a discus ever again. They had loved the film Amadeus and felt that at just touching thirty they were a little too old for Michael Jackson.
It had been the Christmas of Stevie Wonder and ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’. Chris would never forget that as long as she lived. And the way Noel did call to say he loved her, from every phone box, hotel foyer, railway station. And from the family home whenever his wife was out of earshot.
The children were so young in 1984. Noel’s children. And of course to be fair, his wife’s children. They were very young, they were seven and eight. That was young. And oddly as the years went by they still seemed to be young. Chris couldn’t understand it, everything else changed. But those children of Noel’s were still clinging toddlers expecting him home, needing to be telephoned, wanting presents, demanding postcards daily on the few occasions when Noel and Chris did manage to get away together. They seemed to be getting younger in their photographs too. Or else dressing younger and assuming babyish positions. They were twelve and thirteen now. Why did they still get photographed cuddled up to Daddy, leaning on him, needing protection? Did a devilishly cunning wife always manage to snap them this way, knowing that these would be the pictures that got shown rather than complete family scenes?
They were very sensitive with each other, Chris and Noel. He never mentioned aspects of the family Christmas that might upset her, the parties for relatives and neighbours. She was the same with him, she never talked about how her parents always invited her father’s junior partner, a man who had the huge advantage of being single. She never told him how her sisters talked to her darkly about the biological clock ticking away and how liberation was all very well but did one want to put off babies forever?
In fact Chris thought that they were much more courteous to each other and anxious not to offend than were most married couples she knew. She often did those quiz-type articles in magazines. ‘Are you compatible?’ In all of them, answering honestly, she thought they came out with top marks. They always listened fascinated to stories of the working day. They never slouched around the house in slovenly and unattractive gear. Neither of them would dream of turning on a television rather than have a conversation. They were tender and giv
ing in their lovemaking rather than selfish. They didn’t need to cheat. They were compatible.
Sometimes she did a test about ‘Are you romantic?’ And they were, they were! He brought her a single flower, he remembered what she wore and praised it. She always served dinner on a table, no trays on the lap in Chris’s flat.
And it was the same in the ‘Is he a chauvinist pig?’ tests. He wasn’t, he wasn’t. With her hand on her heart she could say that he admired her mind, thought her job was worthwhile, asked her advice about his own, treated her equally in all things. There was no way she could be considered his little bit of fluff.
There were no tests she shied away from. Not even the ‘Will your love survive?’ She went through it remorselessly and decided that it would. Triumphantly, when all others had fallen or cooled down. They had all the right ingredients for survival. They were clear-sighted, they knew the limitations and yet could travel to the furthermost boundaries. Even the regular Christmas promise that next year they would be together. Properly. That wasn’t a weak link in their love. It was a necessary pronouncing of commitment.
Noel loved doing these little psychological tests too. Sometimes he found more that Chris hadn’t seen in management magazines. ‘Is your love life suffering because of stress?’ They would laugh confidently and agree that Noel’s love life with Chris was doing nothing of the sort. He found a serious one called ‘Are you a cheat?’ They went through it very carefully and decided that he wasn’t, because nobody was being let down. And that when the time was right, everything would be out in the open.
So they had no fear of any Christmas quiz dreamed up in a family newspaper to keep the readers happy and partially alert over Christmas. And though they were separated by many miles they wouldn’t be unhappy on Christmas Day. Noel had a picture of Chris sitting down in her family home surrounded by sisters and brothers-in-law, nephews and nieces, and good old family friends. He could imagine her sitting by the fire and picking up this marvellous questionnaire and filling it in quietly, smiling to herself in the knowledge that he too would be doing it by his fireside and that everything they answered to the questions would be almost word for word the same. Chris thought of Noel, after all the family fun, with those two children who seemed to have reversed the ageing process, possibly getting rattles and soft toys in their stockings this year. He would ask for a little peace for Daddy to read the papers and it would be given to him. She could see him nodding and smiling over the kind of thing that might have other couples riddled with anxiety. Compatible, romantic, clear-sighted, non-chauvinist, non-cheating? They would win in every category. At around the same time, on a crisp cold afternoon on the day that was both Christmas and the day that they had reached half of three score and ten, they sat down to do the Christmas quiz.
This year it was in a different format. Not the usual boxes to tick for yes and no and possibly. Not the usual scoring scheme at the end. ‘If you scored over 75 you are ridiculously happy’ or ‘If you scored under 20, are you sure this relationship is for you?’
This year it was a completely new departure. You had to write in words, sentences, not ticks and crosses. There was no scoring at the end, only the suggestion that you leave the newspaper around the house so that the loved one could read it. That’s if you wanted the loved one to change. Deep in their armchairs miles from each other Chris and Noel, the thirty-five-year-old Christmas babies, nestled in to do the questionnaire. It was called ‘Those little irritations’ and under a whole lot of different headings you had to fill in the things about the loved one that caused you to wince. BE HONEST the headline screamed at you, and said there was no point in doing it unless you did it honestly.
In the house where Chris sat, children played with their new games by the tree, her sisters talked of new arrivals in the new decade, her parents slept contentedly in their chairs. Her father’s junior partner, who had the merit of being single, mended the Christmas lights, and put batteries into all the gadgets that had been gift-wrapped without them. He saw Chris take up the questionnaire.
‘Only a couple who were seriously mad would attempt that,’ he said genially.
Chris looked at him pityingly. He must not know about her happy love life in case he ever let it slip to her parents.
‘Oh that’s right, only us singles would dare to do it. Fantasy life and all that.’
He smiled at her, he looked kind of different this year, perhaps he too had a secret life. She drew the paper up to her closer so that she could begin without him seeing the pure contentment on her face.
In Noel’s house, the children had gone out with their friends, they said there was nothing to do at home and now that they had opened their presents couldn’t they please go up the hill and fly kites like everyone else. Noel’s wife talked excitedly with her father and mother about the business she was going to start. Yes, of course, it would mean a bit of travel but the children were well grown up now and nothing made youngsters as independent as having to look after themselves a little in these formative years.
Noel opened the paper and smiled at ‘Those little irritations’. He knew before he started that there would be no irritations, little or large, about his life with Chris. Now if it had been a questionnaire about him and his wife. Aha that would be a different matter altogether! Look at the very first question.
‘Does the loved one have any one phrase said over and over that drives you mad?’ Chris hadn’t. She was forever fresh and new in everything she said. But his wife, if she said ‘Let’s face it’ once a day she must say it four hundred times. And her other phrase was ‘To be strictly honest’. God how he could scream when she said that. She always felt the need to say that she was being strictly honest when she told him the most trivial detail like how long she had waited for a bus or what time somebody had telephoned. ‘No, to be strictly honest it was at three o’clock she phoned not half-past two, but let’s face it, she does phone every day.’ No, there was nothing at all in that category he could hang on Chris. His wife, however, had another phrase that he hated. It was ‘Right?’ Said as a question after the most banal statement. ‘I saw the new, next-door neighbours today. Right?’ Why did she say ‘Right’? With an effort, Noel dragged himself away from this bubbling rage. The quiz was meant to be about him and Chris for heaven’s sake, and so far she had passed with flying colours. Now onto question two. ‘Is there any item of clothing that the loved one wears which you would like to consign to the dustbin?’ Well, yes of course, that hideous mink cravat, and the line of chat that went with it. ‘I don’t approve of killing animals for their fur, but mink are different, they’re vermin, and they’ve never known freedom.’ But wait that wasn’t Chris, that was his wife. Chris wouldn’t wear any kind of fur, nor would she have a list of excuses ready if she did. She wore lovely soft colours, grey-blue like her eyes and lilac sometimes, then when he would least expect it she might appear in a scarlet dress, or a yellow sweater. No, nothing for the dustbin there. He sighed with pleasure as he thought of his luck in love. A girl who never said a word astray or wore a garment that he didn’t love.
In another house Chris was being honest as the headline had urged her to be. Any phrase, over and over? Well, only the way he always said ‘I must go to the little boys’ room’ when they went out to dinner, or even when they had dinner in her flat. But that wasn’t something you hated. Just a bit predictable. Oh and of course he always said ‘Ice and slice?’ when he got her a gin and tonic as if it were mint new. But that was a sort of a joke, he had imaginary inverted commas around it. No, she wouldn’t write it down, that would be nitpicking.
Across from the fire she saw her father’s partner. She thought he had been looking at her, but she must have imagined it, he was very busy installing new batteries. He had brought a seemingly endless supply of them which was good thinking on the part of someone who didn’t have any children of his own. Chris read on. Was there an item of clothes belonging to Noel that she would throw out apart from the underpan
ts with the words ‘Hot Stuff’ on them. Well, there was the red and white, striped nightcap which had been funny once, and the fur hat after the Gorbachev cult, and the socks with sandals in the summer, and the driving gloves which were perfectly reasonable gloves in themselves but somehow looked self-important on a driving wheel. But these weren’t real irritations. Not in the sense of being able to find a list of them.
There were twenty questions in the list. Twenty times Noel found at least five flaws in his wife and not one in his girlfriend. When Chris answered the twenty questions, however, she found twenty flaws in Noel. Twenty times with tears beginning to start at the back of her eyes. Yes, she had found three unpleasant eating habits, and yes she had observed two signs of corporate dishonesty, as well as an alarming six signs of petty personal meanness. She wrote none of them down. She didn’t need to. It wasn’t a paper to be left around to improve his habits. It was an eye-opener. As the scales fell from her eyes so did the glory seem to fall from Noel. She knew he would call soon and sing the Stevie Wonder lines down the phone. She knew she wouldn’t tell him now that she knew he would never leave his home for her and furthermore she didn’t want him to. It would be an ease to him too. He wasn’t a basically bad man, just a basically irritating one.
In another house, Noel had counted seven unpleasant eating habits in his wife, and such high levels of corporate dishonesty that he feared she would be in a major criminal league when she got her business going. Noel knew that this was the time he would tell his wife that he wanted to leave. He would tell her today, this very day. It would be fairer and she could go ahead with her plans without taking him into consideration. He hadn’t realised just how far they had grown apart. Just how little his children needed him. What a revelation it had been.