by Maeve Binchy
His boss had been embarrassed.
‘There’s no easy way to say this, Stephen, and no good time of year to say it either,’ she had begun.
He had looked at her blankly.
‘But of course you must have seen it coming,’ she went on.
Stephen hadn’t seen it coming. And not on Christmas Eve.
As the Patels gave him his receipt they put his trolley away having written S. White in large letters on cardboard for when he would collect it later.
They were really a highly efficient pair, they deserved their success. At that time, of course, Stephen thought he was a man with a job and a future.
Not so when he came back after the news of the afternoon. This time he was like someone on autopilot. It was his first Christmas alone, he just had to pick up his shopping and face it. For the last two years since Wendy had left him he had gone to his brother’s house.
But they played a lot of games there, things you had to be quick-witted about. It wasn’t easy or relaxed.
This year Stephen had thought he would make his own Christmas dinner, get two frozen turkey breasts, one looked so sad. And you never knew who might join you.
George in the office had said he might stroll by. Not a definite arrangement or anything but just a possibility.
Stephen had wanted to be prepared. He would get nice easy foods like tins of custard and packets of mince pies. And some packet soups and stuffings, things you just had to add a little water to.
Small gifts for the ladies in the flats near him, they would like talcum powder and matching soap, he thought.
He bent sadly over the trolley and brought it out to his car.
He unpacked bag after bag, all of them with ‘season’s greetings’ written on them. He stacked them neatly in the boot. He knew that he had bought far too much. George wouldn’t stroll by, not tonight or tomorrow. You didn’t stroll to the house of a man who had just been sacked. There would be nothing to say.
Grimly Stephen continued unloading his supplies. But he didn’t really look at them. Otherwise he would have realised he had the wrong trolley.
He was a person of regular habits, and long-standing rituals. Normally he would have stored anything for the freezer on one side and covered it with a rug for greater insulation.
But tonight he didn’t make any distinction. And he headed out into the rainy night with tears on his face. Tears of failure as he drove the contents of Sara White’s trolley to the small flat where he had lived since he and Wendy had sold what was always called the marital home.
Back at the office the party would be in full swing. He had always, in his quiet way, enjoyed it on other Christmas Eves. He found a background from which to observe it all, it had been good-natured if a little silly.
But this year they would all have been sympathising with him, assuring him he would get another job in no time. Better let them speculate about him behind his back, wonder how poor Stephen was taking it all.
He would come back after Christmas and tidy things up. He had been told that he need not leave until some time that suited him early in the New Year.
Stephen opened the first package and discovered prawns in their shells. Well now, he thought, the Patels were not as efficient as he had thought, they must have included a bag from someone else’s trolley. Still it was easy to do. He looked at the prawns, interested; they were so prehistoric . . . almost like dinosaurs really. He wondered who could possibly cook and eat such things. Then the next bag had a leather handbag and a green scarf. There were jars of olives, strange crusty bread with a herby smell. It took Stephen White five whole minutes to realise that he had none of his careful shopping, that in fact he had been given totally the wrong trolley.
But it had his name on its back in the store which was long closed now. And surely his credit card receipt must be in one of the bags. He rooted around to find it and there it was behind a miniature CD player that must have cost a fortune. But it was for Sara White, that’s what she had signed.
Some crazed woman who must, by the amount of her bill and the look of her trolley, run an exotic restaurant and quite possibly a gift shop. What must she be thinking in some other part of the city as she looked for all these entirely inappropriate things that she had presumably assembled for herself and her family?
And how was he going to find her? The credit card people wouldn’t reveal her address. The Patels would have locked up and gone away.
Suddenly Stephen felt very tired and sad. He sat at the kitchen table loaded with such unexpected things; a big tear splashed down on the coconut milk. He would never find this Sara White in the phone book, there was no point even in looking, she might be there under her husband’s name.
His Christmas was ruined because this stupid stupid woman couldn’t take the right trolley. But that wasn’t really why the tear had fallen, the food didn’t matter. Stephen White sat weeping in the kitchen on Christmas Eve because at the age of forty-eight he was unemployed and his wife had been gone for three years and he had nobody and nothing to live for.
There was a loud banging on the door.
Stephen brushed his face and went to answer it. It was George from the office, with a bottle of wine and possibly quite drunk already.
‘I was strolling by,’ said George who lived in another part of the city entirely and had made the detour out of solidarity with the man who had just been sacked.
George was amazed at all the food. He examined all the ingredients.
‘Imagine that. Well I don’t believe it! You were going to make a Thai curry,’ he said, full of admiration.
‘Was I?’ Stephen was bewildered.
‘I must say I do admire you, Stephen, a few of us wondered would you be all right, you looked a bit grey this afternoon . . . wait until I tell them you were having a party.’
‘A party?’
George laughed easily as he drew the cork from the bottle of wine he had brought with him.
‘Well, don’t tell me you were going to eat all this yourself! When’s it going to start?’
‘I don’t know,’ Stephen said.
It was all becoming increasingly unreal sitting here with George from the office drinking a full-bodied red wine at a table covered with some woman’s fancy shopping, having been sacked from his job.
‘What time did you tell them?’ George wanted to know.
‘I didn’t tell them,’ Stephen said.
George wasn’t bothered by that. He refilled his glass.
‘Well, they could come any time then,’ he said in a brisk and businesslike way. ‘Come on, Stephen, we’d better get our skates on, start frying the mushrooms and onions.’
‘But what for?’ Stephen begged.
‘Well as a base, then we fry the chicken, stir in the green paste and the coconut milk . . .’
‘We can’t do this . . .’ Stephen was hoarse with fear.
‘Well, of course, if you want to make the green curry for the prawns, well that’s fine, we’ll do a red one for the chicken.’
‘But the people! I haven’t asked anyone!’ Stephen cried.
‘Well definitely skates on then, Stephen, we’d better go round asking them.’
And in front of Stephen’s horrified eyes, George from the office, carrying a glass of red wine and most certainly under the weather from the office party, went across the corridor and banged loudly on the door of Mrs Johnson, pillar of the Residents’ Association, undoubtedly the most difficult woman in the entire block of flats.
Stephen had bought her some talcum powder and a matching soap, hoping to get into her good books and that she wouldn’t glare at him quite so much.
But, because of that appalling Sara White, whoever she was, he had NO talcum powder for Mrs Johnson, he only had an inebriated colleague, well ex-colleague, hammering on the woman’s door. Stephen felt slightly faint. And closed his eyes. When he opened them he saw to his amazement that Mrs Johnson seemed to be having a perfectly normal conversation with George. She was even
asking him what kind of bottle she should bring.
‘Anything at all really,’ George was saying. ‘Adds to the excitement.’
George said he would be back shortly, he had now got the names of other residents from Mrs Johnson and everyone would assemble in about an hour. They should have everything ready by then.
Stephen sat down beside the wreckage of the table and the greatly reduced wine bottle. This just couldn’t be happening. It was all a dream, he had fallen asleep and just dreamed it all. That was it. Then he heard George’s voice booming downstairs and excited cries coming from that quiet couple in Number Sixteen who hardly ever looked up from the pavement to talk to you. George had asked these people to Stephen’s house and was planning to cook all Sara White’s insane shopping list for them.
The phone rang.
He hardly felt strong enough to answer it but he picked it up. It was a woman’s voice.
‘Stephen?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said bleakly.
‘Stephen White?’ she sounded doubtful.
‘Oh, is that Sara?’ he asked with real warmth in his voice. ‘I’m so glad you rang.’
Now this terrible woman could come and take all her stuff and give him back what he wanted, what he had bought in fact.
‘No.’ The voice sounded disappointed. ‘No, it’s Wendy, actually, who’s Sara?’
‘Wendy!’ He couldn’t have been more surprised.
‘Yes, well, season of goodwill and all that, I just thought I’d ring to find out how you are.’
‘I was sacked today, as it happens.’
‘Best thing that could have happened to you,’ Wendy said. ‘You were always too good for them, but you’d never leave. Now you can do something you’d enjoy.’
‘Yes, well . . .’ Wendy was always very positive, no challenge too difficult for her.
‘Are you depressed and moping about it alone at home?’ she asked.
He thought for a moment. Wendy couldn’t be doing all that much herself if she had called him.
‘No, actually I’m having a party shortly,’ he said.
‘A party!’ Wendy couldn’t believe her ears.
‘Yes, Thai curry, chicken and prawns,’ he said proudly.
‘Well, good for you.’ She sounded grudging and astonished, and a little lonely.
‘You’re very welcome, I’d love to see you again, Wendy,’ said Stephen White to his ex-wife.
‘In about an hour’s time, then, that would be great,’ she said.
And George came back to say that it was shaping up as a fine party list, but they should really think of getting their skates on and as he had collected five different bottles already, perhaps they should open one for the sheer conviviality of it all.
Affair Before Christmas
JUDITH REALISED VERY SUDDENLY THAT HER HUSBAND WAS having an affair. And the knowledge came to her in a very public place. It was as she was bending over a cabinet of chilled foods in the supermarket three weeks before Christmas; she looked up to ask Ken whether he would prefer the lemon mousse or the raspberry flavour and she caught a look on his face that she had never seen before. He was biting his lip and looking at her as if he wished more than anything that things had not turned out like this. As if he was almost unbearably sorry.
She didn’t suspect, she just knew. Suddenly everything moved slightly as a jigsaw might if it had been juddered out of place, or as a camera focuses. Suddenly everything made sense.
She got such a shock that she dropped the package into the big food compartment and gave a little gasp. He looked at her with even greater concern.
‘What is it?’ His eyes were kind and worried.
‘It’s nothing, just a cramp.’ She straightened herself up and held her side as if she had a stitch. ‘Put that lemon mousse in the trolley for me like a love. I’ll just go and sit down for a moment. Can you finish the list?’
He helped her to a chair and all the time his hand on her arm felt like the painful grip of someone who was taking her into custody.
Judith told herself to stay calm. Calm, calm. Say nothing now, she must think. She would not burst into tears in the supermarket in front of people who knew her from every Wednesday evening. She would not accuse Ken of betraying her to the interested audience of a weary after-work crowd of shoppers. She would have to think it out carefully.
They were playing ‘Silent Night’ from the speakers around the store. There were holly and tinsel chains everywhere.
‘I won’t let it happen until after Christmas,’ Judith said to herself. She actually articulated the words. ‘It will not be said until Christmas is over. I deserve that and the children deserve it. He cannot break up our lives until we have had our Christmas.’
Every Wednesday they came to do their weekly shop. Judith had made it into a great outing for the family. First they led the trolley; she was in charge of expensive items like desserts as a treat, and all the cleaning materials, since nobody else knew what was running out. Tommy and Jane bought the fruit and vegetables. They weighed them out carefully. Judith felt that if they had the actual choosing of beans or sprouts or whatever, they might show more interest in eating them. Ken, the good model husband, bought the bread and the soft drinks and the couple of bottles of wine and the half-dozen beers. They met at the checkout, loaded up the little car and went bowling. Then they had a burger and chips and went home. They all looked forward to Wednesdays. Judith’s friends admired her and said she had the business down to a fine art, their families never thought of shopping as fun. Judith had smiled and secretly congratulated herself. But then it hadn’t been very hard, she admitted; because they were so happy almost everything they did was great fun.
She felt slightly dizzy as she sat on the chair near the checkout wondering how she could have got everything so wrong.
The children came up worried to see her sitting down. Normally she was whizzing up and down the aisles at great speed. They checked they had got the right detergent, and the correct cooking foil. Judith forced her face to stay normal, she beat away the wild stare that she knew was threatening to get to the surface. No, she was fine, she said, just a silly cramp, must have bent over the wrong way.
Ken looked at her, pleased.
‘Maybe you should sit out the bowling, you don’t want to twist yourself and get another stitch.’ Had he always spoken like this, a mixture of pity and guilt? Or was it only now? Since Whitsun. Since May the 25th, when it all began. Judith gave an involuntary little giggle. The affair would be seven months old on Christmas Day. She wondered would they drink to it. Ken and the woman. The woman she had thought was a friend. She changed the laugh into something more natural.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she said firmly. ‘Nothing like a little exercise.’ She hoped her smile was natural looking, not like the death’s-head grin it felt like from inside.
It was at Whitsun that they went on the holiday to the Leisure Complex. It had sounded such a good idea. Ken had been overtired at work. There was a lot of pressure in his office. Jane had got very good marks in her term exams at Easter, Tommy had been picked for a tennis team to play for the school. Judith had been promoted to Assistant Manager in the estate agent’s: as promotion it didn’t mean very much—it was probably an excuse not to give her a big rise—but it looked good on her business card. She had sold a flat to a very nice young woman, Sylvia. Sylvia was a public relations officer for the holiday leisure centre; what could be more natural than that they should make a booking for the long weekend. Sylvia would be there herself, she would keep an eye on Judith and Ken’s holiday, she said.
She did that all right.
Judith hadn’t realised she would join them for meals so often. But as it turned out she was fun and lively. The children liked her and she was able to get Tommy a game with a really top tennis player and pleaded that Jane be let stay up for the disco.
She linked arms with Judith and took her off to the sauna and swimming pool. She insisted that Ken do sev
eral rounds of the nine-hole pitch and putt course even though he had never held a golf club in his life. Then she told him about the driving range. While Ken hit a bucket of golf balls into what he hoped was the far distance but said was only too often the near distance, and Judith had massages and facials, and Jane learned new dances and Tommy played long sustained rallies on the hard courts, Sylvia flitted around them.
Once or twice Judith thought that she must have a lovely life if this swanning around the Leisure Complex was all in the line of duty. But then this was probably just a weekend off, one of the perks of the job that she could come here free whenever she wanted to.
On Whit Monday Sylvia and Ken were gone all day golfing. They came back flushed and happy.
‘This has been a highly expensive weekend for me.’ Ken had laughed like a boy. ‘If I take up golf, look at the cost of the gear and the green fees and everything.’
‘Look at the saving in executive strain,’ Sylvia had argued. ‘Why do so many statesmen and executives go out on the golf courses? Look at all you save in terms of tension and Valium.’
Judith had been surprised that Ken had told Sylvia he took tranquillisers to cope with work.
There were so many surprises over the months. None of them important in themselves. All of them part of a picture that Judith only now saw clearly.
She walked in a semi-daze through the car park to unpack the trolley and stack the boot of the car. Like a mechanical steel arm she received and arranged items, her mind in automatic gear as she placed the bottles standing upwards and wedged them in with softer, sturdier items. It was finished and they walked companionably to the bowling alley as they had done so many Wednesday evenings before. A typical family on an evening out, happier than most, Judith would have said. She would always have said up to fifteen minutes ago.
Sylvia had become part of their life . . . how? Through Judith, really. She had been the architect of her own downfall. Yes, she had invited Sylvia to Sunday lunch sometimes, it was lonely for a single woman in London on Sundays. Or if they were having friends to spaghetti on a Friday night she often added Sylvia in. She was so cheerful and lively and somehow everyone else seemed to shine more when she was there. Jane told tales of school instead of staying mute and mutinous and hugging her school world to her like a secret. Tommy confided his hopes to play in the Junior County Championships.