A Christmas Gift

by Sue Moorcroft

  Before Joe could comment, Georgine’s phone began to ring. She freed her hand to answer, groaning when she saw the name on the screen. ‘Here’s one of the disasters now.’ She put the handset to her ear. ‘Hello, Aidan.’

  As she didn’t move away to take the call, Joe remained seated, recognising the name as the one she’d used when he’d overheard her phone conversation on his first day.

  The unseen Aidan, who Joe could hear quite clearly, demanded, ‘How could you give the debt people my number?’

  Georgine sighed feelingly. ‘I am sorry I had to do that, but they’re your debts so they’re your debt collectors. I couldn’t just carry on being hounded at my own front door.’

  She listened as Aidan vented, using her free hand to pick at the tatty remains of the beermat, lifting her eyebrows at phrases like ‘in view of everything we had’ and ‘you gave them my mum’s address! She went mad!’ This last was delivered at such volume Joe thought people three tables away would hear.

  Most of the colour had leached from Georgine’s face. ‘I’m sorry we’ve ended up so disappointed in each other,’ she said. ‘Two people who once thought enough of each other to live together shouldn’t have to have this kind of conversation.’

  Aidan continued at unabated volume. ‘You’ve really changed!’

  Georgine heaved a sigh. ‘I think you’ll find you’re the one who’s changed, Aidan. All traces of the nice man I felt a lot for have gone.’

  Apparently, the latter observation was enough to prompt Aidan to end the call and Georgine put her phone away. Sweeping up the remains of the beermat she’d been systematically destroying, she discarded it on the fire, her smile brittle. ‘Ex-boyfriend. He got me in a right fix, not paying his share of the household bills and then doing a runner. And that pretty much brings us up to date on the whole sorry story of how I went from princess to pauper. Improbable as it seems, I now count every penny. And I’m not especially trusting of the man-plus-money combination.’

  He touched her arm. ‘But not all men are Aidan.’

  ‘’Course not,’ she agreed, though without real conviction. ‘Are you hungry yet? I’ll grab some menus.’ She got up and set off for the bar.

  Left alone, he tried to absorb everything she’d just told him. Then, as she talked to the lady behind the bar, he found himself noticing the way her jeans and cream top skimmed her curves. He had to consciously refocus his gaze when she turned to make the return journey, weaving her way between the tables with a drink in each hand and menus tucked beneath her arm. Somehow, he felt the relationship they were slowly building – rebuilding? – wouldn’t profit from her catching him watching the way she moved.

  They spent the next few minutes studying the laminated menus of budget-venue staples like fish ’n’ chips and pie ’n’ mash, with a paper insert offering traditional turkey roast and classic Christmas pud.

  ‘I know it’s not December until Saturday but the idea of a turkey dinner is making my mouth water,’ Georgine confessed. Then she sighed. ‘I had a meal at lunchtime, though. I’d better go for a jacket spud.’

  Joe compared the festive menu to the jacket potato option. Turkey dinner was £9.99 and the potato £4.99. He wanted her to have turkey if that’s what she wanted, but he remembered how it felt to watch every penny or even have no pennies to watch.

  He gathered up both menus. ‘I’ll order.’

  ‘OK, thanks.’ Georgine fished around in her bag and handed him a fiver. He wove his way to the bar, idly watching the members of the large party fighting over paper hats and bottles of wine. Judging from their raucous laughter, they were keen to embrace early Christmas spirit.

  The server met Joe at the bar. ‘Any special offers on the festive menu?’ he asked. ‘Buy one, get one half price, for instance?’

  She smiled regretfully. ‘Sorry, love, no. Offers would be printed on the menu.’

  ‘OK. Two turkey dinners then.’ If Georgine said she’d rather have the potato anyway he’d just come back and change the order. He tucked her fiver in his wallet and extracted two tens and allowed himself a wry smile as he carried cutlery rolled in napkins back to the table. All the times he’d lied to get food, now here he was lying to give it away. But he remembered a certain girl at school sharing her lunch with him sometimes. It was time he repaid the favour.

  Back at the table he set the cutlery down. ‘There’s a buy one, get one half price deal so I ordered you turkey.’

  ‘Really? I love Christmas food.’ She beamed, but then reached for her purse. ‘We can split the difference—’

  He waved her offer away. ‘No need. I pay the same whatever you have.’ As she looked unconvinced, he flipped to a subject he felt was guaranteed to distract her. ‘Tell me if I’m sticking my nose in,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘But a friend I saw in London’s a lawyer and happened to say some interesting things about debt.’

  ‘Oh?’ Georgine said guardedly. She was drinking fizzy water now and began to turn the glass in its ring of condensation on the table while she waited for him to go on.

  ‘He mentioned debt charities like Step Change and how much they help people whose finances are out of hand.’

  ‘Oh,’ she repeated, though with more interest this time. A moment’s frowning reflection, then she took out her phone and set her thumbs dancing over the screen. When she’d finished she said, ‘I’ve texted the name of that debt charity to Aidan. Hopefully he might see it as a bit of an olive branch.’

  Joe nodded. That wasn’t exactly what he’d expected her to do with the information, but he could see how it worked for her.

  Within a minute her phone chirped and she picked it up to read the message. She shook her head sadly. ‘Aidan says: “I wouldn’t need that if my ex-gf hadn’t sneaked to the debt collection people.”’ She began tapping again, this time, voicing the message slowly as she typed. ‘“Can only repeat. You … have to … deal with … your … debts. I think … it’s best if … I block … your number. I … wish you well.”’ Then she tapped at her phone for a few moments more before stowing it in her pocket. ‘There.’

  A few minutes later, two steaming plates of turkey and roast potatoes arrived courtesy of a young man who said, ‘Hey, guys!’ when he saw them. Joe wouldn’t have recognised him but Georgine answered, ‘Hey, Marcus! This is what you get up to when you’re not at Acting Instrumental, is it?’ Joe gathered from the following conversation that Marcus had joined the college in September and was a dance student.

  ‘Mmm, this smells lovely.’ Georgine thrust her face into the fragrant steam and sniffed like a Bisto kid. ‘And look at all the goodies! Stuffing, pigs in blankets and Yorkshire pud.’

  They spent the rest of the evening discussing Christmas meals, and almost anything that wasn’t the past, except when Georgine said, ‘Did you ever hear from Chrissy?’

  ‘Afraid not. Maybe I never will,’ he admitted, feeling his stomach tipping with disappointment.

  ‘I haven’t either. Maybe she doesn’t feel she knows you in your new persona.’ Georgine ran a piece of roast potato through her gravy and popped it into her mouth.

  ‘Maybe.’ The mention of persona made him wonder briefly whether it was a good idea to tell Georgine that he was also JJ Blacker, drummer with The Hungry Years, a successful rock band. But he felt reluctant to let JJ Blacker join the party. It was so much easier to be Joe Blackthorn and, as she’d been upfront about her trust issues, he hoped she’d understand his. It was more enjoyable to join in her enthusiasm for the Christmas show and, when their plates were wiped clean, help her make notes about today’s visit to the Raised Curtain.

  After coffee, Georgine checked the time. ‘Better be getting home. Everything connected with A Very Kerry Christmas is ramping up. I’ve arranged to pick up the costumes and props we’ve been offered by Bettsbrough Players on Saturday.’

  ‘I could help you with that if it’s the afternoon,’ he offered. ‘I pick up my car in the morning.’ Pete hadn’t got back to him
about meeting at the weekend so he felt free to dispose of his time.

  She cocked an eyebrow. ‘The wardrobe guy, Ralph, lives on the Shetland estate.’

  ‘Ooh, scary.’ He smiled, but it looked a bit of an effort. ‘Let’s see if I can cope with being back there.’

  Her eyes twinkled. ‘I’ll hold your hand if you get frightened. The afternoon works for me – I’ll take lunch to my dad first.’

  They pushed their way through the heavy front doors to the car park and then halted. ‘Fairy snow!’ Georgine exclaimed, looking up into a halo around a light.

  ‘Never heard of it.’ Joe pulled up his collar and buttoned his coat as he watched the tiny flakes of snow that seemed to dance in mid-air instead of floating down to the ground.

  ‘It’s what I used to call it when I was little.’ Dreamily, she gazed up at the sparkles in the darkness. ‘I used to pretend that each flake was a fairy playing on the wind.’

  ‘Sweet.’ He hadn’t known her before the age of eleven but he could easily imagine her as the kind of little girl for whom snow meant getting caught up in imaginary worlds. For him snow had meant a whole world of shivering misery. He was glad to erase the memory by jumping into her car and turning on the heaters.

  It wasn’t until he got home, still thinking about the evening as he drew his day to a close, that he glanced at his email and saw a message from Pete. He clicked on it to open it up. Pete had said: OK, can make Sat. Noon at my office?

  Nobody else had replied yet so Joe jumped in. Sorry, not available Sat now. How about Sun?

  Before he switched off the lamp beside his bed he saw a couple of terse messages from the others saying they could make Sunday if JJ was sure he couldn’t put whatever it was aside and make Saturday, as already pencilled in.

  He knew he was stoking the mood of irritation they were all struggling with. Lying in the darkness, he asked himself whether he was doing it deliberately, trying to provoke another explosion of such magnitude that staying with the band would no longer be an option.

  He didn’t think so. When he’d first entered the Raised Curtain this afternoon he’d wanted to be on stage with the band again so badly he had almost tasted it.

  But he wanted to do what he was doing as well.

  Chapter Seventeen

  By the last Wednesday in November Georgine felt as if there simply were not enough hours in the days to accommodate everything to be done.

  Joe had provided her with sketchy lighting plans. ‘But everything’s subject to change,’ he said, when she tried to pin him down to something more definite. ‘We’ll do trial runs in the studio theatre. Better ideas may emerge.’

  Georgine wasn’t used to such a fluid approach but soon began to appreciate his apparent lack of ego, especially when he found ways of defusing tensions between Errol, Maddie and Keeley, creative directors of music, drama and dance respectively. When Errol dissed an idea, Joe simply asked him what he, Errol, would do. Flattered, Errol proposed things often spookily similar to whatever he’d just dismissed, happy because it now seemed to come from him.

  Maddie could be stubborn, but Joe would say, ‘Break it down for me,’ and Maddie would begin to move her dug-in toes slowly towards new solutions.

  Keeley, a ditherer, reacted positively to, ‘I have faith in your decision. Why don’t we give it a try?’

  When Georgine remarked on his skill at ‘influencing negotiations’ he winked. ‘Easy compared to keeping the peace amongst a bunch of blokes who’ve been on the road so long they’re sick of the sight of each other.’

  ‘Your peace-keeping skills are going to be at full stretch this afternoon,’ she observed, loading her arms up with everything she’d need. ‘Everyone gets edgy when we try to “top and tail” a whole act, only performing the beginning and end of each song or scene to see if it flows. Tempers can fray, especially if we realise we’ve gone badly wrong.’

  They hurried up the corridor towards the other building. Through the glass they could see a few hardy students taking the outside route, hunched in their coats. The forecast was for snow at the weekend and the wind was so icy that Georgine could quite believe it.

  Soon they joined the students funnelling into the studio theatre, noisier and more excited than usual with the anticipation of a run-through, probably forgetting the stop-start nature of topping and tailing, when ‘let’s try that again’ would vie for unpopularity with ‘try this instead …’

  The studio theatre was already well populated when they arrived. The lower third of the retractable seating was out and Errol, Keeley and Maddie were gently herding students in that direction. Instrument cases stood along the side of the room under very temporary-looking signs for Band One and Band Two. The stage space and band stage had been marked out with gaffer tape by Joe earlier and the double drum kit was already in situ. A dotted line of tape through the middle of the main stage space divided it into stage left and stage right for the dual-stage scenes.

  The Christmas tree prop was in place at the back of the stage as a reference point. Eventually, one side of it would be decorated in red and gold with white lights and the other multicoloured so that, by turning it around, it could be the tree of Uncle Jones, or one in a neighbour’s house.

  Joe had added a broader base to ensure the damned thing wouldn’t fall on anyone today. Georgine touched the scrape on her neck from when Joe had rescued her from its scratchy clutches, his fingers warm on the nape of her neck and voice full of laughter.

  ‘Where in the room are you basing yourself?’ he asked her now, jumping her out of her thoughts. ‘Do you want the storyboards laid out? I could put a few tables together.’

  ‘I usually grab myself a piece of floor,’ she said. ‘If you put tables up in the middle the students on the seating can’t see well. They’ll get restive enough when they’re watching, without putting up a barrier.’

  ‘OK.’ In moments he’d co-opted Tomasz to help mark out an area between the seating and stage with gaffer tape, storyboards, pad and file stacked neatly in the centre. Students chattered, Keeley talked about props, but Georgine gave them only half her attention as she watched Joe write on a piece of paper with a marker pen. When he taped it to the floor she could see it said Events Director. Tomasz said something and Joe nodded, causing Tomasz to grab his guitar and hurry back to show it to Joe. They bent over it together, Joe’s golden brown head and Tomasz’s fair one.

  Then Joe handed the instrument back and Georgine caught him saying, ‘Try that.’

  Tomasz slung the guitar around his neck and played something with the smothered notes of an electric instrument being played with no amplifier. It seemed to be the tremolo bar that had been the issue, but now his face cleared as he tried it and he gave Joe a thumbs-up.

  Then Joe hared off to talk to Errol, who was stroking his beard and pacing at the front of the stage. It seemed to Georgine that Errol unwound just through being in conversation with Joe. He’d stopped pacing and was smiling and nodding instead.

  She shook herself. They had a busy afternoon before them and she’d no time to zone out while she thought about her assistant which, she’d noticed, was happening a lot. Their evening at the Boatman had felt like a return to their past easy friendship, until he’d asked about how the France family had lost their money. Then panic had pulsed through her veins at the prospect of confessing to Joe what she’d done.

  She’d thought about it later, in bed. She hadn’t wanted to look bad in his eyes by admitting she’d been the spark that exploded Randall France Construction. She could empathise with Joe’s wish to distance himself from the Rich Garrit of the past, because the memory of Georgine France at nineteen made her ashamed.

  She gave herself a mental shake and marched over to her designated area to begin laying out the boards. Errol, Keeley, Maddie and Joe gravitated towards her and the last few student stragglers found seats. Wiping her palms on her trousers, Georgine smiled around her colleagues. ‘Ready to go? Great!’

  She
turned to the assembly of students. ‘Hey! How’s everybody doing?’

  Her question brought forth a chorus of ‘OK!’ and ‘Good!’ with even the occasional, ‘Let’s do this!’ Then silence as several rows of expectant eyes fixed on her.

  A little fizz of excitement shuddered up her back. Everybody was as ready to get things underway as she was. ‘As you know, we’re going to run through act one this afternoon,’ she began, ‘topping and tailing every scene, song or dance to check out the transitions and smooth out inconsistencies. You’re all experienced so you know we have to be a bit patient. When you’re not on stage you might feel at a loose end. Entertain yourself with your phone by all means, so long as it’s on silent. Just don’t talk your heads off because then nobody can concentrate. OK?’

  A chorus of OKs.

  Georgine moved over to a lectern at the side of the room, which she’d set up before lunch. There her laptop waited, hooked up to the electronic white board, and she woke it up to show a slide of the day’s running order. ‘We’ll start with singing all of “Everyone Loves Uncle Jones” to get warmed up. From then we’ll top and tail “Thank you for making Christmas, Uncle Jones”, “A Very Kerry Christmas” and then “Family is Everything”. To avoid a stampede, I’m going to bring you up to take your starting places in groups. Bands, please collect your instruments and find your places on the band stage. Kerry Christmas and Uncle Jones, off stage right; rest of the Christmas and Jones families off stage left, ready to come on. Dance Troupe One, off stage left; Two, off stage right, ready to take up your cues. And, remember, everyone – it’s Christmas! So sparkle!’

  The run-through began amidst laughter and good humour.

  By the time it ended the students were over an hour late going home and the atmosphere spoke of fatigue. Errol was irritable, and Maddie and Keeley were casting longing glances at the door. The start-stop and the boredom of delays and discussions had got to everyone, but Georgine was now happy with every transition in act one.