by Jenny Oliver
Hannah nodded, wiped her eyes again. ‘It’s scary though.’
‘It’s exciting.’ Her mum smiled.
‘It’s snowing!’ her brother shouted.
‘Really?’ Robyn and Jemima jumped up.
‘No, just kidding.’ Dylan laughed. ‘Just wanted to lighten the tone.’
Chapter Four
Christmas Day, it was a nightmare.
Not only was it pouring with rain, but Harry had to cycle forty minutes with a slow puncture to get to his parents’ house.
‘Harry!’ His mum stood in the doorway wearing her apron, her black hair falling from its bun, her slippers on and her earrings shaped like Christmas wreaths, flashing green and red lights. He remembered her wearing them to his school play she’d had them so long.
‘Hey, Mum.’ Harry slicked his soaking hair back from his face. ‘Happy Christmas.’
‘It’s such a surprise. I didn’t even know you were here. Why didn’t you tell us you were here? Your sister had to find it on Twitter. You twittered it and you didn’t even tell us?’
‘I didn’t twitter it, Mum. Tweet it – it’s called tweeting. I didn’t tweet it, the restaurant tweeted it. If I’d known they were going to tweet it, I promise, I would have told you.’ Harry rested his bike against the porch wall.
His mum frowned. ‘But that still means that you weren’t going to tell us you were back. You’re never back, Harry. We miss you.’
Harry scratched his head. ‘Can I just come in?’
His mum stood to one side and let him pass, trying to help him with his soaked leather jacket as he did and Harry batted away the fuss.
‘Let me put it on the radiator, here, give it to me.’
‘Mum, it’s fine.’
‘No, I’ll put it on the radiator.’
In the end it was easier for him to hand her the jacket. Two of his nephews careered down the stairs as he edged his way into the living room, the whole house shaking as they swung from the banister.
‘Hello, Son.’ His dad looked up from over his reading glasses and put his paper down. He was wearing a paper hat and the sight of it – too small for his head – made Harry cringe.
His sister was in the kitchen cutting vegetables and peeling potatoes. There were dancing Santas and flickering Christmas lights. Someone had opened the sherry. His grandmother was snoozing already in the corner, wearing her holey slippers and her polyester housecoat. His uncle was shaking all the presents with one of the nephews, deciding what was in what and there was Now That’s What I Call Christmas blasting out the tape deck on the stereo.
Harry couldn’t bear Christmas. He couldn’t bear being trapped again in the confines of his house. The desperate need to breathe overtook him as the walls seemed to close in.
‘So you were going to ignore your old mum and dad, were you?’ His father sat up from the sofa, heaving himself to the edge so that he could then push himself to standing. ‘No, don’t explain, it’s fine with me. It’s just your mother I was worried about. Heartbroken. But I understand. Too old to be with us. Too old to come home.’
Harry ran his hand through his hair. ‘It’s not that I’m too old. I just– I’m here for work. It just so happens to be Christmas. Honestly, it just seemed easier not to make a fuss.’
‘Not make a fuss?’ his uncle said, looking up from where he was kneeling by the tree. ‘It’s Christmas. It is fuss!’
‘And your mother’s cooked enough for the bloody army, so…’
‘I haven’t got any presents,’ Harry said, when he saw a package wrapped under the tree with his name on the tag. Why hadn’t he brought any presents? There was nothing like coming home to remind one what a selfish bastard he’d become. But then, he rationalised, he hadn’t intended to be here until yesterday when some idiot at the restaurant had tweeted about him being in the UK.
‘Now here we go.’ His mum came bumbling through with a bottle of prosecco and a glass with holly leaves all over it. ‘Let’s have a toast to Harry.’
His sister was standing in the alcove between the two rooms. ‘Seriously?’ she said. ‘What’s he done to have a toast?’
‘Silvia, ssh,’ hushed his mum. ‘To my lovely Harry, home for Christmas.’
Harry held up his glass a fraction. Saw his dad give him the same look he used to give him as a boy – behave, his eyes said, don’t do anything to upset your mother. Silvia watched him warily from behind the sofa. His nephews came hurtling in and didn’t even pause to shout, ‘Hi, Harry, bye, Harry.’
Then everyone huddled onto the two sofas together, squished close until his mum went and got a couple of dining chairs so they could sit, all of them in the lounge. His aunt appeared in her Christmas jumper and, sitting down next to Harry, made a big show of faux-scolding him about how upset his mum had been that he’d almost bypassed them all. Harry tried to smile.
In the end, when the noise became too suffocating, and his dad had asked him every question there was about the restaurant, his finances, the rent on his apartment, the importance of the property ladder, whether he was making his money work as efficiently as he could, his pension, and his mum had asked him about his love life and his aunt had commented that he was never with anyone then asked if he was gay with a snort, adding that there was a new gay couple in Eastenders, and his nephews had asked if he’d got them presents, Harry had to stand up and say that the best thing he could do was help with the food.
‘Such a wonderful chef,’ his mum mused as he left. ‘Just wonderful. I don’t know where he gets it from. I’m bloody useless, aren’t I, Charlie?’
‘You’re the best cook in the world, Jan.’
Harry closed his eyes as he walked away. His dad’s idea of being the best cook was having his set meals ready and on the table at seven. Same thing every Monday, every Tuesday, every day. When Tesco had started stocking fresh pasta as well as dried and his mum had given it a go, his dad had taken a couple of mouthfuls and said, ‘Not again, Jan. Let’s not have this again.’
Harry remembered watching him from across the table, sipping on his orange squash, thinking, I love you but I never want to be like you. I never want to turn out like you. All those rules and structures and set ways to live. Veer off them in this household and everyone knew they’d done something wrong. Harry would sit in his dad’s chair to watch TV after school, but as soon as the key clicked in the lock his mum would poke her head into the room and say, ‘Out of there now, Harry.’
Now, as he stood in the kitchen – same wallpaper, same cups, same tablecloth – he glanced over at his sister, who looked warily back at him.
‘Just be nice, yeah?’ Silvia said. ‘Just for a couple of hours, just be nice. OK? You’re here. Don’t mess it up.’
Harry made a face. ‘I’m not going to mess it up.’
Silvia just raised her brows and looked away.
‘What can I do?’ Harry asked, bending down to look at the shrivelling turkey in the oven.
‘Nothing, it’s all under control.’
‘Your turkey’s gonna be overdone.’
‘No it’s not.’
‘Yes it is.’
‘It’s not. Jamie said to do it like this.’
Harry looked around. ‘Who the hell is Jamie?’
‘Oliver.’ Silvia stabbed the cookbook with her finger. ‘Jamie Oliver.’
‘Bloody Jamie Oliver.’ Harry shook his head and then went over and closed the book. ‘Let me do it,’ he said, opening the oven and finding some oven gloves so he could rescue the bird.
‘Do what you like, Harry, you always do,’ Silvia said, pushing the chair back and leaving the room.
In the kitchen Harry felt a semblance of himself. Tea towel tucked into the pocket of his jeans, he dealt with the turkey, added spices and seasoning to the carrots, sprinkled the stewing red cabbage with sugar and apple slices, perked up the sprouts with some honey and bacon, and generally added some finesse to the whole package. He would have liked a few more ingredients to play
with. A bit of kale maybe or some chestnuts, but he felt he’d done pretty well with what he’d had to work with.
He hadn’t brought any presents, the least he could do was sort out the dinner.
***
‘What the bloody hell’s on these sprouts?’
Everyone at the table turned to look at Harry’s dad, who had pierced a sprout on the end of his fork and was eyeing it with distaste.
Silvia sat forward, resting her chin on the palm of her hand and Harry could feel her watching him.
‘It’s er…’ he swallowed. At the restaurant his dad would be out on his ear by now. Harry never explained what he cooked. ‘Well, there’s a bit of marsala and…’ Harry coughed. Everyone was looking at him. He felt his cheeks begin to flame. ‘Bacon. There’s bacon in it, it er, it should be pancetta but bacon works. It brings out the taste.’
His dad narrowed his eyes. ‘I don’t want bacon in my sprouts,’ he said. ‘I want sprouts in my sprouts.’
‘Well maybe give it a try, Charlie.’ His mum wiped her hands on her Christmas napkin and tried to smooth over the tension building in the air. ‘I think they’re very nice. Very different.’
‘Just smother it with gravy and you won’t notice, Dad,’ Silvia said, as she tried to stop her boys from kicking each other under the table.
‘I would, if someone hadn’t messed around with the gravy.’
‘Oh for god’s sake, Dad.’ Harry shook his head. ‘It’s not messed around with, it’s just different. Taste it. It doesn’t all have to taste the same, every day.’
‘It’s not every day, is it? It’s Christmas Day. I like things to taste like they should on Christmas Day.’
‘Urgh. That’s such an annoying thing to say.’ Harry shook his head. He saw Silvia giving him a warning glance across the table. His nephews had stopped kicking each other and were staring, entranced by what was about to ensue.
‘Harry.’ His dad raised his brows at him. ‘You may be some hotshot over there in New York, but here you are still my son and in my house you will respect me, your mother, all of us. You are not too big to be sent to your room.’
‘Yes I am, Dad.’ Harry bunched up his napkin. ‘That’s the thing, yes I am. I knew this was a bad idea.’
‘Harry—’ He felt his mum put her hand on his arm as he was just pushing back his chair. ‘Harry, please.’
Harry shut his eyes for a moment. He saw himself sitting on his bed alone practically every Christmas that he hadn’t been too old to be sent to his room. Banished for some reason or another. Sometimes completely deserving of the punishment, sometimes not, but lonely all the same. His mum would sneak up and give him a bowl of Christmas pudding and brandy butter and her little portable TV that she had in the kitchen. She’d wink and say, ‘Won’t be much longer.’ And he’d wonder why she made him stay there. Why she didn’t just override his dad. Why he got to be the leader.
Now, at the dining table, his unpulled cracker next to his plate, the rain hammering on the window, his dad picking the bits of bacon out of the sprouts, his sister watching warily, his mum’s hand on his arm – wrinklier than he remembered – he used every ounce of willpower that he possessed to force his bum back down on the seat. To focus on his food. To take a bite of beautiful, tender Brussels sprout with the sweet honey flavour of the bacon and try not to wish that his dad might have liked it just because he’d cooked it.
No one said any more about it. Gradually, the atmosphere relaxed. The boys, disappointed that the show was over, went back to their under-table kicking. They pulled their crackers. They wore their hats. Except Harry, who accidentally-on-purpose ripped his trying to get it on, and then they ate Christmas pudding which was faultless, in his dad’s opinion, because Tesco had made it and made it the same every year.
‘So you’re over for business?’ his dad said when the presents had been opened and the kids were playing with their new stuff and his mum was asleep on the sofa.
‘Yeah. It’s meetings with the owners. Looking at the future. What we’re going to do, how we might expand – what we can achieve with the brand. That kind of thing.’
‘Sounds very fancy.’
‘Not really. Just, you can’t stand still, can you?’
His dad sank back into the squashy cushions of his chair – perfectly moulded to his contours over the years. ‘I worked in the same company all my life. Never wanted to do anything different. Got a good pension. Good friends.’ He shrugged. ‘I think sometimes there’s too much weight put on moving on. Moving forward. Growth. Growth? How much can we grow? Economy flatlines and we’re all still trying to grow.’
‘Hear, hear,’ said Harry’s uncle, who was opening another bottle of sherry.
Harry shook his head. ‘It’s not just about expanding for the sake of it, Dad, it’s meeting a demand. If a company is successful then they have the potential to grow. People want what we’re offering so, by expanding, we’re filling a need in the market.’
‘I just can’t believe there’s room for any more restaurants.’ His dad shook his head. ‘I was driving down the high street the other day and what do I see? Another coffee shop. How much coffee are people drinking? And the whole riverside’s been dug up and turned into restaurants. Everyone out there stuffing their faces.’ He folded his hands in his lap and did a sigh of distaste. Then he sat forward and pointed a finger at Harry. ‘It’s because they’ve got nothing else to do. No hobbies.’
Before Harry could reply, Silvia leant over the back of the sofa and said, ‘Not sure golf and watching the snooker count as hobbies, Dad.’
Harry knew she was trying to steer the conversation onto safer, jokier ground but he couldn’t let it lie. ‘Dad, you can’t compare what I do at The Bonfire with some mass-produced high-street chain restaurant. They’re two different things. We’ve won awards.’ He edged forward on the sofa, trying to emphasise his points by getting closer to his dad. ‘We’ve changed the way people cook. We have critics queuing up to eat there. I built that. You know? From nothing.’
His dad frowned. ‘But at the end of the day, it’s just food, Son.’
‘It’s not just food.’
‘I think it is.’ His dad did a half-laugh as if Harry was fighting the obvious. Harry felt the same frustration as he felt as a kid boil up inside himself. ‘I do see what you’re trying to say, Son, but it’s really just food. And what’s food? Fuel to get us to the end of the day. Admittedly yours is fancy food, but still food.’ His dad sat back and Harry noticed that his attention was being diverted to the sweet sherry his uncle was splashing generously into glasses. Clearly distracted by the fact the alcohol might be being wasted, he added, ‘No. I just can’t agree, I don’t think we need more of it,’ before getting up and retrieving the sherry bottle.
Harry saw Silvia wince out the corner of his eye.
It’s just food.
He felt like he’d been skewered on the sofa.
Three years ago he’d sent his parents the money for plane tickets to New York for the opening of the restaurant. His dad had said there was no way he’d be getting on a plane, not with all the terrorism in the world and his mum had said that there was no way she could come without his dad because she’d be completely out of her depth in such a big city. They’d given the money to Silvia and her husband, who had gladly accepted, left their kids with the grandparents, and come to New York for what had been one of the best weekends of Harry’s life. In his head his sister had always been this slightly annoying person who’d appeared in the world when he was about to turn eight, after years of his parents trying for another baby and never getting anywhere. But suddenly, in New York, after a good few years absence from each other, he’d seen her as the person she’d grown up to be. Funny, a bit snarky, beautiful, cool in her own way, and they’d had their time. Finally. It had almost made up for his parents not being there.
‘Don’t worry, he’s just pissed,’ Silvia said, coming round to sit next to him on the sofa. The problem with the
m knowing each other better was that she could now see how much his dad affected him, and Harry couldn’t just sulk silently in the corner.
Harry nodded and leant back against the cushions with a sigh. ‘I don’t think I ever knew he thought like that.’
‘Oh come on, you know he’s never got it.’
‘Yeah I’ve always known he didn’t really understand what I did. But, Christ, I always thought he respected it. What an idiot.’
‘Who? Him or you?’ Silvia asked, rolling her head to look at him with a half-smile.
‘Me,’ Harry said. ‘And him,’ he added. ‘And you as well if you want.’
She laughed then, patting him on the thigh, said, ‘Come on let’s put Lord of the Rings on and play Bananagrams.’
Harry closed his eyes. ‘That does not sound like it’s going to make things better.’
But, actually, for Harry, playing Bananagrams ended up being the most enjoyable part of the day, especially when he and his sister, and even his mum, kept winning and his dad, much to his seething annoyance, kept losing. He left when it seemed the politest possible opportunity to do so.
‘And don’t forget to sort out your pension,’ his dad shouted from his chair as Harry walked towards the front door.
Harry shook his head. He felt his mum put her hand on his back. ‘It’s just his way of saying he loves you.’
Harry scoffed. ‘You really think that?’
‘I know that,’ she said.
‘Well I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think it’s the case at all,’ Harry said, his hand on the door latch. ‘Thanks for today, anyway. I’m sorry I didn’t, you know…’
His mum nodded with a smile.
‘And thanks for the present.’ He held up the white apron with “YES, CHEF!” printed on the front that he wouldn’t wear in a million years.
Then, suddenly, his mum threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight and said, ‘Oh, my boy. Why do you have to live so far away?’
‘It’s where the work is, Mum.’
She squeezed him tighter. ‘Sometimes I worry that it’s to get away from us.’