by Judy Astley
THIRTEEN
There wasn’t much more preparation that needed to be done, foodwise. Charlotte had dealt with the sprouts the day before and had now impressed Anna by attacking the potatoes like a demon and peeling a mountain of them, a glass of wine already by her side. They were waiting in the biggest saucepan, which Charlotte had referred to as a cauldron, doing a bit of witchy cackling as she peeled. Maria’s red cabbage with apples was ready in its casserole dish to be heated up, and Anna had made sorrel and parsnip sauce to put in the little puff-pastry vol-au-vent cases she’d already made the previous afternoon. All this would wait to be cooked till the turkey came out of the oven later and was resting. Alec contributed a jar of spiced cranberries that his mother had made before she left for her cruise, and Elmo and Rosie had chopped a lot of holly and ivy from the driveway and were going to use it to decorate the table once the melted snow had dried from it.
‘Maybe we should add bits of that mistletoe as well,’ Jimi suggested. ‘It’s not as if there isn’t enough of the stuff.’
But Anna wasn’t keen. ‘I think we should leave it where it is,’ she said. ‘I don’t trust it. I have a feeling it’s too powerful to sit tidily on a table and not get up to any mischief.’
‘Along the lines of “bad vibes, man”?’ Alec said, teasing her, but Thea noticed him giving Charlotte a bit of a look. The mistletoe had worked some kind of spell for them, she recalled from late the night before. That had been some clinch she’d accidentally witnessed – Christmas spirit by the truckload. Charlotte’s face gave nothing away but she wriggled her hips a bit as she stirred the bread sauce.
‘Something like that, yes,’ Anna admitted with a grin. ‘I’m not superstitious but I can’t help thinking it shouldn’t be mucked about with. It’s safer to leave it where it is.’
‘We could take it down and put it outside,’ Rosie said. ‘Or would it not like that either?’
‘I really don’t think it would,’ Anna said. ‘In fact, I don’t think we should even talk about it. It might hear.’
‘Have you been at the fizz, Mum?’ Emily asked, with no hint of a smile. ‘It’s only a bit of a plant, you know.’
‘No, of course I haven’t! Though I intend to as soon as I’ve had a walk to the beach and back. Thea, do you know what time the surfers are going out?’
‘Pretty soon, I think. We should probably make a start. I want to watch Sean. He’s world-class, ex-pro, and apart from on films, I’ve only ever seen people on boards do a couple of metres and then fall off.’
It was good timing, in terms of the planned mid-afternoon lunch. The turkey was cooking away in the Aga and when Anna opened the oven door to baste it, it filled the house with the gorgeous scent of Christmas and there was now time to go out and work up an appetite on the beach. Charlotte and Alec went outside to the back terrace to have a cigarette and then came back in and asked if anyone minded if they didn’t go with them.
‘Of course we don’t mind. It’s not compulsory,’ Anna told Alec. ‘It’s fine – you can do whatever you like.’
‘Isn’t it compulsory, though? What about that big list of who’s doing what and when?’ Charlotte looked at Thea.
Just as Thea was wondering with mild suspicion what the two of them had in mind for when everyone else was out of the house, Alec surprised her.
‘We thought we might go to the service down at the church,’ he said. ‘Do you want to come too, Anna? And what about you, Mike? I heard you both missed out on the carols yesterday and Charlotte fancies a sing.’
‘No, actually, I won’t, thanks,’ Anna told him guiltily. ‘I just want to get out and feel the salty air on my face. If I sit around in a hot church with masses of others I’ll only wish I was having a fast, cold walk. I’d start fidgeting.’ She went with him into the sitting room. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Alec? I feel as if I’m neglecting you. It’s just there are so many of us, you know … and it’s not the easiest of situations, is it?’
They were alone in the room and he put his arms round her, which didn’t feel as comfortable as it used to, not after the night before and Mike. Alec no longer seemed to ‘fit’.
‘It’s not a problem,’ he said immediately. ‘I’m not a child, you know; I don’t need mummying.’
She pulled away, a bit miffed at the reminder, intentional or otherwise, that she was so much older than he was. Freeing herself from his grip, she went to put a couple more logs on the fire.
‘Here, let me,’ he said, taking the logs and placing them in a way that she wouldn’t have chosen. They wouldn’t burn like that – they needed to be crossways and have better contact with the hot base. That annoyed her too. She really must try to be less prickly.
‘You coming to the beach, Mum?’ Emily appeared with her children, all wrapped up in their coats and each of them wearing new matching hats and scarves, a present from Rosie. How sweet they looked, Anna thought.
‘Right with you,’ she replied. ‘I’ll just get my coat and boots on. I’ll see you later, Alec. Enjoy the service.’
‘We will.’ He nodded. ‘We’d better get going too – it starts at eleven thirty. I’ll go and find Charlotte.’
He moved towards her and Anna realized how much she really didn’t want him to kiss her, especially as the children were still in the room … but not only because of that. But he simply squeezed her arm and walked on past her. Oh, the relief, she thought as she sneaked back to prod the logs into a better position and put the guard safely in place, but there was a tinge of sadness too. She’d very much enjoyed their minor romance but now it really would have to end. She just didn’t feel like ‘that’ about him. If there was a way to stay friends then she did hope they’d find it, but otherwise – well, she doubted there’d be a broken heart on either side but it would be a shame not to be able to meet again back home.
Still, for now it was time for a proper Christmas family walk. The thought very much cheered her.
The snow had stopped and the sky was blue and bright, but it was still too cold for thawing. Thea wrapped her scarf across her mouth and wished she still had long hair, which had always kept her neck from being chilled in the depths of winter. She pulled her furry ear-flapped hat down tight for maximum warmth and descended the path as fast as the holding of Milly’s hand would allow.
‘Want to go on the sledge!’ Milly protested, trying to pull away from Thea. Sam was ahead, carrying the sledges of the small children. Elmo had been persuaded away from the sofa and his iPad and was on his sledge, bumping and bouncing and whooping his way down the hillside in a terrifying manner, incurring the envy of Milly.
‘It’s too steep here, darling. When we get to the bit near the bottom you can have a go on it.’
Milly stamped and pouted. ‘Want to do it now! I want to go on the steep bit then it’ll go really fast, like Elmo.’
‘But it’s all rocky under the snow. You could hurt yourself. And anyway, we’re nearly there now.’
‘Elmo could be hurt too, so why can he do it?’
‘Because he’s much older than you and his mummy and daddy haven’t said no.’
‘It’s not fair.’ Milly dragged the word out for several seconds. For a moment, Thea was tempted simply to tell her that no, it wasn’t. Life often sodding well wasn’t. But it was also not fair to inflict the mildly resentful mood that was left over from the conversation with Rich on a child of seven.
There were more than a dozen surfers on the beach. A few others were already in the water, lying on boards and slowly paddling out to sea. In wetsuits and neoprene hoods, they made Thea think of seals that had been dieting as they bobbed about in the waves. The air was still and calm, but the winds and storms of the pre-Christmas weeks had left the waves big and rolling.
‘Hmm – he’s pretty buff, isn’t he?’ Thea was surprised by Emily’s statement and looked across the beach to the object of her sister’s unusual admiration. It was Sean. He was pulling his wetsuit up over a tight Lycra rash vest. He s
aw Thea and waved, and came over to her and Emily, still squeezing his arm into a sleeve.
‘Should be a good one today,’ he said. ‘Hope I don’t disgrace myself out there in front of you.’
Emily smiled at him. ‘Oh, I’m sure you’ll be highly impressive.’
‘Are you?’ He looked a bit puzzled. Thea could feel her face getting warm. What on earth was Emily doing, putting on a voice that was almost a purr? Was she flirting?
‘How’s the patient?’ Sean rallied a bit and asked Emily. ‘She doesn’t look like she’s still suffering from the fall.’ Sam was putting Milly on the sledge and the little girl was squealing with anticipation, even though she hadn’t yet moved an inch on the snow.
‘Oh no, she’s fine. Just a couple of bruises to her knee. Thanks so much for coming out to help.’
Thea would swear Emily was fluttering her eyelashes. She hadn’t even realized women actually did that and she’d never have thought her sister would be the type who even gave it a go. She could feel herself getting cross, and jealous that Sean was smiling back at Emily the way she liked him smiling at her. Childish and silly, she thought, deciding this too was entirely Rich’s fault. Trying to sell her a puppy and actually forgetting their baby totally. Jeez.
‘It was nothing. You and Thea had it covered anyway. Look, I’d better go and get on with it.’ He then said to Thea, ‘Could I ask you a quick favour?’
‘Of course.’ She hoped it wasn’t a request to leap into the freezing waves with him, though maybe it would jolt her glooms away.
‘Part of the leash on my zip has come adrift.’ He turned to reveal that the back of the wetsuit hadn’t yet been fastened. ‘Would you mind …?’
‘Oh – yes, sure.’ She grasped the broken neoprene tag and pulled up the zip. It felt like a very intimate thing to be doing and she also had a slightly shocking urge to put her hands on his broad back and simply stroke it, even to lay her head against it. Then the moment was over. He’d have thought her completely mad and possibly it would have counted as sexual harassment. Not that she was thinking sexual, just warm affection. It was a good feeling, way better than the one where she was pointlessly cross with Rich, and one she’d be reluctant to leave behind when she went back home.
Thea and Emily watched as Sean picked up his board and jogged down to the water’s edge where surfers – mostly male but a few girls as well – were assembling.
‘Funny how they all do that, isn’t it?’ Thea commented, seeing a few others running for the sea. ‘None of them just walk down there.’
‘Like athletes running up and down on the spot before a race, I suppose,’ Emily agreed, looking round for the children. Sam was now hauling them both up the snowy slope on their sledges. ‘All this activity,’ she murmured. ‘I suppose we should do brisk walking across the bay and back, to get the appetite going for lunch.’
She didn’t seem terribly inclined to move, though, and Thea was glad. She really did want to watch Sean, who was now with a couple of his mates, standing on the edge of the shore doing some warm-up stretches. Then, suddenly, he turned and waved at her and, board in hand and its curly leash attached to his ankle, he dashed into the waves and threw himself onto it.
‘Rather them than me.’ Rosie approached. ‘How mad do you have to be to go into the freezing sea on Christmas Day?’
‘It’s probably not that much colder than it is out here,’ Thea said, ‘though I’m with you – I wouldn’t want to put that theory to a practical test. It wouldn’t be so much the getting in there as the coming out.’
Soon she was no longer sure which of the surfers was Sean. They were weaving about like a pod of porpoises, heading out for where the breakers started. Some caught waves and took to their boards for a while before tumbling into the water again. Several were on body-boards and whooshed onto the shore. But then, just as she and Emily were about to start their walk across the beach, one of the surfers was up on his board and riding the wave as if the sea – and not the land – was his element. Sean.
‘Wow,’ Emily said. ‘Would you look at that …’
‘I am, I am.’ Thea watched in admiration as Sean wove about, alternately leaning into the breaker and leaping with the board over the foam. It was an astounding display. At last he reached the shore, stepped off the board as easily as if walking off a pavement edge, waved to her again and grinned. She waved back and he turned away to the sea, swimming back out to catch more waves.
She and Emily set off across the sand towards the far side where a group of teens, Elmo among them, were having a noisy snowball battle. Thea started to laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’ Emily asked, giving her a suspicious look.
‘Nothing really,’ Thea told her, fighting back a fit of giggles. ‘I just had a sudden thought, imagining Rich in the sea doing something like that. I can’t picture it, him getting so loose and agile and – you know, into it. What Sean was doing was almost like dancing or something out there. Rich would have hated it.’
‘He hated a lot of things. Mum thought he didn’t like us, even.’
‘He liked you because you have a proper job. And me too, I suppose,’ Thea told her. ‘But the rest of us’ – she laughed again – ‘way too arty-farty for him. He kind of understood that Dad made a great living from the commercial end of art, but he’d never have loosened up …’ She stopped. ‘If, you know, in the future, if we’d had a child …’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Please don’t say “yes, but you didn’t”, Em. I know that all too well.’
‘I wasn’t going to.’ Emily took a deep breath. ‘I don’t want to sound after-the-eventish, but I was going to say that even if the baby had worked out, in the end I think sooner or later you’d have finished it with him. You were too different.’
‘He was fun once, you know.’
‘It takes more than fun.’
‘I know. Well, I do now. No, you’re right, I expect. What I meant was, suppose a child of ours had had a massive talent for, say, drama? Or tennis? I don’t think for a minute he’d have let it go any further than a part-time hobby. He wouldn’t have thought it sensible. It would have been something they’d be expected to grow out of before taking up being a lawyer and then golf or tennis or something that would be socially useful.’ She looked back at the sea where Sean was weaving in and out of the other surfers. ‘To get to be that good at something, you have to have the kind of parents who let you fly. I’d have wanted that. Rich simply – wouldn’t.’
‘Unless it was dog shows and poodle breeding,’ Emily reminded her, starting to giggle.
‘Oh yes. Very important and sensible, that.’
‘What do you think so far? Do you reckon everyone’s having an OK time?’ Mike asked Anna as they sat on a rock and watched Elmo with a handful of snow chasing a pony-tailed girl – the daughter (Daisy, was it?) of Maria. She was laughing helplessly, and when Elmo caught up with her and stuffed snow down into her hood then pulled it up over her head, she shrieked but didn’t seem to mind.
‘I think they’re having both a better and worse time than they expected,’ Anna finally replied.
‘Which side of that is your version?’ he asked.
‘Better time,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘Not quite what I had in mind, the way it’s turned out.’
‘Nor for me. Do you feel bad about Alec?’
‘Yes and no. Probably about the same as you feel about Charlotte, I’m guessing.’
‘She’s up to something but I can’t tell what,’ he said suddenly.
‘She should be up to a massive hangover, the amount she puts away. Still, an hour singing in the church will clear a few of the cobwebs.’
Mike looked thoughtful. ‘Hmm, possibly.’ He glanced up at the sky. ‘More clouds coming in. The weather forecast said more snow is on its way. Unbelievable, isn’t it?’
Anna shivered. ‘It’s so cold when the sun’s gone. Shall we go back? I think it’s time to check the turkey and start get
ting properly organized. And not wanting to sound like your girlfriend …’
‘Ex,’ he interrupted. ‘Not that she really was very girlfriend-ish in the first place.’
‘Well, whatever she is, was or isn’t, I’m not wanting to sound like her but I could do with a drink.’
Thea hung around for a bit after the others had gone, hoping she didn’t look like a star-struck idiot or something, but she was fascinated by Sean’s surfing. After a few more rides, Sean came out of the water and up the beach to where she was perched on a rock. She’d cleared it of snow, but the residual dampness was seeping through her jeans and she was starting to get a bit numb with cold. The snow cat they’d made the night before was still intact, though Milly and Alfie had made a couple of dents in it and it seemed to have a new spine of pebbles along its back.
‘I think Elmo would say “awesome”,’ Thea said as Sean approached. ‘That was brilliant.’
‘Thank you,’ he said, dripping seawater all over her boots. ‘I was showing off a bit because I knew you were there. I probably shouldn’t admit that.’
‘I don’t see why not. A performer needs an audience. It’s what drives the show.’ She thought of the children in her school class, her occasional despair that a class assembly or a show they were doing would never get beyond the hopeless-rehearsal stage. And yet, give them a hall full of eager, proud parents, and they all upped their game. She’d be back to work in under two weeks, she realized, far away from here. Normal life seemed, right at this moment, like another world and another lifetime.
‘True. We all do our best moves in competitions with the biggest load of spectators. And with surfing there’s the huge buzz from seeing the photographers gear up on the beach to take the shots because you know then that they rate you. It’s when they don’t bother and take the chance to fiddle about with their lenses or go for a beer that you get a bit down and your standard flops.’