A Very Irish Christmas

by Claudia Carroll

  Then why am I letting them upset me so much? Is it that I envy my team their youth and general perkiness and the fact that they’ve got all these magical plans for the Christmas holidays lying ahead of them? Whereas apart from Mum’s drinks do tonight, I’ll work this Christmas, same as I do every other year. But then, I remind myself, I do run a 24/7 rolling news station. And the news doesn’t stop, so why should I?

  Everyone I work with thinks I don’t have a life. That I’m utterly alone, friendless, and destined to live out the rest of my days like this. That I’ll end up unloved and unmourned when I’m gone, with money in the bank and a trophy shelf full of news awards on my sideboard, but no one to share either with.

  Which isn’t true at all.

  Well, it’s only partly true. Well, OK, so it may technically be true, but this is how I live my life and that’s all there is to it.

  Slowly, I put my purse and keys into a neat little black bag, while I’m utterly wrapped up in thought. The same niggling feeling that I’ve had all day is still there and now that I’ve acknowledged it, it won’t go away.

  Could it be that what everyone says about me behind my back is actually true?

  CHAPTER THREE

  Punctual to the dot, I clamber into the back of a taxi that stinks of cheap aftershave and stale sweat, give Jess’s address, then pray that the driver isn’t the talkative type. No such luck though.

  ‘So where are you off to then tonight?’ he asks, leaning back on the driver’s seat and taking in my neat black cocktail dress, pearl necklace, and the court shoes with good, sensible heels. For all he knows, I could be off to a funeral. You’d be hard-pressed to tell.

  ‘To a Christmas party, as it happens,’ I say crisply, then whip out my phone and start scrolling through news apps, hoping he’ll take the hint that I’d like a quiet journey, thanks.

  Again, no such luck.

  ‘So, big night for you tonight, yeah? I’d say the aul head will be minging in the morning, wha’?’

  ‘No,’ I sigh, ‘as it happens, it’s not a big night at all. Just a drinks do at my parents’ house with some of my mother’s friends – that’s it.’

  ‘But your family and all your mates will all be there, yeah? And your mum and dad? ’

  I shrug, but say nothing. Dad, I think with a sudden pang. My darling dad. Probably the only person who I really wish was still around, if only to see how well I’m doing at work. Just like he always wanted me to.

  Hard work and discipline are the secrets of success, he always used to say to me. You’re not afraid of hard work, Carole, and you’ve enough discipline to run an army on. You’ll get there, pet. Just decide what it is you want out of life and there’ll be no stopping you.

  Which is exactly what I went and did, Dad. But you’re not here to see me now, are you?

  ‘It’ll be some big piss-up tonight then, yeah?’ the taxi driver chats on, distracting me yet again.

  ‘As I already told you, it’s just a small drinks do, I’m afraid,’ I say curtly wondering exactly how rude I need to be before this eejit will take the hint and shut up.

  ‘It’s all about celebrating with your loved ones, isn’t it?’ he chats away. ‘Sure at the end of the day, who else have we got?’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘Are you married yourself? Kids?’

  Jesus Christ, the cheek of this half-wit! What else does he want to know anyway – my blood type and laptop password?

  ‘No, I’m not married and I don’t have kids. I’m just spending the evening with my mother and sister and some mutual friends. That’s it.’

  Happy now? I want to snap at him, but I stay focused on my phone instead and keep my mouth firmly zipped. Which takes a lot of effort on my part. Like it or not, I have to admit that in his overly nosy way, this idiot has hit on the same raw nerve that’s been jangling at me all day.

  It’s Christmas and I’m alone. Yet again.

  ‘So you never got married along the way then?’ Chatty Taxi Man asks, glancing back at me in the rear-view mirror. ‘Never met the right fella, wha’? Never wanted kids or family of your own?’

  Christ, will you just shut up! What is wrong with this guy? Can’t he see I’m uncomfortable with this? Can’t he see this is not a topic for discussion? His eye catches mine through the mirror and there it is again. The same look I caught on my co-workers’ faces earlier on. Pity.

  ‘No,’ I snap, ‘I’m single, thanks all the same.’

  We’re stuck in Christmas week rush-hour traffic now and as Chatty Taxi Man finally takes the hint to shut up, my thoughts drift. Oh God, I think. Don’t even get me started on the myriad of reasons why I’m still single, which is something I had absolutely disciplined myself not to dwell on. Yet 2.5 units of Sauvignon Blanc in after a rubbish day, I can’t help it.

  I used to say that the Olympics came around faster than a man in my life, yet now even that seems like pushing my luck to extremes. And it’s not that I haven’t occasionally enjoyed male company – I don’t always lead a life of lonely celibacy, no matter what they’d have you believe back at Channel Ten.

  But you try sustaining a proper relationship when you work at a 24/7 rolling news station. Weekends are out because I’m always working and on one memorable occasion a gentleman I’d met via an elite dating agency said that women like me deserved to be alone, purely because I’d had to rush out of a dinner date with him to get back to the studio when a breaking story came in about a terrorist attack.

  Another less memorable date told me in no uncertain terms that I was the rudest woman he’d ever met, purely because I had to keep both my phones in play at the dinner table. Loser, I thought, as he left me sitting there alone with, if memory serves, his half of the bill to pay.

  ‘Ahh Jaysus, would you look at that?’ says Chatty Taxi Man, as we drive past a cinema, one that’s been there for decades now and which often screens retrospective movies and classics from the past. Which never fail to make me feel ancient because I remember going to see a lot of classic films there when I was a teenager, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. I first saw Gone With the Wind there. And Casablanca, as well as Some Like It Hot.

  In fact, some of the happiest memories I have of my youth are of sitting in that very cinema, bucket of popcorn on my knee, glued to the big screen and completely transported by whatever timeless masterpiece was playing. As the car is stuck in traffic, my eye automatically drifts towards what’s playing inside right now.

  ‘A Christmas Carol,’ says Chatty Taxi Man, reading the posters outside. ‘One of my favourites. Perfect for this time of year, or wha’?’

  I don’t answer him though. Can’t. I’m still too wrapped up in thought.

  ‘Did you ever see the movie, love?’ he asks me. ‘Fecking great movie, all the same. The ghosts of Christmases past, present, and future coming to give your man Scrooge a right kick up the arse. Do you remember? You must know the old story. Everyone does.’

  It takes me a minute or two to answer, because the funny thing is, I do remember that particular film. Vividly, as it happens. In fact, just seeing the poster outside makes the breath catch in my throat.

  ‘Actually I went to see that movie on a date once,’ I say a bit wistfully to Chatty Taxi Man. ‘A long, long time ago now, though.’

  His head swivels around suddenly to face me, clearly shocked that yes indeed, someone like me did actually used to go out on dates. Yes, Chatty Taxi Man, believe it or not, I was actually once in a lovely, loving relationship with a man who made me very happy. Yes, even crones like me once knew love.

  ‘Really?’ he says almost in disbelief.

  ‘Really,’ I say, even managing a small smile. With Jack Burke, as it happens, who was my old college boyfriend. Jack Burke, I think fondly, the memory of him catching me by the throat, as the taxi inches past the cinema. We got together when we were just seventeen, kids really, but somehow we stayed together right the way through school and college.

  He’d never wan
ted us to break up and part of me didn’t want that either, but life got in the way, the way it does when you’ve just left college and a whole new world of wonderful choices and options are just there for the taking.

  I think back to when I was young and Jack and I first saw that movie together one Christmas, when life was still all ahead of us. Back to when I was one half of a loved-up couple and when life was just full of wonderful, endless possibilities.

  But then, when you’re young and thick you automatically assume that the Jack Burkes of this world grow on trees. You think that just because this one didn’t work out, never mind. You’ve still got all of your twenties and thirties and a sizeable chunk of your forties to meet someone you might have a family with. But supposing life doesn’t work out that way? What then?

  Well, then you end up single and childless, with a fine fat bank account to show for it and no one but your younger sister to take to your mother’s Christmas party. That’s what. That’s how my life panned out.

  We drive past a shopping mall that’s not far from Jess’s house and my eye falls onto a huge, neon advertising billboard, with glittery lights twinkling all around it. ‘Make a Christmas Wish!’ the banner tagline on the ad screams at passers-by.

  So what’s my Christmas wish? I ask myself, as the taxi zooms by. The answer comes instantaneously. Because in spite of everything I’ve achieved and every award on my sideboard at home, I wish I were young again. Would I do things differently?

  Dear God, you’d better believe it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  At exactly eight p.m. sharp, the taxi pulls up in the tiny driveway in the cul-de-sac of houses where Jess lives. She’ll be late, I think. Jess is always late. I whip out my phone to text her, then abandon it as a bad job; what’s the point, when she rarely answers her phone in the first place? So with apologies to the driver, I get out of the car and stride to the front door, to yank her out of there myself, if need be.

  Sounds of the TV on full blast filter out to the front porch, where I stand patiently waiting on someone to let me in. That highly distinctive theme tune from House of Cards on Netflix. Which means – shit and double shit – that Dave is home. Even though it’s still relatively early-ish in the evening, only Dave would be the sort of guy to ignore both Jess and his two daughters to spend the night happily drinking cider from the tin and glued to the telly.

  Did I mention Dave, that fine specimen of manhood who – in a fit of romanticism worthy of a du Maurier novel and in spite of a great deal of opposition from everyone around her – Jess up and eloped with back in her younger days? Put bluntly, Dave is certainly not going to win any awards for Father of the Year anytime soon.

  Anyway, long story short, they broke up about two years ago, but given the nightmare that trying to find affordable rental accommodation in Dublin is, Dave elected to move into the spare room like a lodger and continue paying his chunk of the mortgage: ‘So at least he can be around for the girls,’ as Jess said at the time.

  There for the girls my arse; it’s poor old Jess who does ninety-nine per cent of the school runs, PTA meetings, and general taxi service that motherhood seems to involve.

  Emma, ten years old and my youngest niece, eventually answers the door.

  ‘Auntie Carole!’ she says, throwing her little self into my arms and giving me a huge warm hug, which I think is the only physical human contact I’ve had in weeks. ‘Happy Christmas! Come into the kitchen and see the collage I made for your Christmas present.’

  I step into Jess’s hallway, which, as ever, is a pile-up of bins for the recycling, abandoned bikes, and for no good reason that I can think of whatsoever, a battered-looking washing machine.

  ‘Carole, is that you?’ Jess yells down the stairs. ‘I’m just running a tiny bit late. I’ll be down in thirty seconds.’

  ‘Look, Auntie Carole,’ says Emma, dragging me into the kitchen (which is so untidy, it looks like there was a terrorist attack in here). ‘I made you a collage! It’s loads of photos of you … all through your whole life … Come and see!’

  She puts a sticky, gluey hand in mind and points excitedly at a cluster of photos I haven’t set eyes on in quite literally decades, as a row brews from upstairs between Jess and her eldest daughter Katie, over God knows what this time.

  ‘Auntie Carole … look! There’s you from years and years ago – and Mummy is with you, pregnant with me. Look how fat she is and how skinny you look next to her!’

  I do as the child says, marvelling at how mesmerizing old photos can be. Funny how you can forget events in your life, however big or small, then something as insignificant as an old Polaroid photo instantly takes you back. I look at old family photos going back through the decades, candid shots of me doing a Benjamin Button and ageing in reverse, the further back the photos go.

  The thing is, I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten how carefree I looked all those years ago. Emma excitedly points out a photo of me at her Christening and I’m shocked at how smiley and happy and optimistic I look.

  ‘Do you remember when all these were taken, Auntie Carole?’ the child asks. And the weird thing is that I actually can, in a lot of cases. That photo of me at Jess’s wedding? I was twenty-six and after years of grafting, I’d just landed my first job as an actual bona fide news producer at Sky News in the UK. It was one of the most gruelling gigs known to man, and I was on call pretty much 24/7, but I did it and was happy to do it and had a permanent smile on my face because I loved my job so much.

  It all skyrocketed from there really; it was like as far as work was concerned, I could do no wrong. In stark contrast to my love life: the higher I scaled the corporate ladder, the more any kind of private life I once had seemed to suffer in direct proportion.

  ‘Look at this one here – you’re so young!’ Emma chirrups, pointing to a grainy photo of me taken at the Christmas drinks do at my mother’s house decades ago. I look no more than about twenty or twenty-one in the photo and just looking at it brings it all back to me.

  ‘Your clothes are so funny in that picture!’ Emma giggles adorably. ‘And look, you’ve got a big pink streak in your hair! Did you really used to have streaky hair, Auntie Carole?’

  ‘Yes, pet, I really did, once upon a very long time ago,’ I say, a bit wistfully, transfixed by the photos. I’m wearing a puffball mini at that particular Christmas do. An actual tartan mini, thanks to whatever fashion sadist figured that was in vogue. My hair is backcombed to within a square inch of its life so there’s no missing the pink streaks, and the make-up I’m wearing wouldn’t look out of place in a drag show.

  Ahh, the 1990s, aka The Decade That Taste Forgot.

  Jess is in the photo too, looking about nineteen and raising what looks like a big glass of Coke to the camera, but which I remember for a fact was spiked to the brim with vodka that she’d filched earlier from Dad’s drinks cabinet when he wasn’t looking.

  And of course my dad is in the photo too, just in the corner of a shot, sitting at our kitchen table with my mum and a gaggle of aunties and uncles. I focus hard on his face, trying not to tear up in front of Emma. He seems so young in the photo because it was taken years before he got sick. There’s so much you missed out on, Dad.

  He never got to meet his grandchildren and in spite of the fact he was my biggest career cheerleader when I was taking my first tentative steps into the world of rolling news, he never got to see me carve out a successful career and actually do well at it.

  Oh, Dad, I think, looking at his image and melting. I’d love to be able to say that he looks movie star handsome in the photo, but the truth is, Dad looks just as he always did whenever he was beaten into a suit for a special occasion. Deeply uncomfortable, and a bit constipated-looking. He’s fingering his shirt collar like it’s too tight for him and I can almost hear him groaning, ‘Who the feck wears a shirt and tie to a Christmas piss-up anyway?’

  ‘There’s another one just as you’re eating a big, fat slice of Christmas cake, Auntie Carole, lo
ok!’ says Emma, drawing my attention to another photo. ‘It must have been taken at the same party, because you’re still wearing those funny clothes,’ she adds, but instead of telling her not to be so cheeky, that a get-up like that was all the fashion back then, the breath physically catches in the back of my throat.

  Because there he is, hovering at my shoulder just behind me.

  Jack Burke, The One That Got Away. Looking every bit as youthful as I do, which makes the two of us roughly twenty-one years old in the photo. And he’s so much taller than me. I’d forgotten that, or maybe blanked it out.

  ‘You look so YOUNG!’ says Emma, with big saucer-y eyes. ‘And you look …’

  For a second the two of us stay focused on the image, as the kid searches for the right word.

  ‘What were you going to say, love?’

  ‘Happy, Auntie Carole. You look really, really happy. I’ve never seen you look like that before and it’s nice. You were lovely.’

  The kid is only ten years old, but the thought is still there, unspoken between us.

  So what happened to you?

  We’re interrupted by yelling from the hallway outside as Jess and Katie have a ‘heated discussion’, which has now spilled over into a full-flung row.

  ‘You never let me do anything I want!’ Katie is screeching. ‘You’re like the fun police – no matter what I want to do, you always say no.’

  ‘Katie, you’re only sixteen and you’re still in school!’ Jess yells back at her, giving back as good as she gets. ‘So no, you’re not going to a nightclub with your pals tonight, end of story!’

  ‘But it’s a Christmas party and everyone is going! All my friends will be there.’

  ‘When you’re eighteen, you can do what you want, but when you’re living under my roof, them’s the rules.’

  ‘Dad would let me go, I bet.’

  ‘Katie, I said no!’

  ‘I HATE you! Do you hear me? I HATE you!’