“You designed this kitchen,” Honey reminded him, folding the tablecloth and sticking it back in the drawer. “And you made the mess, too.”
“We all made the mess,” corrected Dad, looking towards the door as if he was expecting Mum to walk in to his rescue. “And Ana…Miss White is a stranger. Well, not exactly a stranger, but she…” He sighed. “Look, I know the house is not looking its best. But you know your mother always did everything. It’ll take time for me to learn housework. It’s not a man’s job.”
“But changing light bulbs is,” Honey shot back.
“Honey, I did say I’ll change your light bulb over the…” He drew a sharp breath, a look of panic on his face. “Oh, sugar!” he groaned.
Honey grinned.
“The lights!” Teddy suddenly remembered, voicing their thoughts. “The lights in the dining room are broken!”
Dad covered his face with his hands.
“Please tell me you had light bulbs on your shopping list.” Honey talked slowly, stirring the cranberry sauce that was bubbling away on the stove. This is just brilliant. Maybe the laxative jam won’t be necessary after all…
Dad went around and around in circles, like a cat chasing its tail.
“Where?” he muttered to himself, rubbing his thumbs on the sides of his head. “Where did she keep them? Damnation! You idiot!” He thumped his head with his fists, trying to remember the exact location of the light bulbs.
The children kept quiet, making as much mess as possible in the kitchen. Teddy shook a bottle of ketchup and sprayed it on the white fridge door. Honey decorated the floor with vegetable peels. When a funny smell started wafting out of the oven, and the glass had become too steamy to see inside, they went to find Dad.
They didn’t have to look far. He was standing on top of the dining room table, fumbling with the lights in the dark. In the gleam of a torch, they saw the dusty pattern his shoes left on the shiny wood.
“Dad?” Honey called out. “Do you need any help?”
“Are the lights fixed, Dad?”
“There…” Dad mumbled, as if he hadn’t heard them. The clock on the wall counted another minute, clucking like a strange bird, bringing the night closer to the fatal eight o’clock. “…this should go into here…and this…”
Honey noticed the empty box on a corner of the bookcase. She just had enough time to shout: “Dad, it’s the wrong one!” before Dad’s lanky frame shook violently, making the table rattle and the cat shoot up from her sleeping place on the chair. The chandelier buzzed like an unnerved wasp, spitting out sparks. Dad gave a long yelp, flashing on and off like a Christmas tree. In fact, he might have looked like one to the owls and foxes that inhabited the garden after dark. At last, after what felt like forever, he unglued his hand from the ceiling. The smell of burnt flesh drifted through the air, as a thin serpent of smoke floated into the corridor.
“The turkey!” they all cried at the same time, tripping over each other to get to the kitchen and save the bird from being burnt to a crisp.
Honey was placing a vase of roses on the festive dining room table when the bell rung. Everything was ready: tablemats and cutlery carefully arranged on the snow-white tablecloth, the turkey roasted and sliced, the salad and cranberry sauce ready in bowls. A set of four porcelain plates, the good plates, shone in the light of the four-armed chandelier.
It had been Honey’s idea to take out the candles, and fix them in the wavy, sinister arms of the chandelier. It was either that or flash torches at each other all through supper, because Dad would rather die than take his guest to the kitchen. Now, the candles Mum saved for the few times when electricity went off in Chess Cottage, burned brightly above the beautifully decorated table, and even she had to admit that at least this way, the worst bits of the room – like the thick dust on the bookcase, and the cobwebs growing in the corners – were immersed in shadow.
Dad glanced around one more time, to make sure everything was perfect, before removing his apron and going to get the door. As soon as he left the room, Honey nudged her brother.
“Now. Go and get it.”
Teddy ran to the guest bathroom, a tiny box room opposite the kitchen. He flinched at the snowscape perched on the wall just a little above his height, and remembered briefly that it was there to cover up an ugly mark that he did not want to think about. He opened the cupboard, his eyes scanning the row of boxes and jars on display. His hands reached for the red, labelled jar. Then he saw Dad’s blue hair gel that smelled of sweet melon and couldn’t resist opening it for a sniff. His sister hissed his name through her teeth from the kitchen door.
“Teddy!! Hurry up!!”
“Good evening, Mr Raymond!”
Miss White’s voice, in a place that wasn’t school, made Teddy jump.
“Good evening, Miss White. Bang on time, as usual.”
“Oh, always,” she answered, laughing.
Teddy’s hands trembled. She was steps away from him; his heart beat so fast he could feel the blood pumping in his ears.
“I brought you a little something,” the voice announced.
A loud rustle of paper being ripped apart covered the horrendous noise Honey heard as she stood waiting in the kitchen. It was the sound of a jar breaking on the bathroom floor.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have, Miss White…how thoughtful of you…look, it’s my favourite Rioja…”
“Well, I knew you were fond of wine, Mr Raymond!”
Laughter. Teddy, red in the face, came running in, just as Dad and Miss White were turning the corner.
“The lid slipped…” he whispered, breathless. “It fell in the sink, and…”
Honey smiled, relieved. Peeking behind her to make sure no one was looking, she scooped a tablespoon of the jam and mixed it in the cranberry sauce. She looked at the jar. The label read: Strawberry laxative jam. Immediate effect.
“Well, hello, hello. Look who we have here!”
The children stiffened as they saw Miss White standing in the doorframe. She was so tall, taller than Dad even, so tall she seemed to be walking on stilts. Her arms were long and bony, as was her whole body. Her shadow seemed to be slithering from the floor up the walls and ceiling, as if it was examining everything.
“Blimey. You’re the spitting image of your mother,” she said, and the Raymond siblings saw that she was frowning at something behind them. Without turning around they knew it was the framed photograph of Mum wearing a fur cap and scarf, like some sort of Russian princess from the past. She was beautiful, a mirror image of Honey’s curved eyebrows and high cheekbones, and a button nose just like Teddy’s. As always in photographs, Mum looked so alive, as if she was about to leap from the wall and pounce on the freakish guest. She was like a wounded animal captured in the gloomy corridor of Chess Cottage, sitting on the dark red wallpaper as if in a pool of blood.
“Children,” Dad chirruped, in a wonderful mood. He seemed already tipsy although he hadn’t touched the wine. “You both know Miss White. Why don’t you say hello.”
“Hello, Miss White,” chorused the children.
Miss White smiled, showing a row of rather sharp piano teeth.
“Please, children. Call me Anaconda.”
Honey and Teddy looked at each other. Anaconda White? Now that was a wicked name. Her parents must have really hated her to give her such a name. And she probably hated them too. It might as well have been White Anaconda!
Dad clapped his hands. “The children helped me prepare supper. A great help, that was!” He smiled. “I hope you’re hungry. Please, come through. Children, please show Miss White, err, Anaconda, the way.”
They led the way to the table, their guest creeping slowly behind them. Teddy held the cranberry sauce up as if it was a trophy, thinking that the sound coming from his teacher’s mouth sounded like the his
s of a snake, while Honey knew for sure it was smoker’s breath.
“Forty a day,” she whispered to her brother.
“Yuck,” Teddy whispered back.
“Oh, dear. I’m so rude. Please, let me take your coat.” Dad helped Miss White out of the black, stylish leather trench coat she was wearing. The children gasped. She was so thin her shoulders in the evening dress looked like two sticks holding a cloth. They counted her more prominent ribs, three on each side.
Anaconda gasped, too.
“Candlelight!” she crooned. “Isn’t this romantic?”
She gave Dad a languorous look, so sweet it made Honey feel nauseous.
The starter was grilled asparagus. Teddy, wrinkling his nose, whispered:
“What’s that?”
“It’s asparagus.”
“It looks like boiled leeches.”
Honey shook her head. It was true. Mum made grilled asparagus all the time, and it was always simple and elegant. Now, the green stems that her father clearly overcooked had lost their firmness, and they seemed to have lost their will to be eaten, too, along with their healthy green colour. They sat sadly in small puddles of their own juice. Dad came round the table and placed a blob of butter on every bouquet, then invited them to squeeze fresh lemon on top. The children did so reluctantly. They chewed it over and over. It was as disgusting as it looked.
They ate, not taking their eyes off the bowl of sauce in the middle of the table. Their own, very exciting pièce de résistance was only minutes away.
“So, children,” Miss White made her voice sound sweet. “This is your second Christmas without your mother. It must be difficult for you, poor things. Aaahhh, bless, you both look so brave. Is that why you went to all this trouble for me? Because you miss your mum? You poor, poor darlings.”
She stretched a limb that seemed boneless across the table to stroke Teddy’s cheek with fingers like bird claws.
“She looks more like a gorilla than a snake,” Honey whispered, and choked on her food. An anorexic gorilla. Her jaw ached from trying not to laugh.
“They are good children,” said Dad, serving the turkey. “They’ve been wonderful. It wasn’t easy, you know, but we’re nearly there. We’re still a family, Miss White, no matter what.”
He cleared his throat. “Why don’t we try the turkey? Everyone, dig in!” he invited, discreetly wiping a drop of melted wax from the butter dish. Remembering something, he got up and strode to the kitchen.
Honey, however, hadn’t missed the tremor in his hands and the light in his eyes growing faint at the mention of her mother. Suddenly, a word slipped from her lips without notice. It was what happened sometimes with her thoughts: before she could cage them, they would fly away.
“Snake,” was the word she hissed.
Miss White blushed scarlet. Even the whites of her eyes were red. She gave Honey a look of pure hatred. “You know,” she said, wiping her mouth with a tissue until every trace of lipstick was gone, “people cannot be held responsible for the names their parents give them. Just like children cannot be held responsible for what happens to their parents, as what happens to their parents is often well-deserved.”
Miss White was quick to strike back at the slightest provocation – that was a fact everyone at school knew about her. It seemed she enjoyed revenge, and was very good at creating opportunities that would allow her to punish children in varied and often very painful ways. Honey remembered the time she had snapped her favourite ruler in two and then pretended it was an accident. Of course people were not responsible for the names their parents give them. But what did she mean by her second comment – children can’t be held responsible for what happens to their parents? She wasn’t implying that…? Was she trying to say something nasty about Mum? Cheeky cow. Honey burned with rage.
“What’s going on?” Dad returned from the kitchen with a bottle of red wine. He filled his guest’s glass before pouring some for himself.
“The children and I were just talking. Trying to get to know each other, since from now on we are going to be a family. Sort of,” she added quickly, seeing Dad’s face drop.
A FAMILY? What on earth was she talking about? First she was coming to dinner out of the blue and now she wanted them to be family? She was insane.
“How about a toast?” Dad said.
The children grumpily raised their cups of orange juice. Anaconda licked the wine off her lips, signalling Dad to refill her glass. In a moment he was by her side. What a dog. Honey was enraged by this servile attitude. He was acting like a slave ready to fulfil her every wish. Who did she think she was, a Roman empress ready to whip anyone who didn’t satisfy her needs?
“For new beginnings!” Dad toasted, nearly breaking his glass on clinking it with that of his guest.
“Cheers!” they whooped in unison.
In the silence that followed, the children were aware that something was missing. It didn’t take long to realise what it was: the warm presence of their mum in the chair that Anaconda was now sat in. Try as they might, they just couldn’t picture this tall, skinny woman as their new mother.
Or as anyone’s mother, for that matter.
3. Cranberry Sauce with a Twist
The candelabra looked like a four-legged octopus suspended from the roof of the sea. Mum had been against buying a candelabra in the first place. “It’s not of bon ton,” she’d argued, showing off her French by using an expression which means fashionable and tasteful, quite horrified by the monster of glass in the lighting store. “It’s just horrendous!” But Dad went ahead and bought it anyway. Sometimes he liked to do the exact opposite of what Mum wanted.
Honey was jolted from her reverie by an elbow in the ribs. It was Teddy, telling her something with his eyes. Dad was about to drop a blob of cranberry sauce onto her turkey. She quickly covered the plate with her hands.
“No, thanks, Dad.”
“Are you sure? You love cranberry sauce,” Dad protested.
She nodded.
“How about you, Teddy? No? Ok.”
He looked disappointed.
“I’m afraid I’ll have to say no, too,” declared Anaconda. “It looks stupendous but I have a terrible allergy to cranberries.” Her eyes twinkled, and for a moment Honey feared she had guessed their horrible plan.
“In that case, I’ll have it all,” announced Dad.
Honey and Teddy exchanged an alarmed look.
“But Dad,” Teddy said, “you hate cranberry sauce! You always complained when Mum made it.”
“Well, things change. And besides, I don’t want this to go to waste. Honey went to a lot of trouble to help me make it.”
They watched as Dad covered his turkey with the blood-red cranberry sauce.
“And now, commençons! That is, let’s begin, in French!”
Everyone ate in silence. A few times Anaconda glanced up at the ceiling.
“Should we turn on the lights, I wonder?” she suggested. “Candlelight is very romantic, but maybe it’s just a bit too dark. I’ve left my contacts at home, rushing to come and see you.”
“After dessert, we will be moving to the lounge anyway,” muttered Dad, choking on a mouthful of Yorkshire pudding.
“Yeah, because Dad can’t change light bulbs.”
It was Teddy who uttered his terrible sentence – now hanging in the air between them. Honey looked at Teddy and Teddy looked at Dad and Dad gave Anaconda a look like a lost puppy.
Anaconda coughed.
I quite like the candlelight,” she said softly. “And, if we’re going to the lounge straight after dessert…I think this is just perfect.”
A drop of wax fell on her spoon as she was helping herself to more potatoes. Honey bit her lips, trying not to laugh.
Through the glass doors the night h
ad fallen over the garden. Gentle rain splashed on the foliage of trees. From the darkness came the shrill cry of an owl.
Anaconda’s whole body tensed. Her mouth stopped chewing. She seemed to be pointing the silver fork at Honey over the table, but in fact, she was deep in thought.
“An owl hooting by your window is not a good sign,” she said. “It means that someone might die. Or maybe, disappear.”
Despite the worry in her words, her eyes sparkled, and she looked from one child to the other as if considering which one of them was likely to die. She smiled at Honey.
“Really?” said Dad. He appeared to be relaxed again. Hmm, Honey thought, if Anaconda couldn’t change light bulbs, either, they would probably have to live in a cave.
“Well, it happened to a neighbour of mine. An owl never left the pine tree by his window for a week. On Christmas Eve, his little girl simply vanished. They looked everywhere, they called the police, but she was gone without a trace. And, curiously, the next day the owl was gone too, never to be heard again.”
“A very sad story. But I can’t see how an owl could have contributed to it. Just a coincidence, I’m sure. Besides, we can’t have any more members of this family disappear overnight,” Dad laughed, winking at his guest.
Just then, a tremendous thunderclap shook the room. Anaconda froze with knife and fork in midair. Then, another and another, peals of thunder followed each other, some short and grave, like the roars of a contrabass, some long and high-pitched, like an out of tune trumpet. You couldn’t see them but you could certainly smell them. The room had filled with a rotten odour that was sure to ruin everyone’s appetite. The children and Anaconda looked at Dad, who was bright red in the face.
“If you’ll excuse me, I…” He stood up awkwardly, letting go of another volcanic eruption on his way out of the room. Anaconda grinned.
“So, children, have you written to Santa yet? Do you know what you want him to get you?”
Before they could answer, more trumpeting echoed from the bathroom. The children burst out laughing. Anaconda pretended to wipe her mouth and chuckled into her serviette.
Santa Claws Page 3