by Maeve Binchy
“Chrissie, stop it. You’re very forward,” Agnes said.
“No, I’ve been working too hard really to have any time for romance.” He smiled easily at them all. “Is Clare here?”
“No, no sign of Clare—where would she be but up in Miss O’Hara’s or in the hotel with Josie Dillon, there’s no sign of her round here, I can assure you that.” Chrissie’s voice was resentful. “Sorry your visit was in vain,” she said spitefully.
“Not at all. I came for cigarettes,” he said easily. “And for a tin of those nice biscuits as well for Nellie, and some black pudding.”
“Your mother got black pudding this morning,” Tom O’Brien said—it would be no use alienating a customer by selling the same thing twice.
“I’m sure she did but I bet she didn’t get enough. I want six bits on my plate when we come back from Mass tomorrow morning. You’ve no idea how I miss black pudding in Dublin. They only have mean little slivers of it, and it doesn’t taste the same at all.”
He wished them happy Christmas and they found a piece off the end of some cooked ham for Bones, and Bones gobbled it up and raised his paw in the air even though nobody had been offering to shake hands with him at all.
Clare was lying on Josie’s bed, telling her all about the hostel and the rungs up the wall and the laughs with Mary Catherine and Valerie. She told her about the lectures and the debating society on Saturday nights, and the hops, and how each Society had dances which were meant to make money.
Josie was disappointed that she had only met James Nolan on two occasions—in the café and at the very hot crowded party in somebody’s flat. Clare revealed that he had danced with Mary Catherine twice, if you could call it dancing in those dark rooms; but he hadn’t asked Mary Catherine out on a date or anything. Clare didn’t tell her that James Nolan had forgotten her, she didn’t think that was useful information; instead she said that she got the impression he was a bit fickle and faithless. But Josie said that was only when you didn’t know him well.
Josie was thrilled about how she was building up the winter business in the hotel; and Uncle Dick had become really nice, not mad and grouchy like he used to be. Granny was totally gaga now; she had told Josie that Josie’s mother had been putting arsenic in all their food for years now, and had even poisoned some of the guests, which was why they hadn’t come back since. Her sisters Rose and Emily were home for Christmas and weren’t a bit pleased about the bridge weekends; and they had almost told her to her face not to interfere. Clare didn’t know how awfully quiet the place was in winter. When they were young they hadn’t noticed it so much, but it was really so quiet you wouldn’t believe it. She had learned to play bridge herself with Uncle Dick and sometimes the two of them went up to the Powers’ and played a few rubbers with Mrs. Power and Mr. Harris, that auctioneer man who lived in a big house halfway between the town and Castlebay. He was eligible, Uncle Dick said, but he was also a hundred and ten. Well he was thirty-seven, eighteen and a half years older than Josie, twice their age. Uncle Dick must be mad. Clare agreed and told Josie not to dream of trapping the eligible Mr. Harris.
They speculated about Chrissie and Mogsy and wondered what either of them could see in the other. Would their children be as awful as both of them, or twice as awful?
Father O’Dwyer went round to the houses of the sick on the night of Christmas Eve and brought them Holy Communion. He came to the O’Hara cottage as his last visit. Angela had prepared the place for his visit and had a little candle-lighting in front of the crib.
She had gone upstairs while the old woman’s confession was heard and then when the priest called her she came down to kneel while her mother received Communion. They were all silent for a few minutes, but after that Father O’Dwyer had a cup of tea and a tomato sandwich from which the crusts had been cut off.
“Isn’t it a pity that Father Sean didn’t make it over to see you this Christmas?” he said conversationally.
“Oh, well, you know the way it is,” Angela said meaninglessly.
“You see he’s in a part now where they don’t even have proper postal services,” Mrs. O’Hara said. “That’s why we have to write to their house in England in order that priests there can forward them or deliver them when they’re going out.”
“Yes, yes,” Father O’Dwyer was soothing the way he listened to all old people, not taking in very deeply what they were saying.
“But maybe he’ll come back next year,” he said.
“Please, God, Father, please, God. Still the way I look at it is that it’s better that he’s there doing the Lord’s work with savages and people who never heard of God than here coming to see me.”
Her face was radiant in the firelight and the aftermath of receiving Communion.
Angela bit her lip hard.
Father O’Dwyer patted Mrs. O’Hara on the hand and said, “That’s right. That’s right. That’s the spirit that sends the laborers into the vineyard.”
Dr. Power had asked Nellie would she like to go home for Christmas.
“You ask me that every year and the answer’s always no, sir, thank you very much, but I have a nicer time in this house, and a better meal and more peace. And I can go down to see them all in the evening.”
“If you’re sure . . .” he said.
“Anyway sir, the mistress wouldn’t like you playing fast and loose with the arrangements. I’d like to see her face, if I said I wouldn’t be here for Christmas Day.”
“Stop trying to stir up a row, Nellie,” he said affectionately. “This is a happy house now—do you hear me?”
“It is and all, sir,” said Nellie goodnaturedly. “I’ve been here since I was sixteen. That will be twenty years next year, and there’s hardly a cross word ever said under this roof.”
“You’ve been here too long, Nellie. Why don’t you go and marry someone?”
“And have a lout asking me to cook his dinner and polish his shoes for nothing for him, aren’t I like a king here, with my own wireless that I can take upstairs and plug in in the bedroom if I want to, and a big chair beside the range. What would I want with marriage?”
“Will you sit with us and have your Christmas dinner at our table tomorrow?”
“God love you, sir. You ask me that every year too, and I won’t. The mistress would be annoyed for one thing, and for another I’d be dropping the food off my fork.”
“You’re a very obstinate woman.”
“I’ve no brains but I’m not a fool, that’s all.”
Clare had bought bright Christmas decorations while she was in Dublin. It had been marvelous going down Moore Street and Henry Street with Mary Catherine and Valerie listening to the women shouting their wares, and the last of this and the last of that in order to whip people up into a frenzy thinking things were running out. Clare had bought the last of the shiny chains, only to see dozens more coming from under the stall. She had also bought the last of the Christmas sparklers which were like low-key fireworks giving off little tinselly sparks. Jim and Ben had loved them and they were a treat in Castlebay so she felt it was a good buy. She had gone without lunches for three weeks in order to buy the gifts, and had stocked up on bread and butter from breakfast to keep her going through the day.
It was bright and cold on Christmas morning. The O’Briens went to early Mass from habit. There was no need to be back in case anyone would call to the shop. Nobody would admit that they had forgotten anything for Christmas, the family would be able to eat their meal undisturbed.
Clare had wrapped up all her presents and Chrissie eyed this pile of gifts with some suspicion.
“I hope you realize that being engaged and everything we have to put all our savings toward our future,” she said to Clare. “We can’t be wasting everything on silly gifts.”
“Sure,” Clare had said and resisted the temptation to pull out every hair of Chrissie’s permed, frizzy head.
After their breakfast there was an endless amount of preparation for the main
meal. Agnes, still frail and unable to move about, sat with her leg on a stool and gave instructions, lift the ham carefully from the water where it had been soaking. Carefully, don’t drown the whole kitchen. Set the table properly. Properly, Chrissie, it was Christmas Day, take that dirty cloth off and find a cleaner one. And peel the potatoes Ben, not with your finger, with a knife, and move that holly, Jim, before it sticks into people.
Tom O’Brien sat beside her, repeated her orders with increasing impatience, and added little asides of his own about how you’d think people would be glad to help when their unfortunate mother had been injured in a fall.
Clare did most of the work and when the meal was ready she was nearly exhausted. She couldn’t understand why a lot of this work hadn’t been divided up and done the night before, but a word of criticism would open the floodgates, and she kept her thoughts to herself.
After the plum pudding, she distributed her gifts. Mam thought the scarf was very nice, a bit light for this kind of weather, but very nice for warmer weather, that is of course if you would wear a scarf at all in warmer weather. Her father looked with interest at the map of the county she had found with such trouble in a second-hand shop in Dublin, and then framed. It was very generous he thought; of course it would be a poor man who didn’t know his own county, but maybe strangers might look at it. Jim and Ben genuinely were pleased with the puzzles and games she had got them. Chrissie looked at the manicure set with dulled eyes.
Clare had been so sure that Chrissie would love a manicure set, for as far back as she could remember Chrissie had been filing and painting her nails, her fingernails and her toenails, surely the set in the little red case would be exactly what she would like. But Clare must have been remembering a time too far back. Chrissie opened the parcel with her stubby fingers and Clare noticed that her hands were callused and her nails were bitten short. Still, she thought hopefully, maybe.
Chrissie turned it over and said it was very nice, especially of course if you were a student and had time to be doing your nails. She put it aside and never looked at it again during the day.
Clare got a box of sweets taken from one of the shelves from her mother, and a tinsel card from Jim and Ben. Her father gave her £1 peeled from the notes in his pocket. She fought the stinging of the tears in her eyes. They were her family for heaven’s sake, they didn’t need to be going on with too much ritual. It was silly to get upset because of the lack of trappings.
Angela had warned her long ago that one of the dangers of going away to be educated was that you expected too much when you came back, and you built up a whole wall of disappointment that was unnecessary. It had been a bit like that when she came home from the scrupulously clean convent boarding school and had to share a room with Chrissie, it was the same now. After knowing people like Emer and Kevin with their politeness and consideration toward each other and everyone they came in contact with . . . this seemed a dull, leaden sort of day.
She remembered Mary Catherine reading somewhere that more people wanted to commit suicide on Christmas Day than any other day. She would not join them. Putting her elbows on the table full of dirty dishes and the wrappings of the presents that only she had given, Clare managed a big smile.
“Will we tell a ghost story?” she said.
“Who knows one?” asked her father.
“We could make one up as we went along, each person adding a bit. You start, Chrissie.”
“I don’t know how to make up ghost stories.” Chrissie was not going to join in.
“Yes, you do. Just start.”
The others looked eager.
“Once upon a time there was a ghost that had this desperate sister,” Chrissie began. “It had four brothers who were all right but it had a really terrible sister . . .”
There was always a Christmas tree in the window of Dr. Power’s house. On the side where it could be seen from the road. There were presents which had arrived by post from the Nolans in Dublin and from cousins and friends all over the place. David placed his own gifts there on Christmas Eve night, wrapped in red crêpe paper and each one with a cutout Santa Claus.
David looked at all the neatly labeled parcels. He glanced through at the dining room already set with gleaming glass and shining silver, decorated with holly and crisscrossed crackers. Why did it feel so empty and hollow? He hated Nellie being in the kitchen, although he knew she would never come and join them; he hated the games-playing, where he and his mother and father would pull crackers and read jokes and exclaim over gifts. If they only knew about some of the homes he visited in Dublin when he had been doing his practical work, then they’d find this kind of playing at Christmas very shabby. But his father must know.
They walked across in the cold Christmas air to Mass; everyone was good-humored and cheerful despite the wind. Dr. Power dealt with a young woman who had fainted, and reassured her it was just the result of a three-mile walk fasting on a cold morning. “But I’d have to fast and go to Holy Communion on Christmas morning, wouldn’t I?” the woman said, detecting some criticism in the doctor’s voice as he bent her head down.
“Of course you would, that’s just what the Lord likes on His birthday—people nearly killing themselves,” Dr. Power muttered.
All through the day, David felt as if he were under some kind of spotlight. They were all anxious to know what David thought, what David wanted. Did David think they should eat now? Have a sherry? Would David like to open the presents? Was he sure he liked the sweater? If it wasn’t big enough, if it wasn’t the right color it could be changed.
They had soup first, and little fingers of toast; and then the turkey was carved—was David sure he wanted the leg? There was plenty of breast.
They clapped when the flame lit on the plum pudding, and they raised their glasses to another good year and to the year that lay ahead. Molly Power wondered whether the Nolans were at this moment having their Christmas lunch in Dublin, and they drank a toast to them too.
“James’ mother gets very odd at Christmas,” David said, to make conversation. “Apparently last year she had a handkerchief on her head all through the meal.”
Dr. Power burst out laughing. “Did she say why?” he asked.
“Well, she did when Caroline asked her. She said you never knew with ceilings—then I don’t think they asked any more.” David grinned back, thinking of the story.
“I don’t like you telling stories like that about Sheila. She’s different. She’s unusual, that’s all. You make her sound batty when you talk like that.”
“She is a bit batty, I think,” David said apologetically. “You know, not dangerous or anything but definitely not firing on all cylinders.”
Dr. Power frowned slightly and David understood.
“Sorry, I was just joking—unusual is more the word for it.”
Molly smiled, pleased. She didn’t like her friend being defined as insane. She passed round the liqueur chocolates, exclaiming with delight as each center was read out. Would she have kirsch or would she try cherry brandy? Which was more alcoholic? David fought down his wish to say that since there was less than half an eggspoonful of alcohol in each it was immaterial.
“Do you see a lot of Caroline?” Molly’s voice was over-casual.
“A fair bit, but I’m working hard, very hard. People never believe this of students. We went to a party just before I came down here, she sent you both her love.”
“I think she likes it here, I think she’s a Castlebay person at heart, she wrote a very nice note in her Christmas card saying it must be lovely in the winter.” Mrs. Power was still fishing.
“Oh, I think just for holidays,” David said.
“You’d never know. A lot of people thought they’d come here for holidays and changed their minds, ended up staying here altogether.” Dr. Power patted his wife’s hand as he said this. David felt a sense of overpowering claustrophobia. Not only were they wrapping him in cotton wool while he was here; they were planning the day whe
n he came back full-time as a doctor to help his father; and they were now planning his wife for him.
“I think I’ll go for a bit of a walk . . . all that food . . .” he stammered.
He stood up, anxious to be out of the warm room, the smell of mince pies and the beam of their attention.
But it was no use. They both thought that would be a great idea: Dr. Power went to get his stick and Molly ran upstairs for her coat and gloves. David carried the tray of coffee cups out to the kitchen. Nellie was nodding off to sleep beside the big range with the wireless on, and Bones was fast asleep due to a surfeit of turkey.
He left the tray quietly on the kitchen table and wrapped his scarf round his neck.
He knew he was a selfish, selfish ungrateful so and so, but he wished that he had fourteen brothers and sisters to share the responsibility with him; or that he had no parents at all like one of the students in his year, who was going to spend the festive season with a lot of English people in Belgium. Everyone knew that English girls were outrageous and this fellow was going to have a really great time.
“Ready, David,” called Molly and everyone in the house woke up in confusion: David from his dream of permissive coach travelers, and Nellie and Bones from their kitchen sleeps.
The family walk was under way and soon it would be the family tea, and then tomorrow it would be the family Stephen’s Day. David sighed heavily and hated himself for the sigh.
On New Year’s Day Clare went for a walk on the beach to collect shells and make New Year’s resolutions.
“I will not expect too much of my family.
“I will work out a better revision system, not just big pencil marks saying must revise later.
“I will get a job in a café one night a week in Dublin.
“I will have my hair cut in an interesting style.
“I will find a person to take me out on a date.