Chapter 37
Elizabeth was next up to the pretend stage.
‘This is a song that I last performed ten years ago in a student bar. It’s a folk song,’ she said with a nervous smile. She’d written the words down on some paper from memory but she doubted she’d need them.
Whatever everyone was expecting it wasn’t what followed.
Far from being a lilting ditty about milkmaids, ploughmen or sailors coming home, it was a cheeky little number called ‘The Bantam Cock’.
Two worlds colliding: the bawdy and the genteel with terrific effect.
A bantam cock brought in to service a farmer’s hens goes on a sexual rampage, ‘tupping’ everything from the fantail pigeons to the lily-white columbines, a budgie and a visiting migrant swan.
Then it dropped dead. Except, when the farmer came to bury it, the bantam opened up his eye and whispered that it was waiting for the circling vultures to come down so he could have a go at them as well.
Elizabeth was delighted to have brought them such jollity.
It was so wonderful to let out her corsets because she had never expected to perform it again.
She felt truly happy in that moment, lapping up the laughter, and she knew she was in receipt of one of Jane’s glimmers, especially on seeing Vincent grinning and clapping the loudest of all.
‘Well, Elizabeth,’ said Roo with heavy admiration. ‘I think I speak for everyone when I say, that was bloody marvellous.’
Elizabeth was beaming as she took her seat again and tried not to think that the bantam cock would stay locked inside her for ever now.
The elder Penningtons didn’t do anything after dinner except drink brandy, puff on cigars (both sexes) and chew on people’s characters.
Gaylord had once almost spontaneously combusted when Elizabeth had suggested a game of charades.
He’d looked at her as if she were a smell drifting upwards from the sole of his Dunhill velvet loafer.
Henry’s act needed some audience participation.
He asked them all to forgive him for a performance that would not live up to the others he had seen but he was wrong.
Everyone had to sing ‘Jingle Bells’ while he played the two spoons he pulled out of his back pocket.
He was so good they sang it twice to allow him to repeat it and he finished on a wild flourish.
It was a skill he had acquired in the prison kitchens, he enlightened them.
If they’d had more time, he could have taught them to pick a lock or whittle wood or distil alcohol from sugar, bread, potatoes and rotten fruit.
‘And now, before the conclusion of this afternoon’s entertainment, I think Tim wanted to round things off with something else, is that right?’ Roo said to him.
Tim bounced up from the sofa with a deep, Brian Blessed style ‘Ho ho ho, that’s right, little girl.
’ He planted himself on the porter’s chair near the corner, legs akimbo and said, ‘I want everyone to come up here and sit on my knee and tell me what you want most for Christmas. You don’t have to say it aloud if you don’t want to, but by the magic of Santa, I’ll do all I can to make your best wish come true.
Now young man…’ He beckoned over to Vincent, who played the game by going over to Tim and perching on his knee.
‘Let me guess… is it a book?’
‘No, Santa. I’m going to say it in my head.’
Vincent closed his eyes and wished. ‘Find me a nice woman to love, Santa.’ Then he opened them again. ‘You get that, Santa?’
‘Loud and clear, little boy, and if I can get that blue bicycle down the chimney, you’ll find it under your tree. Neeext.’
‘Me!’ said Roo, who was a considerably lesser weight. Tim could hardly feel her.
‘I would like to find a place where I belong,’ she said inwardly.
‘I’d like my wife to come home to me,’ Frank said to himself, squeezing his eyes shut as if that would help his cause.
‘I’d like to hold my son, just one more time would do, even if it’s in a dream,’ was Grace’s silent request.
‘I’d like to find the sort of belief that Clifford had,’ thought Jane. Once formed, it was unbreakable and she envied that he knew without any doubt that something existed beyond the secular realm, despite him being the most pragmatic, rational man she could ever hope to meet.
Elizabeth sat on Santa’s knee and thought that she’d reached the age of twenty-nine without ever doing that before. Did that mean she had all those years of wishes saved up in readiness? If so, she spent them all in one fell swoop.
‘I’d like to find the courage to do what I must to be happy.’ Even said only in her head, she couldn’t quite cite the specifics, but if it involved upending her life, she was going to need the help of a supernatural entity such as Santa Claus.
Only Henry spoke his bid aloud. ‘I’d like the life God has decided I deserve,’ he said, ridiculously perched on the big man’s knee. ‘What about you, Tim? What would you grant yourself?’
‘Me?’ he replied. ‘I’d like to hug my daughter as soon as I possibly can.’
‘Then you have to do exactly that, Santa,’ said Frank. ‘And now I think we all deserve a mulled wine, if you’ll excuse me. I’ve got it all set up ready to warm in the galley. Roo, I ain’t putting any sprouts in yours, before you ask.’
‘Aw, can I have some cherries instead then, please?’
‘I can manage that.’
‘Henry, your spoon thing was actually brilliant,’ said Roo. ‘I’d like you to teach me how to do that. I might include it in my act.’
‘I will, if you teach me the words to that Hark! Hark song,’ he responded.
‘Course. The interesting thing about that old carol is that it’s one of those songs that you can do CPR to, so yes, we’ll cross-pollinate, because it’s something worth knowing,’ said Roo.
‘What’s that?’ Henry asked, confused as to what she meant.
‘CPR?’ Roo pushed her hands up and down. ‘Cardiac something resuscitation, I think it stands for. Vincent, lend me your body for a moment. Lie down on the sofa.’
Vincent puffed out his cheeks. ‘Now there’s an offer you don’t get every day.’
‘Shut up, Vincent,’ said Roo and demonstrated lightly on his chest what she meant while singing the carol.
‘You can do it with “Last Christmas” as well but I don’t like that one.
“Hark! Hark” is joyful and that’s fitting, isn’t it, seeing as it would be a source of joy bringing someone back from the dead. Even you, Vincent.’
‘You don’t half crack me up, Roo,’ said her patient.
‘The tune’s simple, Henry, I’ll write down the words for you. Then you can have some nice memories attached to it whenever you sing it in future. Hopefully with your mum next Christmas, drinking her eggnog in front of the fire.’
‘Thank you, Roo,’ said Henry. ‘And I’ll give you a spoon lesson in return.’
Vincent, his services dispensed with, got up from his supine position. ‘Hey, Roo, I thought of someone else you aren’t allowed to marry: anyone with the surname Barber.’
‘Shut up, Vincent,’ she said again, smiling.
Frank had just reached the galley when he heard his name being called and turned to see Grace striding after him. She’d been holding it in since she’d finished her routine with Sergeant Nutty but couldn’t any more. When she reached him, he saw the tears falling down her face.
‘It was me, wasn’t it? I put the idea in his head,’ she said.
Frank hadn’t a clue what she was talking about.
‘What do you mean, love?’
‘Way before you made him those cowboy guns, before you bought him that army uniform, I did that thing with the nutcracker soldier. I started him thinking about soldiers and the army and—’
She couldn’t continue, she just folded into her heartbreak. Frank put his arms around her, pulled her into his barrel of a chest.
‘Oh, Gracie, it wasn’t anyone’s fault. It wasn’t yours and it wasn’t mine.
It wasn’t Sergeant Nutty and it wasn’t us being sheriff and outlaw.
It wasn’t his army uniform or his walkie-talkies.
People find what they need and Billy needed what he found.
His passion had no limits but his body did, that’s what let him down, not us. Not you, not me.’
He held her, his poor tortured wife and wished he could take her pain away and carry it himself to save her the burden of it because it had crushed her.
He loved her so much and if this Christmas Day had taught him anything, it was that he wasn’t at the end of his fight to get her back. To get them back as they once were.