Chapter 3
3
I suppose I had imagined Christmas Eve night passing in a sort of golden, Walton-family haze with my four granddaughters bonding, talking, and giggling together in their attic bedroom before falling asleep without any sort of shouting or parental threats about Santa not coming. The rest of us would be sitting in the magical, twinkly light from the Christmas tree and the battery-operated candles, remembering Christmases past, our hopes for the year to come.
We would perhaps raise a glass to the old year and get a bit sentimental, and Sara and John would tell me how marvellously I was getting on with my life. This would then expand into what a great mother I had been, how I was the girls’ favourite grandparent, how happy they were to be back in my house. What a lovely day we were all looking forward to in the morning.
And then maybe there would be some fun dealing with the Christmas stockings. John would take the obligatory bite out of the gluten free mince pie and washed, organic carrot left in the fireplace for Santa by the youngest grandchild, Bunny, with a slight rolling of her eyes, making me think she was only doing it for my benefit, and he would knock back the whisky in the special Father Christmas tumbler I’d bought from Woolworths so many years ago when my own children were small.
I’d draw the curtains against the dark night, where ideally it would be snowing, and put on a CD of Christmas music. We’d have a few drinks and delve deeper into the tub of Celebrations, complaining about the coconut ones, and the fire would be friendly and warm, and we would all agree how lucky we were.
Well, it wasn’t like that at all.
My granddaughters went off to bed with their electronic devices and there was a fair bit of leaping up and threatening by Sara and John before the girls settled down for the night, presumably with visions of Fortnite and Taylor Swift dancing in their heads.
Sara had deliberately planted herself martyr-like in what was always regarded as the least comfortable armchair. Vanessa dressed in cream, cashmere loungewear sat at one end of the sofa with her bare feet tucked up underneath her. I sat at the other while John leaned back in what had been Stephen’s chair, listening out for sounds of screaming and shouting from his daughters upstairs.
We made desultory, whispering conversation about Marty whenever Sara was out of the room. In the New Year John promised to ring his friend Barry who was a divorce lawyer, and I scurried back and forth to the kitchen bringing out snacks and fresh bottles of wine and then at about midnight shoving the turkey into a low oven for its starring role the following day.
‘I just don’t know how he could do it,’ Sara kept saying, ‘to me, to the girls. How could he?’
‘He’s an idiot,’ John said, ‘just plain stupid.’
Vanessa stirred from her nest of cushions. ‘You know we don’t use that word, darling.’
‘Well for him I’ll make an exception,’ John said firmly.
Sara was slumped a little in her chair, one hand grasping her wine glass, the other resting on a box of tissues.
‘How am I going to get through this?’ Sara said, her eyes filling with tears again.
I reached over to pat her hand. ‘We’ll help, I promise you. We’ll give you all the support you need, won’t we, John? And Vanessa too.’
Sara sank a little further in the chair that had lost all its support after years of her and her brother jumping on it.
‘John’s not going to be much use, swanning around New York.’
‘I’ll be just a phone call away,’ he said, ‘you can ring me anytime you need a chat. Although there is a five-hour time difference. And you’ll have Mum and all your friends.’
Sara took a sulky slurp of wine. ‘S’pose.’
‘And in the meantime, you can come here whenever you want to,’ I said. ‘The rooms are always ready. If you need a break or anything.’
Sara shook her head slowly. ‘I’m dreading going back to The Old Rectory, I really am. When I slammed the front door behind me, it felt like I was closing the door on my past.’
Vanessa reached out and with the ends of her fingernails took one Pringle, which was very unlike her. They were neither low salt nor additive free. And speaking from personal experience, once you pop, you don’t stop until you’re shaking the last fragments from the tube into your palm. But then Vanessa was made of sterner stuff than I was.
She leaned forwards. ‘One of my friends got divorced in July. She had the best lawyer, he used to say “ don’t get mean, get everything” . And she did. Her ex is living in a one bed in Milton Keynes. That will be Marty this time next year, you wait and see.’
‘Heating up beans over a camp stove with newspapers over the windows,’ John chuckled.
Sara struggled upright again fighting against the flabby seat cushions, spilling some wine in her lap, which she brushed off with an irritated hand.
‘But I don’t want him to be living in Milton Keynes, I want things to be back the way they were. With all of us living in The Old Rectory and being happy.’
‘Were you happy?’ I asked.
Sara emptied her glass and reached for the bottle again. I would have to stop her soon or she would head further into the maudlin phase.
‘No, not really,’ she said at last, ‘but we could have been if… if that woman hadn’t…’
‘Marty’s forty-two, he’s a grown man,’ John said, ‘you could never make him do anything he didn’t want to. Remember that Saturday when we all agreed to come over to help Dad with the shed roof? Marty turned up in an Armani suit and just stood giving out advice for ten minutes, and then he went in to get a beer and watch the Six Nations rugby.’
‘He’d come straight from the office,’ Sara said defensively, ‘an extraordinary meeting of the directors.’
‘And he was an extraordinary waste of space,’ John fired back.
‘Oh, shut up,’ Sara mumbled.
‘You shut up!’
‘John darling. Be nice. Sara’s upset,’ Vanessa murmured.
‘It’s not my fault he can’t keep his trousers on, he always was a?—’
I could see this degenerating into something that would not be appropriate during the most wonderful time of the year and plastered a big fake smile on my face.
‘Right, you lot, I’m going to bed. Can you make sure you turn everything off when you come up? And don’t forget to take up the girls’ stockings,’ I said as cheerfully as I could, ‘we don’t want them to be disappointed when they wake up tomorrow.’
‘Actually Joy, Bunny and Jasmine have never believed in Father Christmas,’ Vanessa said earnestly. ‘We told them years ago that it was just a product of advertising and Victorian sentiment. And Coca-Cola.’
‘God, you’re such a spoilsport,’ Sara slurred.
‘Well no, I disagree. I think it’s important to tell them the truth, right from the start,’ Vanessa said testily.
I stood up, cleared some of the empty glasses and bowls onto a tray and left them to their argument.
Out in the hall I thought I could still hear the dull thud of music coming from the girls’ room, which meant non-existent Santa couldn’t arrive at the end of their beds with their despised Christmas stockings any time soon. For a moment I could almost feel my blood pressure spiking.
Never mind. Push it away. I was determined to look on the positive side.
Everyone was safely here, there was plenty of food in the pantry and lots of heating oil thanks to a recent delivery. I’d remembered to buy three sorts of batteries for any toys that turned up, I’d stocked up with spare toothbrushes, hair bobbles and there were organic, vegan, hypoallergenic toiletries in the bathrooms. I’d bought luxury crackers, too, with proper gifts inside, not just horrible plastic tat and paper hats that didn’t fit anyone.
Surely tomorrow would be different. Everyone would have had time to get used to being here, each other and of course the prospect of Sara regularly having a bit too much of the wrong sort of Yuletide spirit.
And then there was John’s news about moving his family three thousand miles away. My heart did a plunge of disappointment at the prospect. I would miss him terribly. And he would be going soon, too, the middle of January he thought. He would be gone so soon, the idea that I wouldn’t be able to just pop over and see them was awful.
But that was weeks away; for now I would make an extra effort to cheer everyone up, to make their stay really special.
In the morning there would be hot chocolate and croissants for breakfast, a delicious, traditional Christmas feast after the King’s speech and a day filled with laughter, perhaps a jigsaw and some board games in the evening. This was a strange image really because no one in the family was any good at jigsaws, and Monopoly had been banned for years because of the arguments and cheating.
I’d always wanted to believe there was a special magic about Christmas, something that united people, when all the shops had shut, and I loved the idea that a lot of families were all doing much the same thing as we were.
I seemed to remember John saying something about all of them staying until the New Year, which in itself was unusual. Now that I knew that next Christmas he would be on the other side of the Atlantic, it all made sense.
If I was honest, it was all going terribly wrong, and we hadn’t even got to Christmas Day yet.
I got back to the sanctuary of my bedroom after midnight, first tidying away all the shoes and handbags on the stairs and picking up the coats from the floor and hanging them on the coat stand.
I caught sight of myself in my dressing table mirror. I looked old and tired. Well, I supposed I was actually both of those things.
I pulled a face at my reflection.
‘Merry Christmas, you filthy animal,’ I murmured.
I looked out of the window at the dark, rain-battered night and sighed. I began to wonder if I had been totally unrealistic about how this visit would go. An unexpected and unwanted question came into my head; when were they leaving ?