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Embarrassingly I felt tears squeezing into the back of my eyes, and my throat constricted. I stared at the portrait of my great-great-grandmother and thought about how she would have celebrated Christmas in this house, nearly a hundred years ago. Had she loved her husband so much it almost hurt? Had she been afraid of her own happiness when she moved into this beautiful house? I looked at the non-committal dark eyes, at her hand on her silk lap with one finger marking the page of a book. She met my gaze, as she always did.
‘Ooh, crisps!’ Chin exclaimed, and passed me the bowl as Mum clinked two glasses together.
‘I can hear the carol singers coming,’ she said.
‘Wha-hey!’ Gibbo yelled.
We stared at him, and Jess peered out of the window. ‘Yes, they’re at the gate,’ she said.
We processed outside and stood in the porch. The night was bitterly cold and a frost was creeping over the lawn. The carol singers, several of whom I recognised from the church in Wareham, stamped their feet and called greetings to Mum as she hurried forward to open the gate and let them in. We could see their breath rising in the air, wispy in the torchlight, as they formed a little knot, the children in front, muffled up with hats and scarves, eyes shining with the excitement of staying out so late.
They started with my favourite carol, the one that sums up Christmas for me, especially Christmas Eve and arriving home.
‘It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold.
“Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,
From heaven’s all gracious King.”
The world in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing’
‘Nice carol,’ I heard Gibbo inform Chin in a stage-whisper. ‘Look at the bloke on the left with the big brown beard – it sticks out from his chin at like forty-five degrees! What a guy!’
Having been a little nostalgic and sad – in the way that happy family occasions can sometimes make you feel – I was suddenly overtaken with a fit of the giggles.
‘And that old girl there. Look at her! She’s mad as a bag of snakes.’ Gibbo nudged me now, his eyes on Mrs Thipps, the organist’s wife, who opened her mouth incredibly wide on every word and shut it with a snap as she sang.
When the choir struck up with ‘Whence Is That Goodly Fragrance Flowing?’ and Gibbo said rather loudly, ‘What the hell are they singing about now?’ Kate turned and said, ‘Be quiet, you fool.’ Amazingly, Gibbo smiled, said sorry, and was as quiet as a mouse for the rest of the recital. At the end, Mr Thipps came forward with a velvet cap and we all put in some money while Dad stepped forward with a tray of paper cups filled with sloe gin.
‘A Nice Change From Mulled Wine,’ enunciated Mrs Thipps, as she gulped hers down.
Gibbo turned back to the house, fighting hysteria, and as he did I saw Kate catch his eye. My aunt is a fierce creature, someone who doesn’t smile a lot, but when she does she’s beautiful. Her lovely dark green eyes sparkled and she patted Gibbo’s hand. I was glad she liked him.
‘Thank you, all, so much,’ said Mum, as the group turned to leave.
‘Yes, thank you,’ we echoed. ‘Happy Christmas! See you at church!’
We hastened, shivering, back into the warmth of the house. The wind was getting up now, and the french windows rattled. Tom threw another log on to the fire, and sparks hissed out on to the carpet.
‘Supper’ll be ready in a few minutes,’ said Mum. ‘Time for one more glass?’
If catchphrases were written on headstones, that one would do for both my parents.
‘I’ll do it,’ said Tom, picked up the decanter and went round with it.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
‘Yes, of course I am.’ He looked surprised. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘You’re a bit quiet,’ I said.
‘Oh, God.’ Tom laughed. ‘I’m fine. I was just thinking about something I didn’t do at work.’
‘I’d like to make a toast,’ announced Dad. Jess and I groaned. Dad loves to make toasts or little speeches – it’s part of his ceaseless quest to reclaim the title ‘World’s Most Embarrassing Dad to Two Teenage Girls’, which was his for several years during my adolescence.
‘Shut up, girls,’ said Mum, even though I know she agrees with us.
‘Yes, shut up,’ said Dad, placing his glass on the table. ‘I would like to say a couple of things. It is wonderful to have you all here tonight. Lizzy, Jessica and Thomas, you’ve come away from all the important things you do in London, and we’re all very proud of you and glad you’re here. And my little sister, Chin, doing so well with her scarves and bags that not only have Liberty taken some more I hear a shop in…’ he paused before he said the words, then pronounced them as if he were a judge asking who the Beatles were ‘…Notting Hill – yes? Is that it? – wants to do the same.’
‘Oooh,’ we all murmured.
‘Leave it with the J.R. Hartley impressions, John,’ Chin said, bashing his thigh.
The mulberry tree’s branches rattled against the window and the logs crackled on the fire. Dad went on, undaunted, clearing his throat: ‘I’d like especially to welcome Gibbo. It’s great to have you with us for Christmas, and while this year you’ll be substituting, ah, raincoats for sunblock, we all hope you don’t feel too homesick’ – honestly, that’s the best Dad’s humour gets – ‘and we’re very pleased to meet you. So, to us all, happy Christmas, and welcome home!’ He raised his glass and drank, and we were about to follow suit when there was a loud crash in the hall. (Later, after the excitement was over, we found that a window had blown open half-way up the stairs and sent a little jug filled with holly flying on to the floor, where it smashed into tiny pieces, with one of the boughs of pine.)
We jumped, and Kate and Mum grabbed each other and screamed, like spinster sisters in a horror film.
Then the french windows swung inwards.
This time we all screamed. A shadowy, windswept figure stood outside. Dad brandished his minute gin glass at it, as if it were a gigantic blunderbuss. We all took a step back. The figure came into the room and flung off its trilby. ‘Happy Christmas, everyone! I’m so sorry I’m late, but I’m here! God, it’s good to be back! Is that a new armchair?’
‘Mike!’ Jess yelled, the first to recover. ‘You’re here! This is fantastic.’
‘Damn you, Mike,’ Kate said crossly, as we all breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Suzy…’ Mike threw his hat on to the sofa and gathered my mother into a hug. ‘Look.’ He fiddled with his coat. ‘Oh. Damn…I wanted to be able to produce them with a flourish, you know. Ah, here they are. Ouch. Fuck. Sorry.’ He pulled a limp, cellophane-covered bunch of motorway service-station roses out of his sleeve.
‘It’s lovely to see you, you annoying man. Thank you.’ Mum beamed and moved to close the french windows. She started. ‘Oh…my God. Is someone else out there?’
As the wind whistled and the chimney belched smoke into the room, Mike said, ‘I’d like you all to meet Rosalie.’
He grinned rather shiftily, and a second figure appeared from behind him, immaculately made up, not a hair out of place, despite the wind, an early-forties minx-a-like with – and this was obvious even through her cashmere coat – a spectacularly pneumatic chest.
‘This is Rosalie,’ Mike repeated. ‘My wife.’
Rosalie stepped forward. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet y’all,’ she said, and smiled, revealing a set of shockingly white teeth.
THREE (#ulink_3511f42a-a065-5261-b7b3-f2f24af1d2ad)
We’re so British, my family. If we’d been Italian we’d have jumped up and down, waving our arms, demanding to know where Mike had met her and when. If we’d been Afghan, French or Brazilian we would have come out with at least some of the questions we were dying to ask. Instead we simply nodded and stood quite silently.
Then Kate broke the spell. ‘Congratulations! Wonderful!’ she said, then kissed Rosalie and Mike, who clutched her hand.
‘Bless you, Kate,’ he said.
Mum and Dad followed suit, murmuring politely, and Tom and Gibbo shook his hand bashfully. For all his Antipodean forthrightness Gibbo could clearly hear ancestral voices calling when an awkward situation loomed.
Mike hung their coats on the long wooden rack in the hall, and took Rosalie upstairs to show her their room, the long low one at the front of the house with the rose wallpaper, which Mum said was so appropriate for Rosalie, as if she’d known her brother-in-law was about to turn up with a complete stranger to whom he’d just hitched himself. We stood around like Easter Island statues, until they came back, five or so minutes later, looking rather ruffled.
‘Get rid of that God-awful gin and let’s have a proper drink.’ Mike produced two bottles. ‘We brought some champagne.’ He whipped off the foil and wire, popped a cork and out it flowed, thick and creamy, into Dad’s empty sloe-gin glass, which Mike now drained.
There was a silence. I shifted my weight from one leg to the other. Kate hummed and looked at the cornices.
‘Let me get some more glasses,’ said Mum suddenly, and hurried into the kitchen with Chin.
‘We met at a law conference in November,’ Mike said, out of the blue, as Rosalie smiled up at him.
‘This November?’ Dad enquired, like a man in the final throes of strangulation.
‘Nuts, Rosalie?’ Tom asked innocently.
‘Shut up,’ I hissed.
‘Well, thank you – Tom, is it?’ Rosalie breathed, and flashed him a brilliant smile.
Tom coughed.
‘So…when did you decide to get married, then?’ Dad stammered.
‘Well…’ Rosalie and Mike looked at each other and giggled.
‘Well, John,’ said Rosalie, ‘you’re not going to believe this, but we got married yesterday! City Hall, eleven thirty a.m.! Then we decided to get on a flight over here.’
‘I’m going to check on the glasses,’ said Tom, to no one in particular, and left.
‘But how did you get a flight at such short notice, Rosalie? Aren’t they all booked up?’ Jess asked.
‘Weeeell,’ said Rosalie, ‘you have a very wonderful uncle.’ She clenched her hands into tiny fists and punched the air. ‘Hey! Thank you for this man!’
I glanced covertly around me, not sure whom she was thanking. Us? The Lord? Jim’ll Fix It?
She went on, ‘He actually had me booked on to a flight the week after we met – he was always going to get me to come over with him because he wanted me to see your beautiful home. And, I must say, it’s such an honour to be here. You truly have a really…beautiful home.’
‘Oh dear, where are those glasses,’ I said, and slid out of the room.
At the kitchen table, Mum, Chin and Tom were whispering like the three witches in Macbeth. They sprang apart guiltily as I walked in, then visibly relaxed.
‘I was just telling them he met her at a law conference last month!’ Chin hissed across the table at me.
‘I know,’ I said.
‘And they only got married yesterday!’ Tom said, slamming his hand on the table for emphasis.
‘I heard that too,’ I said.
They looked at me crossly, as if I was ruining their fun.
‘I can tell you that she’s just given thanks for such a wonderful man and she thinks our home is really beautiful,’ I said, with a glance over my shoulder to make sure the coast was clear.
‘Noooooooooo!’ they chorused.
‘Also that Mike booked her on the flight home a week after they met because he knew even then he wanted us to meet her.’
‘Noooooooooooooooo!’
‘Yes,’ I said, much gratified at their reaction.
‘Is she a money-grabbing whore?’ said Tom.
‘Is she even a lawyer?’ said Chin. ‘She doesn’t look like one.’
‘I’m sure she’s a very nice girl,’ said Mum, suddenly becoming a grown-up again.
‘But I bet she saw a picture of the house early on and convinced herself Mike’s, like, a duke or something,’ said Chin.
‘I’m sure of it,’ said Mum then she paused and collected herself. ‘Well, anyway, it’s lovely to have Mike home and I’m glad for him. She seems lovely and I’m sure they’re very happy.’
We glared at her, disappointed. Mum picked up the glasses and another bottle of sloe gin – thank God for Jess’s nimble fingers in October. We were positively racing through the hooch that night.
‘Let’s have one more quick drink and then supper.’
We glared at her again, and Tom sighed. ‘Aunt Suzy, don’t be a Goody Two Shoes.’
‘Hello!’ said a voice at the door. We whipped round, and there was Rosalie.
‘Good grief, Rosalie, you made us jump! I was just getting you a glass. Everything OK?’ said Mum, running her fingers through her hair.
‘Yes, of course, Susan,’ said Rosalie. She brushed invisible dust from her sleeve, smiling as if she was visualizing chapter two of a self-help book on forging relationships with strangers. ‘Hi, Ginevra, hi, Tom, hi, Lizzy. I just wanted to know if there was anything you needed help with out here.’
‘How kind of you, but don’t worry. You must be exhausted. Go back into the sitting room – supper’s nearly ready,’ said Mum, with a glint in her eye. I could tell she was looking for something to like in her new sister-in-law. Tom, Chin and I shifted from foot to foot: we are not nice people and didn’t want to like her.
‘Come and help me set the table if you want,’ I offered finally.
Rosalie looked delighted, and so did Mum. It was almost a touching domestic scene.
We went into the dining room next door and started with the cutlery. ‘There are ten of us, and the plates are in that cupboard. I’ll get them,’ I said.
Rosalie painstakingly counted out ten knives and forks. Was she a lawyer? She looked like a fully-clothed member of the Baywatch cast. Who moves their lips when they count to ten? I thought, then realized that I did.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘The wine and water glasses are here. And the napkin rings – can you fetch that bowl from the dresser?’
