Authors: Kate Eberlen
My mother and I were careful around each other. I fought back the silent scream in my head when she said things that annoyed me; she dutifully disappeared after dinner each evening to watch
television in her own room. On one occasion, late at night, when she’d clearly fallen asleep with the telly still on, I tried to slip in to turn it off, but found her door locked.
‘You’re the one who wants her to be independent,’ said Charlotte, when I got back into bed grumbling about the noise.
Since Flora’s birth, my mother had spent Christmases with us. It was a time of year I think we both dreaded. With snow twinkling over each channel ident on television,
ski weather reports after the news, and happy extended families sitting down for banquets together during every ad break, I sometimes felt as if Ross’s ghost had managed to track us down to
our living room.
However patient and solicitous a son I tried to be, I was sure my presence was an unwelcome reminder for my mother, so my solution was to hide in the kitchen for most of the day, pretending I
needed to baste the bird or stir the sauces. Occasionally, I would poke my head round the door of the living room to ask if anyone would like a cup of tea or a refill of champagne, and glimpse my
mother, wife and daughter doing Christmassy things together, almost as if they were someone else’s family.
Curiously, with the prospect of us moving in together in the New Year, our last Christmas in Wandsworth felt less fraught, perhaps because we were all making a conscious effort to look to the
future. My mother arrived on Christmas Eve with a side of smoked salmon and an expensive Yule log from Waitrose. She stood in the kitchen with a gin and tonic talking to me instead of scuttling off
immediately to chat to Charlotte, asking how my job was, and whether I’d decided on turkey or goose.
In turn, I praised the presents she had chosen for Flora and Bella. It was almost as if we had each privately decided to forgive the complaints we had against each other. Perhaps there was a
statute of limitations on resentment, I thought, realizing, almost with surprise, that it was the tenth Christmas since Ross’s death.
On Christmas Day, when I saw my mother helping Flora to thread beads onto ribbon to make a necklace, I felt a rush of pride that she had been able to find joy with her grandchildren.
Flora wriggled down from her lap and ran over to me.
‘Daddy, next year, we’re going to have a very tall Christmas tree!’ she said. ‘So tall, we’ll need a stepladder to put the star on the top!’
‘That’s right!’ I said, imagining the high-ceilinged living room of our prospective house all painted white.
‘What is a stepladder, Daddy?’
‘It’s a ladder that stands on its own.’
‘Can you draw it for me in my notebook, please?’
Flora had a fascination with words so I’d bought her a notebook with a bright plastic cover from Paperchase in which I wrote new vocabulary down for her, often drawing an illustration.
Next to the word
Stepladder
, I sketched a Christmas tree standing in a bay window like the one on the upper-ground floor of the Notting Hill house, with a stepladder beside it and a little
girl on the top rung, stretching out with a star in her hands.
I handed the notebook back to Flora.
‘St-e-p l-a-dd-er,’ she said, sounding out the syllables, with her finger following the letters.
‘Reading at four years old!’ said Charlotte proudly.
‘Ross was an early reader,’ said my mother. ‘And Angus wasn’t far behind,’ she added quickly.
‘Granny may even have her own tree downstairs,’ Flora said, clearly repeating something my mother had said. ‘So we’ll have two trees!’
‘There are lots of trees in the garden, too,’ I said, joining in with the plans. ‘So maybe we’ll be able to string some coloured lights on those!’
Now Charlotte was smiling at me. She had Bella sitting on her lap, who was holding a soft little elephant with one ear that crackled and one ear that squeaked and a bell inside that tinkled when
she shook it. Bella’s skin was having a good day, and with her halo of orange curls, she looked positively cherubic.
In my mind, I tried to capture the softly sparkling image of the three generations of women in my family, knowing that if I brought out the camera, their poses would stiffen, and the glow of
contentment around them would be lost.
‘Why don’t you come and sit with us?’ Charlotte said. ‘You’ve been working so hard all morning . . .’
‘Make a bracelet with me, Daddy,’ said Flora.
The turkey was resting, the gravy was made. If the vegetables were a little overcooked, what did it matter?
Still wearing the navy-and-white striped apron, which had been her present to me, I sat down on the sofa next to my mother, and she handed me a tray of assorted beads. Flora clambered onto my
lap.
In the grate, the flames of the coal-effect gas fire flickered. As the light outside the bay window faded, the coloured lights on our tree seemed to glow brighter. I found myself thinking that
if someone were looking in from outside, they would see a perfectly happy, harmonious family.
Anyone would think the UK population doubled over the Christmas period. I don’t know how people find the room in their fridges for all those ceramic pots of chicken
parfait with shiny jelly and a cranberry on top. And if Stilton’s so delicious, why don’t we eat it all year round? How come families can survive quite happily with a single packet of
Jacob’s Cream Crackers for the rest of the year, but suddenly, everyone has to have this great big tin of ‘Biscuits for Cheese’? Who is daft enough to fork out twelve pounds for a
chocolate Swiss roll with some fancy icing on it? Does anyone in the country actually
like
Christmas pudding? And, on that subject, why pay more for one with an orange in the middle, when,
at that time of year, you can get two nets of Navelinas for three pounds?
There’s not a lot of seasonal goodwill in a supermarket, with the crowds and the queues and the expense. I’d been promoted to supervisor, so I spent most of my time on the customer
service desk dealing with relentless moaning and occasional incidents of pudding rage.
‘Miss Costello to Aisle Four, please.’
Next to the bakery counter, two men were arguing over the last box.
‘Why do you have the bloody television adverts if you’re going to sell out?’ the loser shouted at me, his face alarmingly pink.
Is it worth the high blood pressure, I wanted to ask him? You’ll give yourself a heart attack before you’ve even started on the brandy butter.
‘Could I offer you a complimentary stollen with our apologies for your disappointment?’
‘Do I get one too?’ his opponent demanded.
‘If you’re willing to hand your pudding over to this gentleman . . .’
Not a sentence I’d have ever imagined myself saying.
I’d discovered that the most efficient method of dealing with problems was to grovel and offer compensation wherever possible.
‘It defuses the situation,’ I explained to the deputy manager, who was more inclined to justify than hand out freebies. ‘This way, they go away with a free cake and something
nice to tell their family and friends. So they’ll come back to us instead of seeing what M and S Simply Food has to offer.’
‘You should really be thinking about marketing,’ he said.
I was reluctant to take up the career-development opportunities offered partly because I suspected they’d find out that I didn’t really possess ‘people skills’ or
‘leadership qualities’ or anything other than a bit of common sense. I didn’t see my future in a supermarket, although as time ticked by, I sometimes wondered what I was waiting
for. I’d given up any mad idea I’d had of writing for a living when a short story I’d written about a shop assistant who makes up lives for customers from the contents of their
trolleys hadn’t even been acknowledged by the magazine I’d sent it to. Perhaps I should just accept that it wasn’t going to get any better than retail. Sometimes, the best things
are staring you right in the face, Doll used to say.
It had worked for her. She was on the local news switching on the town’s Christmas lights.
‘Maria Newbury, North Kent’s entrepreneur of the year!’ said the reporter shoving a microphone in her face. ‘Or should I say,
entrepreneuse
?’
‘I don’t know, should you?’ said Doll, flirty as ever.
‘There’s a lot of talk about glass ceilings for women in business. How have you managed to break through?’
‘At The Dolls House, there’s no glass ceiling,’ Doll told him. ‘Because it’s like, well, I’m sitting on the roof, aren’t I?’
He’d loved that.
‘Maria Newbury, founder of The Dolls House,’ he turned to camera. ‘Where the sky’s the limit!’
When I asked Hope what she wanted for Christmas, she said a grand piano, because Martin had one in his flat above the shop.
She and Martin – technically Martin Junior, because his dad who owned Martin’s Music had Parkinson’s and had gone into one of the residential care homes on the Esplanade
– had developed a sort of rapport. It was a bit like the friendship she’d had with Dave, based on having similar library-like brains as far as music was concerned, and I was really
pleased about it because I suspected Hope missed Dave.
‘I don’t like Doll,’ she’d said, when she’d seen the wedding photo in the paper.
At twenty-one, Martin was pretty young to be running the business on his own, because it wasn’t just the shop – there was also a workshop out back where he repaired clarinets and
re-strung guitars and stuff like that. He’d initially given the appearance of being cross with us for disturbing him when we went in to buy Hope a Teach Yourself Keyboard book, but I think it
was more social isolation than deliberate rudeness. His mum had run away with a jazz saxophonist when he was a child, so that probably accounted for a lot. And when we kept returning for more and
more advanced books, he was so impressed with Hope’s talent that he gave her the occasional lesson for free.
It was just me and Hope for Christmas because Dad and Anne had gone to Anne’s timeshare on the Algarve, and I’d had to work right up ’til the store closed on Christmas Eve. We
spent the morning in our pyjamas, eating chocolates. Hope seemed pleased with the full-size keyboard that I’d bought and hidden under Dad’s bed. She immediately wanted to start on the
book of classical pieces that Martin advised me would be the right level for her. The keyboard had a much better tone than the school one, and sounded just like a proper piano, or organ, or
harpsichord, whichever mode Hope chose, as she hesitantly picked out tunes you hear all your life on adverts without knowing their names, like ‘Für Elise’ and the ‘Moonlight
Sonata’.
It was nice just to relax with her, knowing that our dinner was only going to take four minutes to cook whenever we felt like it, because I’d bought us microwaveable Christmas ready meals
with turkey, veg, chipolata sausages, the lot.
‘Why are there three?’ Hope asked, when she looked at the packets in the fridge.
Knowing Hope’s appetite, I’d thought she might like a second, and it was Christmas after all, but I wasn’t going to tell her that up front.
‘They were on three-for-two,’ I lied.
‘Can we invite Martin?’
It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon by then and already dark outside.
‘I expect Martin’s got plans of his own,’ I said.
‘He’s seeing his dad,’ said Hope. ‘Then nothing.’
‘If you want to invite him, you’ll have to give him a call,’ I told her, amazed when she went straight to do it, because Hope never liked using the phone. I think the
uncertainty of the process disturbed her.
In my heart of hearts, I’d have preferred not to have to go upstairs and get dressed and tidy up the wrapping paper, but I was thrilled at the idea of Hope having a friend to the house,
even if it had more to do with the asymmetry of three ready meals in the fridge than her thinking about Martin being on his own on Christmas Day.
He turned up half an hour later with a present for her: a music book called
Songs from the Musicals
, unwrapped, because he’d obviously picked it from the rack on his way out of the
shop.
I sat on the sofa watching him play and Hope sing, with the silver tinsel tree behind them, thinking it was a bit like Christmas in a Victorian novel when families used to entertain themselves
round the piano.
When Hope sang ‘Defying Gravity’, Martin said, ‘She should have singing lessons. She’s a coloratura soprano.’
I didn’t know exactly what that was, but I mentioned it to Dad when he rang up to say Happy Christmas.
‘Singing lessons? She can already sing, can’t she?’ he shouted above the noise of the bar.
I’d bought a box of the most expensive crackers because they were practically giving them away on Christmas Eve afternoon, so Hope, Martin and I sat at the kitchen table with gold crowns
on our heads. I noticed that eating was something Martin did very solemnly, as if it was an end in itself, not just a means to an end, exactly the same as Hope. We had a raspberry pavlova for our
dessert, which was still a bit icy because I hadn’t taken it out of the freezer in time, but instead of asking for seconds, Hope sprang straight up when she’d finished and went back to
the keyboard.
Listening to the two of them as I washed up, I suddenly thought of a solution to a problem that had been preoccupying me. All the pupils at Hope’s school had to do ‘work
experience’ for two weeks in Year Ten. Most of her peers chose to help out in the old people’s homes, but nobody could see Hope being much good at that. Other kids, who were thinking
about a career in teaching, did theirs at primary schools.
Hope’s tantrums were few and far between nowadays, but you never quite knew what was going to set her off, so even if a school had taken her, they’d probably have to have someone
looking after her, and that wasn’t exactly the point of work experience, was it? It had been looking like Hope would have to spend two weeks at home, but what harm could she do in
Martin’s Music? She would know the location of every piece of sheet music and every book within a morning of working there, and it would save Martin the hassle of putting down his cloths and
waxes and screwdrivers to serve customers.