Another Life Altogether (33 page)

“Of course, when I was young,” my father said, “that’s what you were supposed to do—get married. Never occurred to us to do anything
else. But the world’s changing now. There’s lots more opportunities for you, love.” I saw my father as a much younger man—the young man he had been in his wedding photographs, dimple-faced with a full head of hair, grinning for the camera as he stood next to my mother outside the church after the ceremony. He had looked so happy, so full of hope. I wondered how he felt about that day now.

I brushed the thought away and tossed a peeled potato into the colander. “When are you going to pick up Granddad?” I asked.

“After Mabel and Frank get here,” he said. “Your granddad doesn’t like to wait for his dinner.”

“So when are Mabel and Frank coming, then?” I asked.

“About eleven o’clock. Mabel said she’ll take care of the cooking if your mother’s not up to it—which I can’t see that she will be, given the state she’s been in recently. I told Mabel I want to have the dinner on the table by half past one at the latest,” my father continued, taking a mug down from the kitchen cupboard as he waited for the kettle to boil. “That way, your granddad will be happy and I can be sure of seeing the Queen’s speech at three o’clock.”

My father loved the Queen’s Christmas speech. He’d probably never admit it, but it was one of the highlights of his Christmas—his annual chance to rant at the Queen, not just when she was waving from her carriage leaving Buckingham Palace or pictured having tea with some foreign dignitary but face to face as she addressed us in our living room.

I much preferred the perennial showings of
A Christmas Carol
. This year, it was being aired on BBC One on Christmas night, and I had circled it in bright red ink in the Christmas edition of the
Radio Times
. There was something about the transformation of Scrooge from miser and Christmas curmudgeon to generous humanitarian and jolly partygoer that I found irresistible, and I always got tears in my eyes when he raised the salary of his poor beleaguered clerk, Bob Cratchit, who for some reason reminded me of my father. But my favorite character was the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. I longed to be visited by a spirit
like that, someone to tell me what lay ahead so I would know the worst to expect.

My mother finally came downstairs after ten o’clock. Though she had clearly made an effort to dress up, with a set of fake pearls around her neck, matching earrings, and a silver charm bracelet, she looked decidedly off-kilter. It was partly her dress, a silver-flecked outfit that resembled an oversized, stretched-out sweater, with an uneven hem that hung just below her thighs. Then there were the black seamed stockings and high-heeled silver sandals, which made me expect to see her put her hands on her hips and start kicking her legs in the air like a music-hall dancer. And finally the makeup, fiercely bright hues on her eyes, lips, and cheeks that made Mabel’s choice of cosmetics look minimalist by comparison. She looked ridiculous, like a child in dress-up clothes trying to imitate what she understood as adult sophistication.

“Are you all right, Mum?” I asked as she strutted into the kitchen, pausing to examine her reflection in the shiny curve of the kettle.

“Of course I’m all right,” she said, puckering up her lips, patting her hair, then turning toward me, beaming to reveal a smear of lipstick on her teeth. “Couldn’t be better. I mean, after all, it’s Christmas.” Her voice was high and overwrought. “Merry Christmas, love,” she said, sweeping me into her arms. “A merry, merry Christmas.”

“Same to you, too, Mum,” I muttered as she pressed my face into the mothball smell of her dress. I tried to sink into her, to relax into her embrace, but I felt stiff and prickly and, without really wanting to, I pushed her away.

“Oh, I see you’ve got the turkey in already,” she said in a disappointed tone, as if she’d been planning to prepare the meal herself and I’d beaten her to it. She flopped onto one of the kitchen chairs. “Any tea in that pot, love?” she asked, indicating the teapot that my father had filled earlier.

“It’ll be cold by now,” I answered.

“Oh, well, make another one, will you, love? You know me, can’t do a thing without my morning brew.”

Mabel and Frank arrived shortly afterward. They came bearing gifts. Three pounds of beef sausages, a box of Milk Tray, and a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream sherry for my mother, a bottle of brandy for my father, and a book for me. My mother accepted the package of sausages from Frank without even a murmur of ingratitude and shoved it into the fridge. My father opened the bottles and offered Mabel, Frank, and my mother a drink.

“I’m not sure Mum should have anything,” I said softly as my father took the top off the Harveys Bristol Cream. I’d read the label on the bottle of pills he administered to her. There, along with the dosage instructions, it said very clearly: “Not to be taken with alcohol!”

“Don’t be daft, Jesse.” My father waved me away.

“But it says on her pills—” I said as I looked at my mother, who, having already torn the cellophane off the box of Milk Tray, had popped two chocolates into her mouth and was chewing loudly.

“It’s Christmas—everybody deserves a drink at Christmas,” my father said grandly.

“Oh, aye, you can say that again, Mike,” Frank agreed. “Nowt like a nice bit of booze to get the celebration started.”

I stood by silently watching as my father poured out a glass of sherry for Mabel and then for my mother. “Merry Christmas, everybody!” he toasted. The four of them lifted their glasses into the air, clinked them noisily together, then pressed them to their lips. Mabel, Frank, and my father took two or three fast little sips, while my mother swallowed the entire contents of her glass in one decisive gulp.

“I’ll have another one of them, Mike,” she declared, slamming her glass down on the kitchen table with all the gusto of a cowboy in a Wild West saloon. Playing the part of the cowed bartender, my father obediently filled her glass.

As soon as she’d taken a few sips of her sherry, Mabel commandeered the kitchen. “You’ve done a grand job, our Jesse,” she said, peering into the oven at the sizzling turkey. “But I’ll take over from here. It’s
a real woman’s touch you want with your Christmas dinner, right, Frank?”

“Oh, aye,” said Frank, nodding sagely. “And, believe me, Mabel is definitely a real woman, one hundred percent.” He nudged my father and wiggled his eyebrows. My father responded with an awkward laugh.

I turned and made a prompt retreat to the living room. There, I curled up on the settee and examined the book that Mabel had brought me:
The Girl’s Book of Heroines
, a volume that was a little young for me, perhaps, but as I flipped through the pages I found it was filled with fascinating stories. Against the drone of my father’s commentary in the hall and on the stairs as he gave Frank another tour of the house, providing updates on his latest do-it-yourself accomplishments, I reveled in stories of the Virgin Queen, who never married despite being pursued by suitors far and wide; Saint Joan, who dressed in men’s clothing so that she could fight a war but was burned as a witch afterward; and Lady Jane Grey, queen for a mere nine days until she was deposed by Mary Tudor and sent off to the Tower of London to have her head chopped off.

Looking at the illustration of the tragic and beautiful Lady Jane Grey made me think of Amanda and what had been almost constantly on my mind since the night of the Reatton disco—the kiss that she had placed on my lips before we parted in the village. It wasn’t a long kiss, not like those lock-lipped, endless smooches that the girls and boys had been giving one another at the disco earlier. Nor was it like those open-mouthed kisses that the heroes of Sunday afternoon films planted on the lips of struggling and then suddenly limp-limbed women. And it wasn’t like the swirling kisses that Captain Kirk gave those female aliens. But that kiss by the village Christmas tree was the longest and softest kiss I had ever had. Not the fierce dry peck of my great-aunt June or the whiskery rub of my father or the oily lipstick smear that Auntie Mabel greeted me with. This had been my first real kiss. Tender,
lingering, so that I could still conjure up that sensation of the unexpected softness of Amanda’s lips, the astonishing warmth of her mouth against mine in that freezing night.

Afterward, I had been unable to meet Amanda’s eyes, afraid of what she might see there. I longed for her to say something, a comment that might make it real. But when all she said was “Well, see you then, Jesse,” and turned to walk away, I wondered if I had imagined it. I stood a long time there in the snow and the silence, watching the meandering track of her footprints as if it were the only evidence of what had just occurred.

“Jesse! Jesse! For God’s sake, how many times do I have to call you?” It was my mother. She stood in the doorway, leaning loosely against the doorframe. “Are you deaf?”

“I was reading.”

“Well, a lot of good that will do, won’t it? Your auntie Mabel needs you to set the table.”

“Can’t you do it?” I asked, resenting her sudden intrusion.

“No, I can’t. I’m busy. I’m making the sherry trifle.” Her expression was even slacker than it had been earlier, and I guessed that she had probably consumed at least as much sherry as she had put into the trifle. “Come on, you’ve got to do your part, you know. This is a family dinner, after all.” As she turned, she hit her shoulder against the doorframe and reeled back a moment before she launched herself out of the room. I followed unwillingly.

“Are you all right, Mum?” I asked as she barged into the kitchen and knocked into the table.

“‘Course I’m bloody well all right,” she said, steadying herself with a palm pushed against the Formica before flopping down into one of the chairs. “Never been bloody better. Mabel, pour us another sherry, will you?”

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough, Ev?” Mabel said. “Enough?” My mother laughed. “Yes, I’ve definitely had enough. Had enough of everything, I have. Had it up to here.” She jabbed her
index finger clumsily against her temple. “That’s why I could use another drink.” She laughed again. “That’ll wash the cares away—oh, yes it will. Oh, yes it will indeed.” I gave Mabel a beseeching look.

“Why don’t you at least wait until you’ve had some food in you, Ev?” she said. “It won’t be long until it’s ready.” She took a slurp from the gravy spoon.

“I’m not a bloody child, you know,” my mother said, slamming her hand down on the table, making it wobble from side to side. “You might have been able to boss me around when we were kids, but you can’t tell me what to do now.” She pouted and added, “Anyway, I have been eating. I’ve polished off them chocolates you brought.” The box of Milk Tray sat ransacked on the counter.

Mabel gave a hopeless shrug. “Oh, go on, Jesse, pour your mother another drink. At least it’ll shut her up while I get the rest of this dinner cooked.”

My mother watched me with narrowed, expectant eyes. “Go on, you heard your auntie Mabel,” she said, hitting the table even harder. This time it groaned slightly as it wobbled.

I poured about an inch of sherry into my mother’s glass and pushed it toward her. She looked at it scornfully, then heaved herself up, leaned across the table, grabbed the bottle, and filled the glass to the top.

Half an hour later, I looked out the kitchen window to see my father pull into the driveway and Granddad emerge from the passenger side. His gray hair was so shiny with Brylcreem that it looked wet, and as he crossed the front garden, swathed in an oversized black wool coat, he made me think of a massive sea mammal—a walrus or one of those elephant seals I’d seen on a BBC Two wildlife documentary—fearsome and inelegant, and ready to butt chests with anyone who got in his way. When he got within a few yards of the house, he stopped and appraised it. He didn’t seem impressed.

For a while I stayed in the kitchen while Mabel bustled around like a woman possessed. She stirred and agitated pans, put things in and
pulled things out of the oven. Moving through clouds of steam, her face was damp and rosy, and her chest—revealed by the plunging neckline of her skintight orange sweater—was flushed a patchy red. I offered to help, but she brushed me away. And since my mother, now staring foggy-eyed and wordless at her empty sherry glass, wasn’t exactly my idea of good company, I left and wandered into the living room. There, while my father stared at a Bugs Bunny cartoon, Granddad and Frank were engaged in a somewhat one-sided discussion of the character-building merits of military service.

“I mean, just look at the state of youngsters these days,” Granddad said as I entered the room. “All them lads with hair past their shoulders. And the lasses, my God. When I was young, the lasses put some effort into their appearance. Not anymore—oh, no. Far as I can tell, they sleep in their clothes and never so much as run a comb through their hair.” He looked at me and shook his head disapprovingly.

I had on the same outfit I’d worn at the Christmas disco. And though it probably didn’t match Granddad’s antediluvian fashion taste, I had carefully ironed it the night before. I’d also taken care to brush and style my hair and had thought I looked quite presentable before I descended the stairs that morning. I opened my mouth to protest Granddad’s pronouncements, but it was hard to interrupt him once he was in a flow.

“This country, going to the dogs, it is,” he continued. “It’s all them hippies and peacenikers or whatever they call themselves. No wonder England’s in such a mess. Can you imagine it, if we’d been the same when I was younger? Hitler about to kick in the bloody door and us responding by growing our hair and preaching free love. We’d have all been speaking German and living on sauerkraut by now. I’ll tell you one thing, erm—” He narrowed his eyes and waved at Frank. “What’s your name again, laddy?”

“Frank. Frank’s the name and I—”

“Like I was saying,” Granddad interrupted, “lads need to look like
lads. Need to act like them as well. Best thing you could do for them is give them a short back and sides and make them do their national service. Never did Mike any harm.” He looked over at my father and bellowed, “Did it, Mike?”