Read by Carrie Cohen
Oh God – how am I going to tell her? About Christmas. Come to think of it, God, the whole thing’s your fault. So much trouble caused by your blasted son’s birthday! Bloody Capricorns! Knickers, because of Ian I’ve started blaspheming. I’ve become a real old bat, blaming my son-in-law for absolutely everything from the price of peas to the rise of nationalism amongst the lower middle classes.
But seriously, how am I going to tell her? We’ve always spent Christmas day together.
He may be a wizard with financial bonds but he doesn’t understand family. To be fair he helps Emily stuff the goose and load the dishwasher. He even joined in the laughter that first Christmas when the smoke alarm went off and all the residents from their block of flats had to gather in the street due to his over enthusiasm with the lighted brandy. It was nice to meet their neighbours.
Four consecutive years at their riverside apartment. I’d just have one little Bellini so I could drive home allowing Jerry to join Ian supping the cognac and discussing the merits of some fancy red wines bought via a Sunday supplement mixed case offer. Emily would tell me all about her job at the Health Centre and we’d catch up on the tittle-tattle she read on Facebook whilst our chaps talked about football now that both supported the same team. Jerry, from his childhood, being brought up on the Kings Road, and Ian obviously a tactical convert due to Chelsea’s city-boy prestige. Ian went to school in Crystal Palace.
Digression is the first cousin of procrastination and I appear to be mastering both. I must, what is it Mrs Macbeth says, “something” my courage to the sticking place and tell her tonight. Get to her understand. Screw, that's the word! Screw it to the sticking place.
I could start with:
“I don’t want to upset you but ....”
No, never use a negative, that’s what all the counsellors say. Negatives encourage conflict. You have to twist the negative to a positive. So, I’ll take a deep breath, and simply announce,
“Good news, darling, I’m not spending Christmas with you.”
That’s certainly better than,
“Emily, darling, I don’t want to disappoint you but …. “
Actually, will it? Disappoint her? Doubt it will upset him, especially after last year when it was just the three of us, but maybe I shouldn’t even suggest she might be hurt. I can’t be doing with tears. Sometimes she can be quite pathetic. Ian’s hardly done much for her self-confidence. Lots of smiles on the outside but, if you ask me, a bit of a bully underneath. He’s all aftershave and perfectly manicured fingernails.
It’s ridiculous; at my age, struggling to say what I want – or rather what I don’t want. Pity we don’t write letters any more.
Of course Ian would do it by email.
“Subject heading: Xmas 2013.
Message body: You’re on your own this year.
Signature: all the family you’ve got.”
You see, I saw the winter-sun brochures when I went over last Sunday. Were they left deliberately poking out of the magazine rack just so I’d get the message? Did I imagine that Ian mentioned several times that his office would be closed for a full fortnight this year? Emily’s looked so pale lately. She’s certainly losing weight. A holiday would do her good so I don’t know what I’m worried about. I’m doing them a favour. All I need to do is ring her tonight and simply say:
“Darling, you know I’ve been going to that reading group once a week at the library. You know I’ve mentioned a Marjorie and Ken. Well the thing is that Ken has a brother Leo and ….”
And then what? How do I continue?
I could just be direct; modern even.
“The thing is,”
I could just blurt it out,
“Emily, my sweet, the thing is, I want to spend the Christmas holidays with a chap called Leo - shagging him senseless!”
Maybe not.
But I will phone her in a minute and tell her, in a matter of fact manner, that I intend to spend Christmas with my new friends in their holiday cottage in Norfolk. I’ll say that a week there should help me to decide whether to continue to see Leo in the New Year. I’ll be all light-hearted and say that as long as I remember to charge my mobile we’ll be able to speak on Christmas day.
Ian is quick to book a last minute all-inclusive break at a resort in Antigua linked to one of his company’s subsidiaries – whatever that might mean. Seems a strange idea sunbathing in December. Christmas is meant to be constructing snowmen not sandcastles, mulling wine and sledging, not sipping snowballs and snorkelling. Apparently, he says when I drop them at the airport, the resort will also be a good networking opportunity. Emily is less enthusiastic. Her tone is resigned and laden with disapproval. I do believe she considers me to be a harlot. The Christmas card she sends me is smaller than usual, depicting a dour Virgin Mary seated beneath a somewhat tarnished golden star. Such a daddy’s girl! I find myself amused, but stand my ground.
As expected my phone trills on Christmas day.
I’m not ready though. The jingling noise confuses me. I am dazed. I must have dropped off. Where is the damn thing?
“Mum?” Emily sounds anxious.
“Emily!” I pull myself together, “Happy Christmas.
“Happy Christmas, mum!”
“Thank you, darling.”
“Are you all right?” she asks, maybe sensing my air of bewilderment.
“Yes. Fine.”
I walk towards the fridge where my mobile phone’s reception is the weakest.
“Are you having a clckk-ckkk time?” I ask.
“What, mum? You’re cracking up.”
“I said hope you’re having a good clkk clkk .” I shout. “I’m clk-clk garden but there’s hardly any signal here. It's cold but so very pretty now that the snow has settled. Hold on a clk-clk. The trees look like they are dappled with icing-sugar and I’ve a roaring log fire clk-kkkkk back to. Love you.”
“Love you too. Oh, how’s it going with Leo?
“Sorry?”
I open the fridge door and some hissing accompanies the clck-clk sounds.
“Never mind.” She says.
“Try me again hssss on Tuesssss, new year’s eve and …”
I close the fridge door and hang up.
Poor Leo!
My first New Year’s Resolution will be to dump him.
I wonder if he’ll be hurt.
Shall I have him distraught, pestering me almost on the verge of stalking or will I make him a dapper gentleman? He could be the philosophical type, sophisticated even, with a mellifluous voice, hoping we might platonically continue to go to the opera every now and then. I can picture him in a top hat, tails, white silk scarf rakishly lounging over his shoulders. He’ll have a neatly trimmed moustache and twinkling blue eyes.
Whereas distraught Leo would be the sort to dye his hair that shade of brown that never looks natural upon men of a certain age, and he’d wear fair-isle tank-tops and, yes, corduroy trousers which hover half an inch above his ankles. He will nasally plead for a second chance with a tear threatening to ... oh dear, no, I don’t think I could have ever contemplated stepping out with that version.
I open the fridge door. Something caught my eye when I was on the phone.
Eggs! Fried eggs! That’s what I fancy. On toast. White not brown.
After all it is Christmas day, so hang the cholesterol and I’ll fry them in real butter. I’ll do the toast under the grill so the outside’s crunchy but the middle is all warm and doughy so as to catch the yolk as it drizzles through. A lunch fit for a queen. I open a bottle of Merlot and sip some immediately not caring that there’s no one around to insist that I leave it a while to breathe.
Great thing mobile phones! I can be anywhere I choose. And I chose my own sitting room.
You see, Jerry, I just couldn’t face it, going to them for Christmas lunch again. I want to be here, where sometimes, if I concentrate, I can still smell you in the creases of your armchair.
The truth is I couldn’t face being with Emily and Ian; seeing him hold her. Touch her. I don’t …. it’s not that sort of jealously. It’s …. it’s actually anyone in love. I can’t bear it. I can’t watch it. It’s like after the all those miscarriages when all I seemed to see was prams everywhere. Now it’s lovers. “Get a room!” I want to scream. I’ve become a miserable old cow who enjoys baiting my son-on-law. Or rather I wish I did. If I really did enjoy it I’d have been with them now. Oh yes, I could have – Emily is so malleable. Press the right buttons. A touch of angina and she’d never have got on that plane. Only all I actually wanted was to be here, next to an empty chair that still smells of your bloody stupid cigars. I know Emily blames me. Thinks I should have made you totally give up smoking and stopped you from lavishing your food with so much salt.
Maybe I should get a cat. Got to be better than chatting to a stupid chair. This is jolly nice wine. Good to have a drink or two and not worry about driving home. Could get a cat and call it Leo. Could join a book club. Could write a book. Could chat to that fellow I keep bumping into at the garden centre. Probably married. But, never know, might have a brother.
Night night smelly old chair. Perhaps, in the spring, giving you a bit of a clean wouldn’t go amiss.
(c) Carolyn Eden, 2013
Carolyn Eden/Carrie Cohen: About Christmas is Carolyn Eden’s third London Liars story. She was also thrilled that in November Taking the Edge Off was read in Hong Kong and in August her flash fiction Late Night Montage appeared online in .Cent magazine. She also writes sketches and unpublishable novels. Acting under the name of Carrie Cohen, she enjoys sight-reading challenges within a variety of play-reading groups. Carrie has appeared in several London fringe theatres and various low budget films. A “classically trained” actress, Carrie is currently “strutting her stuff” within the Specsavers bingo advert. She is delighted to be reading Carolyn’s story. www.carriecohen.co.uk
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