Then the man with a stall on the street corner offered her a cut-price Christmas tree. She shouldered it home. Her landlady saw her arriving.
‘I see you are going to get pine needles all over the carpet,’ she said.
‘It’s seasonal,’ said O’Brien. ‘Thanks for the sardines. Would you like some of these satsumas?’
The landlady shook her head. ‘And something has happened to your hair.’
‘Yes,’ said O’Brien, ‘but it’s a secret.’
‘I hope it is not because of a man.’
‘No, it’s because of a woman – sort of,’ said O’Brien.
‘I am open-minded,’ said the landlady. ‘I am Hungarian.’
She disappeared into her parlour.
O’Brien was cooking beetroot linguine in a red T-shirt and red skirt when Tony arrived with a bottle of red wine. He put his arms round her. ‘You kept your hair on, then?’
‘Looks like it,’ said O’Brien.
‘That fairy – is she just for Irish folks or would she grant me a wish too?’
‘What do you want?’
‘To spend Christmas with you.’
‘I can handle that one myself,’ said O’Brien.
They opened the wine and drank to each other, and to Santas, gnomes and fairies, pixies and pixels, wherever found.
O’Brien strung her little window with fairy lights, and outside the night was strung with stars.
y father was born in 1919; a celebratory war baby they soon forgot to celebrate.
He was born in Liverpool by the docks. He left school at twelve and worked alongside the men, when there was any work. This was the Great Depression – not only in Britain, but in the USA too, and Liverpool was a major port. Around one-third of working-age Liverpool men were unemployed.
Those days of casual work were all zero-hour contracts – you went down to the docks at dawn and hoped you’d be picked for a day’s paid work, and maybe told to come back tomorrow.
So Dad didn’t grow up with much, not even socks – which guaranteed that for the rest of his life he was one of those unusual men who LOVE being given socks for Christmas. Just plain woollen socks. Much better than lining your boots with newspaper.
Christmas brought another treat too: sherry trifle.
This was thanks to Del Monte Canned Fruit Cocktail – the cocktail name coming from the fact that, in the early days of Del Monte, this fruit mix had alcohol in it.
Dad’s job down at the docks was unloading cargo of every kind (like Eddie, the longshoreman in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge), but the best kind of cargo was foodstuffs, and the best kinds of foodstuffs were things you could slip in a poacher’s pocket and keep for later; that was cans.
So every Christmas his mother made the family sherry trifle. And when Dad married in 1947 rationing was on, but somehow he managed to eat his annual sherry trifle. My mother was working in the Co-op stores at the time, so that might have been where the tins came from.
My parents were obsessed with tinned food. Mrs Winterson still had her War Cupboard in the 1960s, stacked with stuff that would poison us if it was ever to be opened. But it was never to be opened; it was an insurance policy against Communists or Armageddon, whatever came first.
But we did eat tinned fruit – cheaper than fresh – and, until I got a Saturday job working on a fruit and veg stall on the market, tinned fruit was our treat on Sundays – and tinned fruit always went into the sherry trifle.
For me, growing up in the 1960s, sherry trifle meant Christmas. And Dad made it.
YOU NEED
Old cake
Ratafia biscuits. Optional but nice.
Jelly. Make a pint from a jelly block.
Fruit. Large tin of Del Monte Fruit Cocktail.
Custard. Tin of Bird’s Custard.
Double cream (you can use a tin of condensed milk)
Harveys Bristol Cream sherry
Tube of hundreds and thousands
About the old cake: fancy cooks want you to make a sponge specially – and I understand that shop-bought sponge fingers aren’t for everyone. The point about food is that a lot of it used to be left-overs and recycling. Same here. A dry, old cake is just what you want for a trifle because a fresh cake has moisture in it and gets soggy once you pour in the sherry. A dry cake soaks up the sherry and sits firm and content at the bottom of the bowl. So now you know.
METHOD
Get out your best cut-glass bowl from a dusty shelf at the top of the cupboard. Or find one in a charity shop for the right look. Wash it.
Single-layer the old cake in chunky slices on the bottom of the bowl and a little way up the sides as with bread-and-butter pudding – another great pud made from a base of stale left-overs.
Crumble in some ratafia biscuits for an almond taste – you can use fancy Amaretti.
Pour over the sherry – standing back a little, as the fumes from a fresh bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream are quite heady. Leave for 5 minutes to soak in. Do not drink the rest of the bottle until you are desperate.
Pour in the fruit cocktail. One tin or two is up to you.
Pour the liquid jelly over the fruit and sponge and leave in the fridge to set. In our case no fridge was needed as the house was so cold (see ‘Mrs Winterson’s Mince Pies’).
When the jelly is set you can spread the custard in a thick layer on top.
Then, for the true triumph of a sherry trifle, pipe the cream in peaks on top of the custard. (You can just spoon it on if you prefer, but a piping bag was a big part of wartime England and beyond.) This is the moment where a couple of tins of condensed milk can substitute for cream, but I don’t recommend it.
Decorate with hundreds and thousands – these look like mini multicoloured ball bearings.
Put it all back in the fridge and serve when you are ready.
Modern people use fresh or frozen raspberries, make their own custard and usually leave out the jelly. They top it with flaked almonds and truly it is a thing of beauty.
But one day you may find yourself with some old cake, a tin of custard, a tin of fruit cocktail, a few cubes of jelly, some sweet sherry and a bit of cream – or maybe even a tin of condensed milk if you are camping. These things happen.
And you will know what to do.
In 2008 my father died – but not before he had spent his last Christmas on earth with me.
If you’ve read my memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? you’ll know something about that last Christmas.
Dad was eighty-nine and too weak to sleep upstairs – I had him on cushions in front of the fire and I was sure he would die that Christmas night. He had stopped eating, except for . . . yes, he wanted a sherry trifle, and not the fancy kind.
I made it for him and we watched Toy Story on TV.
Three days later, back up north, he died.
I think about that time and, without being sentimental, I am sure that if we can find reconciliation with our past – whether parents, partners or friends – we should try and do that. It won’t be perfect, it will be a compromise, and it doesn’t mean happy families or restored bonds – there is often too much damage, too much sadness – but it might mean acceptance and, the big word, forgiveness.
I have learned, painfully, over the years that the things I regret in my life are not errors of judgement but failures of feeling.
So I am glad of that last Christmas with my dad – not because it rewrote the past, but because it rewrote our ending. The story, for all its pain and sometimes horror, did not end tragically; it ended with forgiveness.
THE SECOND-BEST BED
re there things that cannot be explained?
And if there are, how do we explain them?
My closest friend, Amy, left the city this summer to live three hours out of town in a rambling o
ld house that had no heating.
She and her husband, Ross, want to have children. Ross is ten years older than Amy; he had his own place and a good IT business when they married, and his dream has always been to bring up his kids in the country – the way he was brought up.
Amy’s a midwife, and the local hospital is glad to have her. Ross can mostly work from home as long as he has a satellite connection and, while Amy has been fixing up the house, the summer for him has been about installing the mast.
By Christmas-time, they were ready for guests and parties, and so I packed up my car and set off. I was glad to go. My own relationship hasn’t worked out so well. I know Amy hopes something will happen between me and Ross’s younger brother, Tom. I’ve met Tom and I think he’s gay.
I was the last to arrive. Directions aren’t my USP, and my car is too old and too cheap to have a navigation system. The twisty, frosty roads didn’t leave any scope for speed, and I had to slow down at every junction to follow the printed-out route on the passenger seat.
When I finally reached the house, Amy was pulling dinner out of the oven, so Ross showed me upstairs to dump my bags and freshen up.
‘We’ve put you in this room. We call it the Second-Best Bed. Ours is the master bedroom, just down the hall. I’ve put the boys on the next landing, out of our way.’
The room was big and square with a bay window overlooking the rear of the house. It was warm and well-lit, with a fluffy rug on the polished wood floor and a desk under the window. The bed was a four-poster.
‘The bed came with the house,’ said Ross. ‘Been here since 1840, so I’m told. We bought a new mattress, don’t worry.’
A gong sounded downstairs. ‘That came with the house too,’ said Ross. ‘She loves it.’
He left me while I washed my face, brushed my hair and put on a lighter shirt. It was almost hot in here. Not what I expected from a country house. I looked round the room and smiled. I was being looked after. I started to relax after the drive.
At dinner Tom and Sean hugged me and wanted all the news. Tom works in TV, and Sean is Amy’s college brother studying to be a doctor. Their whole family is medical. Amy didn’t go down the doctoring route – not because she isn’t smart, but because she loves so much of life. She’s a potter and a cook and she wants to be a mum, and she knows, because she’s seen both her parents do it, how much of you it takes to be a good doctor.
I love Amy. She was starting her biology degree while I was in my final history year. We hit it off straight away. Amy leaving the city is difficult for me. It was difficult for me when she married Ross. But we’re fine. Ross can be prickly sometimes – he’s possessive – but mostly, we’re fine.
In the kitchen, Amy stretched up to hug me; I am nearly a foot taller than her. It was wonderful to see her again. She’s like a part of me.
At dinner, everyone talking at once, we made our Christmas plans – the movies we wanted to watch, the games we wanted to play. Some people from the village were coming round in a day or two – get to know the neighbours.
By 11pm I was yawning my head off. I needed an early night. ‘I’ve put a hot-water bottle in your bed,’ said Amy.
‘Just like old times,’ I said, thinking about when we shared a flat before Amy moved in with Ross. Everybody said goodnight as I left the room. Except Ross.
I was half dozing when I heard the others making their way upstairs. There was no sound outside. No main road. No people. I fell deeply asleep.
What time was it when I woke? My watch and phone were on the desk where I had left them. All I knew was that the house was still.
I had been lying on my back, and I turned over in the bed.
There was someone next to me.
I put out my hand. Yes. There was someone else in the bed.
The body lay still. Whoever it was wore thick flannel pyjamas or a heavy nightdress. And whoever it was was cold. I could hear breathing. Slow, low, irregular breathing.
The light switch was on the wall. Easy to find when I had slipped into bed and put out the light. Now my hand was slithering over the wall, but I couldn’t find the switch.
My heart was beating hard but I felt in control. Whoever it was, they were asleep.
I got out of bed carefully. Immediately I was shivering. The room was so cold. I went to the window, opened the curtains and looked out over the garden. I hadn’t seen it before, but there was Ross’s mast, and the earthworks around it. A half-moon gave some light.
Not wanting to, I turned back and looked at the bed. Yes, there was a shape, lying on its back, I thought, though the bed covers were pulled up and the head was in shadow. The figure was long and narrow. Not a woman.
Was it Sean? Tom? Had one of the boys stayed up and got drunk and stumbled into the wrong room?
This was my room, wasn’t it? Yes, I could see my bags. I hadn’t sleepwalked, then. Had my visitor?
But the awful temperature of the room propelled me away from the window, to my dressing gown flung on a chair, and then I was out of the door and down the stairs.
The house was silent. No sound came from the corridors except for a little bit of snoring. I went to the kitchen and put the light on. Normal. Everything normal. The hum of the fridge. The dishwasher light flashing its finish. The table cleared. The big ticking clock on the wall that said 4am.
I opened the fridge, heated milk. Ate chocolate biscuits. All the things you do in winter, in the middle of the night, when you’re sleepless or scared.
And then I curled up on the battered sofa under somebody’s coat and fell asleep.
This is what I dreamed.
I’m in an apothecary shop. The shelves are lined with glass jars filled with herbs, powders, granulations, liquids. There’s a set of brass weighing scales with weights piled up like counters. An old man is weighing a substance on the scales. He tips it into a paper funnel, twists the ends and hands it to the woman standing before him. She’s young, well-dressed, with a bonnet and an anxious face.
‘Is that all there is?’
‘That’s all you can afford.’
‘For pity’s sake!’
The old man looks at her, leers. ‘What will you give me in kind?’
The young woman shudders, takes the paper and leaves the shop.
I was woken by Amy, gently shaking my shoulder and standing over me with a mug of coffee.
‘Sally? What happened?’
I sat up, stiff and groggy. ‘Someone got into bed with me last night.’
Amy sat on the edge of the sofa. ‘What?’
‘Whoever it was wrapped themselves in their flannel pyjamas and didn’t so much as say hi. But it was weird. I think one of the boys must have wandered into the wrong room. Were they up late drinking?’
‘Let’s go up,’ said Amy.
Together we went back upstairs. Someone was filling a bath.
I opened the door into my room.
‘God, it’s cold in here!’ said Amy. ‘I’ll get Ross to check your radiator. We had a new boiler installed.’
We looked at the bed. It was empty.
My side had clearly been slept in, the covers thrown back where I had got up in the night. The curtains were half-open, as I had left them. My things were in the room. The other side of the bed was undisturbed. The covers were neatly pulled up. The pillow was plump.
Amy walked round the three sides of the bed not against the wall.
‘I hate to tell you this, love, but I think you’ve been dreaming. Was it about Tom?’
‘No!’ I said. ‘How embarrassing.’
We were laughing. She gave me a hug. ‘Come on, night-walker. Bacon sandwich?’
‘Let me shower; I’ll be down in fifteen.’
I went into the bathroom. Everything was as I had left it. There was no sign of any human presence but my own.
/> At breakfast, Amy told the others about my night-time adventure. There was a lot of laughter at my expense, but I didn’t mind. It was a relief to be in daylight and with my friends. We were going for a crisp winter walk to cut boughs to decorate the house.
All I had seen of the countryside last night was through my headlights. Now, in the dazzling winter sun, I can see why people like this kind of thing. It’s clean, the air smells of pine and woodsmoke. The wood itself is just a little way down from the house. Amy has baskets and string, and she wants us to cut holly and whatever we can find.
The boys are with Amy; they’re going to do a bit of tree-climbing and get some mistletoe. Amy starts unskeining ivy from ancient trees.
‘Get some pine cones, will you, Sally? There’s loads at the edge of the wood.’
I go towards the wood and start foraging on the forest floor.
It’s pleasurable work, and I’m absorbed. I can hear the others a little way off, but I can’t see them.
Soon I’m moving deeper into the wood on my quest.
It’s so beautiful. The branches of the trees are hung with last night’s frost. It’s a winter wonderland and I feel like I’m in a Christmas card.
I must have wandered, because ahead of me, through the trees, there’s a small building, like a hut made of stone. I go towards it, out of curiosity, my boots leaving crisp, clean prints in the snow. I can easily find my way back again.
The hut is a tiny cottage, long since abandoned, the chimney stack fallen into a pile of bricks by the rotten window. The roof tiles were still intact, and there was a wooden front door, now silvered with age and damp. I looked in through the dirty window. A cast-iron cooking range was set into one wall, still with two ancient implements hanging on hooks above it.
I walked round. Another window. This time into a bedroom. The iron bedstead was in the middle of the room, and on the wall a mouldered picture of a figure kneeling in front of the cross. The lettering said forgive us our trespasses.
I shivered. The Victorians loved shade, and this little house was built in the shade of two enormous spruce trees. It must have enjoyed little light, even in summer.