The woman in the middle lit a cigarette. She remembered where she was and was truly shocked at herself and dropped it. It rolled under the kneeling pad and lay there smoking itself, and when she bent down to get it back she caused the whole row of people to buckle and had to be hauled up, off balance, by the other two, before she could grind the cigarette out on the linoleum with the pointed toe of her shoe. This set all three snuffling with laughter through the Gospel, choking it back as the ageing priest read out the story one more time; no room at the inn, the terrified shepherds surrounded in light, the great throng of the heavenly host praising God and singing.
Then they sang the descant to O Come All Ye Faithful in all the wrong verses, when no one else in the church was singing the descant.
At the Sign of Peace the three women were polite and suppressed as they shook hands with the uneasy people in front of and behind them. They threw their arms around each other to wish each other peace. Though actually believe it or not the three of them had only just met that evening you know, as the half-dressed one, the youngest, was telling the man standing next to her in a voice blunt and large with drink, so unintentionally loud that the people right at the front could hear, before she flung her arms around the man’s neck to give him a Christmas kiss of peace. Then, when the Mass was over and it was time to sing, too high, Hark The Herald Angels, one of them sang the words offspring of a virgin’s wum, to rhyme with late in time behold him come, and laughter and anger broke out all round them. Regulars, smiling, outraged or oblivious, who passed the women on their way out at the end, had to step over or guide their children round the legs of the youngest flung out into the aisle with one tortuous-looking shoe dangling off her foot as she lay flat out on the seat with her eyes closed, her head in the lap of the woman in her thirties who, if they stared, coolly wished them a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year, while the eldest, in her fifties, or maybe her forties, hard to tell, thanked them with her slurred eyes and smile for not standing on the girl’s legs.
The priest came back through from the sacristy to find the church empty except for the women. Now they were right up at the front, dangerously close to the altar. Two of them were crouched in front of it at the side of the crib. The third was round the back of the altar waving something in the air, and as the priest came closer he could see that one of the altar boys, who was following her, rubbing his reddened neck and giggling, had let her have his long metal-tipped stick and was explaining to her how to reach up and extinguish the high candles burning round the walls.
The two at the crib-side were bent low over the plaster figures of Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus. They were rearranging the flowers next to the Holy Family. The priest saw one of them pushing a pursed red-veined lily-head through the legs of the standing Joseph.
Now now, girls, he said.
Then he threw the women out.
Can I not finish the candles? I’ve those six still to do, one said.
The boy’ll do that, the priest said. Give him back the stick. Let go, now.
It’s freezing out there, Father. We’ve nowhere to go, the second said.
And Father, besides. This one’s pregnant, the last said with her arm around the shoulders of the youngest woman. You can’t throw her out. She’s about to give birth, honest to God she is. Look.
The woman pulled up the girl’s top. The old priest squinted at the bare midriff, flat and pale with cold. Its button was pierced.
If she’s about to give birth then so am I, by God, he said, and herded them between the open doors. They crowded back at him. He shut one of the doors, thudding a bolt into the stone floor.
Men will soon be able to have babies, the girl was saying. I saw it on the Discovery channel.
But she is, Father, she is, the eldest of the three said. Aren’t you, love? And she’s got nowhere to go. Tell him, Diane.
I am, Father, it’s true. I’m about to be a mother, any minute now, and we’ve nowhere to go. Can we not sleep in the church for the night?
You don’t look in the least expecting to me, the priest said.
It can’t be seen by the naked eye, the girl said. It’s a phantom pregnancy.
She’s giving birth to a ghost, Father, the other said.
A holy ghost, the girl said. It needs to be kept in a church.
She’s full of the holy spirits, the third said.
The priest spoke through the narrow crack before he shut the door. Go home to your families, now, he said.
He turned a key in a lock. They could hear his footsteps fade away into the church still warm from all the people, and a moment later they heard the last car in the car park behind the church, parents taking the altar boy home. The boy had stood behind the priest at the door laughing shyly at their jokes. The youngest woman had tousled his hair, the second youngest had put her hand on his shoulder by his neck and the eldest had beamed at him. His face had flushed with pleasure and heat. Now the car engine stalled, stalled again, then revved up against the cold and tailed away into the night.
The women stood swaying outside the shut door. Their breath came out of them, visible.
The eldest was called Etta. The middle one’s name was Moira. The youngest was Diane.
They helped each other across the road, under the railing and down the side of the riverbank. The river was high and the grass they sat on was frosty. The middle one took out her lighter, lit a cigarette. They lit the candle the youngest one had stolen. It was still freezing, though now there was almost no wind.
Still the night, the youngest said.
Aye, it is still the night, the eldest said looking at the sky. There’ll be a worse frost by tomorrow, she said.
Listen to this, the middle one said. This is true. I swear it. There was this woman.
What woman, the eldest said. Someone we know?
No, look, the middle one said.
What’s she called? the eldest said. Where does she work?
Listen, the middle one said. Someone told me. This is what she did. Her man died and she went and sat on his grave every night for a year. That’s God’s honest truth.
Like that dog in Edinburgh, the eldest said.
The youngest let herself fall backwards. Grass that had been frozen hard rasped next to her ears. Every night? she said. For a whole year? Three hundred and sixty-five nights. Sixty-six, if it was a leap year. She sat up. Why? she said. Did she think he’d come up and say hello?
I don’t know, the middle one said. How would I know?
How did she get past the gateman every night? the youngest said. Did they not lock the cemetery at nights? Did she ever take a night off? Did she take her supper with her? Or did she have it every night before she went out?
I don’t know, the middle one said. I don’t know what she had for her bloody supper.
Kippers, the eldest said.
What happened after the year was up? the youngest said. Sometimes you just feel like them, the eldest said. I don’t have them very often, but tonight I just felt like them.
For Christ’s sake, the middle one was saying. It’s just a story.
They sat, silent. The cold of the river roared in their ears.
Listen to this, though, the eldest said. This is true as well. Because my mother used to tell me this. She’s dead now. But you know how this is Christmas Eve? And how tomorrow’s Christmas Day?
True enough, the middle one said. Her cigarette had gone out. She held the end of it to the candle, then put it in her mouth and sucked. It still wasn’t lit.
Listen, the eldest one said. Things used to happen at midnight of the night before Christmas. Laugh if you like. But I’m telling you. My mother lived in the country when she was a girl. On Christmas Eve at midnight, back then, in the country, you could be standing at a crossroads and you could maybe hear voices.
What voices? the youngest said.
Telling you things, the eldest said nodding her head.
What things? the middle one said.
/> Things that could happen, the eldest said.
Did your mother actually see these voices? the middle one asked.
No, the eldest said. Because if there was water in a well it could turn into wine. But if you saw this happen, listen, you’d to look away, you’d not to look at it, or otherwise you’d be dead within the year.
All that wine, and wasted, the middle one said.
Within the year, the youngest said. That’s only a week. That’s not very long. Or was it within, like, the new year? like, the next year, the year coming?
Within the year, that’s what she always said, the eldest said with her eyes closed.
Seven days, the youngest said. The middle one shook her head.
The eldest was shaking with cold, even in her coat. And sometimes, she said, the water could turn to blood, not wine. But it was the same. If you actually saw this happen, the wine or the blood in your well or your spring, the water changed, you’d be gone within the year.
What about a river, the youngest said. Could that change?
All three of them looked down at the river, high and speeding.
And see that priest in that church, the eldest said. I’m telling you. This is true. That old woman MacKinnon works for him, she’s worked for him since I was a girl, and I’ll bet you six hundred pounds, I’d bet you all six hundred of them, he’s in her bed in there tonight.
She turned, swayed a hand towards the orange glow burning in the upstairs window in the house built on to the church.
I hope so, for his sake, the middle one said. She was shivering now too. It’s bloody cold the night, she said.
Christmas, after all, the eldest said pushing her hands further up inside the cuffs of the coat.
There was one year I got a slinky, the youngest said.
A slinky what? the eldest said. The middle one laughed.
Just slinky, the youngest said. You know. They went down the stairs by themselves.
The middle one was stiff with laughter. The eldest looked bewildered.
It’s a spring kind of thing, the youngest said. I was playing with it on the stairs and National Velvet was on, about Elizabeth Taylor in the race on her horse. It’s an old film, she’s still a child in it. It was all bright reds and browns.
Those films from before were actually brighter colours, the middle one said. They were enhanced. Technicolor.
She’s been through it, that Liz Taylor, the eldest said.
She looks like she has, the middle one said.
She won the National. She cut off all her hair, the youngest said.
What if you lived in a bungalow, and you got a slinky for Christmas? the middle one said.
The eldest watched them laughing.
One time, she said. This was not long after the war either, so God knows where he got it from. My father. This wicker trunk full of fruit, he came in with it under his arm, all the cold came in round him, he put it down on the kitchen floor. My mother’s face, I’m telling you. There were fruits in the basket we couldn’t have imagined if we’d tried. There were fruits I’ve never seen the like of since.
Can you remember what they tasted like? the middle one said.
To this day, the eldest said.
Like eating technicolor, the youngest said.
The eldest nodded.
The other two have gone, one running and the other limping, both chasing a light on the top of a car in case it was a taxi. There’s just her left. The middle one gave her a ten pound note. The other gave her her coat, and she’s wearing it now. It’s wet all up the back from the ground, and the shoulders and arms are still the shape of the older woman, but they’re warm from her. I’ll not need it, the woman had said taking it off and letting it drop as she went. You’ll need it more. We’re getting that taxi.
She looks up. The sky is covered in stars, like white stubble.
The older one has a sick father. That’d be one of the reasons she didn’t want to go home too soon. The other one didn’t seem to have any reason to not want to go home. It could be anything.
She hopes the two women are on their way home to houses that are warm.
She grips her way up the riverbank slope. Below her on the grass are three small dark places where the frost has scuffed away and melted, the places where the three of them were sitting talking. Her head is clearer now, less misty. Earlier, things were moving round her head by themselves, like shapes in a fog. Now they’ve settled down. She sees the church across the road, dismal in the street light. She remembers. They went in there to get warmed up.
It makes her laugh. Now when she goes past that church she can think to herself, I’ve been inside there and put out the candles on Christmas Eve. And there was the old priest too, who threw them out, but not till the end. The man next to her in the row, the one she kissed. All the people from the church tonight, wrapped up for Christmas like rich presents, listening to the old story about a birth in the middle of winter. As if, on Christmas morning, they could open their front doors and find themselves delivered to themselves new-born on their own doorsteps, in a basket like those exotic fruits, or in one of those wine boxes made of expensive wood and full of straw.
She follows the bend of the river. Round the corner and down the street the lights of the city are still on, though most of the city is home by now, asleep, waiting. The altar boy; he’ll be asleep in a small bed somewhere over there with the covers up to his neck and the central heating set to come on by itself in the morning. All over town, all the people sealed with sleep into houses whose roofs, sheened with white just now, will be blackened again where the sun hits them in the morning. And that woman, the one on the grave of the dead man. If she’s on the grave tonight she’s wearing a big sheepskin and gloves and a scarf, and has one of those heaters that campers take on holiday with them, and the heat coming off it is lighting up the cemetery and its trees, all their branches bare and iced, evergreen and iced.
There’s sand on the pavement. She can feel it under her feet. Above her, frost and empty sky. She reaches up and shakes frost off a branch of the tree next to the parking machine. The branch in her hand is all tight closed buds. She lets it flick back up and frost crystals fling off all round the tree, like water off a dog.
The clock on the parking machine is covered in frost lit up from behind. She rubs at it with her cold hand. Two forty-six a.m. She leans on the rail and listens. Nothing but the river, and far away at the back of it some people shouting and singing, celebrating. She wraps the coat closed around her and puts her hands in its pockets. A burnt-down candle; a ten pound note; someone else’s random crumbs and dust.
She starts walking, anywhere, she doesn’t know where.
The street is deserted, except for a man coming towards her on the other side of the road. He is out walking two small Jack Russell dogs in the dark at three o’clock on Christmas morning.
There’s a story in that, she thinks as they pass each other by.
It’s too dark to see his face. Merry Christmas, love, he calls across the road to her. Have a good one.
The words are full of thaw.
Merry Christmas, she tells him back. All the best.
the start of things
It was the end and we both knew it.
What’ll we do about it? you said.
I shrugged. I can’t imagine, I said.
You shook your head. Me neither, you said.
We stood useless in the living room. Its furniture was pointless. I realized I was standing as if waiting politely for you to leave. You were waiting too, poised and formal, as if you had just got to your feet to wish a guest goodbye.
I crossed my arms. You put your hands on your hips.
There were black smudges round your eyes as if you hadn’t slept for weeks. I knew I had the same dark round my own. Outside it was sleeting, the evening was bitterly cold; it was the worst month of the year, the one where the days seem darker, the weeks seem longer, the money seems to take longer to reach people
’s bank accounts.
I sat down on the couch. You sat down next to me. Though the central heating was turned up as high as it would go, the house still seemed to be full of holes. We both stared at the empty hearth in the wall.
You know what? you said.
What? I said.
We could maybe start a fire, you said.
Yes, I said.
I went to get the matches from the bedroom while you took today’s newspaper apart. Then I went out into the sleet to get the logs from the shed. I chose smaller ones as well as a couple of larger ones and then carefully selected a large wet log from the pile outside the shed and balanced it on top of the load because, as you always say, a wet log burns really well on a good fire. But when I came up the garden the back door was shut and wouldn’t open. I put the logs down. I tried the handle again.
I knocked. I knocked harder.
I picked up the biggest and heaviest of the logs and hammered the door hard with it. Woodlice and spiders and bits of rotten wood jolted off the log. Mossy slime smeared the door and came off all up my hands and sleeves. I took a step back and smashed at the door again. You opened the top part of the kitchen window a tiny crack.
There’s no other way to do this, you said through the crack.
You cheap bastard, I said.
Stop it, you said. You’ll damage the door.
You bet I’ll damage the fucking door, I said. It’s my door. I can damage it if I want. And if you don’t open it right now I’ll break all my windows as well.
It’s my house, you said, and shut the window and locked it. We had had those locks put on by a joiner to deter burglars. I could see you behind the condensation. You were by the kettle, you were pretending I wasn’t there. Steam was coming out of the kettle. You opened the fridge and took out the milk. It was me who’d bought that milk; I had bought it at the shop the day before and you just using it like that made me angrier than anything else. I stood in the rainy sleet and shouted and swore. You acted like you couldn’t hear. You took a teabag pensively out of a box as if I didn’t exist, as if I had never existed, as if I were mere audience to you, out in the dark with the rest of the masses watching you, the star of the film, meaningfully making a cup of tea.