She wondered that they hadn’t taken out the cookery books. She would leave them in a conspicuous place, together with all those cookery articles she had cut from the paper and clipped together with a big clothes-peg. But she must stop fussing, she’d be late for work.
Maire was delighted with the invitation to a drink after work. “What happened? Did they all fly off to the Bahamas without you or something?” she asked.
Ethel laughed; that was just Maire’s way, making little of the married state.
She hugged her secret to herself. Her family who were going to do everything. Things were exciting at the office, they were all going to get new office furniture in the new year, the old stuff was being sold off at ridiculous prices. Ethel wondered would Sean like the computer table, or would Brian like the small desk. Nothing would be too good for them this year. But then, did secondhand goods look shabby, as if you didn’t care?
With the unaccustomed buzz of two hot whiskeys to light her home, Ethel came up the path and let herself in the door.
“I’m back,” she called. “May I come into the kitchen?”
They were standing there, sheepish and eager. Her heart was full for them. While she had been out drinking whiskey with lemon and cloves in it, stretching her legs and talking about the new office layout with Maire, they had been slaving. Poor Maire had to go back to her empty flat, while lucky Ethel had this family who had promised her that things would be different this year. She felt a prickling around her nose and eyes and hoped that she wasn’t going to cry.
She never remembered them giving her a treat or a surprise. This is what made this one all the better. For her birthday it had been a couple of notes folded over, from her husband a request to buy herself something nice. Cards from the children. Not every year. And for Christmas they clubbed together to get her something that the house needed. Last year it had been an electric can opener. The year before it had been lagging for the cylinder.
How could she have known that they would change?
They looked at her, all of them waiting for her reaction. They wanted her to love it, whatever they had done.
She hoped they had found the candied peel—it was in one of those cartons without much identification on it, but even if they hadn’t she’d say nothing.
She looked around the kitchen. There was no sign of anything baked or blended or stirred or mixed or prepared.
And still they looked at her, eager and full of anticipation.
She followed their eyes. A large and awkward-looking television set took up the only shelf of work space that had any length or breadth in it.
An indoor aerial rose from it perilously, meaning that the shelves behind it couldn’t be got at.
They stood back so that she could view the full splendor of it.
Sean turned it on with a flourish, like a ringmaster at a circus. “Da-daaaaa!” he cried.
It was black-and-white.
“Terribly sharp image,” Sean said.
“More restful, really, on older eyes, they say,” Theresa soothed her.
“And you wouldn’t need more than RTE 1 anyway, even if you could get it. I mean, too much choice is worse than too little,” said Brian.
“I told you this Christmas was going to be different to the others.” Her husband beamed at her.
From now on she could look at television as well as the rest of them; she’d be as informed and catch up on things and not be left out, just because she had to be in the kitchen.
All around her they stood, a circle of goodwill waiting to share in her delight. From very far away she heard their voices. Sean had known a fellow who did up televisions, Dad had given the money, Brian had gone to collect it in someone’s van. Theresa had bought the plug and put it on herself.
Years of hiding her disappointment stood to Ethel at this moment. The muscles of her face sprang into action. The mouth into an ooooh of delight, the eyes into surprise and excitement; the hands even clasped themselves automatically.
With the practiced steps of a dancer she made the movements that they expected. Her hand went out like an automaton to stroke the hideous, misshapen television that took up most of her kitchen.
As they went back to wait for her to make the supper, happy that they had bought her the gift that would change everything, Ethel got to work in the kitchen.
She had taken off her coat and put on her pinny. She edged around the large television set and mentally rearranged every shelf and bit of storage that she had.
She felt curiously apart from everything, and in her head she kept hearing their voices saying that this Christmas was going to be different.
They were right, it felt different; but surely it couldn’t be on account of this crass gift, a sign that they wanted her forever chained to the kitchen cooking for them and cleaning up after them.
As she pricked the sausages and peeled the potatoes it became clear to her. They had done something for her for the very first time—not something she wanted, but something; and why? Because she had sulked. Ethel hadn’t intended to sulk, but that’s exactly what it had been. What other women had been doing for years. Women who had pouted and complained, and demanded to be appreciated. By refusing to begin the preparations for Christmas, she had drawn a response from them.
Now, what more could be done?
She turned on the crackling, snowy television and looked at it with interest. It was the beginning. She would have to go slowly, of course. A lifetime of being a drudge could not be turned around instantly. If, as a worm, she was seen to turn too much, it might be thought to be her nerves, her time of life, a case for a nice chat with some kind, white-coated person prescribing tranquilizers. No instant withdrawal of services. It would be done very slowly.
She looked at them all settled inside around the color television, satisfied that the Right Thing had been done, and that supper would be ready soon. They had no idea just how different things were indeed going to be from now on.
SEASON OF FUSS
Mrs. Doyle used to begin fussing around October. There was so much to do. The Christmas cakes, the puddings, getting everything out. It drove her children up the wall and down again, particularly since they weren’t children anymore. They were grown-ups.
It would start when she realized that she had lost Theodora’s recipe for the cake, and everything would be turned out on the table. This would reveal new horrors—letters not replied to, knitting patterns that had been promised to friends. All was in disorder, all was confusion, and the very mess that was created served as further proof of how much there was to be done.
“I bought her an album for her recipes,” wailed Brenda. “I even started clipping them out and putting them in for her, but she actually takes them out again and loses them. It’s too bad.”
Brenda’s own flat was something that a business efficiency expert would envy. She was always able to retrieve Theodora’s recipe for the cake or the latest posting dates to America. She would photocopy them for her mother, but it only seemed to add to the fuss. Mrs. Doyle would speculate about where she could possibly have put the originals.
Her other daughter, Cathy, used to have to lie down with cold compresses on her eyes after any hour of Mrs. Doyle’s fussing about the Christmas dinner. To Cathy it was the simplest meal in the whole year. You put a bird into the oven and when it was cooked, you took it out and carved it and ate it. There were potatoes, sprouts, bread sauce, and stuffing to consider, but honestly, unless you were about to throw in the towel, you shouldn’t be frightened of that lot. Mrs. Doyle would go through her schedule over and over, planning all she should do the night before, and what time she should get up. It was as if she were in charge of mission control in Cape Canaveral instead of lunch for her two daughters and son and two extra spouses. It was a meal for six, not a space shuttle.
Michael Doyle said that he sometimes wanted to lie down on the floor and not get up until Christmas was over when his mother began to talk about the cost of everyt
hing. In vain would he urge her not to worry about the price of things. She only had to pay for a turkey and some vegetables. She would have made the pudding and the cake well in advance. Brenda, Cathy, and Michael provided all the wine and the liqueur chocolates, the little extras like a tin of biscuits, or packets of crisps, or a spare set of lights for the Christmas tree to cope with the annual failure of the bulbs to glow.
They all went away drained, back to their houses weary and tense, the spirit of Christmas snuffed out by the buzzing and bustling of the woman who was unable to relax and enjoy the family that gathered around her for Christmas Day.
It was Brenda who decided that this year should be different. Brenda was single and successful at her work and allowed to be a little more bossy than the others. In fact, it was a role she was almost meant to play, and this year she played it for all it was worth.
Cathy had a small baby to think of, a gorgeous five-month-old boy who would be no trouble to anyone, who would sleep peacefully through the hurricane of fuss downstairs, if only Mrs. Doyle would allow him to. Cathy was tired this year, unused to the wakeful nights. She should not have to go through all this business with their mother. And Michael’s wife, Rose, was pregnant, so she too must not be stressed out by this restless, unsettling atmosphere. She should be allowed tranquillity and a chance to talk about birth and babies to her sister-in-law, Cathy.
In September, Brenda decided on her plan of action. They told Mrs. Doyle that as a treat they would cook the Christmas meal. Cathy would make the cake, Rose would make the puddings, and on the day Brenda could cook the main course. Mrs. Doyle was to put her feet up. They would find a Christmas tree for her and decorate it. They would even buy her Christmas cards well in advance and get the stamps so that she did not have to queue for hours at the post office. Mrs. Doyle protested. No, they all said, you’ve been doing it long enough for us; just this once for a change let us do it instead.
Coming up to Christmas they wondered why this had never occurred to them before. Mrs. Doyle was calmer than any of them remembered her having been in her whole life. Sometimes she would begin sentences of urgency, but then she would remember that she had no great onerous duties this year so she would fall silent again. They all lived near enough for her to have a visit from one of them almost every day, and Brenda, Cathy, and Michael congratulated themselves and each other on having reduced the level of fuss by eighty percent. She still worried about icy roads, and whether she had put enough stamps on the calendar she had sent to her cousin, but that kind of thing was just literally incurable. They had cured all that was available for cure. On Christmas Eve the house looked festive. They had put up a tree, bigger and much better decorated than before. Michael and Brenda had enjoyed doing that, they laughed and poured themselves small vodka-and-oranges. It was like being children again. Cathy had come and decorated the room with holly.
Brian had tacked it up high and so that it didn’t fall down and scrape people’s foreheads, as often happened when Mrs. Doyle had tried to shove small spiky bits behind pictures. They had bought cheerful red paper napkins and colorful crackers. Michael had seen to it that there were plenty of briquettes to keep the fire going and an extra box of firelighters. They had set the table for lunch before they left. They kissed Mrs. Doyle and looked forward to the happiest Christmas yet.
She walked around the warm, neat house. Brenda had taken the opportunity of doing a little tidying, as well as just getting things ready for the next day’s meal. The saucepans that held the potatoes and sprouts were shinier, the turkey with its chestnut stuffing, and sausage-meat stuffing as well, was covered with foil. She was to put it in the oven at eleven a.m. That was all she had to do. Perhaps she might look through that kitchen drawer and sort out some of those old recipes. It would please Brenda to see them in that album. But fancy that! Brenda had already stuck them in for her. The drawers were suspiciously tidy, and though she couldn’t actually pinpoint anything that was missing, she felt that a lot of things must have been thrown out.
She would tidy up the food cupboard so that it would impress them when they helped with the washing-up. It was very tidy, actually, and nice clean paper lining the shelves. That was new, surely. Yes, that must have been what Cathy and Rose were doing as they laughed about babies and backache and insisted that Mrs. Doyle sit in at the fire out of their way. And her tea towels had all been washed and were stretched over chairs, so that they would be crisp and dry for tomorrow, and a tray had been set for her own breakfast, the boiled egg she would have when she came back from Mass and waited for them to come. Waited doing nothing after she had made the big journey to the oven to put in the turkey at eleven a.m. The day would be so peaceful, compared to other years. They were very good to her, her children. Very good indeed.
She sat down by the fire and thought about James. She even took down his photograph from the mantelpiece and looked at it hard. This was her twelfth Christmas without him. He would only be sixty-two if he were alive, the same age as she was. It wasn’t old. A lot of their friends had been older than they were and both husband and wife were still alive. It was far too young to have been twelve years a widow at sixty-two. James shouldn’t have died like that. They had hardly had time to say anything to each other and he was gone. Her eyes filled with tears as she heard carol singers going by. Christmas was very hard on widows and people who lived alone.
She was determined not to let her eyes get puffy for tomorrow. Her daughters would peer at her suspiciously and interrogate her.
No. She would remember the good bits of when James was alive; how excited he had been when the children were born; how he had bought drinks for total strangers when his first daughter arrived, and ran around to the neighbors knocking on their windows at the birth of his first son. How he had told everyone of their successes, the number of honors in their exams, the unfairness of Michael’s not getting that job because of somebody else’s pull. She would think of him coming back from work laughing. She wouldn’t think of those last months with the pain and the bewilderment in his eyes, and the constant question, and the constant lying reply. “Of course you’re not going to die, James, don’t be ridiculous.”
Somehow this Christmas it was harder to put things out of her mind. She couldn’t think why. But it was.
They arrived, arms full of presents, up and down the street people saw that Mrs. Doyle was loved and cared for by her children. They saw she had a bright Christmas tree in her window, and they may even have noticed that her brasses were nice and shiny. Brenda had given them a surreptitious rub when her mother wasn’t looking.
The lunch was effortless. Their mother sat in her chair, the baby upstairs slept happily through it all, and Michael and Rose talked happily of next Christmas when their own baby would come to the feast. Brenda was the life and soul of the party and said that she had serious designs on a widower who had recently come to the office, and if she played her cards right she might bring him home for Christmas next year.
They all agreed that it had been the happiest Christmas they had spent.
“Since your father died,” Mrs. Doyle said.
“Of course,” Michael said hastily.
“Naturally we meant that,” Cathy said.
“Obviously, since Daddy died, that’s what we meant,” Brenda said.
They were surprised. Normally she never mentioned Daddy at Christmas, but she didn’t seem upset. It was as if she was saying it for the record.
This time they didn’t all rush home. The washing-up was done in relays, with others staying by the big roaring fire talking to Mrs. Doyle. There was some television viewing, a walk for everyone except Cathy and Rose, who minded one baby and talked about the next.
There was tea and cake, and much later a small plate of cold turkey with some of Brenda’s excellent homemade bread. They all said he would be a lucky widower if Brenda trapped him.
They were gone and the house was warm and tidy still. The wrapping paper had been folded up and stored
in the bottom of the dresser. Mrs. Doyle could never decide other years whether they should keep it or not; this year the decision had been made for her. Her presents were all on the sideboard. Perfume, talcum, a pen and pencil set, a subscription to a magazine, a hand-embroidered cover for the RTE Guide, a bottle of oranges in Grand Marnier, gifts to a woman who was always remembered at Christmas. Why did they make her feel a little uneasy? Perhaps it was the list beside them. Brenda had written out who had given her what. So that there would be no confusion, Brenda had said, when writing to thank. Well, yes. It was useful, of course, but she was sixty-two not ninety-two. They didn’t have to put a bib around her neck and feed her. They didn’t talk baby language to her. Why write down who gave her what? She had little enough to hold in her mind today. She might have enjoyed thinking over who gave which gift.
Normally Mrs. Doyle went to bed exhausted on Christmas night. This year she sat on long at the fireplace and took down the picture of Jim again and wondered why if God was so good, as the priest had said this morning, he had let Jim suffer for all those months and be so frightened and then let him die. She found no answer to the problem, only guilt at thinking badly of God. She went to bed and lay with her eyes open in the dark for what felt like a long time.
They all dropped in over Christmas week. This had always been the way, they would pop in and out as they felt like it. Usually she would fuss and say she had been about to make scones, but this year it was organized like some military campaign. When Rose and Michael came in the morning, they took her a plate of ham sandwiches just in case anyone dropped in. Then when Cathy and Brian came in the afternoon, hey presto, there was their tea! And Cathy brought a bottle of something that was lemon and cloves and whiskey, you just added hot water. So, lo and behold, when Brenda came by there was a nice unusual little snack for her to try.