But it would not be too late to rescue Christmas if she chose to. If she chose to open up some of the windows in her heart that Jack had made her close. That she had closed out of blind love for him that was not real love, it was infatuation and fear of losing him.
She thought it all through, slowly, clearly, and without emotion. It would suit them all, but there would be problems, of course, foolish not to face the problems.
There must be no aura of pity about it. No hint of the Last Chance Saloon. If Penny were going to do it, she would spend not one minute of her time trying to keep the peace between the gruff and distant Miss Hall and the sulky, resentful Lassie. She took a deep breath and looked at the child sitting at the desk in front of her. Was it her imagination or had she actually pushed her hair behind her ears. Her face looked if not alert, at least responsive.
“Lassie,” she said.
“Have you thought it all out?” Lassie asked.
“Yes, and I’m going to offer you something. A lot depends on what you say, so listen to me until I’ve finished.”
“All right,” Lassie said agreeably.
She listened and there was a silence.
“Do you have a nice big flat?” she asked.
“No, it’s not very nice, I never did much with it, I never thought I’d stay there long, you see. But there is room. A spare room with a sofa bed for Miss Hall, you could bring a sleeping bag and have the sitting room and the telly if you turn it down low. I have my own room.”
“There’s ten days before Christmas,” Lassie said impassively.
“Yes. So what?” Penny didn’t know whether to be pleased or annoyed that the child was taking it all so matter-of-factly. To be invited to stay with two teachers for Christmas was surely not something that came your way every day.
“I meant we could get it looking nice, paint it up a bit maybe, put up a tree, practice cooking. I don’t suppose any of us are much use at that.”
“No.” Penny couldn’t hide a smile.
“Will she have any money?” Lassie cocked her head toward the staff room.
“No, I don’t imagine so, but I have enough. Nothing luxurious.”
“They’ll probably give me some money, I can bring that, I mean they’ll be so glad to get rid of me.”
“You can’t live with me forever, you know, Lassie, just Christmas.”
“That’s all right, that’s all we’ll need each other for,” Lassie said.
“I’ll go and tell Miss Hall. I’m sure she’ll agree.”
“She’ll be mad if she doesn’t,” Lassie said sagely.
Miss Hall listened impassively. Penny began to wonder was the world filled with people who took everything very lightly.
“Yes,” she said eventually, “that would be very nice. I’m glad you told her about my predicament, after all, I told you about hers. So we’re all right. You’re the only problem.”
“What do you mean I am the problem?” Penny was so indignant, she could hardly speak. Here she was offering these two misfits a home for Christmas and now suddenly she was defined as the one with the problem.
“Well, it must be a man, a married man,” said Miss Hall without any condemnation in her tone. “And since you haven’t had time to discuss this new arrangement for Christmas with him, is there not a possibility that you may regret your invitation to us, or that he’ll resent it, or that it will seem somehow the wrong thing to have done?” Miss Hall asked as mildly as she might have asked were there more biscuits with morning coffee.
“No. No, there is no possibility of that. None whatsoever,” Penny said.
“And you mustn’t take this kind of thing on every year, dear.” Miss Hall was solicitous. “You are such a good warm girl, it would be easy to find yourself taking on lame ducks instead of taking on someone undamaged to love them and to be loved back.”
It was said softly and with great warmth, and yet Penny knew she must respond in practical brisk tones.
“You are good to say that.” She smiled. “And of course you’re right, it’s just one-off, just this Christmas, after that we’ll all be cured and ready to get on with whatever there is to get on with.”
She would have plenty to write to Maggie about, and little to say to Jack. Because Jack would know it was no empty gesture, no seeking his attention. Just a sign that she was indeed cured and well on the way to recovery.
A HUNDRED
MILLIGRAMS
If you stayed with Helen’s mother until Easter, she’d still complain that you were leaving too early after Christmas. So this year they decided to be firm. They would arrive on the Sunday night and they would leave on Thursday. Four nights under her mother’s roof and almost four full days. This year, their tenth Christmas together in Mother’s house, they would avoid all the pitfalls of other years. They would list them in advance.
There was the cold. Mother’s house was freezing. So they would give her a gas heater, one you could buy cylinders for, then she couldn’t complain that it was eating electricity or running away with fuel bills since they would provide the cylinders. They would wear warm clothes and take two hot-water bottles each. They would never shiver in public nor would they spend any time at all trying to persuade her to get central heating.
Then there was the matter of drink. They would just provide their own bar up in the bedroom, cunningly disguised as part of their luggage. They would need many more drinks than Mother’s sideboard would offer, and they would have to take them in private. Mother was a great one for spotting broken veins, shaking hands, signs of liver damage where none existed. Then there was Mother’s advice. They would listen to it with blank, polite faces. This year they would not rise to the bait, this year they would not be drawn into an argument they couldn’t win. They would say to themselves and each other as soon as they woke, the tips of their noses freezing in that igloo of a bedroom … they would say, “Mother is not technically very old. But Mother has always had the mind of an old woman. She will not change so we must change and not allow ourselves to be hurt by her.” They would chant that at each other. Then surely it couldn’t be too bad.
And indeed it wasn’t too bad. This tenth Christmas was a lot better than the ones that had gone before. The house was warmer for one thing, and they had invited neighbors in for sherry and mince pies at intervals. That cut down on the amount of time left for Helen’s mother to shake her head sadly and say she didn’t know what the world was coming to, and that values had all changed and not for the better.
It was Thursday morning. Today they were going to leave. They had planned to take Mother out to lunch. The boot of the car would be packed already. They would drop her home after the meal in the hotel and they would fly off home, guilty but free, and this year congratulating themselves on having kept the peace.
Helen leaned over and gave Nick a kiss. He reached for her but she leapt smartly out of bed. That was another thing that you couldn’t do in Mother’s house. It felt wrong, you had the notion she could come in the door at any time. Anyway there was plenty of time for all that back home.
“I’ll make us a cup of tea instead,” she said.
“All right,” Nick grumbled.
Her mother was in the kitchen. “Wouldn’t you think he’d get up and get you a cup of tea.” There was a hard, thin line of discontent. Helen reminded herself to watch it, she must not allow herself to become defensive, she must let no note of anything mutinous into her voice.
“Oh, we take it in turns,” she said lightly.
“A lot else he has to do. Any man in his position should be glad to make you tea and take it up to you—honored to be allowed to make you tea.”
“Look, while I’m here why don’t you go back to bed too and I’ll bring you a cup.”
“No, I’m up now. I might as well stay up. It’s back to normal for me now that you have to go. I thought you were going to stay till the New Year at least, and Miss O’Connor was saying that she was surprised …”
“
Yes, she has a great capacity for being surprised, I’ve noticed that,” said Helen, banging out the cups and saucers. Then she remembered. Only five more hours. Be nice, be calm. Nobody except us gets hurt in the end.
“Did she have a nice Christmas herself, Miss O’Connor I mean?” she asked in staccato tones.
“I’ve no idea. She goes to a sister. It’s all she has.”
The kettle was taking an age to boil.
“Does he lie in bed all day at home now? Does he get dressed at all?”
Calm, Helen. Slow. Fix on the smile. “Oh, we usually get up about the same time, you know. One day I make the breakfast, the next day he does. Then we take Hitchcock for a walk and I get the bus; Nick gets a paper and goes home.” Her voice was bright and sunny, as if she were telling a tale of an ideal lifestyle.
“And has he turned his hand to cooking even?”
“Oh yes indeed. Well, you saw over Christmas how much he likes to be involved with everything.”
“He only carried plates in and out, from what I could see.”
The kettle must have two holes in the bottom of it, no container ever took three hours to boil. Helen smiled on and fussed with a tray.
“Trays, is it? There used to be a time when two mugs of tea did fine in the morning.”
“You have such nice things here, it’s a pity not to use them.”
“I suppose he can’t wait to get his hands on them altogether. I saw the way he was admiring that cabinet. Fetch a good price, he said.”
“I think Nick was trying to reassure you, Mother, you said that you had no possessions, no antiques. Nick was pointing out to you that you do have nice pieces of furniture.”
“He’s in a poor position to point anything out, a man who did what he did. I wouldn’t thank him for pointing things out to me.”
“That would be a pity, Mother.” There was steel in her voice. Helen knew she was on the thinnest ice yet. Usually it had been hint and innuendo. Now it was being said straight out.
“No I mean it, Helen, to humiliate you and me. To make us the object of pity here. Don’t think that everyone doesn’t know. Everyone knows. It’s only because I have always been on my own, always had to bear the burden, that I’m able to do it again.”
“I don’t think it’s a humiliation for me or for you that Nick is redundant. All over the country people are being laid off work. The one it’s worst for is Nick, and we’re lucky that we have something coming in. And that we don’t have five children like some of his colleagues have.”
“Well, that’s another thing. Ten years married and no children, just a dog with a ridiculous name, Hitchcock. Who would call a dog a name like that?”
“We thought it was a nice name, and we love him. And we don’t inflict him on you, now do we? He’s in a kennel, looking out, waiting for us.”
Wrong. Wrong. She shouldn’t have said that. It showed an eagerness to be away. Too late to try to retrieve it. Was that actually a sound out of the kettle, did it intend to boil after all?
“I don’t know how you put up with it, Helen, you who had everything. I really don’t know how you take it all, instead of having some spirit.”
“If I could get Nick a good job in the morning there’s no one who’d be more delighted than myself.” She had the smile of a simpleton on her face now, willing her mother to drop the conversation, to go no farther down the path where she was leading.
“I don’t mean just about the job. I mean about the other thing,” her mother said. And now it was said, it had to be acknowledged.
“Yes?” Polite, interested, but giving nothing away.
“Don’t yes me, Helen, you know what I mean. The woman. Nick’s woman.”
“Oh yes, well, that’s all over now.” Still light, no evidence of the heavy lump of putty gathering in her chest.
“What do you mean it’s over? It’s not like Christmas that it’s here and then it’s gone. It’s not simple like that.”
“It is really, Mother, that’s exactly what it is.”
“But how can you let him away with it? How can you bear him with you after … after all that?”
“Nick and I are very happy, we love each other, that was just something that happened. It was a pity that people got to know about it but they did.”
The kettle had boiled. She scaled the teapot.
“And you go on as if nothing has happened, after all that.”
“What is the alternative, Mother? Just tell me. What else would you like me to have done? What would you have liked, Mother, if I had asked you?”
“I’d like for it never to have happened.”
“So would I, so would I, and I think so would Nick and so would Virginia. But it did happen.”
“Was that her name, Virginia?”
“Yes, that’s her name.”
“Well, well. Virginia.”
“But tell me, Mother. I’m interested now, what would you like me to have done? Left him? Got a barring order? Tried to get an annulment? What?”
“Don’t raise your voice at me. I’m only your mother who wants the best for you.”
“If you want the best for me, then stop torturing me.” Helen’s eyes filled with tears. She went upstairs with the tray of tea. “I’ve blown it,” she sobbed to Nick, “on the last bloody morning I’ve blown it.”
He laid her head on his shoulder and patted her until the sobs ceased.
“Let’s put some brandy in our tea,” he said, “and get back under the covers before you become a relic of the Ice Age.”
It would have been nice if nobody had known about Virginia, Helen knew. She had known from the start, but she had said nothing. She thought that it would not last. Virginia was young and pretty and silly and worked in Nick’s office. That kind of thing happened all the time, very very rarely did it break up people’s marriages. If the wife was sensible and kept her head. Only confrontations were dangerous, and why make a perfectly decent, honorable man like Nick be forced to choose between his practical wife, Helen, and the pretty little Virginia? Why not take no notice and hope that Virginia found some other man. That is precisely what would have happened and was about to happen, and it would all be past history if it hadn’t been for the accident.
It was two Christmases ago and there was Nick’s office party. Helen had begged him not to take the car. The place would be full of taxis. Why have the responsibility? They had argued good-naturedly about it at breakfast. They worked out milligrams, how many would make you drunk. They agreed that they could both drive a car perfectly after four times the permitted amount, but that some people couldn’t so that was why the rules had to be so strict and the limit made so absurdly low. He had promised that if they all got really bad, he would leave the car there and sneak in for it the next morning. Helen knew that his romance with Virginia was coming to an end, she had been happier then than for a long time before.
She realized that Nick wasn’t staying out so late, there were fewer furtive phone calls. She congratulated herself on having weathered the storm.
At seven o’clock Virginia had telephoned her very drunk and tearful. Virginia had asked her to be especially nice to Nick over Christmas because Nick was a wonderful person, a really wonderful person, and would need a lot of consolation. Helen agreed, grimly thinking that the only thing worse than being sober and receiving a telephone call from a drunk was to be the wife receiving a telephone call from the mistress. The combination of the two was heady stuff.
A little later Nick had phoned saying he hoped that some of the girls hadn’t phoned her saying anything silly. Helen said it was all incomprehensible but please don’t drive home. Nick said he had to take this silly girl home, she was making a fool of herself. He hung up before Helen could beseech him to get a taxi.
Nick had told her later that the drive was something he would remember for the rest of his life. The drive rather than the accident.
The streets seemed to be full of tension and danger, the lights of every car
were hostile, there were drivers peering through windscreens in the rain, there were unseasonal hootings, and abuse was hurled in a most unfestive manner.
Beside him Virginia, who had been sick, was sobbing and clutching at his arm. She hadn’t meant to telephone Helen, but it came over her that Helen should be informed. Earlier that day she had told Nick she was going away for Christmas with someone else. Now she seemed full of regrets and second thoughts, she wanted reassurance that she had done the right thing at every turn. Nick was concentrating hard on the road and didn’t answer, she pulled his arm and the car swerved into the left lane right into the path of a big truck.
Virginia lost two teeth, broke her shoulder, and cracked two ribs. Nick lost his driving license for three years, the firm lost the car, but since it also lost Nick and most of his colleagues some months later that wasn’t very important. The case went on and on, and insurance companies provided more and more explanations on each side, and Virginia gave an interview to a paper about how her chances of matrimony might well be lessened by her facial injuries and referred to having a fling with a married man in her office, a married man who had managed to destroy her life completely. Somewhere in the world there is always someone who sees things in papers and brings them to the attention of other people, and somewhere there was somebody who managed to send it to Mother’s friend Miss O’Connor, with the name of the firm and the coincidence of the accident and everything they thought Helen’s mother should know.
For two years she had managed not to speak aloud about it, only making allusions. But this morning it had come out. And Helen hadn’t been ready. “I’m sorry,” she snuffled into her brandy-flavored tea. “You’ve been so marvelous, and now I’ve thrown it all away. She’ll sulk during lunch, and it’s all been wasted.”
Nick warmed his ice-cold hands on the nice cup of tea and brandy and stared ahead of him. Downstairs they could hear Helen’s mother banging the furniture about a bit. It was a message as clear as any drumbeat in a jungle, a message that she was annoyed and upset and that things would not be easy when they got up.