The Mother of All Christmases

by Milly Johnson

  ‘He didn’t do anything,’ replied Angharad without even having to think about it. ‘What do you mean? He broke off with me. I’d have married him.’

  ‘What?’ Effin’s heart rate went through the roof.

  ‘I’m joking. He was lovely but he wasn’t you and that’s why we would have split up eventually anyway, but it was him that broke it off, not me. And for the reasons I’ve just said.’

  Effin’s blood pressure nudged back down again. ‘Didn’t you once start to tell me that he’d been a bit rough with you?’

  Angharad took a breath. ‘Effin . . . I never said that was Stu.’

  *

  It was Davy MacDuff’s turn to find a surprise visitor on his doorstep that evening.

  ‘Well, well, well. To what do I owe this pleasure, Mr Williams,’ he said. ‘Would you like to come inside? There’s no one else in so we can have exclusive use of the lounge.’

  Effin, all too aware that his hospitality was more than he offered Davy, walked meekly past him inside with a thank you.

  ‘Coffee, tea, biscuits?’ asked Davy.

  ‘No thank you. I won’t be staying. But . . .’ he took a deep, fortifying breath, ‘I need a favour. A big one. Please.’

  ‘A big yin?’ smirked Davy. Quite a turn-up for the books, this contrite, polite Effin. Then he realised that he shouldn’t have fun at the man’s expense because he must be in a bad way to ask for his assistance. ‘Please, take a seat.’

  As soon as Davy sat down, his landlady’s white cat jumped on his knee and he was infused with a Blofeld-type power rush.

  ‘It’s about Cariad,’ said Effin.

  ‘You want to be best man at our wedding?’ asked Davy. ‘Sorry, sorry, couldn’t resist.’

  Effin started to insult him in Welsh then remembered that Davy knew all the words for ‘smug bastard haggis’.

  ‘I’m asking you to betray a confidence,’ he said.

  He had Davy’s interest now. ‘Oh?’

  ‘I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important. I know Cariad thinks of you as a friend. And she’d tell you things that she wouldn’t tell me.’ He paused to see Davy’s reaction but he remained neutral.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Did she say anything about the date she’d had with Dylan to you?’

  ‘No,’ said Davy, but his answer was too quick to be believed. ‘But if she had, if she wanted you to know, she would have told you.’

  ‘I know,’ said Effin. ‘It would take me an hour to tell you the background and why I’m asking, but it really does matter.’

  Davy studied Effin, saw the worry in his eyes, the way he was swallowing nervously.

  ‘Okay, she didn’t tell me everything, but enough. Seems your super Dylan couldn’t quite believe his charms fell on stony ground. Insisted on paying for everything as if that gave him a right to control how her feelings went. Cariad agreed to go to the cinema on a friends-only basis but Dylan wanted more than to be friends. He thought a wee box of popcorn and a ticket to see a film gave him access all areas and when it didn’t, he got a little bit . . . annoyed.’

  Effin’s spine straightened. ‘How annoyed?’

  ‘Oh, nothing physical. I would have jumped in myself if there had been. Just verbal. But names can really wound, can’t they, Effin?’ He looked at Effin pointedly. ‘Cariad made me promise I’d not make it my business and I stood by that, but I warned her that the gloves would be coming off if it happened again. Even if it was only words.’

  ‘What sort of names?’ said Effin, trying to will his face not to colour.

  ‘She was a little sketchy on the detail but she did mention one – ironically a name reserved for a woman who gives it away rather than one who isn’t prepared to.’

  Hwren.

  The big black box in his head suddenly sprung open as if the hinges had been greased with melted butter.

  Chapter 66

  The Christmas Pudding Club was two members down that week. Chloe, on her phone, had a video message from Di. She was in hospital looking knackered and joyful with a baby in the crook of each arm.

  ‘Hello, you fat cows,’ it began. ‘Meet Jacob and Jesse. Born naturally, with a bit of gas and air and some panting because my fanny more or less spat them out. Three quarters of an hour from start to finish. Do not forget those nipple shield things because my tits are in bits. Breastfeeding might be natural but it chuffing hurts. Hope to see you at the Summer Pudding Club because there’s only five weeks and two days before me and Lee can start having sex again. Good luck girls,’ and then she blew a kiss.

  ‘I saw her yesterday,’ said Chloe. ‘She gets this week’s prize for most profanities in one minute. She had a surprisingly easy time of it, I have to say.’

  ‘And Fil had a little girl this morning,’ said Sharon. ‘Ayo. Absolutely beautiful.’

  ‘Like her parents, then,’ said Raychel.

  ‘You know about Palma, presumably?’ Cheryl asked the midwives. They nodded with sad smiles.

  ‘I think she’s incredibly brave,’ said Raychel. ‘We don’t know how lucky we are, do we?’

  Annie had tried to put herself in Palma’s shoes a few times, questioning what she would have done had she had the same devastating news. Probably the same, she concluded, but what a dark place to be.

  ‘She and Tommy are back together at least,’ Annie told them.

  ‘Oh, thank goodness,’ said Cheryl. ‘I was afraid to ask. John said we were mad to do what we did.’

  ‘Ben said much the same,’ said Raychel.

  ‘I won’t even begin to tell you the torrent of Italian that I got from Joe,’ said Annie, ‘but then they didn’t have our pregnancy sensitivities. I swear they make us borderline psychic.’

  ‘We did good,’ said Cheryl.

  ‘Yep,’ replied Annie, ‘we certainly did.’

  There was no special topic of discussion that session, just a general chit-chat over drinks and cake, because Cheryl had been baking. Her nesting had mainly taken the form of cooking and she’d made lots of meals and frozen them for the next weeks.

  ‘I feel quite sad that one by one we will be dropping off. Like that book by Agatha Christie,’ said Raychel with a smiling sigh.

  ‘Except we won’t be murdered,’ chuckled Eve. ‘I’m getting married on the twenty-third in the chapel in Winterworld. You’re welcome to come, but I understand if you are otherwise engaged.’

  ‘My, that’s cutting it fine,’ said Chloe.

  ‘All the babies in my family have been at least ten days late,’ replied Eve.

  ‘Babies do not stick to patterns, Eve.’ Chloe wagged her finger.

  ‘My intuition is telling me that I’ll be okay, though, so I’m going with that.’ Her intuition was also telling her that the wedding was going to be loop the flipping loop. She had a vision of herself drifting down the aisle in a dress not dissimilar to Alice’s in The Vicar of Dibley. But then again, she had left it up to Jacques, and so she couldn’t complain if that’s what happened.

  As they walked out to their cars, the four remaining Christmas Pudding Club women hugged each other, in case they weren’t at the next meeting. None of them were going to the Aqua Mama classes now that their little group had broken up; it wasn’t the same. Plus the ordeal of getting dressed afterwards was now too much. There were Good lucks all round. Cheryl’s due date was coming up next and she was ready for it, she said. She was sick of the heartburn and of trying to roll herself out of bed in the middle of the night to go to the toilet. She was sick of having to use ten pillows in strategic places to be comfortable at night and sick of not being able to put her own socks on.

  ‘John says the first thing that comes out of my mouth when the baby is born should be its name,’ she laughed.

  ‘I look forward to being at Bloody-Hell-That-Hurt’s christening, then,’ said Annie. She felt ridiculously tearful as she zapped open the car to drive home.

  Chapter 67

  ‘Shwmai, Dylan bach? Sorry, we’ll speak
English, I know you prefer it. How are you? Come in, come in,’ said Effin, herding Dylan into his cottage.

  ‘I’m good, Effin, how are you?’ said Dylan. He handed over a four-pack of beer.

  ‘Very kind of you, boy. Sit down. We might as well have one of these now. I made a stew for tea. Not as good as Angharad’s but not bad. Less honey, more cider in my sauce.’

  Dylan sat at the table and opened two of the cans. He really was a good-looking boy, thought Effin. Dark, thick hair like his dad but tall and fine-featured like his mam. He hoped he wasn’t too late.

  ‘How’ve you been then?’ asked Dylan as Effin got the plates out of the oven using a big glove.

  ‘Very down, as you can imagine. Very down,’ said Effin. ‘I think I’m going to leave here because I’ve probably lost the contract at Winterworld so my business will inevitably fold. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can’t carry on working because I can’t be trusted. That’s what everyone thinks.’

  He noted how Dylan shifted awkwardly in his seat.

  ‘I’ll have to sell my house. I’ll buy a much smaller one and take early retirement. I was going to settle up here with Angharad. We sit on the terrace at night and watch the birds hovering over the fields. Buzzards, sparrowhawks, barn owls . . . and the kestrels. They’re my favourite. Remind me of my childhood. My dad took all us boys on my birthday to see Kes at the pictures, including your dad. I cried my bloody eyes out. You ever seen it?’

  ‘We read the book at school.’

  ‘He came from round here, Barry Hines, the man who wrote the story. The place didn’t look much on the film, so never thought I’d fall in love with Yorkshire when I came here. Never thought I’d make it my home, but I have. I’ve read the book too, many times. A Kestrel for a Knave. I still get upset at the ending: all that hope and potential in one boy completely destroyed by a total and utter twat. A family member too. You’d think he’d have his back, wouldn’t you? His fate could have been so different.

  ‘ “See that boy Billy Casper, he had a passion,” my dad told me. “He found something that made his heart want to beat. We all need a passion in life.” ’ Effin laughed. ‘I don’t know if he was trying to make me feel better but he told me he knew what happened to Billy Casper after the film had ended. That his passion never left him and he grew up and escaped from his past and ran a sanctuary for injured birds and was happy. “Never let your past dictate your future,” he’d say.’ Effin gave a long, sad outward breath. ‘I don’t know what my future will be now. Go back to Wales. Might buy myself a dog.’

  Dylan ran the edge of a finger across the bottom of his nose. ‘That’s not good,’ he said and bowed his head.

  ‘Your dad got a dog these days, Dylan?’

  ‘A couple of sheepdogs.’

  Effin started to ladle stew onto the plates. ‘I remember a dog his dad – your grandad – had. A female sheepdog. He called it Hwren. Horrible name. Do you know what Hwren means in English?’

  ‘Er, no,’ said Dylan. His neck was blotchy-red, Effin noticed.

  ‘It means whore. He used to kick it. I once told him to stop and he slapped me. And my dad went round to the farm and he had your grandad up against the wall. Told him if he ever touched me or that dog again, he’d find himself drowned in his own sheep dip. Very handy with his fists, your grandad. Although, funnily enough, he only ever used them on those much weaker than himself. That’s how your dad ended up nearly blind in one eye, did you know that?’ He put a plate down in front of Dylan and smiled. ‘Help yourself to bread. It’s from the bakery just down the road from here.’

  ‘It’s . . . it’s nice bread.’ Dylan was uncomfortable and Effin was glad. He wasn’t uncomfortable enough yet, though. Not by half.

  ‘Miserable old fucker, your grandad,’ Effin went on, noting that Dylan hadn’t answered him. ‘Bitter man and a proper control freak. Eat up, boy.’

  Dylan took a piece of bread and dipped it into the gravy with the reticence of one who suspected it might be poisoned.

  ‘Your dad wanted to be an aircraft pilot, did you know?’

  ‘Dad?’ echoed Dylan, with the tone of one who didn’t.

  ‘Our friend Stu became one, but because of your dad’s eye, he couldn’t. What he could do was things with his hands! He was so clever, could turn them to anything. You’ve got his gift, I see that, you can do it all, can’t you – electrics, brickwork, joinery and you love it, don’t you, Dylan?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I do.’

  ‘Brynn did too. Got so much enjoyment out of making things. He should have been my partner in the building trade. I did ask him, but he stayed on the farm and he had to hear about Stu being a hero in the air and see me making a success of myself, all because your grandad said he’d cut him off without a penny if he didn’t. It would have done your dad good to get away without a penny because he’d have made his money with his talent. But instead he stayed and your grandad filled him up with his bitterness. Taught him wrong. Taught him that women were nasty things not to be trusted or respected. Every one of them a hwren – a whore.’

  Dylan’s eyes were fully down on the stew and the redness had crept up to his cheeks now.

  Effin took a spoonful of the stew, ate it, drank some beer.

  ‘Stu the pilot used to go out with my Angharad before he suddenly went off to join the forces. I always thought he’d run off in shame because he’d done something nasty to her. In fact, as I started to remember, it was your dad that told me.’ That recollection had been in the big black box. He’d been too quick to believe what Brynn had told him and pin it on Stu because he was still smarting from him and Angharad getting together. He’d have forgiven Stu in time because they were only young, silly boys – and he loved him. But he would never forgive him for hurting Angharad, and Brynn knew that. So Brynn had seen to it that the door on their friendship was not only closed, but bolted and then cemented over. It had been Brynn, though, who’d come on roughly to Angharad and then begged her not to say anything. It was a one-off, he’d said to her. He wasn’t like that. And because Angharad felt guilty about the part she’d played in splitting up the friendship between Stu and Effin, she didn’t want to play a part again in splitting up Effin and Brynn; so she’d kept quiet but the sight of Brynn made her feel sick and she’d moved away.

  ‘No, Dad never told me anything about anyone called Stu,’ said Dylan.

  ‘Your mam was a lovely woman,’ said Effin, taking some bread.

  ‘Dad said she was a . . .’ Dylan started quickly then shut up.

  ‘I bet he did. Well let me tell you, Lin was a beautiful girl. One day you should find out her side of the story because there will be one and it’ll be very different to the one Brynn told you. I used to love your dad but he changed into someone I don’t know and it took me a long time to realise that. He’d have been a different man had he told his father to go fuck himself. Life would have straightened him out, but instead he stayed on the farm doing a job he loathed and got all twisted up.’

  Dylan stood up, scraping the chair across the floor as he did so. ‘I think I’d better go, Effin.’

  ‘You sit down and you eat and you listen,’ snarled Effin, wearing an expression that no one had ever dared to defy. Dylan sat, picked up his spoon again.

  ‘Every woman was a whore to your grandad and that’s how it became with your father. He despised himself for staying on that farm but the brain is wonderful at self-preservation. Your dad needed to hate something else instead of himself to survive the hell he was in. So he hated Stu for following his dreams and he hated me for following mine and being happy and finding a nice woman, one that moved away because she couldn’t stand the mere sight of him. He hated your mother for rejecting him. It was always someone else’s fault, never his, that’s how he excused himself for all the mistakes he made, never taking any of the responsibility himself. I bet he did tell you about his eye, Dylan. And . . . and I bet he blamed me, before the man who made his skull shake with the blo
w he delivered, didn’t he?’ Dylan was unmistakably suffering from subtext overload and the redness had reached his scalp by now, but Effin wasn’t letting up. ‘His dad might have had him trapped for the first half of his life but he trapped himself for the second. You’re a clever boy, Dylan. Whose idea was it to ask if you could work with me, eh? And why – so you could level the playing field for your dad? Pay me back for having the gall to be content and successful? Make me look like an incompetent idiot so I’d end up as miserable as him?’

  Effin noticed a splash in Dylan’s stew.

  ‘You going back to the farm to live? Same bitter, lonely life as your grandad and your dad? Seeing all your friends go off into the world and meet girls but you’ll stay and get older and more unfulfilled and angrier at life and label every woman a whore before she’s even looked at you?’

  Another splash. Dylan swiping at his cheek.

  ‘That where your passion lies, Dylan? Sheep farming?’

  A silent slow shake of the head. No.

  ‘The world is your oyster, Dylan bach. My late brother had a saying: Don’t look down at a little moon in a muddy puddle, when you can look up and see it hanging there bright and huge in the sky. I love my kids, Dylan. And I know your dad loves you, but when you raise a child, there comes a time when you have to let them fly off. It’s wrong to load their wings with your own baggage so they’re forced to stay in the coop.’

  Effin raised his eyebrows at himself in surprise. He had no idea where that had come from. Another open box in the loft, no doubt.

  Dylan’s spoon fell from his grip and clattered into his dish and his head fell into his hands.

  ‘I don’t know how to put it right,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry, Effin.’

  A tidal wave of relief washed over Effin. He hadn’t been going loco, he’d got the nail bang on the head. Sherlock Holmes, fucking move over. He had the urge to do his first ever fist pump.

  ‘Write a letter to the Captain. I’ll smooth it over somehow if you tell him the park sign was your fault and the hole, because I’m not losing my reputation for anything or anyone . . .’