by Weldon, Fay
The Search for Mother Christmas
‘Father Christmas and I,’ said Ruby to her children, ‘have a special relationship.’ That was in 1971, when the boys were twelve, ten, seven and two respectively. Billy, Joshua, Jason and little Ben.
‘Does that mean no presents this year?’ asked Billy, who had a nervous disposition, and red hair like his father. Sometimes he was difficult to like.
‘You mean a special relationship like between Britain and the US?’ asked Joshua, who had been categorized as a gifted child. It had its drawbacks: he got called brainbox and was bullied in the playground.
‘Does that mean he’s going to be our new Daddy?’ asked Jason, who lived in fear of some terrible event, which would come along and confound his life yet further.
And little Ben said nothing at all. He wasn’t speaking yet. The clinic recommended he see a child development specialist and Ruby was putting it off. She had enough to do, as it was.
‘It means,’ said Ruby, ‘Father Christmas may put the presents down the chimney on New Year’s Eve rather than Christmas Eve because I don’t get paid till the last Friday of every month.’
Ruby had a part-time job. She worked in the office of the local secondary school. The family lived in Garton, a small town in the new County of Avon, as unexciting as its name.
‘There’s no such thing as Father Christmas anyway,’ said Billy.
‘There is so,’ said Joshua.
‘Fancy you being ten and believing that,’ said Billy.
Jason said, ‘I know there’s no Father Christmas because I waited up one night with a torch and it was Dad dressed up in a red gown with cotton wool.’
‘What you saw,’ said Ruby, briskly, ‘was Father Christmas dressed up as Dad.’
And little Ben said nothing at all.
‘Anyway,’ said Ruby, ‘he told me he’d come on New Year’s Eve, and he wouldn’t lie to me because I’m his wife.’
‘Is that the special relationship?’ asked Joshua.
‘Yes,’ said Ruby. ‘I’m Mother Christmas and you can see I’m true.’
And she washed through eight socks and a pair of tights and draped them over the backs of chairs to dry by the morning. She couldn’t afford to use the washing machine too often. She didn’t own a dryer. In any case dryers shrink socks, ruin tights and help to deplete the ozone layer. There is some comfort to be gained from hardship, if you try, but not much.
Oh yes, that was the winter of ’seventy-one, when Ruby was thirty-four and two years widowed, and this was the pattern of her day:
Ben, waking at six, would wake his mother, and she would pot him, change him, dunk the drenched nappy, and give him a bottle to get on with (prepared the night before) and pack his bag for the nursery school where he had a free place. That put Ben on hold.
Ruby fed Pussy the cat to put an end to her yowling, and cleaned up after her. Pussy would not, would not, use the cat flap when it was cold. Ruby got the older boys’ clothes laid out and mended and their socks sorted. If everything was in order it saved quarrels, argument and noise. (The three big boys shared a room. As they grew older it grew too small. Presently Ruby would have to move out of her bedroom and use a Put-U-Up in the living room, but she put that off too. Ruby was Canute sitting on a shore keeping back the tide that was her children.)
Then Ruby set the table and laid the breakfast. ‘Sit down to breakfast, boys. Don’t eat it standing up. Widows and orphans must make an effort.’
‘Talk about it to them, Mrs Halter, talk about the accident. They’ll get over it quicker.’ All very fine, but what about me? Can’t I just forget it? I have to peel my own mind raw for the children’s sake? Apparently so.
‘Well, boys, it was like this. Your father was killed reversing through red lights at the crossroads at two a.m. one morning. Walk round the corner and to this day you can see the dent in the lamp-post where his car ricocheted. Who was in the car with him? Why, Muriel his secretary. You know Muriel, she gave you knitted scarves for Christmas for years! Where are the scarves these days? They got the moth. Your mother threw them out. Yes, Muriel was killed too. Why was she in the car with your father? I expect they had some work to do together. Why two in the morning? It must have been very urgent. Very urgent. He’d rung me a couple of hours earlier and said he was in Edinburgh and described his hotel room to me. Can you get from Edinburgh to Bristol in two hours? I expect you can, if there are wings on your feet. No, dear, there isn’t an air shuttle. I was speaking metaphorically. Then why did he, what was he, how was he – why was he reversing? Did he change his mind? What was there for him to change his mind about? Yes, I’m sure he said it was Edinburgh he was calling from. You wish to misremember but some things will not let themselves be misremembered. The fact of the matter is, my boys, my dears, some things will never be known, some questions never answered, and the more I think about it the more upset I get, and long for the Day of Judgement when the dead will rise up, when all will be made clear.
The truth of the matter being, lads, that whenever I got pregnant your father would find solace outside the marriage; and here I was pregnant with you, little Ben. Speak to me, Ben. What, speechless?
Once the child was born he would return; but of course this time, being dead, he could only send his ghost. If you are very good, sit up at the breakfast table, he may forgive you: not blow his cold breath through the broken windowpane. Billy, will you measure up and cut the glass? I will putty it in. We have no money to pay the glazier.
Yes, and I am sorry for the girls he took up with. Bit-part players in the drama of a marriage, thinking they were centre stage. Is that enough talk now, boys? Or would you prefer silence?
Never mind, never mind: the cereal running out and never enough milk: will four eggs make scrambled for five or shall mother go without again? And she missed him, she missed him: how could he go without her, taking someone else, not her? And where was his replacement? She saw no sign of him. How could he appear? She flew no flags saying, ‘Here I am, take me!’ There was no time, no energy, no money, to run one up the flagpole. Ruby’s grey streaks stayed grey; Ruby got round quicker in low heels; how could Ruby buy nice clothes when the boys needed shoes? Ruby wouldn’t go on the State, not she: Ruby wouldn’t take handouts from anyone: Ruby would manage, yes she would. Oxfam helps the widows and orphans.
At seven thirty Ruby would wake the boys, remember whose turn it was to use the bathroom first, stop Joshua using the lawn, and if Jason had wet the bed strip it. Jason slept too soundly, the Clinic said. What’s the answer? Pretend it isn’t happening: poor little Jason, he’s had a hard time. But so has Ruby, filling the washing machine and lucky to have it. Does no one care? Who’s to care, now Jack is gone? A widow’s an embarrassment. People cross the road. Misfortune might be catching. And wasn’t there something odd about the death, wasn’t he with some girl – never mind, never mind, what’s the use of wasting emotion. I loved Jack and he loved me, most of the time, and we had children.
Seven forty-five. While the boys eat, make their beds so that when they get home from school all is orderly and cheerful, and a quick wipe round the sink, and a quick floor-sweep likewise. Then while the boys get their act together – Joshua has to have his books found for him every day – brilliant he may be, hopeless he is – and Ben and the cat have to be disentangled, and everyone got into coats and shoes which with any luck she remembered the night before to fill with newspaper and prop up against the Rayburn so they’d be dry, and Jason’s cut his finger opening the cat food and needs a plaster – he always cuts his finger and there’s an open tin unfinished and the cat’s already been fed but never mind, never mind, if you shout at Jason he cries, and cries, and cries – and Billy puts an expression on his face which means he’d leave home yesterday if he could. Then distribute dinner money in the right change for everyone (it’s every day now, not once a week. Someone broke into the school office one Monday and took the lot. Now it’s collected daily, banked daily: people
have to be so careful) and it’s Billy’s turn to clear the table but he’s in a bad mood: better if she does it herself, she hasn’t the energy to insist.
Eight fifteen and everyone leaves the house. Ten minutes at the bus stop. Off the bus to take Ben to the nursery (he’s grizzling again. Ruby fears he hates the place: sometimes she’s glad he can’t talk. It stops him telling her) while Billy, Joshua and Jason continue on their own to school. They’re too young. Ruby sometimes thinks of child molesters and child murderers, but not often and not for long. What can she do about it? Ben puts his arms around Ruby’s neck and clings: he has to be dragged off: he wants to be at home with her, of course he does. And Ruby wants to be at home with him, of course she does. Or even without him.
Ruby wants her life back.
And it’s still only eight forty-eight and Ruby’s working day hasn’t even begun: and Christmas is coming up.
‘Ruby,’ said her friend Margaret, ‘why did you have four?’
‘I wanted to get it right,’ said Ruby. Ruby wanted a pregnancy in which Jack didn’t fall in love with someone else. Ruby thought she’d got it made when she was eight and a half months’ gone with Ben, until the news came about the crash, and her first thought had been if the car’s a write-off how am I going to get to hospital? Ruby once told Margaret that Ben was an accident, but it wasn’t true. The house just felt empty without a baby in it. Good God, why do women have such feelings: and worse, having them, why do they then act upon them?
As it happened, for the Christmas of 1971, Ruby’s parents, though they disapproved of large families, helped her out. Father Christmas came down the chimney on the proper day. Ruby wanted the children to believe in Father Christmas. Ruby knew it was absurd: but it was her luxury, she needed it. And that Christmas Billy taught Ben to speak – only to say ‘no’, admittedly, but better than nothing. Perhaps. Was Billy disturbed by Jack’s death? Not disturbed by his death at all but born to be like that anyway? How could one ever know? All Ruby could do was lay the table, light the fires, get them to school, make the beds so the place felt cheerful, keep everyone going, earn the money, work in a school so as to have school holidays, and dress up as Father Christmas once a year.
‘How well you cope,’ people said.
‘What alternative do I have?’ she’d ask. ‘It’s cope or die.’
Sometimes on a dark night she’d wish she’d had no children. Billy had been born when she was only twenty-two. She couldn’t remember herself at all: Ruby without children. What had she been like?
And a decade passed, and the memory faded further and then the desire to remember failed. Ruby, widow, head of a one-parent family. It would do as a definition. It contained all necessary concepts of depression, hardship, loss.
When Billy was fifteen he started grabbing his brothers and getting their heads in headlocks and bashing their faces in.
‘Better face it,’ said Margaret, ‘the boy’s disturbed.’
‘He’ll grow out of it,’ said Ruby.
Billy kept swearing at Ruby and saying she’d ruined his life.
‘You have,’ they told her at the Clinic. ‘You let his father die.’
‘What am I meant to do?’ Ruby asked.
‘Try asking his forgiveness,’ they said.
Ruby did. ‘Are you crazy?’ shouted Billy. But she thought he was better after that. He just didn’t choose to show it. Like his father, he had his pride.
Billy left school at sixteen. He hung about with friends and smoked dope and stopped beating up his brothers. He did a job here, a job there, and came back at odd hours with money in his pocket. What could she say to him? Get a proper job with a pension? Impossible to mouth the words. ‘There is no future,’ he’d say, if she tried to talk to him about it, and he’d cite nuclear winter or ecological disaster, but Ruby knew he meant the sudden full stop of his father’s death, in the arms of the girl of his dreams, who was not his mother.
In the winter of 1981 Billy got a passport and said he was going to Australia. He had met a girl from Sydney called Liz.
‘At least stay for Christmas,’ pleaded Ruby. ‘Bring Liz back as well.’ And he said he would, but he didn’t, and they cleared the two laid places and moved up the chairs and there was enough room for everyone. He sent a card from Sydney to say he and Liz were married.
‘I expect she only married him to get British citizenship,’ said Joshua. He was the one who had suffered most from the head-bashing. He was doing computer studies at a local college. ‘She couldn’t have wanted Billy.’
‘Billy’s so good-looking,’ said Jason, ‘anyone would want him. Not like me.’ He had a Mohican haircut, and his head was shaved, but the school hadn’t thrown him out.
‘They can’t throw him out,’ Ben observed. ‘If they did they’d lose Mum, and never has any woman worked so hard for so long for so little.’
Once Ben had started talking, he never stopped. Ruby wondered why she’d worried.
With Billy gone there was more space. She was astonished by how little she missed him. She was ashamed. One down and three to go. This was the pattern of Ruby’s day once Billy had gone:
At six o’clock the dog woke Ruby barking to be let out, and she’d do it, and then let the cat in (her heart had hardened) and feed both and by the time she’d done that Ben would be out in the yard kicking his football against next door’s fence – bang, bang, bang: of course they complained – and Ruby would say, ‘Ben, not so early,’ and he’d say, ‘You said it was all right after eight o’clock,’ and Ruby would say, ‘It’s only half past seven,’ and he’d say, ‘I must have dunked my watch in the bath again,’ and Ruby would give up and lay the table and make the breakfast, and pick up yesterday’s old pants and socks, and empty Joshua’s ashtray (he said he liked the smell), and say ‘Not so loud’ to Jason’s ghetto-blaster, and then Ben would come in saying he had frostbite and forget to close the door, and Ruby would ask Joshua to get in the coal and he’d say, ‘In a minute’, and she’d say, ‘Now’, and he’d say, ‘When I’ve finished my scrambled egg. There isn’t much of it,’ and Ruby would say, ‘That’s because you didn’t buy any eggs yesterday. None left for me. I can’t really have to earn the eggs, buy the eggs, cook the eggs, clear up after the eggs all by myself, can I? And not even eat the eggs?’ But the boys would not be listening. They would be reading newspapers, laughing at a story in Today, rolling over under the table with the dog (the dog had been for Billy; something to love: he’d never once taken it for a walk, never once), and their great boots were everywhere – and never mind, never mind, she loved them and they loved her, and now Billy was out of the way – callous, callous – it was at least cheerful. And then at eight fifteen they’d all leave the house (the beds unmade and the table uncleared: she got back first these days: she could do it then), and at least she’d learned to drive and had a little car, and a certain Mr Abbot took her out to dinner every now and then though Jason kicked up such a fuss it was hardly worth putting on a pair of earrings – and she was the official school secretary now and being sent on a middle-management course and she thought they might even take her on at the Education Authority –
That was winter 1981. That year Ben said, ‘I wonder why Father Christmas always looks so much like mother?’
Jason said, ‘How do you know he does?’ and Ben said, ‘Because I pinch myself to stay awake and I see from the light in the hall that Father Christmas is wearing a wig beneath the hood to make him look just like mother.’ And Ruby said finally, ‘Boys, there is no Father Christmas,’ and they all just laughed and said yes there is. And she wondered if they’d have dared, had Billy still been there.
And all of a sudden, for years creep on and over you so quickly, it was over. One by one the boys left home. There was space and peace and eggs for breakfast: even the animals calmed down: she could afford a new car: Mr Abbot could stay the night – she didn’t want to marry him: she’d been married – the video stayed unbroken, the doorframes clean; she sh
ould have been lonely and upset and feeling useless, but she wasn’t at all. She was herself again. She went to the hairdresser and finally had the grey turned into a rather expensive-looking hennaed brown. A Mr Roland vied now with Mr Abbot for her company. The three boys visited from time to time: they were all in London: they saw each other frequently. They had learned closeness: she was glad of that. She finally got her better job up at Education House. The cat died, poor old thing. She resolved not to have another, though she was tempted by kittens, of course. Who is not?
This was the pattern of Ruby’s morning once the boys had left her:
She would wake in her own time (seven fifteen on the dot, true: some life rhythms, once acquired, take decades to break), put on a silk dressing gown and impractical slippers, make herself coffee and toast (scrambled egg on Saturday and Sunday) and go back to bed to eat, watching morning television, switching over at her pleasure with an unbroken remote control. After the eight o’clock news she would get up, wash and dress (flicking through a wardrobe – deciding) and, having more than one lipstick and eye pencils that were always sharp because they hadn’t been used for telephone messages, make up her face to suit her mood. (Twice a week someone came to clean, change the sheets, empty the bins; oh, wonderful.) She would feed the tropical fish, inspect their quarters, talk to them. (Fish express their discontent quietly: of all pets they are the safest: they seldom pine: they are either well and happy or totally dead, floating belly-upwards, their erstwhile friends eating their innards.) At eight forty-five she would leave the house, calmly, and be at work at nine o’clock, to meet friends and colleagues with whom she got on well and for whom she had no moral responsibility.
Ruby rejoiced in her reward, so long in coming; this apparent happy ending.
But a manner of living, once yours, tends to be yours for ever. If the tide seems to stand still it is only illusion. It is on the turn, that’s all. Back it comes. The crest of the wave becomes the trough, the trough the crest, in and in to shore. In the winter of 1988, three years into Ruby’s quiet life, something happened.
