by Trevor Hoyle
Joe was sitting as far away from the fire as could be managed; the heat of the room was formidable, and still he perspired even in shirt-sleeves. Martha, Polly and Emily were his sisters, who had married Cyril Shaw, Reg Smith and Jimmy Brackett respectively. Martha and Emily were childless, though Polly had a boy, Norman, going on nineteen, who had grown beyond the family circle and went off drinking with his mates or perhaps to the Carlton. The only person of Terry’s age was his cousin Valerie, a pale watery slip of a girl with hair like yellow fleece, the only child of Joe’s brother Harry and his wife Ivy. Altogether the gathering numbered thirteen, counting the children.
‘And what are you learning at school?’ Cyril asked Terry. Unlike his wife Martha, he had no feeling for kids, regarding them as an alien species, almost like tiresome little Martians.
Terry gave the standard reply, and his mother added, ‘He’ll be leaving Heybrook next year and going to the High School.’
She was always making rash pronouncements and it annoyed Terry. ‘I might be going,’ he said. ‘I might. I haven’t even taken the exam yet.’
‘Our Terry, you know you will,’ his mam said. Her pride and faith in him were complete and unquestioning; yet had anyone asked her which subjects he excelled in she wouldn’t have known what to answer.
‘More expense, Joe,’ said Reg.
‘Aye,’ Terry’s dad said. He was actually smiling; but then Christmas came but once a year. He gave a short forced laugh. ‘High School,’ he said, as though naming some rare tropical disease. ‘What would they do today, this lot, if they had to leave school at fourteen like we did? They don’t know they’re—’
‘—born,’ Emily said, adept at finishing off other people’s sentences.
‘Three-and-six a week I used to get when I started,’ Joe said. He’d found a subject that interested him, but all of them – Terry included – could have recited the list of woes and calamities, hardships and deprivations just as capably. It had all been said before and would be again, and again, and again.
‘Why do you always have to harp on about that?’ Barbara said. ‘Times change. We’re not all living in the stone age like you.’ (This was one of the standard dialogues between them, a pattern of words that went in endless circles so that each knew the response of the other before it was uttered.)
‘Kids today, I don’t know,’ Cyril said, which was the truth. He talked with a Senior Service in his mouth, the front of his waistcoat and jacket lapels covered in ash which he forgot to brush off. Martha, his wife, laying knives and forks on the table, said:
‘They’re exactly the same as when you were a lad. Anybody’d think you’d been brought up in the workhouse with no shoes on your—’
‘—feet,’ Emily said.
‘They’re all the same, fellas,’ Barbara said. ‘Nobody had such a hard time as them to hear them talk.’
‘We didn’t have the same chances they have,’ said Reg.
‘That’s what you’ve worked for,’ Ivy Webb said. She was a wan creature, the same as her daughter; to Terry the pair of them seemed to fade insignificantly into the wallpaper. ‘If you can’t give your kids a proper start in life what’s the use of it all?’
‘There’s no gratitude nowadays,’ Cyril said, wheezing cigarette ash down his front. ‘When we were given something we were grateful. Kids today want everything on a—’
‘—plate,’ Emily said, nodding.
Terry lost interest in the conversation when his Uncle Jimmy swallowed a sixpenny piece and pulled it out of Valerie’s ear. He did the same trick every year and it never ceased to amaze and intrigue them. Jimmy had been in the RAF and on his sideboard at home were photographs in silver frames of groups of men in blue uniforms standing in front of a giant propeller and part of a wing that Jimmy said was a Wellington bomber. He had never actually made the claim that he was a pilot during the war but Terry had somehow gained that impression. And Jimmy had a real gun too, a Browning automatic, which he kept in a felt pouch in the top left-hand drawer of the bureau.
‘Did you shoot anybody with it?’ Terry had once asked. ‘Only wogs,’ Jimmy said, a reply which mystified him. For a long time afterwards Terry imagined wogs as small furry creatures with pointed ears and bushy tails, rather like foxes.
At one minute to three silence fell. Cyril switched on the radiogram and everyone sat motionless as the National Anthem swelled from the speaker; then the King spoke for ten minutes, the flat, tired yet kindly voice with the slight impediment droning out the Christmas message to his Subjects throughout Great Britain and the Commonwealth. Martha, Polly and Emily had ceased their preparations to listen, standing at the door to the kitchen in attitudes of sober respect.
When it was over everyone breathed and smiled again. The table was now fully loaded, containing everything except the turkey, whose arrival was the second major highlight of the day. (The first for Terry having been the ecstatic thrill of waking up and realising it was Christmas Day.) The men and children ate first, the women waiting on them, after which they would sit and eat together and indulge in women’s talk before doing the washing-up.
Terry wasn’t faddy about food and had a bit of everything: turkey, pork, stuffing, sausages, sprouts, carrots, peas, roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, apple sauce, pickles, beetroot, and to follow, Christmas pudding and white sauce (with a silver threepenny bit in the children’s helpings), sherry trifle and cream, mince pies and chocolate biscuits. The crackers were pulled, the paper hats put on, and the room throbbed with the heat of the fire and the eating people.
‘Would you like some more Christmas pudding, love?’ Martha said, resting her hands on Terry’s shoulders. ‘Or there’s plenty of trifle left
‘You’ve had enough, our Terry,’ his mam said. ‘He’s had plenty, Martha, thanks. If he has any more he’ll be—’
‘—sick,’ said Emily.
Terry left the table and went to sit quietly on the settee under the window, his belly distended like a hard rubber ball. He opened Jets, Rockets and Guided Missiles and showed Uncle Jimmy the pictures and cut-away diagrams; to his surprise Uncle Jimmy didn’t seem to know how a jet engine worked or even the difference between a jet and a rocket.
‘Bright lad you’ve got here,’ Uncle Jimmy said to Joe.
‘Aye,’ Joe said. ‘Thinks he is.’
‘Will you have a drop of something?’ Cyril said, getting up and opening the doors of the cabinet with the rows of bottles and glasses inside.
All the men had beer or a short, except Joe who had a glass of shandy. They talked about work, about how Brights’ was doing (where Cyril was an overlooker and Martha a beamer), and about which mills were laying men off or going on short time. The room was oppressively warm and Terry began to feel queasy. It was dark outside; through the leaded window the snow gleamed faintly under the streetlights: a dim stretch of heathland merging into night. At hourly intervals the blue-and-cream buses rumbled past, going up to the terminus at Syke ponds and coming down again with an icy blast that blew grit under the front door and jarred the fluted glass panels in the vestibule.
Terry went into the kitchen to escape the heat and to get a drink of water. He drank it slowly, putting on a special smile for Auntie Polly who was washing up at the sink. She was an exceedingly short, squat woman with heavy brows and chin-whiskers, and to Terry it seemed that she was always wearing the same long dress with faded flowers on it and an enamel brooch pinned just above the shapeless swell of her bosom. He got the impression that she never knew what to say to him – even though she had a son of her own – and in a queer way this gave him a sense of adult superiority: he felt it was up to him to take the initiative.
He put the glass down on the draining-board and considered for a moment before saying, ‘I like your dress.’
Polly looked at him through the rising steam; then she smiled, rather uncertainly. Terry saw that she had more hairs on her chin than last Christmas, and there were some growing on her uppe
r lip, though he was polite enough not to use this observation as a topic of conversation. Instead he said, ‘How are you keeping then?’
‘Not bad,’ Polly said. ‘Considering.’
‘Cold in’t it,’ Terry said, ‘for this time of year?’
Somehow the conversation wasn’t zipping along as he thought it should, and worse, he still felt sick. He opened the stairs door.
‘I’m going upstairs.’
Polly accepted this information without comment or expression, so Terry left her at the sink, her thick red hands immersed in soapy water. Upstairs in Auntie Martha’s front bedroom it was a blessing to breathe in cold air that didn’t have the taint of hot rich food in it. And the darkness helped – just the one streetlight outside the window shining on the white fur rug and candlewick bedspread, slanting across the clutter of objects on the dressing-table. Auntie Martha lived in what Terry considered to be luxury; there was even talk of Uncle Cyril buying a television set in the New Year.
Syke was raised above the town on the slopes of the hills, lightly populated, which gathered in a circle until they adjoined the Pennines farther to the north and east. It was still working class but the houses weren’t crammed together and some of them were semi-detached with gardens front and rear. Terry’s teacher, Mrs Butterworth, lived in one of these.
From the window he could look down to the lights twinkling in the valley. His school was down there somewhere, and beyond it the maze of streets which encircled the Arches: at this distance and with the gloom pressing down no detail visible, no landmark clearly identifiable. He liked the feeling of being alone in the sumptuous bedroom, his breath making an oval of condensation on the window-pane, and everywhere in the town below on this Christmas Day the thought of people congregating in front rooms, oases of warmth and laughter in the cold and dark. It was at such moments that nostalgia infected him like a dull fever, as though he were totally alone and watching over everything: the silence, the icy stars, the misty town in the valley. Yet deep inside there was an immense store of pleasure because he knew that down there somewhere, in the kitchen of the house in Cayley Street, there was a red bike shiny and new and glistening with chrome – His Bike – waiting for him.
The sound of music wailed from the front room: Frankie Laine singing Jealousy. It wouldn’t be one of his Auntie Martha’s records because he knew that she liked Donald Peers and Charlie Kunz. He went down, feeling quite chirpy, and crept into the front room on his hands and knees, squeezing into the space behind the radiogram. The table had been cleared and folded away, settee and chairs arranged in a semi-circle, and everyone was holding glasses and eating nuts; all except Valerie and Sylvia who were sitting on the hearth-rug playing with their stupid dolls.
‘Still following the Dale, Joe?’ asked Jimmy.
His father laughed. ‘Aye, me and a few other silly sods.’
‘Any chance of promotion?’
‘Not this season.’
‘Never in a blue moon,’ said Cyril, who was the local bookie’s runner and therefore took pride in laying good odds on any sporting event.
‘Harry goes up sometimes,’ Ivy said. ‘Stands up there in all weathers. I tell him it’s bad for his chest but he just won’t—’
‘—listen,’ Emily said.
‘You won’t listen, will you?’ Ivy said.
‘No,’ Harry said.
‘Where’s your Norman gone to-neet?’ Joe asked Reg.
‘Couldn’t tell you, Joe, not if you paid me. Off galivanting I suppose, but he never tells us owt.’
Terry was getting rather fed-up at not being missed. It was cramped behind the radiogram. He made a high-pitched beeping sound that no one took any notice of.
‘Across at Waggon I expect,’ Polly said – her sole contribution for the evening.
‘Does he go boozing?’ Ivy said disapprovingly. ‘At his age?’
‘He’s nineteen,’ Cyril said. ‘Spends his brass how he wants.’
‘He never is,’ Ivy said, shaking her head. ‘Nineteen! Well I never. Would you credit it. Doesn’t time—’
‘—fly,’ Emily said.
The record had finished and Terry took the opportunity to emit another high-pitched beeping noise. Jimmy said in an unnaturally loud voice: ‘Somebody’s got the wind in this room.’
‘Jimmy,’ Emily said, scandalised. ‘Don’t be vulgar.’
Jimmy came to the radiogram to put another record on and winked at Terry over the raised lid. They mouthed their complicity at one another and made faces.
Cyril went round again, filling up the glasses. He was a dour man, and tight with his money, but he didn’t begrudge spending a bob or two at Christmas and was never backward in offering beer and shorts from the well-stocked cabinet. As he moved from chair to chair the ash on the end of his cigarette wilted and fell onto his waistcoat before cascading to the carpet.
Jimmy said: ‘We haven’t drunk a toast yet.’
‘Aye, the Christmas toast,’ said Reg.
‘Where’s our Terry?’ Barbara said.
‘Come on, lad, get a glass,’ Jimmy said, and Terry crawled out from behind the radiogram. Cyril was about to pour him a glass of lemonade until Martha said, ‘Nay, give the lad summat a bit stronger. Get him a drop of sherry.’
Terry raised his glass with the others, clinking it against Uncle Jimmy’s as Reg proposed the toast: ‘A Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year for all the family. Let’s hope the coming year will be as kind to us as this year has been and that next Christmas we’ll all be here in good health and spirits.’ He raised his glass. ‘To us all.’ Everyone drank. Emily started weeping.
Martha said, ‘A toast to Mother and Daddy Sam.’ These were the elderly Webbs, Terry’s grandparents, who lived on Belfield Lane and who hadn’t been to the Christmas party for the past four years due to Mrs Webb being a semi-invalid. On Boxing Day several of the family popped down to see them and spend an hour or two.
They drank again, Emily’s glass wobbling in her hand and Martha’s eyes red and watery. There was a subdued atmosphere for a while, the women taking their handkerchiefs from their cardigan sleeves and the men staring into the flames. It seemed unreal to Terry, a roomful of people sitting silently holding glasses in their hands. He was moved without knowing why.
‘When’s Father Christmas coming?’ asked Sylvia in her cutest voice, breaking the spell.
‘He should be on his way any time now,’ Emily said, looking at Jimmy and nodding to the kitchen. She pointed to the ceiling. ‘Listen for the reindeers clip-clopping clip-clopping, their little silver bells jingling away …’
Bloody Nora, Terry thought. Not again.
‘We haven’t got his mince pie and drink of beer ready yet,’ Valerie said, genuinely alarmed, and Terry crossed his eyes and made a grotesque face behind her back.
‘Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,’ Emily began to sing. Valerie and Sylvia and the adults joined in, but Terry refused to open his mouth, even after a dark look from his mother. He sat on the rug with Jets, Rockets and Guided Missiles and pretended to read.
‘Sing, Terry,’ Valerie said, ‘otherwise Father Christmas won’t come and you won’t get any presents.’
‘Hard—’ He nearly said ‘crap’ but clamped the word between his jaws and gave her a sour, world-weary smile instead. Uncle Jimmy made some elaborate pretext to leave the room, receiving meaningful glances from everyone but Sylvia and Valerie, and Terry who pretended not to notice.
Barbara hissed, ‘Why aren’t you singing, our Terry?’
‘Forgotten the words,’ Terry said, turning a page.
They had got through Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Silent Night and were well into another chorus of Jingle Bells before there was a knock at the front door and in came Uncle Jimmy wearing Emily’s red dressing-gown trimmed with white fur, suede flying boots, and an economy packet of Boots cotton wool stuck to his chin, upper lip and eyebrows. On his cheeks were two circles of rouge and he carrie
d a brown sack with Tate & Lyle stencilled on it.
Sylvia had risen and was standing transfixed at this apparition, clutching her mother’s hand, and Valerie’s pale blue eyes were hovering between excitement and a thrilling kind of fear. They each had to say ‘Hello Father Christmas’ before giving their names as Jimmy pulled presents from the sack. When it came to Terry’s turn he looked Jimmy in the eye, between the rouged cheeks and the cotton wool eyebrows, and said flatly, ‘That isn’t Father Christmas, it’s Uncle Jimmy.’
‘Terry!’ Valerie whispered. ‘You won’t get any presents!’
‘Not bothered,’ Terry said. ‘It’s still Uncle Jimmy,’ and wouldn’t be budged even when Barbara grabbed his wrist and tried to shake some sense into him. It didn’t matter; he refused to be deceived – especially since Father Christmas had the same freckled hands as Uncle Jimmy and wore the identical ring on the little finger of his right hand.
Father Christmas ate his mince pie, drank his glass of beer, and went, leaving Terry’s presents on the sideboard. He wouldn’t ask for them and it was left to Auntie Martha to stop all further nonsense by bringing them to him where he sat calmly reading on the hearth-rug.
They sang more carols, Jimmy slipping in from the kitchen with a strand of cotton wool still clinging to the side of his neck. The men’s faces were glowing with alcohol and the heat from the fire and the women were a little tipsy, yet well within the bounds of social propriety.
After the giddy excitement of Father Christmas’s visit the mood became reflective, almost sombre; at such moments Martha couldn’t help weeping at the memory of the baby girl she had lost – her first and only child – and had to be comforted by Emily, while her husband Cyril sat motionless in his chair by the drinks cabinet, the ash lengthening on his cigarette, successive layers of it trapped in the folds of his waistcoat.
