by Jan Ruth
‘Uncle Al, you promised we could get a tree,’ Becca shouted.
‘Yeah, in the morning.’
‘Off to bed then, it’s late,’ he heard Fran mumble to Becca.
He trod heavily up the stairs, bottles clinking and Becca followed, but thankfully dived into her own room. Kate was on the landing. She was wearing a modest dark blue robe, but it did little to conceal her voluptuous figure. There was a triangle of fabric open to her milky, speckled cleavage, and he concentrated on not looking at it. Vanilla ice cream sprinkled with flakes of chocolate.
‘It’s all yours,’ she said.
A beat. ‘Sorry?’
‘The bathroom…?’
‘Oh, yeah, yeah.’ He looked down at the floorboards for safety but found himself looking at her bare feet and before he realised, his eyes had travelled back up her body again.
‘Well, congrats on gaining Granddad status again, I’ve yet to get Tia to stay with the same man for longer than three months. It’s going to be a busy time for you, next year. Two babies, two weddings, a hundred and one puppies-’
‘-and a horse funeral.’
‘Not funny,’ she said, but then smiled.
He decided to come clean about his cul-de-sac future with Jo. ‘Feel a bit of a twit now, telling everyone and getting all excited.’
She looked him directly in the eye. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. We tend to think relationships get easier with maturity, but they just evolve somehow, still catch you out.’
He thought about this for a moment. ‘Will you have a drink with me?’
She glanced at the bulging carrier bag. ‘I’ll go and find some glasses, maybe stoke the Aga.’
Clearly, she wasn’t going to step into his room.
Back in the kitchen, she’d put three tumblers on the table, and Fran was telling her all about the decorations. She trailed to a halt when he placed a bottle of whisky, a bottle of brandy and a bottle of gin amongst the angels, baubles and fairies. It looked faintly blasphemous and drew an uncomfortable comparison to the background of carols on the radio.
‘Name your poison,’ he said.
‘You don’t drink, Al,’ Fran said worriedly. ‘Not really, not like this.’
‘No?’
He unscrewed the top of the whisky and sloshed it in the direction of the first glass. Fran exchanged a look with Kate. ‘What’s happened?’
‘Me and Jo are finished.’
‘Oh, well, I think that’s for the best,’ Fran said.
‘Really?’ he said darkly.
‘Yes, she wasn’t right for you, Al. Not right at all.’
He downed the single malt and they both watched him top up the glass even though his eyes were practically watering. The last time he’d got really drunk was when that bitch Ruby Martinez had told him to go away. Helen had told him to go away eventually as well, and now Jo.
Kate found some ice and mixers and she was dispensing these when George returned from his festive night out, pulling his tie awry and looking more bloated than usual. His eyes were drawn to the bottles.
‘Is that my single malt? It better hadn’t be.’
‘No. Want one?’
‘Why would I want to drink with you, Al? Actually, I’m feeling a bit liverish, Fran, where’s the salts?’ He began hunting through the kitchen units, ripped open a packet of powder and ran the cold water tap, then began stirring vigorously into a mug. ‘So, why are you all having a pow-wow in here?’
‘Al’s got some news,’ Fran said, her eyes on his, seeking his permission to spill the beans. He saw no point in hiding the information and put a battered cigarette to his lips while his sister-in-law went over the non-event of the year on his behalf.
His brother laughed. ‘Is that a fact? Our incorrectly gelded stallion runs true to form. You leave a fucking trail of disaster everywhere you go.’
‘George,’ Kate said quietly, ‘Wanting to do the right thing by his unborn child is not the action of a weak man.’
‘I’m sorry, Kate but you don’t know the half of it. What’s she going to do about the kid?’ George said to him, blunt as ever.
He thought about hitting him, but his brother was drunk, and he was quickly getting to the same stage. Neat whisky on an empty stomach wasn’t a good idea, but then he was top of the masterclass for bad ideas. Out of the corner of his eye he became aware that Fran and Kate were both looking at George with varying degrees of shock and disgust, and that was good enough for him.
He kept his eyes focused on the Virgin Mary buried amongst the tinsel on the table, in the hope she’d maybe give him a short-term answer. Ironically, he remembered making the straw crib, so that was a no, then.
‘Well?’ George barked.
‘I expect she’s going to have a termination.’
‘Intelligent woman, too good for you,’ his brother said, and downed his liver-salts with a noisy flourish, then banged the mug down and wiped his mouth. ‘Fran? I do hope you’re not going to sit here and help him drown his sorrows, not with those painkillers you’re still scoffing.’
She rose obediently from the table and followed her husband into the hall but in passing the back of Al’s chair, kissed the top of his head. She continued to keep glancing back at him, blowing kisses until she began to ascend the stairs.
Al topped up their glasses, refusing Kate’s offer of ginger ale.
‘I don’t know how you can drink it neat,’ she said, ‘but I guess if I’d just had your news, I might want to light that cigarette as well.’
They had a four-foot table between them like a barrier and her dressing gown was pulled tight across her chest.
‘Despite what my brother says, I do actually have some will-power.’
‘Are you talking about smoking?’
‘Partly. What you said earlier, about the best and the worst, that you can’t have one without the other?’
‘What of it?’
‘Does that apply to everything in the universe, do you think?’
She leant back with a frown and the folds of her dressing gown fell open slightly. ‘That’s a big question. I guess in a broad sense, yes.’
‘So, if you’ve had tremendous highs and then devastating lows in your life is that better than feeling nothing?’
‘Better than living in a single straight line you mean? I can relate to that.’
‘Are you looking for some zigzags?’
She laughed. ‘Better to have loved and lost, no matter what the cost?’
‘As a philosophy, as least you know you’re alive if you experience both sides of the coin. When someone takes the knife out, you totally appreciate the meaning of joy.’
She held his eye contact and pushed her glass over to his side of the table for a refill. ‘I didn’t love Greg, not in the way I loved my first husband. I didn’t think I could expect overwhelming passion twice, and I settled for something much less.’
‘So, your first husband broke your heart?’
She nodded, ‘Yes, he did.’
‘I broke my wife’s heart too.’
‘Was it… love, money, or just sex?’
‘None of those, not what you’re thinking, although they all came into play. Rejection comes closer.’
‘Love, then. Parental, maternal?’
‘I think it may have been the more powerful driver, yes.’
He told her about Ruby Martinez, and she listened carefully, interested in his theory that his behaviours were down to female rejections.
‘It doesn’t work like that for everyone though, does it? If you’re doing a Freud on yourself, you could easily blame your mother for everything and be a victim, so you can justify wielding the knife, but you’re not guilty of that. I think you’re just trying to be the very best, where she was the very worst.’
Oh, but she was too astute. She was also beautiful, available and grown-up, and there was no doubt he was drawn to the full package in the wake
of his disastrous love life, although it seemed crude to think of her that way. The ink of his conversation with Jo hadn’t even had the chance to dry, and the death of her second husband was barely old news, but he couldn’t help thinking, wondering… if maybe Kate Roberts was the silver lining missing from his latest storm cloud.
‘I’m going to buy a Christmas tree tomorrow, with Becca,’ he said, swirling the remains of his drink. ‘Will you come and help choose?’
‘Case closed?’
‘For the moment.’
She smiled. ‘I’d love to.’
He got to his feet in a whisky fog, and she took the debris of their drunken repast over to the sink. Her hair fell forward as she stacked pots and glasses, exposing the nape of her neck. Maybe sensing his gaze, she turned to face him, wiping her hands. If her intention to move closer had been nothing more than a chaste hug, then maybe he could have controlled it as such, but what actually happened was nothing like that. Instead of passing him by, she seemed to gravitate fully into his arms, and she was about to say goodnight - maybe she even actually said it? He didn’t respond because he wasn’t sure what drivel might come out of his mouth, so he went for the usual diversion, and kissed her instead.
She tasted like a single malt after years of cheap blended scotch. How much of what he felt and tasted was down to the actual single malt he’d polished off, was irrelevant. The caress of her hands as they roamed across the back of his shoulders, and the way she turned her face to meet his, was a moment of blissful anticipation. Such soft lips, soft breasts pressed against him and then all too soon, soft hands around his face and those ice-blue eyes, full of fire. Okay, he was drunk.
‘Night, Al,’ she whispered.
Chapter Twelve
Kate.
Rounding the stairs, she almost fell over Fran, who was perched on the third step, hunched like a pixie in the dark.
‘Fran! What you doing there?’
‘George is snoring like a pig. I was going to re-join you, but you looked… intimate.’
‘Oh,’ she said, feeling about fifteen, tongue-tied and caught out. ‘Oh, you know how it is. Christmas…’ she finished lamely.
‘Al has only been single for a matter of hours. You’re my brother’s widow,’ she said to the floor, then squinted up at her. ‘I’m a bit surprised at you.’
Kate felt her insides twist with a combination of embarrassment, the shock of Fran’s reaction and the idea that she’d been spying on her through the stair bannisters. Above all, it was deeply humiliating.
‘I… I’m sorry. Look, it was nothing,’ she said, and squeezed Fran’s shoulder briefly as she slid past. Once inside her room, she closed the door and leant on it, the blood surging, pounding through her head, screaming liar, liar!
Who was she fooling? It hadn’t been nothing at all, it had been an all-encompassing everything. She couldn’t remember being held like that, ever.
Enjoying the warm contours of his body against hers had been painfully teasing in its brevity, intense and intoxicating. She hadn’t quite opened her mouth to his, they’d danced on the periphery of each other and as a result, the ensuing tension was now considerable. She picked over and over it all as she lay wide-eyed on the bed, the room lit by a pearlised moon hanging in a heavily clouded night sky.
*
Feeling un-rested, she rose early and almost leapt out of her skin when she found Al slumped over in the kitchen chair, his head on the table. The whisky bottle was empty. She almost touched his hair, then thought better of it and set about putting the kettle to boil instead. The noise disturbed him and he lifted his head to look at her through bleary eyes.
‘Bloody hell.’ He rubbed the back of his neck, and then his eyes. When he got to his feet, the chair toppled over backwards with a clatter, causing him to stop in his tracks and grimace. ‘Bloody, bloody hell.’
She passed him a pint glass of water and two Alka-Seltzer. He thanked her, then slowly creaked up the stairs without so much as a backwards glance.
Becca appeared an hour later to ask her for some painkillers.
‘Menstrual cramps from hell,’ she said, and grumbled that Uncle Al had passed out fully clothed on top of the bed, and who was meant to help her with all the chores?
‘I’ve tried to wake him up but he just grunts,’ she said, throwing her cereal bowl into the sink. ‘I feel really horrible, and it’s Christmas.’
‘Don’t worry, it’ll pass,’ Kate said, and reached up to get the first-aid box from the top kitchen cupboard and rooted through it for the codeine she’d spotted in there, but there was none left and so had to resort to whatever she could find in her handbag. ‘I’ll help you feed the animals.’
Her spirits bottomed out when she saw the solid sheet of rain outside, but a couple of hours of physical activity was maybe the best cure for her mental and emotional melting pot of shame. Surely she was too old to feel like this?
A good hour later and George greeted them both at the back door as they flung off wellingtons and shook out dripping coats with cold, numb fingers.
‘Where’s Al, I thought this was his job?’
‘I don’t think he’s feeling very well,’ Becca said, then to Kate, ‘Can we make some mince pies?’
They made mince pies. In the midst of rolling and cutting out the second lot of pastry, Al appeared, white and unshaven. There was a wonderful steamy fug in the kitchen, an aroma of warm spices, wet dog and wood-burner and he smiled indulgently. It went a long way to lifting the gloom outside and the general mess littered across every surface. He scratched his belly and yawned, then slung an arm across Becca’s shoulders, but she was mostly unrelenting.
‘Sorry I was a grump,’ he said, ‘Can I have a pie?’
‘Have you forgotten about the tree?’
‘No! Have I ever let you down, ever?’
‘I guess not.’
He pinched a hot mince pie off the cooling rack, tossing it from hand to hand. ‘Go and ask your dad if Kate can borrow his vehicle, then we can get a decent sized tree.’
When Becca disappeared, he helped to wash-up.
‘I hope I didn’t make an idiot of myself last night,’ he began. ‘Scrap that. I may as well just say sorry.’
‘There’s no need,’ she said, passing him a bunch of utensils to dry, averting her eyes as their fingers touched. How much he actually remembered, she couldn’t gauge. He looked pensive, but that could be down to any number of reasons since he had so many negative issues in his life, topped off with a considerable hangover. Her own face seemed frozen in time too, scared of saying or presuming the wrong thing.
He asked her what was wrong with Becca.
‘Oh, just time of the month.’
‘Ah… I keep forgetting how old she is.’
They managed to escape the house before Fran surfaced, and the mood lifted a little as they bowled along the wet lanes towards the forestry plantation. After a full morning of rain, the smell of cut fir trees and logs for burning was delicious, and one long inhalation was almost enough to epitomise Christmas. They mooched down the muddied tracks between the long rows of trees, divided by size and type.
‘Uncle Al,’ Becca said. ‘Do you think Mum is acting a bit weird?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Oh, I dunno,’ she said, twirling the fronds of a spruce between her fingers. ‘Can we get one of these?’
‘If it will make you smile.’
‘She’s not even bought any presents or sent any cards.’
Al exchanged a look, and Kate deliberated over telling him about the altercation on the stairs, but she couldn’t very well do this with Becca in earshot, and anyway, she sensed it was only a small part of a bigger problem. ‘Well, maybe we can kick-start some atmosphere with one of these,’ Kate said, reaching into the fronds. ‘This one’s a beauty.’
‘Why are we getting a stupid tree anyway, we’ve no proper decorations for it,’ Becca said, as Al heav
ed the huge eight-footer out of the row and began to drag it towards the netting area.
‘If you don’t cheer up I’ll put you feet-first down that chute,’ he said.
This was met with a scathing look, not usually part of Becca’s personality. ‘You wouldn’t dare!’
‘Are you challenging me?’
‘Yeah, if you think it’s so funny, why don’t you do it yourself?’
She imagined that Al would maybe grab hold of Becca and run with her to the chute, threatening to drop her in and then landing her safely to her feet at the last second. But this was Al.
With one fluid movement, he climbed headlong into the short metal chute, inching along until the netting began to capture him, like a human chrysalis. Kate looked round wildly, registering that the place was mercifully quiet. Becca was open-mouthed with delighted shock, then shrieked.
‘Uncle Al!’
He fell out at the other end, writing on the ground as if he’d been born to some strange forest creature, a long knotted tail on top of his head. She laughed, how could she not laugh? Becca was soon hanging onto her arm, tears streaming down her face.
‘I can’t believe he’s gone and done that!’
Kate tried to imagine Greg doing something as bizarre, but he would never have made such a fool of himself. Even Tia’s father had employed strict limits on silly behaviour, where it might be deemed marginally dangerous or getting out of hand, as he called most rough play. Although he’d been a good dad to their small daughter, he had far less interest in her now as a grown woman, having inherited two younger children with a second marriage. She wondered if Tia felt rejected, a little like Al.
In a very short time, he was cut out of the net and their selected tree was passed through the chute by two unimpressed forestry workers with very little festive spirit or sense of humour. Kate and Becca plucked all the needles off his sweater and out of his hair, grinning at the small audience of wary adults and amused children as they waited to pay for trees.
