Maeve Binchy's Treasury

by Maeve Binchy

  Grandfather got an alarm clock for a Christmas present. He listened for the tick and couldn’t hear it properly so, as he often did, he removed his hearing aid to test it.

  ‘Get it, boy,’ Joe said, and the dog snapped at the small bit of plastic. He chewed it happily, delighted with the new toy, and mangled it out of any recognisable shape.

  In an attempt to retrieve it, Joe made sure that all the wires were wrenched from it.

  Grandfather was astounded. He hadn’t heard his grandson’s cry of encouragement. Neither had anyone else. Or if they had, it wasn’t mentioned.

  The Christmas lunch appeared on the table. As always, it seemed great to Joe—dish after dish appeared. His grandmother didn’t pick them up to read what was written underneath.

  ‘That smells very nice,’ she said instead. Joe’s mam nearly dropped the turkey.

  Every other year there had been sorrowful reminiscences of the times when Christmas was Christmas and the bird had been brought in on a silver salver. Now, since she couldn’t see the plate it was resting on, there was nothing to trigger off a trip down Memory Lane.

  Dad was carving. ‘And a leg for you, Father?’ Dad came over and placed it in front of him and looked at him as if waiting for approval.

  ‘That looks very good, son,’ Grandfather said.

  From the other room came the sounds of the Chieftains belting out their numbers. Everyone’s foot was tapping including Granny’s; it had been a good choice, it sort of spanned the generations. Grandfather didn’t hear it at all. Nor did he hear Switch yowling in time to the music.

  There was a marvellous film on television on Christmas Night. Dad had said they wouldn’t be able to have it, because his father would say that the values were all wrong . . . fellows not fighting for their country like fellows should, and language that would make a soldier blush.

  Granny would say that that sort of thing was fine in its place but not on Christmas Day when everyone had eaten a good dinner.

  But this year? Maybe . . . ? Joe looked at his parents hopefully.

  ‘Give it a lash,’ said his father with good-humoured enthusiasm.

  ‘The skies can’t fall on us,’ said Joe’s mam.

  As they watched the film, Grandfather looked for awhile, pleased at the images and understanding nothing at all. Then he dropped off to sleep peacefully.

  Granny sat in her chair seeing only a blur. But she liked the music and thought she followed the plot. Then she too went to sleep.

  On the day after Christmas, Mam and Dad used always to have people in for a drink. The neighbours would come and say their heads were splitting and it had been the final blight on the festive season. Granny used to sniff and say that people of this sort had been the salt of the earth in their own place, but of course their own place had been at the back door.

  Grandfather used to say that these people talked about money and drink and horses and football and had no values like people of old who talked of nationhood and identity.

  This year his grandfather and grandmother sat benignly when the guests arrived. Drinks were handed to them. Clasps of goodwill were exchanged.

  Joe saw his dad giving his mother a bit of a squeeze in the kitchen, as they went in to take more mince pies out of the oven. Granny couldn’t see the paper plates and plain paper napkins. Grandfather couldn’t hear the assembled company singing ‘I’ll scream if I hear White Christmas’ as Joe’s dad conducted them.

  ‘It might not be like this every Christmas,’ his father said as the departure came the next day.

  ‘No, indeed,’ said Joe. He was sure he couldn’t get away with it again.

  ‘Not both of them anyway,’ his mam said. She never knew, did she? Her eyes were bright.

  Of course he couldn’t immobilise both of them again. But somehow the memory of them seeing nothing and hearing nothing had been a touching one. It made them less of the ogres they had been.

  They would never be able to threaten his Christmas again.

  The White Trolley

  IT HAD BEEN A LONG HARD YEAR RUNNING THE SHOP. TOO MANY very early mornings, too many late nights. A lot of anxiety about introducing new lines. But the Patels had got it right. It was Christmas Eve and they knew that they had more than justified Uncle Javed’s hopes for them. It was up and running now, their own place, in the middle of city offices. A place where they had the courage to stock much more than the usual sandwiches and fast food for office lunchers. They had even opened a gift section with small electronics, unusual stationery, little leather goods and gadgets of every kind.

  The other shopkeepers had shaken their heads and said they were mad. But the Patels were newly married and fired with ideas, gently encouraged by the watchful Uncle Javed. The young couple had a gut feeling about the kind of service city workers needed and now, as they finally prepared to close for the Christmas holidays, the Patels stood and watched proudly as their most successful venture, white trolleys overflowing with carefully packed goods, waited in line to be collected.

  These were goods that had been bought in the lunch hour or during the day, when customers had been able to slip away from their offices. Each trolley had a name written on it with a big felt pen on cardboard. The customer showed the receipt and then pushed the trolley out the door. There was a chorus of greetings and good wishes and the Patels watched as a hundred different Christmases left their shop in trolleys. Uncle Javed congratulated them, remarking that there were many new faces among the regular customers.

  Mr Patel was talking to one of the regulars when Uncle Javed gave the trolley marked S. White to a young, anxious-looking woman with long hair falling into her eyes. Mrs Patel was outside in the cold, pointing towards a bus stop and giving directions, when Uncle Javed gave another trolley marked S. White to a stooped man with sad eyes. Then, under Uncle Javed’s mischievous gaze, the young couple closed their store and took the first proper rest they had known for over a year.

  Sara White pushed the trolley to the van where Ken waited patiently. There was someone like Ken in every office, a man who didn’t drink, who didn’t seem to have any real life of his own, not one that he talked about anyway. But who was always there, ready to help. It had become a tradition that Ken drove people home after the Christmas Eve office party. He piled all the carrier bags into the back of the van and returned the trolley to the little line. His three other passengers were still singing cheerfully as he dropped each of them to their homes and they seemed reluctant to leave.

  Only Sara was sober and silent as she sat beside him in the front seat.

  ‘You must have bought up the whole shop,’ Ken said to her.

  ‘Well, it’s going to be a difficult Christmas this year, I want to make it different for them, not too traditional and all that,’ Sara said and looked out the window at the crowds making their way home in the rain.

  Sara’s husband had left home in the springtime. Quite unexpectedly, apparently. She had spoken little of it in the office but some of the girls had told Ken that she cried a lot and always expected that he would phone and say he was coming back.

  ‘I’m going to make them Thai Curry tomorrow. They’ll like that and it won’t be sort of reminding them, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ Ken said even though he didn’t.

  He helped her into the house with the carrier bags. Last year there had been a tall thin man in a red sweater called David opening the door and, taking the bags for her, he had invited Ken in to have a drink. This time two children opened the door.

  ‘You’re very late,’ the girl said disapprovingly.

  ‘I suppose it was all stupid games and things at the party,’ the boy said.

  ‘You remember Ken.’ Her voice was bright. Too bright.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the girl.

  ‘Hi,’ said the boy.

  Ken said ‘Good night’ sharpish. No thanks he didn’t want to come in. He wished everyone a very Happy Christmas.

  ‘Well now,’ Sara said.

 
; ‘Well?’ said Adam who was thirteen and had come to the end of a bad day. All his friends seemed to be having proper Christmases, with presents and relations and trees and parties. Adam didn’t know what he would do if his mother said once more in that false sort of accent she spoke with sometimes, that it was just a day . . . ‘That’s all Christmas was when you came to think of it, just a day.’

  ‘Well?’ said Katie, who was twelve and missed her father with a dull sort of ache that never went away. Things would never be all right again. When they saw their dad he just sighed and groaned and cast his eyes up to heaven about their mother. Her mother couldn’t speak of Dad without shaking and trembling and talking about that woman and all the trouble she had caused. Adam and Katie didn’t talk about Dad at all. It was easier.

  But nothing is easy at Christmas time. They watched as their mother’s false smile tried to reach her eyes and didn’t succeed.

  ‘Well,’ she said again. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got here.’ And very slowly she began to unpack on to her kitchen table the entire Christmas shopping list of a Mr Stephen White. His credit card receipt was in one of the bags. A man who liked wrapped white sliced bread, and tins of peas and two portions of frozen turkey breast. A man who had bought ten tins of cat food, and four horrible, horrible little packages of talcum powder and soap with Merry Yuletide written on them. Unbelieving still, Sara opened bag after bag. Everything she hated most in the world was unfolding before her. Packet stuffing for a turkey! Could this man have intended to put some dry packet stuffing in a frozen breast of turkey? There were tins of ready-made custard, there were convenience foods like she had never known. Things you boiled in a bag, things you stewed in a packet of sauce. Sara’s eyes were round in horror.

  Her face began to crumple, and for the first time since their father had left, the children saw that their mother was about to cry. Adam and Katie looked at each other in amazement.

  She had never cried when Dad had walked away and gone off to live with that strange Mrs Hunter, the woman with the greasy hair and the long droopy cardigan. And here she was now about to collapse because of something to do with the shopping. Sara fought back the tears. She could not let herself go now, now of all nights. But it was eight o’clock on Christmas Eve. Some half-witted man called Stephen White in some other part of the city had the beautiful soft leather handbag she had bought for Katie, the tiny CD player with the ten carefully chosen discs that she had found for Adam. The pure silk scarf that would go with Katie’s green eyes, the camera that Adam had always wanted.

  This man, who ate white bread and frozen turkey breasts, would have all the lemon grass, and black olives, fresh limes and coriander. He would have the fresh prawns, the designer salad ingredients, the superb cheese. Even if there were any other stores open now, which she doubted, Sara couldn’t afford to buy anything else. She had spent half a month’s salary in Patel’s and they with their happy marriage and successful business had managed to ruin everything for her. Because of their incompetence she was going to have to serve this man’s revolting food for Christmas. Or they would eat nothing at all.

  She didn’t deserve to be let down like this, she had worked so very hard and fought so very bitterly to have the children to herself this Christmas. She didn’t want them going anywhere near David and that appalling Marjorie Hunter who looked as if she never washed her face or combed her hair.

  David said it wouldn’t be Christmas for him if he couldn’t see the children at least for a little bit of the day. He had offered all kinds of things, he could collect them, he could visit them for an hour, he could send a taxi for them. He would be lonely, he said.

  ‘You should have thought about that when you left them,’ Sara had said crisply.

  ‘Please, Sara,’ he had actually begged her.

  ‘How could you possibly be lonely, David?’ Sara had said. ‘You have the lovely Marjorie Hunter to entertain you.’ And he had hung up then. Defeated.

  She saw both the children staring at her. Worried.

  ‘Do you want us to put the shopping away?’ Katie asked.

  ‘I’ll open the freezer,’ Adam offered.

  ‘This isn’t the shopping,’ Sara sobbed, her shoulders heaving. ‘This isn’t anyone’s normal shopping, it’s the shopping of a madman.’ And with her head between the tins of cat food and the packets of instant whipped mousse, Sara White wept all the tears that the children had never seen her shed in this, the worst year of their lives.

  They were entirely at a loss. For month after long month it had been a brittle, tense way of coping with Dad leaving. Katie had tried to talk, she had sat on her mother’s bed and begged her to tell her what had happened. But she got no answer. Only that strange, unnatural laugh that didn’t sound at all like her mother. Adam had wondered was it because he had got a bad school report? Could that have had anything to do with it? But again that laugh, he wasn’t to be so silly to think that a bad report could make a father leave home.

  They couldn’t understand why she had never cried. The children could not understand that their mother was tormented with her own desperate questions and the person with the answers had simply walked away.

  Katie and Adam hardly dared to touch the weeping woman with her head down on the table in the middle of this perfectly ordinary-looking shopping. But, tentatively, Katie touched her mother’s shoulder. Adam went and got a great lump of kitchen paper for her to dry her eyes. Gradually Sara sat up and looked at them. She blew her nose loudly and gave each of her children a squeeze.

  ‘It’s just the last straw, you see,’ she explained.

  They didn’t see.

  ‘I wanted it to be special for you,’ she said humbly.

  They huddled together and talked. She told them how much she loved them and how hard she had fought for them this Christmas. And now there were only terrible, terrible things to cook, and all their lovely presents gone forever to this madman.

  ‘I don’t mind these things,’ said Katie. ‘You don’t have to cook with them, we’ll do it.’ Katie waited for her mother to protest. But Sara took one glance at the alien food on her table and sighed heavily. Adam held his breath and followed his mother’s gaze. At least she had stopped crying.

  ‘This stuff’s easy to cook,’ he boasted. ‘And we’ll find the madman after Christmas and get our presents back.’

  His mother touched his cheek. The small gesture surprised Adam and he felt happy. For the first time in months he and his sister did not seem like some impossible burden their mother had to suffer alone.

  Warily, Sara watched her son and daughter play with the garish items that had been bought by Mr S. White. The tins and packets were being tossed carelessly between Adam and Katie; their faces getting increasingly excited as they invented elaborate names for the dishes on their Christmas Day menu; a meal of sorts seemed possible, Sara conceded. She looked at her children, both ridiculously pleased with themselves, and she felt blessed. They deserved their presents and she knew, she had always known, what they really wanted for Christmas.

  ‘Would you like to call your dad?’ she asked gently. The children looked at her, their shoulders sagged slightly and they avoided her eyes. ‘You can invite him to your lunch,’ she added softly.

  ‘Only if he brings some food and our presents,’ said Katie too brightly.

  ‘Don’t be silly! He wouldn’t come without Her!’ Adam tried to hide his frustration but recently their lives had become so complicated.

  ‘Daddy could bring her,’ said Katie, hesitantly.

  A furtive look passed between Katie and Adam; they hardly dared to hope.

  Sara studied the shopping of Mr S. White with open suspicion. ‘Do you really think you can manage this lot?’

  Two eager faces beamed back at her.

  ‘Easy,’ said Adam confidently. Katie nodded her agreement.

  Sara sighed. Her children were right, she thought, it was ‘easy’ and she went to the telephone. ‘I will have to warn Daddy . . .
and . . . Marjorie,’ she said and smiled at the two impish faces, ‘that it will be a light and very uncomplicated lunch.’

  The Feast of Stephen

  STEPHEN WHITE HAD ALWAYS LIKED THE PATELS WHO RAN THE great shop near his office. They were such a hard-working couple and yet they always had time to have a few words.

  Mrs Patel had once advised him what to take to a colleague who was in hospital. Stephen White had been going to buy her chocolates, but the busy little woman in her sari said that she thought a packet of cards with envelopes would be better and then if he were to get her a book of stamps as well that would be perfection.

  It had indeed been a highly acceptable gift. The woman in the hospital bed had been surprised at receiving something so thoughtful.

  Foolishly Stephen told her it was the suggestion of the woman in the mini market. It seemed to diminish the gift but Stephen was such a fair-minded person he didn’t want to take credit for an idea which was not his own. He had always been that way. Not pushy enough his father had said, but then nobody was pushy enough for Stephen’s father, who had eventually pushed himself into a situation where he was prosecuted for fraud.

  Never stood up for himself his sisters had said, and Wendy the wife that he thought had loved him had left him because she said that he would never light a fire under anyone, himself included.

  Stephen hadn’t known that he was meant to light fires under anyone. It hadn’t been part of any original deal. He thought you went out and worked hard and earned money and stood behind other people in queues and waited your turn. He didn’t know a new system had come in where you were meant to have a confrontation about everything, and not to back down and not to lose face.

  And this, of course, was why he was in this situation just before Christmas time.

  Redundant.