Three Christmases: A Things We Never Said short story bonus.

by Nick Alexander

  I made two mugs of tea and warmed a bottle for Jake and then April asked me what was going on.

  I told her about my job and all the rubbishy contracts the architecture practice where I was working had accepted. I told her how they’d dropped me to three days a week but that for the moment, I was rather enjoying the extra time off. I explained I was taking Tai Chi classes on Mondays and Wednesdays and made her giggle with a short demonstration of some of the movements I’d been learning. Jake, bless him, tried to copy some of them which was cute beyond belief.

  But then April said, “That’s all really great, Mags, and I am interested, honestly, I am. But I actually meant, what’s going on between you and Dad? Because I can’t work out if you’ve got a secret thing going on or have fallen out with each other.”

  April had always been incredibly straightforward – it was one of the things I liked about her so much – but this time, she’d really thrown me.

  I stuttered and stumbled my way through the conversation explaining that neither was the case, that we most certainly didn’t have a thing going on and nor had we fallen out. “We’ve just, you know, been busy, I expect,” I said vaguely. “Your dad with the move and his job and everything...”

  “And you with your three-day-week,” April laughed.

  “Well, quite,” I said.

  “Oh, well, as long as there’s no bad blood between you. I’d hate that.”

  “There really isn’t,” I insisted.

  After they had left, I sat for the whole afternoon trying to figure it all out.

  I wondered if Sean had sent April to find out how I felt. I wondered if it was his way of sending me a sign that he was now “ready”, whatever that meant. I asked myself if I wanted a sign, if I wanted him ready. And finally, I forced myself to ask a question which had become taboo, even in the privacy of own mind – I asked myself if I wanted Sean in that way at all.

  There had been moments, over the years – not many, I could probably count them on my fingers – but there had been moments when I had looked at Sean and found him sexy. Of course there had been. He’s a good looking, fit, clever, friendly kind of a guy.

  But I had never considered it a possibility, that was the thing. He had been married to Catherine, after all, and I had loved Catherine to bits. In fact, I wondered, that afternoon, if I hadn’t loved Catherine even more than I loved Sean. I certainly was missing her enormously.

  These days, I’m not so sure that I was right about that. Nowadays, I’m tempted to say that I loved them both equally. Or perhaps that they were simply so fusional that one never really knew where one ended and the other began – so perhaps it was the two of them together, their humour, their fusion, their energy, that I loved so much.

  But when Sean had told me that day what Catherine had said, it had thrown me. It had made me wonder if she was right, if perhaps I had been in love with Sean all along.

  It’s ridiculous, I know, not to know one’s own mind, but for the longest time, I couldn’t decode even my own feelings, let alone anyone else’s.

  And though I sat, for that whole afternoon, trying to decide how I felt, it remained a mystery to me. The only thing that seemed sure was that Sean and Catherine had been a huge, integral part of my life, and that I missed them both individually, and, perhaps even more so, as a couple.

  None of this eased things with Sean in any way, though. In fact, as that second year passed by, I found myself avoiding him more and more. Maybe avoiding is too active a term for what was going on. After all, not seeing someone is so much easier to achieve than seeing them. It’s the seeing that requires the phone calls and emails and dates and rendezvous. The default state, if one is lazy or hesitant, or confused, is always one of not seeing.

  But I phoned less, I suppose. I stopped dropping in with food parcels, too.

  In the old days, I had called by as much to see Catherine as I had to see Sean. And then after her death, I had dropped in because I was worried about him and because I felt that Catherine would have wanted me to keep an eye on him.

  But increasingly, Sean seemed fine. He seemed to be coping as well as could be expected without Catherine, and he seemed to be doing fine without little old me, too. Perhaps it suited me to decide that he was best left to it, but that is what I came to believe.

  When I thought about Sean, and from time to time, I can’t deny it, I did, I felt a sense of love for him, it’s true. But the less time we spent together, the better I was able to identify it, and it wasn’t sexy love after all, it was far closer to a kind of brother/sister sort of thing. And when I tried to imagine myself with Sean – in a physical sense – I merely felt embarrassed. Perhaps I’d known him for too long, but he felt like family, and those visions of us together, when I forced them to manifest, felt more like incest than anything else.

  I couldn’t, for the life of me, imagine how to explain such a thing to Sean though, and I worried that I’d perhaps led him on in some way, only now to have to let him down. So I steered clear – albeit automatically, subconsciously – of any situation where that awkward conversation might have to happen.

  The following Christmas, April invited me to London and because I’d spent the previous Christmas not with my brother, as I had claimed, but drunk and maudlin and alone in my flat, and because I was missing them all like crazy… And because I had a feeling it was time, perhaps, to normalise my relationship with Sean, I accepted.

  April pointed out repeatedly that Jake hardly knew me, and not only did that make me feel guilty, but it provided the justification I needed to be there.

  All the same, as I travelled down on the train, my jumbo bag of gifts at my feet, I felt as nervous as I’ve ever been.

  On arrival, I went straight to my hotel – I’d found a great deal at Camden Lock.

  I checked in, showered and changed, and then headed over to April’s place. It was a lovely crisp December day and I enjoyed the walk, half of which was through the park.

  On breakfast TV that morning, Carol Kirkwood had promised snow, but it hadn’t happened after all. It smelt as if it might still come to pass, though – the air had a strange metallic taste to it that reminded me of other snowy days, in any case.

  It was just after three when I got to the flat, and Jake was having his afternoon snooze with April, so Ronan, Sean and I headed back out for a Christmas drink at a nearby pub, The Queens.

  The conversation was stilted at first – I didn’t know Ronan well and hadn’t seen Sean for months – but by the time the boys had started their second pints and I was sipping a repeat G&T things seemed to feel much more normal.

  We chatted about Jake and how Ronan was coping with his new work/life balance (he wasn’t coping at all) and how he and April had agreed to swap roles again after the New Year so that Ronan could get his career back on track. Looking after a baby wasn’t, he said, compatible with freelancing after all. He actually seemed surprised about that.

  As we walked tipsily back home, Ronan asked me how I was, so I told him about working part time and that I was enjoying it, but how, financially, it couldn’t go on forever.

  And then Ronan asked me if I was seeing anyone at the moment. There was something peculiar, something premeditated about the way he had said it, and I glanced, without thinking, at Sean to see if he was complicit in this in some way.

  Sean spotted and understood the context of my glance: he gave me an open handed shrug which meant, Sorry, nothing to do with me.

  “No,” I replied, eventually. “No, not seeing anyone at all.” I was glad that it was dark enough that they couldn’t see me blushing.

  Back at the flat, Jake was awake and tearing around the apartment, yanking at the branches of the tree, which they had securely attached to the wall, thank God, and squeezing and punching the gifts beneath it. He was a welcome distraction for all of us, I think.

  “I’m glad I left my gifts at the hotel,” I said. “I’m not sure they would have survived an evening with Jake.”


  I helped April serve some Christmas Eve snacks and I drank another couple of glasses of wine, which was probably one too many, but hey, it was Christmas Eve, after all.

  By eight, both April and Jake were in bed and Ronan was snoring in front of the television, so I said that I’d order a taxi back to my hotel.

  Sean offered to walk me back instead. “It’ll do me good to get some fresh air,” he said. “Plus, this way we can talk.”

  Because the darkness of the park scared me a little, we walked around the edges instead. It was incredibly cold and our breath hung in the air like fog.

  We walked in silence for a while, which made me feel uncomfortable, so when we turned onto Regent’s Park Road I steeled myself and spoke. “So, did you want to talk about anything specific?” I asked.

  Sean cleared his throat. “I suppose I do, really, yes,” he said. “I suppose I think it’s time we had a conversation about us.”

  “Us?”

  “Yes, it feels like… I don’t know. Like we’ve been avoiding each other? Maybe? Just a bit?”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Yes, I know what you mean. We have, really, haven’t we?”

  “Ever since the hospital. You know, when Jake was born.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m thinking maybe that was a mistake, saying what I said. I’m wondering if perhaps I offended you?”

  “No!” I said, stopping walking now, so that I could turn and face him properly. “No, don’t think that. Nothing you said ever offended me, Sean.”

  “Right,” he said. “OK, then.”

  “I think we need, perhaps…” I stumbled. “Perhaps we need to be clearer about the kind of relationship we have.” I was trying, but failing, to nudge the conversation in a more useful direction.

  Sean touched my elbow then. “And what kind of relationship is that, Mags?” he asked.

  As I tried to construct the perfect response, as I tried to forge a phrase that would be clear, concise yet friendly, respectful yet unambiguous, I momentarily closed my eyes. “I think,” I started, “that we’ve been perhaps trying to make…”

  Sean lurched at me and pecked me on the lips.

  “Oh,” I said, genuinely surprised. I hadn’t been expecting that at all.

  He leaned back just far enough that I could see his features lit by the streetlamp opposite. He looked confused and serious, an expression I struggled to understand in the context of the kiss.

  “I don’t think I…” I began, hesitantly.

  “Hang on,” Sean interrupted, raising a finger to my lips. “I’ve had a bit to drink, I know, but do you mind? Would you mind if I just…”

  I laughed awkwardly. “I don’t mind, Sean. It’s just that…”

  He leaned in and kissed me again, more forcefully this time. He placed a hand on my neck, too. His hand was icy cold on my skin and I shivered.

  After a few seconds Sean pulled away. “Oh,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “That didn’t work really, did it?”

  “No,” I agreed. “No, not really. Not for me, anyway.”

  “No, me neither,” Sean said, sounding matter of fact, as if he was perhaps stating the result of a scientific experiment. “Sorry, but I had to know. I had to find out.”

  “It’s OK,” I told him. “I understand.”

  “Do you?” Sean asked, looking somehow boyish in his confusion.

  “I think so,” I said.

  I suddenly felt overcome by embarrassment. “I think I’ll…” I said, pointing vaguely and starting to walk. “It’s fine. My hotel’s just there, Sean.” My voice had gone all wobbly and I felt desperate to end this interaction, desperate to be alone in my room with my thoughts.

  “Right, if you’re sure,” Sean said. “I’ll, um, see you tomorrow then.”

  By way of reply I gave a little wave over my shoulder.

  When I got to my hotel room, I sat on the bed and cried.

  I’d struggle to explain precisely why I cried because it was for a whole jumble of reasons and emotions, but I cried, I think, because I thought my friendship with Sean was now definitively ruined forever. I cried because it was Christmas Eve and I was fifty years old, and yet still alone. I cried because I knew that I wasn’t going to April’s place the next day, after all, and because I’d be spending Christmas Day on my own. Again.

  Eventually, I dried my face, touched up my makeup, and headed downstairs to the bar. I’d have a better chance of sleeping, I reckoned, with a double whisky inside me. I was feeling hungry, too.

  At first, I sat at the bar, but as the only other people on barstools were men, an old guy in a suit to my left, and an overweight chap to my right, nursing a pint, I quickly relocated to one of the tables while I waited for the Halloumi brochette I had ordered.

  The few tables that were occupied had been taken by couples and I hesitated for a moment over whether I felt more or less uncomfortable seated at a table, alone, than at the bar. But then I took a hefty swig of my whisky and thought, “Fuck it.”

  Frank Sinatra came on the loudspeaker system singing Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas. I sighed deeply and looked at the bar in case my snack had arrived. I needed something to do with my hands and the food would be a welcome distraction.

  One of the two men (the overweight one) had swivelled on his chair to face me. He was staring straight at me. Balding. Bearded. Big brown eyes.

  He sighed exaggeratedly and raised an eyebrow. “Christmas, huh?” he said, softly, and I laughed in a dry, understated kind of way. He hadn’t said anything that profound, but I felt that I couldn’t have put it better myself.

  He lifted his empty glass and nodded vaguely at mine with his chin, silently asking a question.

  I blinked slowly and then surprised myself by shrugging, silently transmitting my answer. He turned back to the bar to order for us both.

  “Thank you,” he said earnestly, as he placed the drinks on the table and pulled up a chair to join me. Close to, he was younger than I had thought. Late thirties, perhaps early forties. Now smiling, albeit sadly, he was cuter, too. His size seemed less important – he somehow seemed to carry it well. With the beard and everything, the overall impression was of a friendly, if slightly sad, teddy-bear. And those brown eyes really were enormous – I could see the whole room reflected in them.

  “I thought I was about to cry if I had to drink another pint on my own, on bloody Christmas Eve,” he said.

  There was something so honest about that opening statement that it touched me. Perhaps it was just the alcohol and the emotion of the day but my eyes were watering again in sympathy. I swallowed with difficulty. “Me too,” I said.

  “Dan,” he said, offering his hand.

  I reached out and shook it. His grip was warm and firm. “Mags,” I told him.

  “It’s snowing!” someone said, and we both turned to look at the young woman seated by the window. “Look,” she said again, addressing her boyfriend. “It’s snowing.”

  “Merits a closer look, I’d say,” Dan said, standing.

  I followed his lead and took my drink with me to the window. Outside, tiny snowflakes were drifting past the streetlights.

  “Merry Christmas, Mags,” Dan said.

  “Merry Christmas, Dan,” I replied.

  Three: The Kerala Curry Christmas.

  Sean:

  About two weeks before Christmas, April phoned me. We had decided to have Christmas dinner at my place, so I assumed that she was phoning with last minute suggestions or requests.

  “I need to ask you something, Dad,” she said.

  “I need to ask you something, too,” I replied. “I was about to phone you, actually.”

  “Oh, OK,” April said. “You go first then.”

  I laughed. “No, no, after you.”

  “Right,” she said, sounding worried. “Well, it’s about Maggie, actually.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Maggie, is it?”

  I had spoken to Maggie only a h
andful of times since the previous Christmas, and I hadn’t seen her once.

  She had phoned April to cancel on Christmas morning. She’d invented some cock-and-bull story about having to visit a friend in distress, but April had seen through it, so, when pressed, I’d invented a story of my own about a random drunken argument to excuse her. Because of course I knew perfectly well that it was my fault she had cancelled. I knew that I’d made her feel uncomfortable with that stupid kiss.

  I have no excuse for what I did, except to say that even the silliest action can seem perfectly logical after a few drinks. I know that’s a cop-out, but it’s true.

  The papers that year had been full of sexual harassment, inappropriate behaviour, and even, occasionally, full-blown rape accusations against a slew of well known personalities. And every time I had read about one I’d squirmed a little and wondered if I hadn’t crossed a line with Maggie. After all, she hadn’t exactly invited me to kiss her, had she?

  So I’d phoned her to apologise on New Year’s Day and I’d emailed her again to grovel some more in March. But though she insisted that everything was fine, I knew, from the simple fact of her complete absence from our lives, that it wasn’t true.

  “Now, I know last Christmas went off like a damp firework and everything,” April said, “and I know you had a bit of a tiff, but I still feel weird coming to Cambridge and not seeing her at all. And if I do go to see her, I can’t see how I can avoid asking her what she’s up to for Christmas, can I? And if Dan’s not there, if she’s on her own, I mean, then I’ll…”

  “Dan?” I asked, interrupting her.

  “Yes, Dan. Her boyfriend.”

  “Maggie has a boyfriend?”

  “Yes, of course she does. You know that, right?”

  “Um, no, I didn’t.”

  “Don’t you ever look at her Facebook page, Dad?”

  “Not really,” I admitted. “No. I never look at Facebook at all.”

  “Oh,” April said. “Well, they’ve been together for a while, I think. So my question is, if I do go to see her, can I invite them?”