Christmas morning and the sound of a mug being plonked down on the beside table next to me wakes me up. It’s Dan, still wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday and looking more shattered than I think I’ve ever seen him. And older too; for the first time in the bright morning light I notice grey hair starting to sprout round his temples. All the ridiculous hours he’s been working finally taking their toll.
‘Hey, Happy Christmas, sleeping beauty,’ he says softly, sitting down on the edge of the bed beside me and rubbing his eyes exhaustedly with the back of his hands. ‘Made you some tea.’
‘Dan! Where were you? I mean, what happened last night? I was so worried…’
‘I know and I’m so sorry, love. It was all hours by the time I got back, so I just crashed out on the sofa downstairs so I wouldn’t disturb you. Believe me, I couldn’t get away any sooner.’
I haul myself up onto the pillows, waiting for the morning fuzziness in my brain to clear and for that two-second time-lag to pass before my thoughts come back into focus. Yeah, now I have it; he went to Beatrice Kelly’s farm last night, something about a colicky hunter.
‘Problem with the horse?’
‘Well, no, not really,’ he says, the black eyes suddenly miles away, full of concern. ‘I think the main reason Beatrice called me out was that she was feeling a bit lonely. You know how tough this time of year can be for anyone living alone. I think she just wanted the company more than anything else. I tried calling you but of course, no signal on my phone up there.’
I nod and say nothing, knowing it’s completely pointless to. I can see it all too clearly: Beatrice was all alone on Christmas Eve. And of course Dan with the biggest heart in the south east, stayed up with her and talked the night away. So what can I do? As usual, nothing. Neediness always gets top priority in Dan’s life, always. It might as well be engraved on his forehead: ‘the squeaky wheel gets the grease’.
We exchange gifts and I give him his first. A satnav, which I know he wanted and which I bought when I was up in Dublin doing my call-back audition. It cost a packet and I had to go to loads of trouble to get it, but get it I did and he’s delighted with it…then he hands me a slim, white envelope, looking at me sheepishly.
‘Merry Christmas, Annie. This is…well, let’s just say it’s my small way of trying to make things up to you. For the anniversary night, for everything.’
I open it and almost fall out of bed with shock. It’s a voucher for the two of us for a weekend at Marlfield House, the posh country house hotel where our last, disastrous, aborted anniversary night was supposed to take place.
‘Dan!’ I manage to stammer, utterly overwhelmed at the gesture. Not just by the thoughtfulness of it, but by the fact that he actually intends to take a full weekend off just for the two of us to be together. The best Christmas present I could possibly have asked for.
‘This is completely wonderful…thank you…so, so much…’
I smile up at him and he gently takes my hand and starts massaging it.
‘Annie…I know things haven’t been easy here for you and you’ve been so amazing to put up with everything the way you do. But you do know why I’m doing all this, don’t you? Why I’m working so hard and putting in all these ridiculous hours?’
‘Course I do…’
‘…all I’m trying to do is build up the practice…’
‘I know…’
‘…and then there’s so many people relying on me to keep things going. Depending on me for a living. Mum, Jules, Andrew, James, Mrs Brophy…and I couldn’t live with myself if I thought I was letting anyone down. You know that Dad left things in such a bad way when he died, and the only way I can haul us all out of this is just to keep on working at this pace…for the moment, at least.’
‘Dan, shhhhhhh, it’s OK and for what it’s worth, I do understand…’
He’s completely focused on my palm now, which looks tiny in his huge tanned hands, like he’s some sort of giant that’s played tricks with scale. But we’re only inches apart and it’s the closest and most intimate we’ve been in I can’t remember how long. The most emotionally available he’s been to me, literally, in years.
‘Just bear with me for a bit longer, Annie, that’s all I’m asking. The time will come when the practice is running smoothly and then we’ll have more time for each other, I promise.’
‘Hey, look, we’ve got the whole of today, don’t we? No work, no call-outs, no interruptions…’
‘Now that’s a definite promise, no working today,’ he smiles…the crooked smile that I love so much. Then he looks at me tenderly, in a way he hasn’t done in the longest time. I slowly slide my hand up his arm, wanting nothing more than to kiss him, to feel his huge, warm arms wrapped around mine, to pull him back down into bed beside me.
‘So we’ve got all day today then? You give me your word?’
‘The whole day,’ he half-whispers, moving in closer still as I lock my arms around his tanned, broad shoulders.
Next thing, from downstairs, the dogs start to go mad at the unmistakable sound of someone letting themselves in through the front door.
‘DAN? ANNIE? Where are you? I thought you’d already be in the kitchen getting the turkey organised by now, what is going on? Don’t tell me you’re still in bed?’
Sweet baby Jesus and the orphans, I do not believe this. It’s Audrey; arrived early and letting herself in with her own key, like she always does.
Mood shattered, romantic moment well and truly over.
Half an hour later and I’m up, washed, dressed and whizzing round the kitchen, full of hope for the day ahead and absolutely determined to make sure that everyone has the Best Christmas Ever. We’ll be like the family in the Dolmio ad, I think, efficiently basting the turkey, checking the stuffing hasn’t fallen out of it and pre-heating the oven.
Jules trails in mid-morning, yawning and demanding to know if I’ve got any Solpadeine lying around, that she’s dying with a hangover. So I efficiently whirl round the place sorting that out for her, while getting Audrey settled with a sweet sherry in front of the fire, then getting back to the kitchen, at all times acting the part of perfect hostess-cum-dutiful daughter-in-law.
Never in my whole life have I gone to so much trouble; I have officially busted my ass for this Christmas dinner and the only thing that’s getting me through is the thought that tonight, when everyone’s gone, it’ll finally, finally, finally just be me and Dan. A.L.O.N.E.
Next thing Jules ambles into the kitchen in her lazy way, wanting to know where the Quality Street are. I’m just about to be a total Irish Mammy and tell her she’s not allowed eat them now, that it’ll only ruin her dinner, when next thing a car swooshes into the driveway.
A familiar looking, bashed-up green Nissan with two child seats in the back.
‘Ah, for feck’s sake!’ yells Jules, suddenly more animated than she’s been ever since she got here. ‘Hide! Quick! It’s the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse! Lisa shagging Ledbetter…the Countess Dracula herself!!’
I almost drop a boiling pot of carrots on the floor. ‘I do not befeckinglieve this!’
‘Even from here I can hear you blaspheming, Annie,’ Audrey berates me from the drawing room. ‘And can someone kindly bring me another sherry? In one of the good crystal glasses this time, please?’
‘Lie down flat on the floor, quick,’ says Jules, ‘maybe she didn’t see us. Maybe she’ll think we’re all out…visiting…or…at Mass or something.’
But it’s too late. Already I can hear Dan opening the hall door to Lisa as her eldest son starts yelling the place down that he got a football from Santa and will Dan come outside to play with him? She has two kids, by the way; Harry is seven and Sue is four. Harry, I’m fond of – he’s cute and easy to baby-sit and God knows I should know, having been called on to do it often enough. But Sue is a different story; moany, sulky and whingy, a kid that’s never, ever in good form, no matter how many treats you throw her way. But then, as Jules is forever at p
ains to point out, the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree, does it?
And there’s something else about Lisa that drives me mental too, something I’ve been at pains to keep to myself all this time. Call it what you will, women’s intuition maybe, but I’ve always felt that Lisa has her eye on Dan and has had for a long, long time. There’s just something in the way her voice changes gear whenever she talks to him that never fails to alert my suspicions and while I’m far from jealous – Dan barely even notices me half the time, never mind when someone else is flirting with him – it does get annoying after a while.
Anyroadup, Jules starts dum-dum-dumming the theme music from The Omen under her breath as Lisa slithers into the kitchen, full of abject apologies for disturbing me in the middle of cooking dinner, but nevertheless, still big fat doing it anyway. Vintage Lisa; at all times, just barge right on ahead and completely suit yourself regardless.
I grudgingly have to admit that she’s attractive, naturally tall and skinny, the jammy cow, but most of the time she streels round the place looking care-worn, thin, pale and permanently unsmiling. Red hair, but with her natural dark roots showing; yet another source of incessant griping from her. That she can’t afford to go to the hairdressers any more and has to make do with home colours instead, all while her husband Charlie still somehow has money to go down to the pub, night in and night out. And I’m sorry if this sounds a bit unsympathetic but bear in mind that when it comes to whinging, this is a woman who’d give Gillian McKeith a right run for her money.
We exchange Merry Christmas air kisses as Jules scarpers back to the safety of the TV.
‘You see Charlie bloody well buggered off to have drinks with some boozing buddy in Lismore this morning,’ Lisa moans, making it sound like he did this with the sole intention of getting at her, ‘leaving me all on my own with the kids. And of course my sister in Dublin is having my parents over to her this year and never even bothered to invite us, can you believe it? Which means I have to cook a dinner myself. And I haven’t even started it yet so my turkey probably won’t be done for about another seventeen hours. Anyway, I thought I might as well pop in and wish you all a happy Christmas. Everything looks lovely, Annie,’ she sighs enviously. ‘I wish I had enough money to go all out, like you always do.’
I usher her into the drawing room to say hello to Audrey and then offer her a drink. She notices Jules drinking champagne and asks for the same.
Immediate burning sensation, exactly like heartburn. She’s drinking. This means that not only will she end up leaving her car here and have to come back to collect it during my precious time out with Dan, but worse, far worse…Jaysus knows when she intends to leave. Not being inhospitable or anything, but if the measure of a good guest is someone who knows when to go, then the Countess Dracula is most definitely NOT one of them. It wouldn’t be uncommon for her to pop in for a coffee in the afternoon and still be here with her kids asleep upstairs in one of the spare rooms well past midnight. With absolutely no intention of going home either, even at that hour.
‘So what did Santa Claus bring this morning?’ Dan asks little Sue, who’s plonked herself on the sofa beside Audrey, pulling a doll along by its hair. Dan, by the way, is normally great with children and for their part, kids of all ages love him…with the sole exception of this little madam.
‘That,’ she says disgustedly. ‘I didn’t want a stupid doll. I hate dolls. I wanted a bike.’
‘Couldn’t afford it,’ says Lisa focusing solely on Dan and only Dan, completely indifferent to the fact that the child isn’t deaf and can clearly hear her. ‘Although her father still manages to have enough money to keep up his sixty fags a day habit, doesn’t he?’
No one says anything to that. Then Harry starts noisily kicking his soccer ball around the drawing room, and Audrey presses her hands to the onion-thin skin on her temples, in a gesture I know the meaning of all too well. Meanwhile Lisa flops down on the sofa, telling the room about how exhausted she is and how no one ever appreciates the sheer amount of work she does at this time of year, to much behind-her-back-eye-rolling from Jules. I excuse myself and get back to the kitchen to start getting the vegetables on.
A sharp stab of worry; what do I do if Lisa invites herself and her kids to stay for dinner? But I let it go. Her husband, Charlie, is presumably only out visiting for the morning and will be back later, so she won’t have any choice but to leave. Because surely not even the Countess Dracula would gatecrash our Christmas dinner? Would she?
The phone rings out in the hallway, but I let Dan get it. I check the clock on the kitchen wall, not yet midday. Only seven am in Washington where my mother is, way too early for her to call yet. Next thing, just as I’m up to my elbows in Brussels sprouts, Dan strides into the kitchen, kicking off his shoes and pulling on the pair of Wellingtons he’d left by the side door last night.
Very bad sign.
Burning feeling like indigestion returns with a vengeance.
‘You going out to play soccer with Harry?’ I look up and ask him deliberately, already dreading the answer.
Because he couldn’t, could he? Take a work call? Not today of all days, not after he specifically promised he wouldn’t.
‘Ehh…no, not exactly.’
A cold fear clutches at me and suddenly the air between us starts to throb.
No more information forthcoming. Which is what Dan does whenever he senses that I’ll be annoyed about something. Proffers absolutely nothing and leaves it to me to ask all the questions.
Bad burning feeling suddenly gets about a hundred times worse.
‘Because dinner will be ready pretty soon, you know,’ I say and somehow my tone of voice manages to make even that innocuous sentence sound like a vague threat.
‘Annie, look, I know this is inconvenient, but that was Mike Nolan on the phone…’
I swear to God, at this my knees actually loosen, like they might buckle from under me at any second. Mike Nolan is a regular client here and lives on a massive farm a good two-hour drive away. He’s also a well-known worrier, famous for calling anyone at the practice out for very little reason whatsoever.
‘…and he’s very anxious about some of his cattle.’
‘Dan, for the love of God, please tell me you’re not heading out to do a farm call. Not right now, not today of all days.’
‘You see, he thinks it might be ringworm and God love the guy, he’s in a blind panic.’
Dan doesn’t even make eye contact with me at this, like he knows I’ll flip and is just doing his best to get out of here before all hell breaks loose.
‘He thinks it might be ringworm!’ Now I’m raising my voice, something I don’t think I’ve ever done in this house. I know they can all hear me in the drawing room and I don’t care.
‘But ringworm isn’t even remotely serious!’ I splutter at him, absolutely stunned that he’s even considering heading all the way out to Mike Nolan’s. ‘There’s no possible way that this can be classified as an emergency! For God’s sake, it’s Christmas Day and I’m about to serve dinner. Surely, this can wait till tomorrow? Or, if you really feel you have to go, can’t you at least hold off till after we’ve eaten?’
‘Mike’s a good customer and he practically begged me to drive over there just to take a quick look. That’s all.’
‘That’s all? It’s at least a two-hour drive there and back! Plus the last time he hauled you out there, you didn’t get back till the following day!’
‘Look, I’ve told him I’d go – I gave him my word and I can’t go back on it. He needs my help and it would be wrong to let him down.’
‘You gave me your word this morning that there’d be no call-outs today!’
But his feet are well and truly dug in now and I know of old that whenever that happens, I’m on a loser.
‘Can I ask you one simple question, Dan? Does all the trouble I’ve gone to mean absolutely nothing to you? Only this morning you told me we’d have the whole day to ourselve
s. You promised.’
A low card I know, but feck it anyway. His promises are clearly worth about as much as the Zimbabwean dollar and I want him to know it.
‘Annie, please, can you please stop making me feel worse than I already do about this? I’ll do my best to be back as soon as possible. But…it might be a while. I won’t really know till I get out there.’
A slash of sudden pain shoots through me and suddenly…that’s it. Break point. The straw has finally broken the camel’s back. A rumble of fury starts to bubble up from deep within me. In my liver it gathers bile and becomes toxic, in my stomach it gathers acid and in my blood…heat.
No room in my hot little heart now for anything but the furies of hell.
‘Dan,’ I say, trembling, with days, weeks, months and years of suppressed anger finally breaking through the surface. ‘I. Have. Had. Enough. I can’t live like this and I won’t. Do you even know the trouble I’ve taken to have everything perfect for this dinner? If you take this call you know right well that you won’t be back till God knows when…’
He looks at me, genuinely puzzled and a bit irritated that now, on top of everything else, he has to deal with a domestic scene.
‘Why are you behaving like this, Annie? I know you’re angry but like I say, it’s a once-off emergency…’
‘It is NOT a bloody emergency. If it was, I wouldn’t mind. If it was a calving or a foaling and if an animal might die, then I mightn’t appreciate the timing, but I’d still let you take the call. But it isn’t. This is just Mike Nolan selfishly taking advantage of you because he knows right well that you’re the only vet within a hundred mile radius who’d even think of abandoning their family on Christmas Day…you’re the only one who’s soft enough…you’re the only one whose wife clearly means nothing to you…’
Oh God, right now, more than anything, I need to be articulate. I want to remind him…yet again…that with a possible year apart hanging over us, how much this pathetically short little break means to me.
But the rage that was in me a moment ago has now subsided and turned to a hard tough little lump deep in my gut. Then it travels up to my throat where it quickly turns to tears. Bucketloads of them. Messy, uncontrollable weeping that I never allow myself. Instead of an inner core of steel to draw on, I only have access to vowels and tears and snot.
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow Page 9
