by Andy Jones
Ivy called at eight forty, as Frank was miming the act of throwing up (‘Out of breath? Dodgy tummy? Retch? Sick? Spew? Wallace and Vomit!). Maria and her brood had gone home by then, so it was just Dad and Ivy on the other end of our six-way Christmas conference call. The consensus was that Ivy and I should spend the night at our respective ‘in-laws’’, but foolishness prevailed and Ivy squeezed herself back into her van and I squashed myself behind the wheel of the Fiat.
Even travelling in excess of a hundred miles an hour (speeds neither of our vehicles is capable of ) it was extraordinarily unlikely that both Ivy and I could make it back to Wimbledon before midnight. But we calculated that, with luck, faith and a good tailwind, we could both get to the Oxford services while there is still some Christmas left in the day. It’s not exactly en route, but when have I ever done anything the easy way?
The car park at Oxford services is practically deserted, and I immediately spot a white van with the words ‘Glamour Squad’, stencilled onto the side. Ivy is perched on the bonnet, her breath forming white clouds in the air. I pull up alongside and unfold myself from the tiny car at six minutes and a bunch of seconds to midnight.
‘You made it,’ Ivy says, managing to communicate with a quiet smile that this is a moment I should resist cheapening with any kind of glibness.
I put my arms around Ivy and hug her as tightly as I can without crushing her or my babies. ‘Happy Christmas.’
Ivy kisses me, softly at first, increasing the pressure and tension by increments until we’re engaged in the kind of kiss that would be embarrassing if there was another soul around to witness it. ‘Happy Christmas,’ she says, and we sit side by side on the bonnet of her white van, holding hands and saying nothing else until midnight ticks over, and then Ivy kisses me again.
‘Right,’ she says, ‘if I don’t pee in the next two minutes, I think my bladder might explode.’
If I had expected any kind of festive atmosphere in Oxford services in the early hours of Boxing Day morning, then I would have been an idiot. The skeleton staff (Santa hats drooping over their eyes) regard us with indifference as we gaze into each other’s eyes across a Formica table and two steaming cups of burnt coffee.
‘Do you think we passed on the way?’ Ivy asks.
‘Are you being metaphoric?’
‘Too late at night for that. Or is it early in the morning? I can never decide.’
‘I think we must have done,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry.’
Ivy shrugs. ‘It’ll make a good story to tell our children.’ She smiles, and it’s a smile I’ll remember until I lose my hair, teeth and mind.
‘Shall we go home now?’
We pull up outside our flat at a little after two a.m. Ivy is dead on her feet, and with her arm around my shoulders, I all but drag her up the stairs. I’ve driven a six-hundred-mile triangle in thirty-six hours to get here, but it’s been worth the trip.
‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ I ask as Ivy curls up on the sofa, still in her coat and shoes.
‘Do we have any sherry?’
I open cupboard doors and rummage through the tins and packets. ‘No sherry. Cointreau or port?’
‘Hmm, tricky. Cointreau might be a little pokey, d’you think?’
‘You could have a small one.’
‘Surprise me.’
I pour two ports and take them to the sofa.
‘Happy Boxing Day, baby,’ I say, going to clink my glass against Ivy’s.
Ivy pulls her glass out of clinking range. ‘I’m pretty sure it doesn’t stop being Christmas till we go to bed.’
‘Really?’
‘Totally.’
‘So . . . if we stayed up for the next two days?’
‘Still Christmas.’
‘In that case, Happy Christmas, baby.’
And now we clink. Ivy sips her port, closes her eyes and savours the sweet liquid. ‘First drink I’ve had in twenty weeks.’
‘How is it?’
She purses her lips. ‘Bloody good.’ And she takes another sip.
‘I’m sorry, you know. About . . . everything.’
Ivy shrugs a minuscule shrug. ‘Me too,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry too.’
‘I forgive you.’
Ivy goes to kick me in the leg. I grab her foot and hold it in my lap, massaging the heel, sole and toes. And that, it seems, is that. We could have said these words two days ago, of course; but I don’t think they would have carried the same weight and value without a six-hundred-mile, two-day road trip behind them.
‘You must be exhausted,’ I say.
Ivy nods. ‘Don’t think I’ll be staying up for the next two days, I’m afraid.’
‘Can you manage ten minutes for presents?’
My parcel is about the size of a packet of crisps; Ivy’s is roughly the size of a signed first edition copy of A Prayer for Owen Meany.
‘You first,’ Ivy says with a sly smile.
I tear open the snowman paper to reveal a pack of ten picture hooks.
As well as deferring my birthday until three fifty-five on the afternoon of December 25th, my family has always (for the last fifteen years, at least) found it highly amusing to give me a feeble, disappointing ‘joke’ gift for Christmas, only to follow it up with a present proper at five minutes to four in the afternoon. I have never told Ivy about this tradition, but it appears someone (Hermione, is my bet) has, and it seems I am doomed to suffer this festive farce for as long as I have the strength to tear paper.
‘Hooks,’ I say, with my traditional routine of forced enthusiasm and poorly concealed disappointment. ‘Just what I always wanted.’
Ivy smiles, picks up her own parcel and picks at a corner of Sellotape with her nail.
‘Be careful,’ I advise.
Ivy regards me suspiciously. What she is holding is obviously a hardback book. What she doesn’t know, though, is that this particular bunch of pages cost me over four hundred pounds. Worse still, she has read it before.
Ivy frees the tape from one end of the package and starts working on the other.
‘Owen Meany,’ Ivy says, clutching the book to her chest.
‘You were reading it the first time we met.’
‘I remember,’ Ivy says, laughing.
‘It’s a first edition.’
And then she melts into tears. ‘Thank you,’ she says, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. ‘It’s . . .’
The tears come harder now, and I’m terrified that one of them is going to land on the book and do about a hundred quid’s worth of damage. Carefully, I take the book from Ivy’s hands and place it on the coffee table.
I pull Ivy into a hug and kiss the top of her head.
‘I love you,’ she says. And if that’s it, if those three words and a packet of picture hooks are all I get this year, then it will still be the best Christmas of my life.
‘It’s only a book,’ I say. ‘Pull yourself together.’
Ivy sniffs, wipes her eyes again. ‘Phew,’ she says, ‘must be my hormones.’
She picks up the book from the coffee table, holds it reverentially and opens the cover, revealing John Irving’s rather clumsy signature. She turns to the first page of the story, and starts reading. ‘So good,’ she says under her breath. ‘Do you think it’s safe to read?’
‘Now?’
Ivy laughs, closes the book. ‘Probably not, hey.’
I shake my head. ‘I’d keep it well out of the reach of little fingers, too.’
Ivy’s hands go reflexively to her belly.
‘How are they?’ I say.
‘Great. Moving all the time.’
I lean forward and kiss her bump. ‘Happy Christmas, babies.’
Ivy strokes my head. ‘I almost forgot,’ she says.
‘Hmm?’
‘It’s your birthday, isn’t it?’
‘Thirty-two today.’
‘Wait here.’ Ivy begins hauling herself from the sofa.
‘Shall I?’
She
shakes her head and disappears into the hallway. When she returns, she is holding a flat package almost an arm span high and wide.
‘Happy birthday,’ she says, propping the article up against the sofa.
The very first day I met Ivy, we were discussing the make-up for the Little Monsters commercials I was shooting. Ivy made the comment that the scripts were ‘horror in fancy dress’, citing the old movie Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.
And it is these three faces that adorn the framed poster Ivy has bought me for my birthday. The laughs are monsterous, according to the headline.
‘I love it.’
‘First day we met,’ Ivy says, kissing me, and it sends a red-hot impulse straight to the centre of me.
‘I remember. Where will I hang it?’
‘Anywhere you like. It’s your house, too.’ And she leans forward and kisses me hard on the lips.
‘So is it Christmas until we go to bed, or until we go to sleep?’ I ask.
Ivy grins. ‘Not sure what you’re getting at.’
‘Well, I thought that, as we’ve got the place to ourselves for a night . . .’
‘A bit more than a night, actually.’
‘Why, when’s he coming back?’
Ivy shakes her head. ‘He isn’t.’
‘They got back together?’
Another shake of the head. ‘No. Frank and Lois are done. I told Frank it was time to move on. To move out, actually.’
I force myself not to grin too expansively. It’s not easy. ‘What did Frank say?’
‘I told him we, me and you . . .’ She kisses me on the forehead, the tip of the nose, the lips. ‘I told him we needed our own space. He’s fine, he gets it.’
‘Do your folks know?’
Ivy nods.
‘Wow, that must have been fun around the Christmas pudding.’
Ivy winces. ‘Anyway,’ she says. ‘You taking me to bed or what?’
I fell asleep – with an idiot smile on my face – attempting to resolve a calculation . . . we last made love on the last weekend in August, the day before we visited Dad. Thirty days has September, April, June and November . . . all the rest have thirty-one . . . but every time I close in on a figure, I drift into sleep . . .
Whatever the number, it had been well in excess of one hundred days since Ivy and I made love. Until last night. Until this morning.
When I wake several hours later, Ivy is not beside me. The sheets on her side of the bed are cool, but the physical memory of her still clings to me under the heavy blanket. Like the imprint of a sheet on my cheek and the smell of port on my breath. I’m hungry and need to pee, but I want to stay here, wrapped in the echo of Ivy’s heavy breath, the residual heat from her body, the smell of her hair, the ghost of her back pressed against my chest . . .
Today is the twenty-sixth day in December . . .
I love Christmas.
Chapter 23
Papaya.
Mango.
Courgette.
Broccoli.
Aubergine.
Cantaloupe.
Cauliflower.
Acorn Squash . . .
Chapter 24
Ivy is twenty-nine weeks pregnant, and if you didn’t know she was expecting twins you’d assume she was due in approximately ten seconds. Climbing the stairs is a feat of epic determination now; getting off the sofa is a two-man job; and standing, Ivy appears to defy the laws of physics – remaining somehow upright, despite her asymmetric planetary mass. She appears to be twice the size of the other women in the room.
There are eight couples in this chilly church hall, the men looking awkward as the women sit cowboy-style on their chairs. The instructor is teaching us how to massage our partners during labour, pushing our thumbs into the hollows at the tops of their buttocks – the instructor, Julie, calls them the ‘Nodes of Venus’. Ivy’s bump is too big for her to sit astride a chair like the other seven women, so she is kneeling on the floor, leaning forward over an inflatable gym ball.
After Ivy the person furthest along is a woman called Kath, who isn’t due until mid-May – a full five weeks after the twins have made their entrance. Kath, like every woman here besides Ivy, is expecting a single baby, and there is a general sentiment of awe, fear, sympathy and admiration directed at my girlfriend and her stupendous bump. I’m fairly confident Ivy is the oldest mum-to-be by a good half-dozen years, and she is the only one not wearing a wedding ring.
I push my thumbs into Ivy’s nodes, and resist the urge to kiss the back of her neck.
‘If you can’t get comfortable sitting on the chair,’ says Julie, ‘try leaning on a ball like Ivy. Or stand in front of a chair and lean on the back, like this.’
One of the women tries this, bending at the waist and gripping the back of the chair. From behind, her husband puts his hands on her hips and thrusts up against her.
‘Get it while you still can, boys,’ he guffaws, and a couple of the more polite guys laugh with him awkwardly.
Another guy, Steve, catches my attention and rolls his eyes; I nod subtly – tosser. Steve laughs. His wife and Ivy gravitated (in every sense) towards each other during the coffee break, leaving Steve and me to make not entirely awkward small talk – What team do you support? What do you drive? What did you do last night?
Last night was Valentine’s Night. Our first together. And the most expensive date of my life. We went to a drive-in at Alexandra Palace and watched The Princess Bride. It’s not a sexy movie, but I’m pretty sure the couple in the adjacent car were doing more than just kissing. Tickets, popcorn and drinks came in at over fifty quid. Which is a drop in the ocean compared to the eighteen grand we spent four hours earlier on a second-hand Volvo XC90. There is no question we need something more family friendly than Ivy’s two-seater van or El’s tiny Fiat, but this thing is the size of a small tank. It’s very Wimbledon, though, and there’s enough room in the back to deliver twins should the necessity arise.
They do antenatal courses for couples expecting twins, but the next one is too close to our due date and too far from our front door; so here we are, the odd ones out with one extra baby and two months fewer until our due date on April 11th. The course consists of two seven-hour sessions, of which this is the second, and after we leave today, we are, in theory, as prepared as we will ever be for the arrival of our babies. We have covered breathing, breastfeeding, nappies, sleep, forceps, suction cups and Caesarean sections. We have talked about emergency scenarios, and what are the best types of snacks to power us through labour. We have a list of items to pack in our hospital bag and a shopping list of essentials to buy from Boots.
It’s informative and exciting and scary, and I have four pages of notes and a laminated wallet-sized checklist to consult during labour. But if anything, I feel more nervous than I did one week and seven hours ago. After the course we adjourn to a local pub for eight pints of beer and eight soft drinks. Squashed around three pushed-together tables, we form a large and conspicuous group, and the other drinkers are amused by our presence, nudging their friends and glancing in our direction as if we are some novelty act due to start performing at any moment.
Apart from learning how to change a nappy, the other reason anyone goes to antenatal classes is to make friends that won’t be irritated by their incessant ‘they did the funniest thing’ anecdotes. It’s a lottery and, looking around our group, I’m not planning on buying too many extra Christmas cards this year. The guy who was thrusting up against his wife just two hours ago is called Keith, and he has appointed himself social secretary.
‘So,’ he says, addressing the group as if we were guests on his show. ‘What does everybody do? I’ll start, shall I? Lawyer, I’m afraid.’
There are, it transpires, three lawyers around the table, plus a wine importer, a property developer and two City types. Listening to the job descriptions, looking at the shoes, watches and lethal engagement rings, it’s pretty clear that Ivy and I are the paupers in this group.
‘Hair and make-up,’ says Ivy, and all the women lean forward in their seats.
‘Work with anyone famous?’ asks Steve’s wife, a pretty woman called Carrie.
‘A few,’ says Ivy, smiling.
‘Who was the worst?’
‘Hmm, I don’t know about the worst, but . . . someone farted on me once.’
Carrie’s hands go to her cheeks in horror. ‘No!’
Ivy nods. ‘’fraid so. I was making a bite mark on his bum.’
‘She suffers for her art,’ I say.
Ivy shoots me a faux-withering glance. ‘Funny. It was a vampire film. I used a pair of false teeth and some red eyeliner.’
‘That’s her story,’ someone says.
Ivy winks. ‘And I’m sticking to it.’
‘Come on,’ says Steve, ‘we’re going to need a name.’
‘He . . . he was in The Talented Mr Ripley,’ says Ivy. ‘And that’s all I’m saying.’
‘Jude Law?’ says Kath. ‘I bet it was him.’
‘What’s that other one?’ says Keith, flapping his hand in mid-air. ‘Damon! Yeah, he looks like a farter. Definitely Damon.’
Ivy shakes her head. ‘My lips are sealed.’
‘I should hope so,’ says Steve, laughing.
‘So,’ says Keith, slapping his hands together and signalling the end of that story. ‘Fisher? How’d you earn your wonga?’
‘I’m a director,’ I say.
‘Of?’
‘Commercials.’
‘What, like adverts?’
I nod.
‘I like that one with the drumming gorilla,’ says Keith. ‘Did you do that one?’
‘Afraid not,’ I say, shaking my head.
Keith seems disappointed. ‘Or them meerkats? They’re funny.’
‘Nope,’ I admit.
‘What’s the last thing you did?’ asks one of the City types.
I wince involuntarily. ‘Nothing exciting.’
‘Come on, spill the beans.’
The irony of this last piece of phrasing is horribly appropriate. ‘Fastlax,’ I say.
‘What’s that? Laxatives?’
I nod. ‘Laxatives.’
