by Kitty Wilson
‘The papers.’ His tone does not fill me with hope.
‘Ooh, are you famous too?’ the older woman asks me, a big grin on her face. The Beautiful One looks interested.
‘No, I’m really not.’ If he remembers me from the papers then here I am back on my dad’s coat-tails. My least favourite place in the world. My heart sinks.
‘Yeah, look, I’m sorry your dad’s a dick, ooh, sorry, Nan…’ Nan! No way, she does not look old enough. Jamal continued, ‘Your dad is a … well, you know what I’m saying. The papers are intrusive but still, must have been a shock.’
‘Nah, not really.’ He hands me a mug of tea and I take a slurp appreciatively before I look up and hold his eye. He’s watching my every move, my every micro-reaction. ‘I’ve known he’s a di … um … a bounder?’ I look over at Jamal’s nan who nods. ‘I’ve known my whole life. From about the age of five, anyway, when I caught him snogging my reception teacher after the parents’ race.’
‘Some men, they just can’t keep it in their pants,’ Jamal’s nan says, her accent pure Jamaican, as she shakes her head.
Glamazon nods wearily.
‘Not my Jamal though. He is a good boy. A smart boy. He won’t see you wrong.’
‘Let’s eat before it gets cold. Stew, Nan? Alisa? Belle?’ He serves the chicken into a big bowl and gives us all small plates.
‘Nan came over with Windrush, so this reminds her a little of home. She taught me when I was small,’ he says as we all sit there, cramped up together in the tiny kitchen polishing off our bowls.
‘That was so good, thank you.’
‘No worries. But why are you sat in my kitchen? Your family is rich. Why won’t your dad invest? Free up my money for people without your privilege?’
Ouch. It’s a question I can’t answer either. I go for honesty.
‘Maybe you should give your money to people who didn’t have my start in life. But I’m sat here now hoping you’ll give it to me and that my project helps open up the world a little to people who may struggle to access parts of it otherwise. I’d like to do this without going to my father.’
‘And I’d like to live in a world with more equality, where people don’t have to go without food to make sure their kids eat. Like is a luxury in this life.’ Again, I can’t argue with that. The food had been delicious but nothing is going to remove the taste of failure, peppered with a sprinkling of humiliation, from my mouth now.
I desire you in friendship, and I will one way or other make you amends.
* * *
December Seventh.
Rory.
I had been wandering the aisles in the Tesco near Mum’s, wincing at the bloody Christmas songs belting out – I swear they had managed to run through the whole gamut and start the loop again just in the short time I was in there – when I’d had a moment of seasonal madness and found myself putting a jar of mincemeat and a tub of clotted cream in the trolley. I picture Mum’s face as I triumphantly present her with a mince pie, warm from the oven, the cream sliding off the top like snow from a warmed porch.
She had been exhausted yesterday, evidenced by the fact she let Dave cook the roast – I almost lost three teeth, how he did what he did to the potatoes was a mystery, and who, who burns peas? I saw the fatigue on her face, her eyes lacking brightness, a pallor hanging over her. I don’t think this is the cancer, this looks like lack of sleep, and I can well imagine that after showing a brave face and a bright side throughout the day she is lying awake at night, consumed with worry about having to leave us should the worst occur. I know how struggling to doze off feels and it breaks my heart that I can’t cast a magic sleep spell for her.
So instead I went to the supermarket, then batch-cooked a whole host of things for her freezer and was currently stood ready to slide out mince pies from the oven. I’ve done this once before when I was twelve, trying to make amends for something hideous I had done at the time, although now I can’t remember the actual crime. I remember the feeling though, as I presented her with the plate. That. That was what I was aiming for today, for the both of us.
It isn’t just my mum who will be surprised though; I have to tell Belle this. I’m itching to reach out to her and see how yesterday went but don’t want to overly intrude. My intention had been to pair them and then step back. The fact that I haven’t heard from either her or Jamal does not bode well. It’s niggling at me.
The two of them are made for each other, I had been so pleased when I had thought of it. What I know and others don’t is that Jamal is back in the UK for the next few months in rehearsals for the RSC’s production of Coriolanus, scheduled for the summer. He’s politically active with strong opinions on the state and its responsibilities, and this role, so he tells me, is a good one for making a statement about absolute power. Twin that with the coincidence of him being back from America, and in Bristol seeing his family this weekend… If this isn’t the universe intervening then I don’t know what is.
I whip out my phone.
You’re not going to believe this but right now, right now, I am making mince pies. From scratch. Mince pies.
Send. There, that might make her smile, and she might tell me what happened yesterday. I put Mum’s recipe book back on the shelf, an old red ring binder with all Grandma’s recipes inside, handwritten and fading. Grandma had died of breast cancer but I had spent the morning trying not to think about that. Medicine is better now than when my mum’s mum had first got ill. The oven timer buzzes at the same time as my phone.
Mince pies. Wow. I’m impressed. I was going to message you today but it’s been hectic. What’s caused the thawing of your frosty Christmas spirit?
She punctuates her texts. Of course she does. And she’s been busy, that’s a good sign. Maybe I should stop being so pessimistic. Maybe she and Jamal haven’t been in touch because they’ve been up all night hatching plans, her enthusiasm for her subject captivating him as it had me. I feel a flash of something uncomfortable and turn to the cooker, opening the door and sliding the pies out. They smell amazing.
I think thaw is a bit strong. Trust me when I say I still loathe Christmas. But I love my mum. And she loves a mince pie.
* * *
Well luckily for you, I have decided to be your very own Christmas Elf and…
What does that mean? I picture her in an elf costume, hair in bunches, and shake my head quickly. For some reason that image has appeared straight out of Playboy circa 2002. Thirteen-year-old me would have been keen but adult me is rapidly trying to delete that mental picture right now. This is Belle Wilde and a complication I do not need on my brief visit home. The list of reasons for avoiding that has to number a billion. I am still grieving, we would not be a good match, she is not attracted to men like me, she is not Jess. Mind you, I want to know what she means. My phone beeps again.
…and tonight I have tickets for a show on the Brunel SS. You know you love a boat ;-)
How did she remember that? I must have told her one of the times I gave her a lift home that I had always been fascinated by old boats, and a memory flashes into my head of the both of us giggling about how we could pinch one of the barges docked by the quay and sail away, leaving all of the panic over dissertations behind us. Well, she would have giggled, I probably said something terribly responsible. We’d had a funny friendship back then.
I haven’t been on the SS Brunel since I was a boy. I did love it then. I suppose it would do no harm.
I walk through the car park and see her before I actually see her. I hope I’m wrong but know I’m not. I head towards the person wearing flashing lights both on their torso and head – a Christmas jumper with flashing lights on Rudolph’s face and an elf’s hat with flashing lights built in. I raise my brows.
‘Just helping you get into the Christmas spirit.’
‘I don’t think that I need that sort of help.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, I think that’s exactly the sort of help you need.’
‘H
mmm. You do know there are several Christmas phobias, don’t you? What you’re doing right now could be cruel as cruel could be. Like locking someone who is afraid of birds into an aviary, that sort of thing.’
‘Oh, calm yourself. You’re making that up.’
‘Am not. It’s called “selaphobia” – the fear of flashing lights – and my selaphobia means that those lights wrapped around your hat are currently causing me trauma.’
‘Pshaw.’
‘Pshaw? Is that the best you can do?’
‘Honestly, it’s a bit of a relief.’ She reaches up to her hat and pulls it off her head, clicking a button as she does so, and then reaches under her jumper and clicks another. ‘I bought these cos I love Christmas and thought it would be fun. But truthfully, I have always been way too embarrassed to wear them. This will probably be my one and only time. And I did it because you need to know I take my elf duties to you very seriously. Very seriously indeed.’
‘Okay, in that case, please keep them off.’
‘Phew.’ She shoves the hat in her bag. ‘I shall take care not to take you anywhere with too many flashing lights.’ Then she winks. She’s different to the Belle I knew at uni. I like this Belle better. She’s less brittle, less aloof.
‘Any more Christmas phobias I should know about?’ We walk towards the ticket office manned by someone in Victorian dress.
‘Yes, but hang on… Thank you,’ I address the person who has taken our tickets and is waving us through as Belle nods her thanks. ‘What have you got me into here?’
‘Nothing to fret about. Let’s get these phobias out of the way first.’
I do not trust that smile. If I end up having to take part in some kind of historical Christmas pantomime her elfing days are over. I’ll chuck her overboard and let the River Avon deal with her. I give her an arch look, just to make sure she knows she’s on thin ice. She smirks.
‘Okay. There’s also ghabhphobia – people who hate receiving presents because they can’t cope with the social anxiety triggered by people looking at them as they receive it,’ I continue.
‘I can understand that one.’
‘Really?’
‘My social anxiety is off the scale unless I’m super comfortable with the person or, um … when you knew me back in the day, chemically aided. I have to talk myself into and through social situations because I don’t want to let them control me. I think that’s why I’m at my happiest at home lost in the Shakespeare project. I’m always second-guessing whether I’m responding appropriately to social cues rather than just responding. So yeah, even when I’m given a gift I worry that the way I have reacted may not be the way the person wanted me to. Don’t get me wrong though, I like presents, and I’d rather feel uncomfortable than never have another present again.’
‘Wow.’
‘Wow makes me feel like I’ve made a right tit of myself.’
‘You…’ I stopped. I had been about to say you stood there in those lights and now you’re worried about making a tit of yourself. But seeing as she has just opened up to me about how deep her social anxiety runs, that would be a tad insensitive. It also makes me realise what a sacrifice of comfort the lights had been, and how badly I had misjudged the Belle I thought I knew. ‘You have nothing to worry about. I’m sorry. Do you want to hear more phobias, Christmas elf?’
She nods and smiles. I’m forgiven.
‘I have, with good reason “Christougenniatikophobia”…’ I pause again, but we’re being honest. It’s just that I’m not used to being this honest with myself let alone someone else. ‘It’s a mouthful and is a fear of Christmas in general.’ There, I had said it out loud. And it was actually okay. I am scared of Christmas, the season at least, with my discomfort ramping up the closer we get to the day itself and then spiralling into oblivion in that ridiculous time people now call ‘twixmas’. I flick a quick look across at her but she doesn’t seem at all phased by what I said. Just accepting. As if it is both perfectly possible and perfectly normal for me to have some kind of overwhelming fear. I take a deep breath, nod and continue. ‘Then there’s “meleagrisphobia”, the fear of turkeys. I don’t know if people who have that phobia would be scared or relieved by a dead turkey but that is a thing.’
She laughs.
‘I reckon you may understandably suffer from “syngenesphobia”, particularly triggered by Christmas and for you specifically twice in December. This one I don’t have. I have the others though.’
‘I do not believe you are scared of turkeys, Mr Walters. But okay, syngenesphobia, um … let me work this one out, syn. Syn is not same, that’s homo … syn is with?’ She quirks her brow at me, not quite sure, and I nod. It sounds about right; she’s way more likely to know than me. ‘Um, genus, that’s family. So I’m going to go with fear of family and hope my half-arsed attempt is actually one … hundred … per cent right.’ She spaces out those last words, victory in her tone.
‘Boom, you’ve got it.’
‘This is fun. Another?’
‘Probably only fun for us, you know. Others would think we’re pretty weird.’
‘You are weird,’ she says, deadpan.
‘I’m opening up, discussing medically rationalised fears about Christmas, and that’s fun to you? Are you always this sadistic?’
‘Yes.’
We’re on the boat now and I’m excited, as if I were still a child. It has been years since I was here and I remember how much I loved those spooky wax Victorians that I was both scared and captivated by.
‘Do we get to look around before you take me to whatever hell you’re planning?’
‘For sure. Hell doesn’t start for another half hour or so in the first-class dining room so we can grab a bite to eat on the promenade deck, have a wander. I’ve actually never been here before. You can be my tour guide.’
‘I am so up for that.’ And I am.
We grab a mince pie, I say no to more mulled cider – Luisa’s batch had to be a stroke of luck – and we wander back through the narrow wood-lined corridors, the narrowness of them pressing us together. I’m aware of Belle’s every breath as she peeks her head into cabin after cabin.
‘They are so tiny! How did they get four people to fit in there? I can barely fit me in! I’ll never bitch about the size of my flat again. Oh, but look at the ironwork on the corner, isn’t that pretty?’
We go down into the cargo hold. ‘Oh my goodness… This is how they’d get their horses across. I suppose I knew they would but never really thought about it. Although I should have. The Tempest begins with a shipwreck. Think of all the people crammed in, all the animals, all that life bouncing over the waves. ‘But look there…’ she points, ‘…look at how shiny they keep the hulls of the lifeboat. That wood is a thing of beauty, that must take so much work. Why have I never been here before?’ Her delight at everything is making something I love even better, and her talk is some kind of stream-of-consciousness babble but I like it.
‘Ooh, I don’t want to leave. But the performance starts in ten minutes. You’ve got time to show me one more thing and then we’ll have to grab our seats.’
‘What exactly are we going to see in ten minutes?’ I query.
‘It’s a Dickensian Christmas improv evening. They’re going to make up a Christmas play on the spot with a bit of help from the audience.’
‘You are joking me?’
‘No, no I’m really not. It’s going to be awesome, and besides, it’s Dickensian so no flashing lights.’ She winks and her nose crinkles with delight.
‘We’re never going anywhere together again,’ I say as sternly as I can.
‘Oh, but we are. I’m your Christmas elf.’ She waves the elf hat out of the corner of her bag at me and I can’t help but smile.
‘I don’t think I ever agreed to that.’
‘Nope. It’s magic. You don’t need to agree, it just happens.’
‘We live in an age of consent.’
‘Not for the next two hours. I d
on’t think consent is very Dickensian. Anyway, hurry up with your one more thing before we need to grab our seats.’
I push her through the corridors back into the promenade deck where I lead her into one of the booths where the waxwork doctor stands, his kit all laid neatly out in his bag – scissors, glass bottles, possible instruments of torture – working on a patient who is looking away from his wound with credible emotion for a waxwork, even better than Cyndi on her birthday. She oohs and leans over to stroke the saw with a ghoulish fascination. Then her eyes light upon the medicine cabinet.
‘Ooh, look at this, they have everything. Laudanum, obviously…’ She turns and gives me a grin.
‘Don’t go getting any ideas,’ I say mock-seriously.
‘I was thinking for you, not me, to get you through this performance.’
‘Oh, well, in that case.’ I open my mouth wide and she giggles before turning back. ‘Look, they’ve got everyday things too like cream of tartar, what medicinal use does that have? Epsom salts. Nitre… That sounds dangerous.’
Her exploration pauses as a bell sounds.
‘We need to get our seats, come on.’ She grabs my hand and pulls me out of the doctor’s cabin. ‘We need to be quick, we want to get the right seats.’
‘You’re not going to sit me at the front, are you?’
‘Are you mad? It’s audience participation, the thought of being called upon scares the living daylights out of me. No, I’m going to sit at the back and refuse to make eye contact, that’s my plan. Then I can enjoy it in safety.’
I laugh and trip through the corridors with her up to the first-class dining area where she swoops on the chairs right at the back, next to a large column.
‘Phew, that was lucky.’
‘Who comes to an audience participation without wanting to participate?’ I ask. She really is a contrary creature.
