“If only we didn’t have to come here. Just one Christmas, the two of us on our own with Hitchcock,” Helen said wistfully.
Nick’s eyes seemed misty, she thought, or was the early morning’s brandy making her feel a bit dizzy.
“I wonder how many milligrams there are in this tea?” she asked. More to cheer him up than anything else. He turned and looked at her. She had been right, there were tears in his eyes.
“Remember that plate you broke here years and years ago?” he said.
She was surprised. “Yes, the one that Mother made such a fuss about.”
“Well, we mended it, remember, you held bits of the plate with an eyebrow tweezers and I painted on the glue.”
“And you couldn’t see the cracks in the end.” She wondered why he was thinking of this, it had happened years ago, just another occasion when her mother had behaved badly and Nick had smoothed it out.
“But when it was done she wanted to use it at once and we had to say no and put it high, high up so that it would have time to harden. It looked all right but it wasn’t really. You couldn’t use it. Touch it and it would all fall apart.”
“Yes, we put it in one of those little plate stands?” There was a question in her voice. What was he talking about?
“If anyone came into the room and looked at that plate, they’d have said to themselves that it was a perfectly sound plate, they’d have no reason to think otherwise. But it wouldn’t have been. Not until the glue hardened. It was fine in the end, of course, but for a long time it was only pretending to be a real plate.”
“Well, yes.”
“It’s a bit the same here, isn’t it? We’ve been pretending to be real plates in front of your mother. We won’t let her see any of the cracks or the glue or anything. We’ve been putting on such a brave face for her. We’ve not stopped to ask ourselves is it real or is it not?” He had rarely sounded so serious.
“Yes, I suppose it was a way to go. We could have endless discussions and analyses, and what happened and why, and where did we go wrong, but I don’t know. Would it have made things much better?”
“It might have been more honest. You might have wanted to throw me out but couldn’t, not with us having to put on an act all the time for your mother, pretend that this was the successful lovey-dovey marriage of the century.”
“Well, it’s been a pretty good marriage most of the time, hasn’t it?” Helen said.
“Is that you talking or is it you talking for your mother’s ears?”
“It’s me talking, do you not think the same?”
“I do, but I’m the villain, the cheat, the partner without a job, the drunk driver, I’m in no position to make definitions.”
“Oh Nick, don’t be so ridiculous, what’s over is over. I said that ages ago.”
“No, you’ve got too used to pretending, you’re being too tolerant …”
“Listen to me.” Her face flashed with anger. “When my mother attacks you I feel a sense of loyalty to you so strong it almost sweeps me away, when she says one word against you I become so fiercely protective you would never believe it. Perhaps she has done some good for us in that way, because her every attempt to drive us apart only glues us together.”
“Is it real glue, is it good firm glue, do you think, or are we only pretending to get along fine?”
“I don’t know how you test these things. We could go downstairs and fling the plate on the floor, for example, and if it broke we could say, ‘Boo hoo the plate wasn’t properly stuck together.’ ”
He looked very pleased. “In a way your bad-tempered old mother has a lot to be thanked for. She stopped us making any decision before the glue had hardened. It has hardened, hasn’t it, Helen?”
There was an almighty banging downstairs. The noise had increased in case it wasn’t being heard. Nick and Helen got up and tore the linen off the bed they wouldn’t have to sleep in that night. They heaved the furniture round the room for pure divilment and realized that for them there would be nothing gained by examining the cracks and pulling them to see if they would come apart. Other people might want to talk it to death, but they knew the face they had shown the difficult woman downstairs was a real face, and they only had four more hours of putting slightly phony smiles on it. The kinds of smiles a million other people were putting on their faces like children’s masks over Christmas.
THE CHRISTMAS
BARAMUNDI
She had met him first at the fish market on Christmas Eve. It was very early in the morning, but already crowded. Their hands touched as they each pointed to the same ocean perch.
“That one,” they said at the same time.
They all laughed, Janet the schoolteacher, Liam the banker, and Hano the younger son of the fish merchant.
“You have it,” Liam said gallantly.
“No, no, you were the first,” Janet countered.
Hano said, “He has many brothers and sisters, you can have one each.”
“I don’t like to think of his brothers and sisters,” Janet said.
“I know, but we’re very hypocritical, aren’t we?” Liam had a crinkly smile that lit up his face.
“Who was it said they could never eat anything that had a face?” Janet looked thoughtfully at the slabs of fish, each one with a very definite face, some of them indeed with expressions that you could almost define.
“Hey, you’ll have us eating bread and cheese for Christmas,” he said.
Janet sighed. “No, that’s the problem, point out all the disadvantages about something and then go ahead and do it all the same.”
“Mine’s different, I favor the ostrich technique; pretend things don’t have faces, or brothers and sisters. Just grill them and eat them.”
“Poach them surely, or cook them in foil. This is much too big to grill.” Janet took things literally.
“Have coffee with me,” Liam said suddenly.
Hano wrapped their fish for them. Janet paid in cash, Liam used a gold credit card. He took her by the elbow and they went to where people drank small cups of coffee and ate delicious Italian bread. Hano waved them goodbye. He would love to have gone with them, to have talked and laughed as they did so easily. Instead he would have his father’s eye on him and his uncles’ and the eyes of his two older brothers. This was one of the busiest days of the year. He should be working, reaching out toward customers, not dreaming.
More and more people bought fish for Christmas Day. Going to the market in Pyremont was now almost a tradition. The customers enjoyed the experience as much as the fish they bought. Look at that couple, for example: The man was rich, he had a jacket that Hano would have to work for five years to earn. His watch was gold. He didn’t even look at the docket he signed. He surely didn’t need to come here and buy fish; someone could have got it for him. Perhaps he was lonely; maybe he had a fight with his wife. Possibly he was a bachelor or a divorced man. He must be about thirty-five or forty.
Janet was asking herself all these questions, too, as they went together for coffee.
But by the time they were sipping their espresso and eating the warm foccacio she didn’t care if he was married or single, if he had twenty people waiting at home for him or nobody. He was just so easy to talk to. They sat on high stools and talked about Christmas Eve in other lands. Liam had been in New York some years, always a wet cold day. He remembered coming out of his office and trying to join the throngs getting last-minute gifts in stores where a million others had the same idea. They took such short vacations in New York City. Not like here in Sydney, where the world closed down for weeks.
“Well, it is our summer holidays,” Janet said, a trifle defensively. She was always apologizing for the long school vacations that teachers enjoyed. Her other friends said her life was a holiday. But their lives weren’t filled with shrill young voices, clamoring young personalities, and the need to be onstage from the moment the first bell rang to the last. Of course, she had never wanted to be anything els
e but a teacher, she told Liam, and she told him about a Christmas she had spent in France that was meant to improve her French but actually had only improved her interest in wine.
And then they talked about wines they both liked, and around them people wandered around the fish counters and water gushed through the drains and lumps of ice that hadn’t yet melted fell to the ground. They talked, Liam and Janet, with the excitement of people getting to know each other and afraid to ask the question that might nip it all before it got started. Each was buying a fish large enough to feed a family. Neither wore a ring, but that meant nothing. They each noticed that the other was in no hurry to go home, but again that might have no significance. When their third set of empty coffee cups was taken away they could pretend no longer.
“I suppose I’ll have the shakes if I drink any more,” Liam said.
“Me too.” Janet looked glum suddenly.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I wish sometimes that I could get out of that schoolgirl habit of saying me too, and me first. It’s the only downside of working with children; you start talking like them.”
“Do you have children?” His question was sudden and direct.
“About two hundred and eleven at last count,” she said, and then as if trying to make up for being flippant, added, “but I say goodbye to them each day at four o’clock.”
“I see.” He seemed pleased.
“And you?” She hoped her voice sounded light.
“About ninety at last count, but that’s only in the bank,” he said. And she knew that he left them behind when he left the bank too.
“I see.” She was very pleased. She might have to fight a woman for him, but no adorable little toddlers who needed their daddy.
They had been there for a long time.
“Would you like to meet again?” he asked simply.
“Yes please,” she said. It was a jokey thing to say. It hid her eagerness, her great relief. Would he ask her phone number? Would he give her his? When would he suggest? Janet felt the breath almost choke her.
“So what do you suggest?” he asked. He was leaving the decision to her.
“I think saying same place, same time, next year is a bit on the long finger.” She looked at him with her head on one side, waiting. Janet hated women who behaved like this, but she felt she had to. It was the only alternative to letting him see the eager longing in her face to see him again, to get to know him better.
“Oh, I hope to know you very well by this time next year,” he said softly. “Very well indeed.”
Janet felt herself shiver. It was the kind of shiver that her mother said meant someone was walking over your grave.
“Well then,” he said. “Well then.” He suggested a restaurant, he suggested lunchtime three days later.
“Will they be open?” Janet asked. She didn’t want to risk their missing each other.
“Oh yes, they’ll be open.”
They looked at each other as if there was still something more to be said. He picked up a brochure advertising all the different kinds of fish that were on sale and tore a piece off. It had a picture of a baramundi. He quickly wrote some figures.
“In case you change your mind,” he said.
She tore another baramundi off and wrote her number.
“In case you change yours,” she said.
“No, it’s the highlight,” he said, with a mock bow of his head.
“I look forward to it,” Janet said, and skipping the puddles of water made from the hosing of the fish stands, she made her way to her car. She turned around to look back once, and he was still standing there. She wondered why they hadn’t wished each other Happy Christmas. Everyone else was saying that to people that they had only just met. Perhaps it was because they each believed the other had something to do at Christmas, something to unpick or sort out.
Janet shared a house with three other teachers. They each had a large sunny room that acted as their own bed-sitting-room. They had a huge shared kitchen and two bathrooms. They had a small garden with four sun beds placed around it. Everyone said they were mad to rent this expensive property. They could each have found a deposit and a mortgage for a house of their own, but at this point none of them wanted that. And they got on very well together for women in their twenties and thirties. They didn’t live each other’s lives. They paid a woman to come in once a week to clean, nobody kept their television up too high, and if lovers were invited into people’s rooms, it was not discussed, nor was anything untoward ever audible. They always laughed about their living arrangement, calling it Menopause Manor. But they could do that because it was far from the truth.
This year none of them had gone away for Christmas. They would eat together in their garden. There were various reasons. Janet had a new stepmother; she wanted to give the woman a breathing space before descending on her for holiday festivities. Maggie had a married lover who was not available for Christmas Day. Kate was writing her thesis and had decided to give it three solid weeks of six hours a day in Menopause Manor. Sheila was from Ireland; sometimes she flew the whole way back there, but this year she had not saved the money and couldn’t find the enthusiasm for rain and sleet, so she too was staying in Sydney. It would be a happy, undemanding day for the four of them. They would be unsentimental, probably a little tipsy. They would not mention Maggie’s man, and the futility of it all; they would not make Sheila sad about the Emerald Isle by singing “Danny Boy”; they would be supportive about Kate’s M.A. thesis; and they wouldn’t know that Janet had just met the most marvelous man in the whole world, so they could have no attitudes about it.
On Christmas Eve, Janet sat out in the garden; the night was warm and smelled of flowers. She could hear the sea in the distance. She wondered where he was at this moment, the man called Liam with the crinkly smile, who said he was in banking. He had not said he worked in a bank; that was a subtle difference. It was ten o’clock. The telephone rang. Although she felt sure it must be from Ireland for Sheila, Janet went to answer the call.
“Janet?”
“Liam?” she said immediately.
“Just thought I’d wish you Happy Christmas. We forgot to do that today.”
“So we did. Happy Christmas,” and although she hated waiting, she managed not to say any more.
“Have you still got the baramundi?” he asked.
“Yes, yes indeed.” Another pause.
“Have a happy day,” he said.
“You too.”
They hung up. Janet went back to the garden and hugged her knee as she looked up at the starlit sky. She knew exactly why she had been so unforthcoming. She wanted to be allowed to dream over this Christmas. She wanted to think of Liam and his smile, and the fact that he had been thinking of her at ten o’clock on Christmas Eve night. She did not want to hear about his wife and children if they existed, or his longtime live-in lover who understood him, or his messy divorce. She wanted to think of him as a man who was looking forward to seeing her in three days time. A man who could talk about anything and who understood everything. A man who said that this time next year they would surely know each other very well.
She sat and hugged her secret to herself. She had not been in love for six years. Not since she was twenty-two. Since then there had been people, but nothing that counted as real love. She had forgotten how utterly wonderful it felt; how silly and feathery and quite unconnected with the real world. She heard bells ring and she knew there must be church services. She heard merrymakers calling good night down the street. It was Christmas Day.
There was no breeze, but still she shivered. That was the second time today. For no reason Janet remembered her mother helping to zip her into her first formal dress on her eighteenth birthday.
“I’m so happy,” Janet had said, looking delightedly at her reflection in the mirror.
“You’ll never be as happy as you are now this minute,” her mother had said. Janet had been furious. Her mother had tak
en all the gold and glitter away from the moment. And she had never forgotten it, even though her mother had been wrong.
Janet had been happier than on her eighteenth birthday. When she was twenty-one she had fallen in love with Mark and been happy for fourteen months, every day and every night. Why did she have to remember her mother’s words now, the words of a woman who was never truly happy, who always saw the bleak side? Too much laughter meant tears before bedtime, too much good weather meant headaches later on, people being nice and warm and welcoming meant that sooner or later they would prove to have feet of clay.
Janet’s mother had been dead for four years. Her father had married again; a different kind of woman, small and round and giggling. Janet couldn’t understand what they saw in each other, but that was not remotely important. Maybe they found what she and Liam had found, however unlikely it seemed. After all, her father had met Lilian at a television studio where they were both members of a studio audience, and now they were married. Janet had met Liam at the fish market this morning, and he had told her that this time next year they would know each other very well indeed. He had just telephoned to wish her Happy Christmas. The good times were only starting.
On Christmas Day the others said that Janet must have had some attitude-changing substance. She had a funny, happy smile all day. Janet made the salads, set the table in the garden, baked the potatoes, and chilled the wine. Not the most domesticated of the four in the household, she insisted on doing it all this time. She cooked the ocean perch lovingly. This was a fish that Liam had touched with his own hand. This was a fish they had laughed over, a fish that brought them together.
The day seemed curiously long; happy but long. Janet thought that it must be seven o’clock when it was still only five o’clock. Somehow the days passed. And then it was the morning. The morning of the lunch. Janet realized that she had shadows under her eyes because she had slept so poorly. She was placing far too much hope on this, too much importance, reading more into it than there was. Very probably, but it still didn’t make her sleep. There was no hairdresser open so she shampooed her hair and spent hours trying to get into the kind of shape she wanted. She had planned to wear her peach-colored shirt and a gray denim skirt, but she thought it made her look as if she had stepped from the chorus of Oklahoma! It was too hot for a jacket, too smart a place for a beach dress. Janet had been wearing jeans when she met him at the fish market. She wanted him to know she had other clothes.