Chapter Ten
The Day
Christmas Morning - what a time for past joys, a fever like ecstasy that radiates through your tiny body; when you get older the feeling simmers into disappointment. For weeks your friends and family get you all keyed up, the media too: “It’s coming, it’s coming. YAY!” The high street is cluttered with lights; the ten different Christmas pop songs are being looped in every shop, public house and household. It’s CHRISTMAS!!!!! And then you wake up to find it’s just another day; that it feels no different. No wait, it’s worse than a normal day because a normal day has no expectations.
I’m alone. Deb always sleeps at her parents’ on Christmas Eve. I’ve been asked to attend but to spend Jesus’ birthday with a girl’s folks is a big step, a bigger step than I’d like. So we have arranged to meet up after we are done with all of our family obligations.
Christmas stuff starts early for my family. Mum’s got Hannah and my brother and sister also have young children; their day starts at 6am at the latest. I normally make my way over to mum’s around eleven for the second round of presents being opened. I’m sure most of you are familiar with this kind of ritual; each separate pocket of the family, brothers and sisters, let their children open the gifts that are from them (normally around 6am) and then those family members gather in one place, normally with a grandparent or the eldest sibling, to form one big, massive, super unstoppable family and that’s where the second gift exchange and opening happens and that’s the one I’ll be attending, for two reasons: 1) my mother demands it of me and 2) the food is dished out within the hour.
‘Twas 7 o’clock on Christmas, when all through the flat, not a creature was stirring, not even that feral cat, the stockings were hung off the nightstand without care, I hoped that St J Daniels would soon be there.
I’m not sure if the AA meeting is helping my drinking problem. Before I didn’t think it was an issue, now after hearing all the other drunks talking of how they would drink to solve all manner of problems, it’s starting to sound good to me. ‘Shit, I forgot to pay the rent. I guess I’d better climb into a gin bottle.’ ‘Uh oh, the wife has left me and taken the kids with her. No problem, I know how to drink the pain away… and my liver.’ But it’s Christmas, it’s a day for the sober people to get wasted, even the kids get to have a shandy or a sherry or something, so I’ll make myself a tea and I’ll let the norms have their fun.
I have reheated pizza for breakfast and tea with no sugar - got to watch those calories - also I need to buy sugar. The pizza is from a Greek place around the corner, at least I think it’s Greek; they sell kebabs so I think Greek but, hell, they’re also selling pizzas so I really need to rethink that line of thought. Anyway, this cheesy meat feast was awful last night. This morning after having been nuked in the microwave it’s still as awful and is now harder to chew, which is partially down to its rubber-like consistency and partially due to the fact that it has taken off the roof of my mouth on the first bite. My thoughts shift to little Jonathan in the hospital and his father in the morgue. People will talk of the outrage of a thing like this happening at Christmas like if it happened on some random day in August it wouldn’t be so awful. Death at Christmas is only worse for those who didn’t really care about the lives lost. They don’t mourn the dead they mourn the day; so sad that someone else’s tragedy has cast a shadow over the merry event. These thoughts fade and the pain in my mouth returns to the forefront of my mind. I pour myself a glass of milk, as it’s the coldest thing in the flat besides a frozen bag of mixed peppers, and wander into the lounge. In an attempt to ignore the pain and needing to kill four to five hours I turn to mindless brutality of video gaming - I think I’ll play Sonic or that game where you are a farmer.
I have one of those new next gen consoles but I refuse to name it; I’m no advertising whore. What I will say is I paid a lot of cash for this ‘cutting edge technology’ console and mainly use it to play DVDs and for downloading old Mega Drive games that I’m sure I still own; they’ll be in a box in my mum’s loft. I play my expensive little toy on auto pilot, for non-gamers, this is when you completely tune out to everything around you even the very game you are playing. The screen only coming back into focus when you hear a sound that indicates you have finished a level that you have been stuck on for days.
I take a shower. As the individual jets of water drum on my back, thoughts of Jenny Weir and the hot chick out of Rilo Kiley, who I’m sure is also called Jenny, encourage me into masturbation. I feel like a loser, thirty-two and masturbating in the shower but, hey, it’s Christmas so ‘let it snow, let it snow, let it snow’. Exiting the shower is always a wary task; my feral feline’s head rises to view me. Is it love for a caring human that has allowed him to remain king of the bathroom or it is a villainous look before an attack. It’s not easy to tell where a cat’s eyes are aimed but I fear it’s at my swinging sweetmeats. I cover myself quickly as though a nun has just walked in and I speak to a beast that only understands instinct.
“Hey, John, happy Chrimbo. How about I get you a tin of tuna fish? I’m up here, John, my eyes are up here.” I point to my face in hopes of getting the cat to look up and away from my genitals. His stare doesn’t falter, he blinks but in that slow cool way that cats do, he is totally in control of this situation. After my retreat I brush my teeth in the kitchen sink and contemplate the fact that I’ll have to return to the bathroom to give him his tuna. The comment was a bluff to get out of there but I fear some kind of retribution if I do not follow through with my offer.
Arriving at my mum’s I’m just in time for the second gift unwrapping; the kids are on the floor within a circle of adults surrounding them like spectators at a cock fight. The kids are Hannah, my step-sister’s three: Jade, Cory and Caprice and my brother’s eldest, Luke. My brother also has a daughter, Ella. She is only five months old so she is not in the ring of death with the other children.
A child’s uncontrollable delight in ripping open presents could be easily compared with a carnivorous beast ripping apart its prey; a flurry of emotion and instinct, but unlike the beast, the child is never satisfied and needs to act out more and more carnage. Out of breath and out of bright coloured boxes to tear apart, being allowed to have a small chocolate bar calms the child’s savage nature. So maybe the act is primal; the little beasts were hunting for sustenance. Also the instinct to destroy is a lot stronger than the want or need to try on a pair of home knitted gloves.
Hannah seems fairly happy, so I guess Mum didn’t tell her about Jonathan. I guess it’s a kindness really, to let her enjoy the day. I’d want to know. I realise I’m not a nine-year-old girl and I’m not so big on the day anyway; it’s just that I think she’ll feel guilty when she finds out, knowing she was so happy at a time when her closest friend was in such a bad state in the hospital. Maybe it’s just me. I’m always confusing guilt with sorrow, for me the two never come alone.
Who are all these people? All family, either by blood or marriage, but who are they outside these gatherings? They are strangers to me. Uncle Ron, who are you? Some guy married to my aunt, Rebecca, and who is she? Some sister of my mother’s who lives at the other end of the country. I don’t know these people. Oh God, Aunt Lilith. I don’t want to know these people. Aunt Lilith is the oldest of my mother’s siblings and she is most unpleasant. She has a tendency to do shitty things and then act the victim when she gets caught. For example, she and her husband Terry tricked his mother into selling them her house. They gave her ten grand for a house worth two hundred thousand. When Uncle Terry’s brothers found out that the two of them had duped their mother and conned them out of their inheritance they were not best pleased. Shamelessly, my aunt would come to my mother and weep over the way she was being treated, like anyone could hear that story and see her as the victim. But she’s family so everybody treated her like she was. Recently, Lilith has swapped religious teams, from Church of England to Catholicism. No one knows the reason for this sudden
change; she told mum that she felt lost and needed spiritual guidance, but if that was true why not go back to her old church? Is the C of E too lax? Did she need the strict bondage of guilt that only the Catholic Church can offer? No, I think she just liked the idea of the ‘holier than thou’ judgement side to it. That sounds more like Lilith.
“So, you’re still working at that pub?” A rhetorical question is one that is spoken for effect and does not expect a reply, but what do you call a question that is really a statement, which does expect a reply?
“Yes?” The questioner, Uncle Nick, has come over to ask me if I like my gift. It is, what looks to be, a fantastic book about Truman Capote that I’ll never read. I do give Nick a gold star for effort though. He’d recalled talking about Capote to me last year and so at least the gift was thought out even though he must have forgotten that it was him who brought up Capote and I just nodded and said, “Phillip Seymour Hoffman did a good job in the film.”
“So, you have no urge to better your situation?”
“How do you know there is a better situation?”
“Don’t take offence, Noel.” ‘Don’t take offence’ always means that someone is about to offend you. “But I assume it’s minimum wage?”
“It is, like most jobs. Not everyone is on a salary, Uncle Nick.”
“It’s not a bad thing to be financially secure, Noel.”
“No, but it’s not so nice to imply that those of us who are not are the world’s fuck-ups.”
“I wasn’t saying that.”
“You kind of were and don’t take offence, Nick, but I’m not the one who needs to watch what I eat because of my stomach ulcer.” At which point Mum intervenes and drags me into the kitchen.
The kitchen smells like Christmas and there is nothing my bitter and blinkered view on life can do to make it into something dark. No anecdote about a drunken father throwing a novelty Santa gravy boat across the room and the shattering pieces scarring a small boy’s left eyebrow. Sure, I have that story and the hairless line in my eyebrow to prove it but that Advent and others like it do nothing to sully the joyous feeling that is the smell of Christmas. The savoury smells of the turkey and vegetables blend with the sweet aroma of cakes and biscuits and there is even the tiny citrus fragrance of fresh fruit. The whole blissful scene plays out to the sound of the Rat Pack banging out Christmas tunes. The sight, sound and smells of everything is so burnt into my innermost thoughts to the point that if I hear Dean Martin crooning the hell out of Let it Snow I swear that I smell ginger in the air, as I did this morning in the shower.
“What is it with you and your Uncle Nick?”
“The guy’s an arse. Every time I speak to him he starts questioning me on why I don’t spend every waking hour trying to stockpile my money. The guy’s like Scrooge McDuck - I have images of him swimming in a pool of pound coins.”
“Scrooge McDuck?”
“Oh, it’s Disney’s take of the Dickens’ character.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s an old Scottish Donald Duck. This happens when you substitute parental love with a TV, Mum.”
“Don’t you start with that, I never wanted the thing on.”
“Hey, I liked watching the A-team but you are the one in The George Peppard fan club.”
The meal is laid out on the kitchen counter tops: the turkey, half-carved; the vegetables in their serving dishes; and the gravy in its boat, this time stainless steel. If anyone tosses that thing at the wall it’ll probably ricochet and take out an eye. We don’t have a table big enough for the whole family to sit around; the older members of the family get the dining table, the kids sit at one of those mini plastic tables and those of us in between grab any chair that’s going and eat off our laps.
The absence of my grandad is noticed; I feel it and I’m guessing the others do, too. Mum will feel it the most. She’ll make him up a plate and pop it around to him later. He’ll pick at it and eat nothing. This is the second year he’s missed Christmas at Mum’s house; the cancer is letting him fight but not letting him live. I still haven’t been to see him, don’t know why; don’t know much of anything these days.
With my stomach full and my sombreness cranked up a notch, after dwelling on thoughts of Grandad, I sneak into the garden for a crafty cigarette.
I find it alarming that I have chosen this smoke to be my refuge. I guess this means I’ve moved out of the ranks of social smoker. I don’t even recall when I bought these cigarettes. Ah well, just another disgusting vice to add to my rap sheet.
“Do you smoke now?” Hannah, vigilant little Hannah has followed me out into the garden.
“No, well, yes, but not really.”
“They’re what made Grandad sick?”
“They are.” I stub my fag out on Clive’s pristine garden shed. “There I’ve stopped. Thanks, Hannah Banana.”
“You’ve stopped for good?”
“Yep.” Or at least until you are out of view.
“Ok. I just came out to thank you for my gift.”
Hannah pulls me down by my hand, so she can kiss me on the cheek and then heads off back into the house. I had bought her a Judaism starter kit. It comes complete with miniature Torah, Yarmulke, Mezuzah, a wooden dreidel and a tiny Hanukkah Menorah. I don’t like to encourage religious nonsense, but I knew she would love it.
Before she turns and disappears through the patio doors she looks back to me and shouts out, “It’s very sad about Jonathan.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“Will you take me to see him?”
“Of course I will, whenever you are ready, Hannah.”
She vanishes into the house. She knows? Where does she get the strength? In her tiny world Jonathan is such a large piece. The news must have crushed her, yet here she is not letting it affect the day. I know I’m her brother and I may put her on a pedestal but I know in my heart she is putting on this brave face for everyone else, masking her pain to shelter them, to keep the burden off Mum.
I light a fresh cigarette and smoke it to the filter.
Returning back inside I’m ambushed by Clive, “Have you been to see your grandad?”
“Errm, yeah. Last night.”
“Really, oh I was just going to suggest you pop over there with your mother when she goes to take him his Christmas lunch.”
“I would but I have got to meet up with Deb later.”
“Right, but you saw him yesterday?”
“Aye.”
“How was he?”
“Well, he’s got cancer, so bad.”
“Yes, right. Oh, I think your mother wants me for something.”
Clive does a fast walk over to my mother who is by the kitchen talking to my step-sister and has in no way motioned for him to come over. I sure hope she doesn’t call Grandad to confirm my story - got to make sure I’m out of here before the lie is uncovered.
After putting away twice their body weight in turkey meat and carrot mash a food lull falls over the room. I see the odd person fighting the overwhelming urge to nap, their heads nodding forward then shooting back up as a sensation of suddenly falling strikes them; they won’t last long. The children are now finally giving their presents the proper attention. They scan their piles, picking up something at random, their eyes getting bigger: ‘This is all mine’. And then they put it back on the pile waiting for one of their peers to shout, “Look at what I’ve got! It’s better than anything, let’s watch me play with my toy!” and the younglings will jump like a mini rebellion and erupt into anarchy. Not chubby little Luke though, no, he’s got his own little objective and that’s to eat every chocolate in his selection box: chocolate and nuts; fudge; caramel; wafer and biscuit; every crumb engulfed, nothing touching the sides. I miss being a kid; you can eat shit like that as a kid. Fuck, with the growth spurts and all the running around I bet it gets absorbed into your body before it has a chance to hit your stomach. Mum’s looking over at me, she knows I’m lyi
ng. I’ve got to get out of here before she confronts me.
“Wow, look what I got!” Cory holds up what appears to be a large plastic Samurai sword; the anarchy is going to begin then… SMACK! He cracks Caprice on the head; the sword makes the sound of hitting another sword, how unrealistic. Caprice bawls as a child is known to do when it is bludgeoned by, well, anything. The parents swarm in. One goes to cradle Caprice, another grabs Cory.
“Why did you do that Cory? Why did you hit your sister with your toy?” I’m thinking because the toy you bought him was a sword replica and although Cory does not know the finer points of martial arts, he does know that a Samurai sword is meant for hitting people, namely younger siblings. Though to be fair, last year they got him a remote control ambulance and he cracked Caprice over the head with that too, so that kind of kills any violent toy propaganda. What they need to do is buy him softer toys and get him into counselling before he becomes the next Peter Moors, who’s a relatively unknown Welsh serial killer. I don’t think Cory has the potential to be a big name.
To pacify Caprice, Shelly puts on a DVD. I don’t know what it is but its cast is a bunch of creepy looking puppets and equally creepy humans. Today’s kid’s shows give me nightmares. During the height of the Teletubbies craze I had recurring close encounters like abduction dreams, which always ended with Dipsy giving me an anal probe with his/her pornographically erect head protrusion. I watched The Muppets as I was growing up and yeah, it had big monstrous characters like Thog and Sweettums and even a puppet called Uncle Deadly but I never had the chills from them. It’s these new ones that are trying so hard to be the epitome of goodness and happy times; they fill me with thoughts of the anti-Christ and the end of days. Because anything that tries that hard to convey the image of blissful and unquestionable goodness is a lie and is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. You know all of those flump-looking beasts from In the Night Garden are on magic mushrooms and the old guy from the Tweenies beats Judy in front of the little Tweenies.
As I watch over the room I can’t help but let a little joy push the cynicism out of my mind. My mother laughs at the paper hat on Clive’s head; it’s tearing due to the man’s oversized noggin. My brother and sister spout generic chit chat at each other, their eyes never looking away from their children; and the kids, their eyes never leave the TV screen. They laugh and shout; they sing and dance along with the colourful images on the screen. Luke is especially excitable, jumping and jumping, “Yay, Sportacus!” Who the fuck is Sportacus? A hero to these kids, I guess; makes them smile. The simple joys are out there and the kids see them. I need to look harder for those simple pleasures. We all do. We all miss those bright colours of our past, the slow melodic turning of the mobile above the cot. We try to simulate those simple joys with huge complicated and costly joys: shiny cars, expensive bling bling, homes decorated by the people off the telly. We pay to make some parts of our body smaller and other parts bigger; dress our kids up to be princes and princesses when all they want is to play in the mud. The kids see the simplicity of happiness.
Luke then throws up on me. Projectile vomit shoots across my chest and it runs down my top. Kids don’t see shit, they’re just dumb.
“Oh dear, are you ok, sweetie?” asks Abby, Luke’s mum and my brother’s wife.
“What’s wrong, your tum tum hurt?” she continues. No one seems to care that I’m covered in sick.
“Kid eats a box of chocolates, this gives him a sugar rush, the sugar rush makes the kid jump, and the jumping makes the kid puke!” Ah welcome back home cynicism.
“You’re the one who sat there and watched him eat a whole box of chocolates!”
“How is that my responsibility?”
“You’re his uncle.”
“The kid was eating a selection box, not playing with razorblades.”
“I’m just saying you’re the adult, the mess on your T-shirt is your fault, not his.”
Now, wearing a handmade reindeer jumper with no undershirt I’m back on the street heading for home. The vomit violation was my get-out-of-Christmas-free card and I used it; I need my fortress of solitude. Damn, this thing’s itchy as hell. It’s a fifteen-minute walk back to my flat; it’s a small town so it’s a fifteen-minute walk to anywhere from anywhere. Walking through town on Christmas Day is like being in a zombie movie; the streets and roads are empty. The warmth of the festivities that lies within the houses doesn’t pour out into the cold harshness of the outside. I cut across a car park to what used to be a Kwik Save; it still is a Kwik Save if you ask me, little more than a title change. Another reason Christmas streets are like a zombie flick is that any movement you do see feels a little threatening; firstly, because of your own feelings of isolation and secondly, what kind of people roam the streets on Christmas Day? People like me.
“You got any pot, mate?” The words are coming from a twelve-year-old boy.
“No, why would I have any pot?”
“You look the sort.” What mockery? A child asks a stranger, on the holiest of days, if he’s selling weed and somehow it is the stranger that is the shady looking character.
“I look the sort? I’m not the one trying to solicit cannabis off some random bloke.”
“What are you on about?” He and his two friends move closer to me.
“You said I look the sort. You are the sort. Do I look anything like you?”
“You should shut your gob, you fucking paedo.”
The kids love bandying the word paedo about these days. No thought of the damage it can do and I don’t mean the damage paedophiles can do, I mean the damage of such a slanderous statement. I lose control; I have no control; I am without control; I slap the youth around his somewhat chubby chops. I have struck a minor.
“Ow, you can’t do that.”
“You’re fucking dead now, Sammy’s Dad’ll fucking murder you,” states one of the prepubescent hooligans.
“Oh yeah? Go get your dad, Sammy, and I’ll have to tell him how you were trying to buy pot off me and I’ll add how you wanted to pay for it.”
“What?”
“I’ll tell him you offered to suck my cock for it.”
“I didn’t!”
“And, yes, I slapped you but for your own safety. Got a feeling your dad’s the kind of dad who’ll rush you home and take a belt to you for acting all rentboy.”
They run; all three of them. I’ve won, I slapped a minor and nothing will come of it and God, did it feel good. They disappear out of sight and I run like the wind; I don’t stop until my flat door closes behind me. Sammy’s dad will find out, maybe not right away but he will find out and I’ve got a funny feeling that if I explain to him that his little boy offered me head, things won’t go as well as I depicted.
In the flat I piss sitting down, something I do without shame. The idea that this is in some way unmanly is bizarre to me, I’m not being effeminate, I’m being plain ol’ lazy. The fact that I like the smell of freshly cut flowers makes me effeminate. I sit while I pee because it’s an option. Hold on, why is sitting an option, where’s John? The window is closed, so he’s still in the flat. Oh no, I’ve shown too much weakness, he’s finally made his move, he’s taken control of the rest of the flat. He’s not in the lounge, as far as I can see; the kitchen is clear, too. I guess I’m still ok to cook and kill hours of my life watching the idiot box. I have high hopes on him being in the mausoleum, the room where past endeavours go to die. If that’s the case I could just close the door; that room is lost to me anyway. No sign of the ginger menace and there is only one more room to check. I push the door to my bedroom open and instantly hear him purring. He’s taken my bed. The joke’s on you, John, my sofa is a pullout.
“What’s with the power play, John?” He lies on his side looking almost placid
“I treat you pretty good for a squatter, don’t I?” And then I see them.
“Kittens, fuck. So you’re a girl cat and a slut. So how many we got here?
” Three new mouths to feed. I know they’re nursing now but how long can that last? Two of them are tortoise shell, and the other is a miniature version of John.
“Guess John isn’t an appropriate name anymore… how about Lou?”
What do I do? She’s chosen this place, my bed, to give birth and she has made it her nursery. Am I allowed to move her? Am I allowed to take back my bed? I give her head a rub and she purrs. It’s the first time I’ve ever touched her. I was expecting a forceful retaliation but she seems to like the attention. Hell, the bed’s a twin, there’s enough room for us all, maybe not for Deb but at least enough for me and the cats. A hand on Lou’s back I contort myself into an awkward and uncomfortable position in the little space available on the edge of the bed and I drift into sleep.