A Proper Family Christmas Read online

  “A lot of this stuff could go,” said Lesley, then new to the family and revelling in this opportunity to validate her position. “Stephen and I will help you clear things out if it’s too painful.”

  If Hilary had had any idea of ridding herself of her last memories of Ben, the thought of Lesley going through their things would have put it to flight for ever. Daniel, with all the outraged fire of seventeen, threatened to rush down to Oxford, when he heard, and turn out Lesley’s cupboards. Hilary had laughed in spite of herself, and in a way the incident had given her the jolt she needed.

  Certainly she had no intention of losing her home as well as her husband. So much of Ben was in this house - not only the things they had bought together, which would have moved with her, but their positions in each room - little corners of familiarity. She was surprised to realise how much they mattered to her.

  She drew the curtains quickly, turned on the stereo and poured herself a drink, then wondered if she should be keeping a clear head. She alone was responsible for dealing with anything that might happen now. Would she be capable of seeing off Jehovah’s Witnesses, or mending a fuse, or saving the neighbours from a fire, if her faculties were numbed by alcohol? And with music on, one couldn’t be sure what other sounds it was disguising. A host of burglars might be tramping through those supposedly empty rooms above her.

  She really had meant it when she’d told Daniel that she didn’t mind spending Christmas alone, that evening, weeks ago it seemed, when he’d first mentioned the climbing scheme. Since Ben’s death they had always gone to friends or a small hotel, making a rather over-conscious effort not to let the season get them down, but she still found Christmas one of her worst times. The idea of ignoring it altogether had seemed infinitely appealing.

  “You’ll have to go to someone’s for Christmas Day,” Daniel had warned her. “It’s all very well saying it’s sentimental rubbish, but when there’s sod all on telly and you see everyone else in the street playing happy families round the Christmas tree… well, you’ll miss Dad like buggery, for a start.”

  “As if I didn’t already!” Hilary had made a face.

  “Phone Julia and Tony. They’d adore to have you!” He imitated Julia at her most gushing. “It’ll be the real thing - you know how Julia loves all that Christmas crap. You can see it through in an alcoholic haze. Good pressies, too, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “Oh yes, and have Tony taking me into corners and asking me how I am all the time, and Julia telling poor little Posy not to bother Auntie Hilary, as if I was an uncertain-tempered cat, and everyone avoiding the subject of husbands and feeling guilty if they laugh by mistake…”

  “Okay, okay!” Daniel had grinned. “Trash the Wimbledon idea. But I still think you’ll want to go somewhere, when it comes to it.”

  “Nonsense. I shall just put my head down and let the whole thing pass me by. It’ll be heaven.”

  Well, here she was, just as she had wanted it - alone for Christmas.

  “Sod it!” she admitted out loud. “I’m lonely already.”

  CHAPTER 2

  William was getting his tea, an operation as full of ritual and long-standing custom as any ceremony in Japan. He had put the kettle on some time ago - the proper kettle, not that stupid electric thing - and now it was spluttering on the old gas stove with just the right kind of hiss that told him it was time to open the toffee tin with the bent spoon he kept for the purpose and get out a teabag.

  His daughter-in-law had once spent some time explaining to William that if he didn’t fill the kettle completely, it wouldn’t take so long to boil. William, as always, had listened with polite interest to her discourse on freshly-drawn water, energy conservation and the prevention of limescale build-up, and continued to do as he always had, quite failing to see the point of making extra trips to the sink, when a good full kettle might last him several days.

  Not that he was totally behind the times. William had recently discovered round tea-bags, and he paused a moment to admire the satisfying way the bag aligned so perfectly with the round base of his mug, before taking it out again. Nothing would persuade him that a decent cup of tea could ever permeate a paper wrapping, and he carefully split the bag open and shook out the contents into the mug. He tipped the kettle slowly, watching the water dance into his cup and splurge tea all the way up the sides but just stay within bounds, in a way that he always found immensely satisfying.

  Scratch the cat watched the proceedings keenly. Although he had already been fed, he had a strong suspicion that William would be dining on something more interesting than cat food, and he didn’t want to risk missing out just because he wasn’t really hungry.

  William cut himself one and a half slices of bread, and spread the half slice with marmite and the full slice with butter and jam, topping both bits with a layer of strong cheddar cheese. This done, he began the rather precarious journey across the hall. Mrs. Arncott had suggested that if he ate his tea in the kitchen it would mean fewer crumbs for her to clear off the sitting-room carpet in the mornings, and less chance of him tripping over the hall rug and breaking something - whether a cup or a leg she didn’t specify. William, who knew she’d do anything to make less work for herself, had pointed out that the T.V. was in the sitting-room, and he could hardly be expected to eat a meal with nothing to look at but his plate.

  He turned on The Bill, wincing at the statutory Christmas decorations adorning the Police Station despite the suspiciously full-leaved trees in the exterior scenes. Scratch placed a paw against his leg, and when that was ignored, stressed his point with a strategic amount of claw until he was given a bit of cheese and marmite. The pair of them settled down to a peaceful evening.

  Something bleeped somewhere. William ignored it. He was beginning to get hold of the plot of The Bill. This greasy-haired yob had stolen something from the black one, and the third one, who was really a goodie despite his earring and leather jacket…

  The bleep became louder, more and more insistent. William knew what it was - that annoying machine Stephen and Ratso had bought him “because you don’t always seem to hear the phone, Dad.” It had buttons and aerials and little red lights, and if you ignored it, it went on and on bleeping louder and louder until you pressed and pulled the right combination of things to make it stop.

  But William had discovered an easier solution, and slowly, with a lingering eye on The Bill, he went out and picked up the receiver on the proper telephone in the hall.

  “Well?”

  This uncompromising greeting usually put off any caller persistent enough to get him to answer the phone in the first place. But this one knew William.

  “Hello Dad.”

  “Huh.”

  “How are you?”

  “Having my tea.”

  Stephen paused in vain for an echo to his polite enquiry, then answered it anyway. “Bit of a panic here.”

  There was always a bit of a panic where Stephen and Ratso were concerned. William waited to hear whether little Tobias had caught a snuffle, or whether their local shops had run out of Christmas pudding, and strained to pick up on The Bill round the corner of the sitting-room door.

  “Seems our damp proof course has broken down.”

  “What a shame.”

  As he’d thought, they’d arrested the wrong youth, leaving the greasy-haired one free to walk over to that block of flats…

  “Yes, it is rather,” said Stephen acidly, knowing full well his father’s mind was elsewhere. “The house is quite untenable - you know how dank Oxford gets in winter.”

  “Can’t you buy a new one?”

  “We can hardly move again so soon. And we’d never find such a…”

  “I mean a new… What did you say had broken down?”

  “The damp proof course, Dad! Apparently they don’t last for ever in these old Victorian houses. Lesley’s already found mould at the bottom of one of the curtains, and of course Tobias has a tendency to weak lungs…”

 
; William’s contact with his grandson so far had given him quite the opposite impression, but he didn’t argue. With a bit of luck Stephen was leading up to the news that they couldn’t have him to stay after all! He prepared a speech of polite regret and reassurance that he would be perfectly all right on his own.

  “So Lesley and I really don’t feel we can have you to stay for Christmas.”

  “Oh, what a pity! But…”

  “…We couldn’t risk you catching pneumonia or rheumatism or something while you were here.”

  “That’s very thoughtful…”

  “Children find invalids so distressing, don’t they? And Tobias is at such a vulnerable age.”

  “Yes, well - I shall be perfectly all right…”

  “However, we both feel that it would be a tragedy for him to miss out on a proper family Christmas at this essential stage of his social development…”

  “Quite”.

  He wished Stephen would hurry up. The greasy-haired yob was about to attack an old lady. She had foolishly turned up a lonely passage-way and he was creeping up behind her…

  “…So it means we’ll have to come to you.”

  “What!” William’s head swam as if he’d been mugged himself. “You can’t possibly… I haven’t got anything in. There’s no room!” He snatched excuses desperately. If Stephen and Ratso once installed themselves at Haseley House, there’d be no getting rid of them before New Year.

  “There’s plenty of room, Dad. You’ve nine bedrooms, for heaven’s sake! Surely Mrs. Arncott can bestir herself to make up one of them - well, two, actually. We’ve got a nanny now, did I tell you? And we’ll bring food. Tobias only eats organic products anyway…”

  William put the phone down with a shaking hand. Stephen and Ratso for Christmas! Spreading their things all over his house! Making him eat ‘proper’ meals and watch their television programmes…! He flicked the T.V. off angrily as a comedy came on. …Telling him the gadgets he ought to buy and the repairs he ought to make, as if they owned Haseley House already!

  Well, he would get Mrs. Arncott to prepare the rooms at the far end of the attic, which were probably damp and certainly dust and spider-ridden, where Tobias could exercise his weak lungs well insulated from the rest of the house. If Stephen and Ratso stuck it out for more than two days, he doubted the new nanny would. Nannies were fussy creatures, as he well remembered. They bustled about in white aprons, wanting everything just so. He hoped this one would be fat and cosy - William liked fat people. Mrs. Arncott was reassuringly plump.

  Frances, Tobias’s new nanny, was actually rather thin, and she had long, delicate hands and feet, which made her appear even more so. Her hair was a wispy blonde, which she wore piled on top of her head to make her look responsible and older than her nineteen years. Being Nanny to Tobias Sebastian Shirburn was rather a responsibility, as she had soon discovered.

  “Come on, the water’s lovely and hot now.”

  “You’ve made it too hot,” said Tobias suspiciously.

  “No, I haven’t,” said Frances, splashing her arm in the bath to prove it was neither too cold, as Tobias had first complained, or too hot. “Why don’t you get in and see?”

  Tobias put one leg over the side and grimaced, but with a look at Frances’s face, gave in and clambered into the bath. “I need my boats.”

  “Here…”

  “No. The other ones. Those two.”

  “What about a wash first?”

  “Not soap!” said Tobias witheringly. “I have my special stuff - there.”

  “You remind me of the Chinese Boy-Emperor,” said Frances.

  “Who’s he?”

  “A little boy who had to have everything special,” sighed Frances, anointing his arm, “and liked to have his orders obeyed. What sort of games do you play with your boats? Sailing races, or discovering desert islands - or battles?”

  “Battles,” said Tobias firmly, retrieving his arm in order to stage a head-on collision with a boat in each hand. “A-a-a-a!! These boats have got guns and they’ve both sunk and everyone’s drowned.”

  “Right,” said Frances. “Um - what about if one boat was hiding from the other, behind your back, say, or in this cave under your knee? Then the other one might go sailing all round here trying to find him…”

  Tobias giggled.

  “Keep still, or you’ll have him on the rocks!”

  “We prefer Tobias to structure his own imaginative play.” Mrs. Shirburn stood in the doorway, trying to temper her reprimand with a tight smile. She had a long thin nose and long mousy hair, and made no attempt to disguise her thin mouth and rather pink eyes with any make-up.

  “Right,” sighed Frances again, not wanting to jeopardise her job so early. “Let’s wash this other arm then.”

  It had seemed such a good idea at the time, coming to work for an academic family in a romantic place like Oxford. Frances had left her Warwickshire village with visions of starting a whole new life in the City of Dreaming Spires.

  Living at home with her mother and three young brothers and working just round the corner meant that she never seemed to go anywhere or meet anybody new. In Oxford she saw herself mixing with exciting, lively-minded people, joining in their witty, intellectual conversations, and of course meeting the person - her soul-mate - who would love her for the rest of her life.

  She had come down for an interview with the Shirburns, not really expecting to get the job. They were obviously dreadfully fussy, and a child-care course at the local college and couple of years looking after the local doctor’s family wasn’t going to compete against some uniformed Norland Nanny with generations of satisfied aristocrats under her belt. Still, it was an excuse to have a day out in Oxford, and she spent the morning wandering round the colleges, soaking up the atmosphere, and trying to spot her soul-mate among the students.

  There was a suitable air of romantic decay about the Shirburns’ rather dilapidated Victorian house. Frances longed to paint the contrast of straight architectural lines half smothered in tangled vegetation, the glimpses of vivid orange brickwork under the dull greens and browns of December foliage.

  But there was nothing romantic about Dr. Shirburn, with his flat pale hair, thin-rimmed glasses, selfish, turned-in mouth, or his rat-faced wife. They led her into a dingily-furnished living-room, sat her in an uncomfortable chair, and explained that they were looking to replace their previous nanny “who unfortunately did not understand the needs of a gifted and sensitive child like Tobias.”

  The gifted and sensitive child sat between them, apparently sizing her up as attentively as his parents. They must have had Tobias late in life - in fact there was a bachelor-spinster quality about them which suggested a late marriage - and they had clearly devoted themselves to the subject of child-rearing with the same thoroughness they would apply to academic research. They talked of books and diets and educational methods. Frances said ‘yes’ in what she hoped was the right places, and watched Tobias surreptitiously pulling the fringe out of a cushion and waiting to be told not to. His parents hadn’t noticed, and she didn’t think it was up to her to indulge him until she was being paid for it.

  At the end they had said “Thank you. We’ll let you know,” and Frances assumed that was that, and tried not to be disappointed.

  Then the letter had come.

  “Wow!” she’d screamed at the breakfast-table. “They want me after all. I’ve got into Oxford!”

  They’d teased her of course, laughing at the self-satisfied way the Shirburns’ letter gave no option for her to turn the job down, and the horrific-sounding contract enclosed with it.

  “‘Suitable dress at all times’,” quoted Joe, pulling gleefully at the long tee-shirt which was all she happened to be wearing.

  “‘No men in your room at any time,’” chanted Liam. “We can’t visit you, then - and nor can little Tobias.”

  “That kid sounds a pain,” said Alex, with eight-year-old superiority. “I don’t think yo
u ought to go.”

  “You did say the parents were awful and the child was a monster,” Mum reminded her. “Are you sure you’ll be happy working for them?”

  “She thinks she’s going to meet all these cool new people - men!” Joe explained. “You’re such a little mouse, you won’t dare talk to them. And if they’re Oxford students they’ll think you’re just a thickie nanny…”

  “Frances isn’t thick at all!” Mum had interrupted. “She’d be at university now, if she wasn’t so pig-headed!”

  Frances grinned. Her mother had been horrified when she had insisted on leaving school and starting to earn her own living, instead of taking A levels and going on to Art College, as had always been planned. But when her father had died, she simply didn’t feel she could let Mum go on supporting her as well as the boys, just so that she could indulge her childhood dream of becoming an artist. She still thought she’d made the right decision - her job didn’t bring in much, but at least she paid her way at home - just sometimes she couldn’t help wondering what would have happened if things had been different, and what that other Frances would be doing now. In a way she saw Oxford as a second chance that she mustn’t miss out on.

  The doctor’s family had wept, and gave her a hugely expensive box of oil-paints as a leaving present. The boys kept telling each other how much more room there’d be in the house and how nice it would be not having an older sister bossing them around, and bought her a silly great teddy ‘so she’d have something to cuddle in Oxford until she found a boyfriend’. Mum obviously thought she was doing the wrong thing, but didn’t feel she could say so after the row about leaving school. The whole family waved her off from Warwick Station as if she was a Pilgrim Father, setting off to discover the New World.