Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,105

wankers. Most men are, when I come to think of it. But you—” She took off one of her gloves and raised her hand, impossibly cold, to my face and pressed it against my equally frozen cheek. “You’re nice. Really nice.” Her words were drawn out, limp. She looked into my face, smiling. Then she leaned toward me, sending me reeling in the swirling scent of her cigarette-and-whiskey breath before she landed a soft, wet kiss on my mouth.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE ALL THE WAY.” MY FATHER DANCED into the kitchen on Christmas morning wearing his brown wool dressing gown, paisley patterned pajamas, and red slippers. His hair, usually carefully combed in a vain attempt to cover his ever-expanding bald patch, hung in loose, jagged strands over his right ear. “Oh what fun it is to ride on a one-horse open sleigh, hey!” He stuck his hip outward and his hand into the air. Clearly, he was in good spirits and determined to inject our Christmas celebrations with an appropriate degree of cheer. I was considerably less jolly as I stood at the sink peeling what felt like an infinite quantity of potatoes. We were having them roasted and mashed to go with Christmas dinner. Mabel, Frank, and Granddad Bennett would be joining us, and I was preparing two five-pound bags to make sure there would be enough. “Merry Christmas, love,” my father said, stopping to plant a kiss on the crown of my head before dancing over to the cooker. “By heck, I could kill for a cup of tea. My mouth feels like the inside of a bloody birdcage. And, speaking of birds, how’s that turkey coming along, eh?”

The previous evening, while my mother had lain lifeless on the settee watching Val Doonican’s Christmas Show, my father and I had prepared the stuffing for the oversized bird, gratefully following the instructions from the recipe for roast turkey that Auntie Mabel had clipped out of a December issue of Woman’s Weekly and sent to us with the Christmas card signed by her and Frank. At seven o’clock that morning, my alarm had gone off and I’d got up to stuff the bird and hoist it into the oven. Now the turkey was roasting away in its massive roasting pan and I was basting it every half hour.

“It smells great,” my father said, dreamily sniffing the air as he filled the kettle with water. “When you grow up, you’ll make some man a lovely wife, Jesse.”

“I’ve told you before,” I snapped. “I am not getting married.”

He laughed. “That’s probably your best plan, love.” Leaning over the gas burner, he turned it on, struck a match, and leaped back when it burst into a ball of blue flame. “Bloody hell, another damn thing to fix,” he muttered, shaken as he brushed a few singed strands of hair that had been hanging perilously close to the gas burner back over his ear. “Anyway,” he said, putting the kettle over the flame and then searching the kitchen counter for the tea caddy. “You ask me, marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Certainly not the riding-into-the-sunset-happily-ever-after rubbish they make out, I’ll tell you that for nothing.”

He laughed again, but there was a sadness to it that made me wonder how many times he had regretted marrying my mother. I wondered also whether, given the chance now, my father would still choose to have me. But I knew the answer. My father’s ideal life would consist of a quiet house, an armchair, a television and a newspaper, and regularly but anonymously delivered cups of tea. If things went well, he’d get to watch the downfall and then humiliation of the royal family on the BBC. In that little cocoon, there wouldn’t be any room for a daughter who demanded his attention, who wanted more than he could possibly give. After all, he had so easily forgotten me the other night at the disco, and if Amanda and Stan hadn’t had that accident I would have been left to walk home completely alone in the dark.

“Of course, when I was young,” my father said, “that’s what you were supposed to do—get married. Never occurred to us to do anything else. But the world’s changing now. There’s lots more opportunities for you, love.” I saw my father as a much younger man—the young man he had been in his wedding photographs, dimple-faced with a full head of hair, grinning for the camera as