Another Life Altogether: A Novel - By Elaine Beale Page 0,106
he stood next to my mother outside the church after the ceremony. He had looked so happy, so full of hope. I wondered how he felt about that day now.
I brushed the thought away and tossed a peeled potato into the colander. “When are you going to pick up Granddad?” I asked.
“After Mabel and Frank get here,” he said. “Your granddad doesn’t like to wait for his dinner.”
“So when are Mabel and Frank coming, then?” I asked.
“About eleven o’clock. Mabel said she’ll take care of the cooking if your mother’s not up to it—which I can’t see that she will be, given the state she’s been in recently. I told Mabel I want to have the dinner on the table by half past one at the latest,” my father continued, taking a mug down from the kitchen cupboard as he waited for the kettle to boil. “That way, your granddad will be happy and I can be sure of seeing the Queen’s speech at three o’clock.”
My father loved the Queen’s Christmas speech. He’d probably never admit it, but it was one of the highlights of his Christmas—his annual chance to rant at the Queen, not just when she was waving from her carriage leaving Buckingham Palace or pictured having tea with some foreign dignitary but face to face as she addressed us in our living room.
I much preferred the perennial showings of A Christmas Carol. This year, it was being aired on BBC One on Christmas night, and I had circled it in bright red ink in the Christmas edition of the Radio Times. There was something about the transformation of Scrooge from miser and Christmas curmudgeon to generous humanitarian and jolly partygoer that I found irresistible, and I always got tears in my eyes when he raised the salary of his poor beleaguered clerk, Bob Cratchit, who for some reason reminded me of my father. But my favorite character was the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. I longed to be visited by a spirit like that, someone to tell me what lay ahead so I would know the worst to expect.
My mother finally came downstairs after ten o’clock. Though she had clearly made an effort to dress up, with a set of fake pearls around her neck, matching earrings, and a silver charm bracelet, she looked decidedly off-kilter. It was partly her dress, a silver-flecked outfit that resembled an oversized, stretched-out sweater, with an uneven hem that hung just below her thighs. Then there were the black seamed stockings and high-heeled silver sandals, which made me expect to see her put her hands on her hips and start kicking her legs in the air like a music-hall dancer. And finally the makeup, fiercely bright hues on her eyes, lips, and cheeks that made Mabel’s choice of cosmetics look minimalist by comparison. She looked ridiculous, like a child in dress-up clothes trying to imitate what she understood as adult sophistication.
“Are you all right, Mum?” I asked as she strutted into the kitchen, pausing to examine her reflection in the shiny curve of the kettle.
“Of course I’m all right,” she said, puckering up her lips, patting her hair, then turning toward me, beaming to reveal a smear of lipstick on her teeth. “Couldn’t be better. I mean, after all, it’s Christmas.” Her voice was high and overwrought. “Merry Christmas, love,” she said, sweeping me into her arms. “A merry, merry Christmas.”
“Same to you, too, Mum,” I muttered as she pressed my face into the mothball smell of her dress. I tried to sink into her, to relax into her embrace, but I felt stiff and prickly and, without really wanting to, I pushed her away.
“Oh, I see you’ve got the turkey in already,” she said in a disappointed tone, as if she’d been planning to prepare the meal herself and I’d beaten her to it. She flopped onto one of the kitchen chairs. “Any tea in that pot, love?” she asked, indicating the teapot that my father had filled earlier.
“It’ll be cold by now,” I answered.
“Oh, well, make another one, will you, love? You know me, can’t do a thing without my morning brew.”
Mabel and Frank arrived shortly afterward. They came bearing gifts. Three pounds of beef sausages, a box of Milk Tray, and a bottle of Harveys Bristol Cream sherry for my mother, a bottle of brandy for my father, and a book for me. My mother accepted the package of sausages from Frank without even a murmur of