off their coats and shed their burdens of wrapped presents, though personally I find it falls only just short of faintly nauseous on the olfactory scale. Still, the morning was all right, on the whole. Dad slept till gone nine, which meant I was able to read yesterday’s paper over my breakfast before I had to make his and sit with him while he ate it in his dressing gown, and there was just time to get him upstairs and out of sight to wash and dress before people started to arrive. Anne and Jim were the first. I was glad to see that she looked well. Jim looked as he always looks, genial but detached, slightly spaced out, though he assured me once that he never smokes grass before lunch. Although he was only a child in the Sixties, he looks and acts like a fossilised relic of that era, wearing his hair shoulder length, dressing always in denim, and sporting one of those long straggly moustaches that were popular on the West Coast during the Summer of Love. Cecilia can hardly bring herself to look at him without flinching. He and Anne have been together for eight years now. I must admit that he wouldn’t have been my first choice as a partner for my daughter, and I sometimes feel he is living off her rather than supporting her, but she seems happy with the relationship, so I keep my doubts to myself.
I took Anne into my study and asked her how she was. ‘Fine, just a bit of backache,’ she said.
‘And the baby?’
‘Kicking. He’s fine.’
‘How do you know it’s a he?’
‘I had a scan. I knew you’d be pleased.’ She could tell by my expression.
‘Well, you know . . . My first grandchild. Perhaps the only one. Not much sign of Richard producing any progeny . . . and I don’t suppose you’ll risk having another at your age, will you?’
‘Well, we’ll see how this one goes,’ she said.
She looked very like her mother at that moment, when Maisie was carrying Anne herself, except that Maisie used to wear tent-like smocks, whereas Anne follows the modern fashion for flaunting her swollen belly, sheathed in a tight-fitting top above matching trousers. The fluffy ginger hair, the round face, the hesitant smile, and the two vertical worry lines in the middle of the forehead, were just the same. It was always said that Anne took after her mother, whereas Richard was more like me.
‘And how are you, Dad?’ she said.
‘Oh, all right. Getting deafer and deafer.’
‘You seem to be managing all right.’
‘It’s quiet in here.’
‘And what about Rick? Is he coming today?’
‘Yes, he’s coming.’ The doorbell chimed at that moment. ‘That might be him,’ I said.
But it was Marcia and Peter and their children. It’s a cliché, of course, that children are an essential ingredient of any celebration of Christmas, but like most clichés it is true. Adults, even sour and cynical ones like me, can at least for a while see Christmas through their innocent eyes and recover some sense of the wonder and excitement we experienced ourselves long ago. Lena entered the house with a beatific smile on her face which shone like a reflected sunbeam on everything and everybody that she encountered, while Christmas had made Daniel more solemn and dignified than ever, though there was a visionary gleam in his eye. ‘So what did Father Christmas bring you, Dauphin Daniel?’ I asked him, crouching down to bring myself to his level. ‘Father Christmas bringed Daniel an icicle,’ he said. ‘An icicle? That doesn’t sound like much of a present,’ I said. ‘A tricycle, Desmond,’ Marcia said, and everybody around us laughed. One thing we deafies can do at a party is give people a few laughs with our mistakes, and I did not begrudge them this one. Daniel, however, didn’t laugh, but turned his wide eyes on the grinning grown-up faces with a puzzled and faintly disapproving air. ‘And it’s “brought”, not “bringed”, Daniel,’ his mother added. ‘Father Christmas brought you a tricycle.’ Being a teacher (though of maths not English), Marcia thinks it her duty to correct her children at every opportunity. Of course Daniel’s mistake was perfectly logical and shows that he has already mastered the way to form the past tense of regular English verbs. You’ve got to grasp the rules before you learn the exceptions.
There was a discussion, which almost turned into an argument, about whether presents should be exchanged before