late husband used to say grace before every meal even if there were only the two of us at table.’ I looked at Jim and winked.We had a bet last Christmas predicting how many times during the day Cecilia would use the phrase ‘my late husband’ (it was nine, and I won). The grace gave the food a further opportunity to cool, a fact to which Dad tactlessly adverted by asking if his portion could be warmed up a bit in a frying pan and volunteering to carry out this operation himself. His table manners are an inexhaustible source of amusement, irritation or embarrassment, according to one’s point of view. He doesn’t feel that a dinner plate is equipped for its function unless it has a generous smear of mustard and a small hill of salt on the rim, irrespective of the ingredients of the meal, and it is no use telling him that mustard doesn’t go with turkey or that too much salt is bad for you (though we do, every year). Nor is it any use handing him a salt mill - either he twists it the wrong way, causing it to come apart and scatter crystals of sea salt all over the table, or he labours with increasing impatience to grind out enough minute fragments to make a perceptible heap on the edge of his plate. Fred was so irritated by this procedure on one occasion that she provided him with a half-kilo plastic container of Saxo salt beside his plate at the next meal, but so far from taking the hint, or any offence, he thanked her for the thought. I had remembered to place an old-fashioned cruet with a salt cellar and a pot of prepared mustard within his reach at table today, but forgot that he would also require a slab of white bread, spurning the warm ciabatta rolls provided as being too crusty for his false teeth and contaminated by bits of indigestible olive, and I felt obliged to fetch a slice of white loaf from the kitchen in spite of Fred’s injunction that I should stop fussing and sit down.
And so the day proceeded on its predictable course, through the Christmas pudding and mince pies, the pulling of crackers, the donning of paper hats, the reading out of atrocious riddles (rendered still more atrocious when they had to be repeated in a louder voice for my benefit), and the exchanging of presents, leaving the lounge awash with torn wrapping paper.‘History repeats itself once as tragedy and the second time as farce, but Christmas repeats itself as surfeit,’ I remarked, looking round the drawing room at people in various attitudes of torpor, inebriation, indigestion and boredom, clutching new books they would never read, gadgets they would never use, and items of clothing they would never wear. ‘Speak for yourself, darling,’ Fred said sharply. ‘We enjoy it, anyway. Don’t we Lena?’ She gave her grandchild, who was sitting on her knee, a hug. ‘Yes, grandma,’ Lena said obediently. ‘Granddad’s an Eeyore,’ said Fred. ‘Yes, you’re an Eeyore!’ cried Lena delightedly. Fred has been reading Winnie-the-Pooh to her when baby-sitting. Well, perhaps I am. After all, Eeyore was deaf too. It comes into the story about his birthday party. When Piglet wishes him ‘Many happy returns of the day’, Eeyore asks him to say it again.
Balancing on three legs, he began to bring his fourth leg very cautiously up to his ear. ‘I did this yesterday,’ he explained, as he fell down for the third time. ‘It’s quite easy. It’s so I can hear better . . . There, that’s done it. Now then, what were you saying?’ He pushed his ear forward with his hoof.
Deafness is always comic.
I had a surprising conversation with Richard before he left. All through the day he had been as politely inscrutable as ever, fending off all enquiries, however subtle or oblique, about his private life. Then just as he was leaving - when he was actually outside the house, and I was walking him to his car, which he’d had to park in the road - we had the most intimate conversation, brief as it was, that we have had in years. We were talking about Anne’s pregnancy, and I said, ‘She looks just like your mother when she was expecting you.’
His response seemed a non sequitur: ‘I suppose that’s why you hate Christmas, is it?’
‘What d’you mean?’ I said.
‘It reminds you of Mum’s death.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘Though