Tom All Alone (7) (ii)

      "You still awake, Russell?"

      -

      "Russell?"

      "Shut up and go to sleep."

      "I want to see Father Christmas."

      "You saw Father Christmas in Selfridges."

      "I want to see him again.  I want to see him eat the mince pie I left him."

      "You can't.  I told you, if you see him he won't leave you nothing."

      "But he won't know I'm awake."

      "Of course he will.  He always knows."

      "But it's dark, so he can't see me."

      "Then you won't be able to see him either, will you.  Now go to sleep."

      Quiet again now. Just the sounds from upstairs.  People talking in loud voices.  Sometimes a laugh.  A chair being dragged over the carpet.

      "Will they put the fire out before he gets here?"

      "What's up now?"

      "He'll get burnt on the fire when he comes down the chimney."

      "Dad will put it out before they go to bed.  He'll put a bucket of water on it."

      "Will he?"

      "Yes.  Now shut up again and go to sleep, or he won't come."

      "Alright.  Nu-night."

      "See you in the morning."

     

      Upstairs, the sitting room rocked with bodies in the smoke-stinging heat.  Faces, blushed and brandied, bobbing like buoys on a restless tide.  Long Derek and his wife Sal from over the road, Jim and Joan Gibney, tattooed Leo from the forage yard, Paddy and Lil, 'Uncle' Les and 'Auntie' Florrie, George Holt from next door with his Guinness and pipe, bald Oakie Brown from The Coat and Badge, Gassy Bill in his greasy cap and round-framed specs - a Capstan Full-Strength nailed to his stubbly grin.  The fire ballooning into the room from the tiny grate.

      Dad holding court by the fire side, glass in his fist, roll-up dangling, the ash dropping onto the burn-scarred fire rug. He cracks the top off a fresh bottle against the mantelpiece, pours it - his fingers thick as sausages, the nails stained brown, his voice breaking over the roisterous crew.

      "Drag that other crate in from the landing, Oak."

      Mum sitting in the chair next to him with her Babycham and cherry, the lip-ring on her glass, the white of her teeth as she laughed at whatever Lil next to her said - a sense of something secret or lascivious in it. Lil with her headscarf and no teeth, but a tongue on her and a mouth like a docker's.

      The chink and nudge of glass against glass, the fume and flare of the spirit, the slop and froth of opened bottles.  Nuts cracking in knuckled bunches of fingers.  Bowls of crisps, plates of sandwiches and sausage rolls, cheese and pickled onions and gherkins on sticks. Fag-ends smouldering in tin ashtrays.  Star-sparks catching in eyes from the white heat tinsel-tassel blaze of lights and flames.

      Dad coughing, then clearing his throat loud enough to bring all eyes back to him.

      "Go on, Dan!"

      Readying himself - bones clacking in accompaniment in his huge cupped hand.

 

 ‘The party finished early, just shortly after nine,

and by a stroke of fortune, her room was next to mine.

Like Christopher Columbus, fresh regions to explore,

I took up my position by the keyhole in the door…

 

Oh, the keyhole keyhole keyhole, the keyhole in the door,

I took up my position by the keyhole in the door.

 

Now, all you men of science, you men who are so wise,

you talk about your stars and you talk about your skies.

But I will tell you one thing, I’ll tell you nothing more,

Your telescope’s got sod-all on the keyhole in the door…

 

Oh, the keyhole keyhole keyhole, the keyhole in the door,

your telescope’s got sod-all on the keyhole in the door…’

 

Cheers and whoops and hands slapping knees.

"Encore!"

"Good one, Dan!"

"Another beer for that man!"

The final savoured sups and guzzles.  The kisses and pats and squeezes.  The unsteady clump of shoes on the stairs, someone breaking into song, someone else shushing them loudly.  The sudden echoes across the house-fronts of the empty street.

"Merry Christmas!"

The hugs and waves and car door slams, the cough and rumble of engines. 

The hip-hugging, ear-nuzzling, foot-slipping return to the room upstairs, all the chairs and glasses and bottles and ashtrays and smoke and heat.  And the head-shaking, head-aching heft of the night and the time.

*

‘He’s been, Russell!  Father Christmas has been!’

Present-stuffed piles of pillows, like icebergs in the freezing sea of early light.  The two boys jumping from their beds in breath-stopped excitement, grabbing the shapeless mounds and dragging them through the door, thump-thump-thump up the stairs and along the landing to mum and dad’s bedroom, and up into the bed between them.  Strips and strands of paper flying off in streamers.  Boxes emerging - cars, games, books, a train set.  An aeroplane with flashing lights. A cowboy outfit with silver six-shooters. A selection box of chocolate medallions, spilling from a chest of eye-patched skull-and-crossbone pirates.  The eye-shining smiles and shrieks.  The swirling, shuddering chaos of colours.  The rip-roaring glory of the day.

*

      The upstairs scullery sweats and heaves with the heat and smells of the dinner.  The steam and bubble of pots, the spit of fat in the turkey-stuffed oven, the hiss of the gas hob, the fuss and fiddle of fingers and elbows as the old lady and mum cut, slice, prod, salt and chop - mum’s raw wet fingers reaching every so often for the tumbler of gin and bitter on the window sill.  Nan constantly wiping her glasses on her apron.

      "You can’t be optimistic with a misty optic, Cath."

       In nan's downstairs parlour, dad pushes the armchairs back against the wall and moves the big folding table into the centre.  He takes the best cloth from the cabinet and spreads it out, setting down the cutlery and placing a cracker by each spoon.  Then, satisfied with the task, he goes back upstairs and pours himself a beer, then stands by the fire to watch his boys with their toys.  He takes a cigar from a packet on the mantel-piece, lights it with a spill, then stands with his back to the flames, glass in hand, and feels his body slowly filling with the wax-warm sense of the days’ special mystery. 

     Seeing the boys there - heads down in busied fascination.  Watching their images gently merge into smudges of shapeless colour as his mind wanders the cat-howling back alleys of his own childhood.  He remembers the crammed, dingy rooms in Tooting, shared with eight brothers and sisters.  The scratching for food - boosted by whatever he and his brothers could steal or beg from greengrocers’ shops and market stalls.  The nights of violence with his own father - the slapping and banging and the dinners up the wall, and his mother weeping softly against her pillow in the darkness.  And yet, despite this, the blood-binding aura of love there as well.  The pulling together of the family at any cost.  The sense of duty in his father that was a source of the deepest frustration as well as being the only - the final - stability in his life.  Dan feels these things keenly himself: the stability he so much needs to give, welling up from deep in his heart in a love whose scale and strength it is almost beyond his power to measure or comprehend - but which sustains him in a way that no other circumstance of his life has ever done.  And the frustration, too.  The consuming sense of his own inadequacy, his lack of resource, his limited scope for improvement - none of which matters, of course, but that he could comprehend it.  Still he always feels there's more he can do, more he can offer.  More he can love.

      He raises the glass to his lips and takes a long draft as his eyes refocus on the boys - healthy, happy, content.  Loving him in a way he feels, in his secret heart of hearts, he can never truly justify or deserve.  And in that moment, as in many, he feels something shift inside himself like tides meeting in a single swelling current: a conflux of emotions, springing from the deepest waters of his soul, flowing against one another with equal force, rising and falling and eddying - buoying him up, then sucking him down. Whirling him, dragging him, whipping his sails, threatening at any moment to snatch the tiller from his numbing hands and wash him away.

      If only they knew, he thinks.  If only they knew…

(continued)