“No.”
Florence reached out for the glass and swallowed it quickly, anxious to have it over with.
“Merry Christmas,” Evelyn said. “At the same time, I must tell you that I regard you as an odious and interfering woman.”
Florence spluttered. “I am sorry,” she said. “I can’t drink whisky. I didn’t realise that it was neat whisky.”
“How unfortunate,” Evelyn said. “I went to a great deal of trouble to find it for you. It is some years since anyone wanted it.”
Florence stood up. “I am sorry to have put you to so much inconvenience. Perhaps you will give Muriel my best wishes for Christmas and the New Year.”
“Certainly,” Evelyn said. “This way.”
“Yes, I know the way,” Florence said faintly. She gestured down at the plate containing the ten remaining pies, which she had placed on the arm of her chair.
“Not really,” Evelyn said.
Florence picked the plate up and walked out into the hall. “You seem to think I have intruded on your privacy. I sincerely apologise.”
“One lives and learns,” Evelyn said blandly. “Muriel is putting on weight, you know.”
“About that door. Obviously something is wrong with the frame. You ought to get a man in.”
Evelyn sniggered. “Oh, we have that. We have had a man in.” She watched Florence down the path.
Thoroughly unnerved, Florence walked into her own tidy kitchen and filled the kettle. She stared for a moment at the mince pies on their plate, then with an abrupt movement picked it up and slid them into the wastebin.
CHAPTER 5
Christmas morning.
“Just shut the door on them,” Sylvia said. It was six A.M. She was huddled into her quilted dressing-gown. The children shrieked and howled from Suzanne’s bedroom. “I’ll go down and brew some tea,” Sylvia said. “There’s no point in going back to bed.” And on this as on almost every other day, a grey fatigue shook her; another baby, what for, when the three were too much for her, but if only she could think sensibly about this, think logically, if only she could run all the strands of her thinking together for just half an hour. She never seemed to have half an hour, that was the trouble. In the cold kitchen she bit into a corner of dry toast; all she could face, these last couple of weeks. The electric light was brilliant and hard, like an operating theatre; her laminate surfaces gleamed empty and scrubbed, ready for the severance of 1974 from 1975. Condensation ran down the windows. Already the fights had begun upstairs; she could hear Alistair working himself into one of his fits. When he was younger, he used to go blue with temper and stop breathing. She moved about the kitchen, aimlessly dazed with bowls and spoons and teapots. She pulled back the curtains onto the blue-black morning; a streetlight burned fuzzily on the opposite side of the road, the great artificial moon which shone each night onto her marital bed. Already in the neighbours’ houses lights were clicking on, the children rampaging downstairs shredding wrapping paper and mauling cats, shaking the ornaments from the Christmas trees. She put her hand against the radiator. It would soon be as warm as they could afford. She had always wanted a cosy house, low and cream, with plump flowered cushions; now she was as cosy as a fish under ice. Another year almost gone, the house no nearer paid for: the piling up of the interest on the debts.
Colin stood by the small window on the landing at the top of the stairs, looking out, with a damp towel from the bathroom in his hand. Some people, unbelievable as it seemed, lived in such a way that they had their own towels. A door opened and Karen lurched towards him, her face streaked with tears and dirty—how could it be dirty?— already. Grasped in either hand she had by the wrist identical dolls, fatly flaxen, improbably frilled.
“Come on now, pet,” he said, but she avoided him with a warning growl and swayed downstairs. Suzanne came out, glowering, her face heated.
“Florence has brought me a rotten sewing machine,” she said. “I never get anything decent.”
“What’s the matter with Karen?” Colin asked mildly.
“She’s a crybaby. Stupid kids. I’m fed up pretending about Father Christmas. Daft stupid kids.”
“I didn’t know you’d been enlightened,” Colin said. “Could you just manage to pretend, for your brother and sister? Just for this year, at least. It would spoil it for them, you see.”
“Spoil it for you,” Suzanne said, acutely.
“You’re eight years old,” Colin said, with ferocity; the accumulation of pinpricks. She stared at him and laughed, and went downstairs.
Sylvia was doing an explanation when he arrived in the kitchen. She held out the two dolls and looked helplessly from one to the other.
“Besides, I’ll make them new dresses,” she said. “Then they’ll be different.”
“When? Today?”
“Well, soon, lovey, but not just today, because your Aunty Florence is coming. Besides, isn’t it nice, what they are, you see, they’re identical twins.” Karen stopped crying, but her mouth drooped dangerously; Suzanne was openly sneering. “I’ll make them on the machine,” Sylvia promised. “Special little dresses.”
“Just as long as I’m not expected to do it,” Suzanne said. “I’ll get filthy Alistair for his breakfast. Get his pigswill out.”
“Come here,” Sylvia said to her husband. They backed off into the corner by the fridge. Her voice was dangerous. “Florence. I bloody told her. I bloody told her what I’d got for Karen but she won’t be told.”
“I can’t help it. She didn’t do it on purpose, did she? Look, just leave it, just leave them to fight it out amongst
