react? When I glance at Natalie in the hope that my sternness has found favour, she seems less than impressed. Perhaps she doesn't like to hear her son accused of causing my behaviour. At least the rumbles of amusement have subsided, as if a storm has moved on without exploding. The last communicants return to their places, and the priest puts away his props. He and the congregation utter a few updated versions of old words, and the proceedings are rounded off by a performance of 'O Come All Ye Faithful'. It almost wins me over until I hear an off-key voice repeating 'O come let us abhor him.' If it's mine, surely it's inaudible, although the atmosphere feels oppressively electric with imperfectly suppressed laughter. The carol ends at last with a lusty chorus of 'Cry iced the lord' that may include a chant of 'Twice the lord', whatever sense that makes. As the echoes fade the priest appears to have an afterthought – at least, the extra ritual is new to me. 'Let us exchange the sign of peace with our neighbour,' he says.
He demonstrates by shaking hands with his dwarfish server. As I shake Mark's hand I notice that members of the congregation are kissing each other. This makes me uncomfortably aware of the headscarfed presence at my side, or rather at as much of my back as I can manage. I don't turn away from Mark until an elbow nudges me in the ribs, unless it's a fist; in either case it feels more like a lump of dough or jelly. More to avoid it than in any other response I turn towards its owner, and a hand clasps mine.
It's a hand, despite feeling like a large stuffed glove with very little in it besides padding. Its texture and its coldness suggest leather more than cloth. Leather would have to be old if not positively fungoid to have grown so white, but all this is a diversion from the rest of my predicament. My neighbour wants more than a handshake. As she squeezes my hand so hard that I could imagine my fingers are merging with hers, the draped head swings towards me.
I've just glimpsed a pallid pouchy cheek that looks not much less porous than a sponge when I'm overwhelmed by light and uproar. A spotlight has found me, and a fanfare celebrates it, or rather headlamp beams are streaming through the spidery outlines of the nearest stained-glass window and dazzling me to the tune of a raucous horn. Blindness seems to swell out of the depths of the headscarf and close around my vision, so that the face that's pressed into mine is no more than a bloated whitish blur with eyes and teeth. It comes with an oily smell that might belong to some kind of makeup, though it reminds me of preservative. As the scarf drifts like heavy cobwebs over my face I hear a whisper. 'Have a very special one.'
It's so faint or so discreet that I'm not even certain of hearing it. The engulfing hand releases mine, and my fingers writhe in an attempt to dislodge a sensation of being gloved. I hear more than see the worshippers trooping out of the church. I turn to all my family for reassurance and to be ready to follow them the instant they leave the pew. Eventually they move, and I lurch after them. Isn't the crowded porch unnecessarily dim? My spine is crawling with the sense of a presence at my back. I hurry to keep up with Natalie and Mark as they step into the night. I'm emerging from the porch when another whisper overtakes me. Is it 'Not long now' or 'Lots wrong now?' I'm not sure which I would prefer even less.
As I twist around I shut my eyes, but only to clear my vision. In no more than a couple of seconds I open them. The porch is deserted. I dash into the church and throw the inner doors wide to reveal just the priest and the server at the far end of the aisle. I run into the street to be confronted by Natalie and Mark and my parents. 'What's wrong?' Natalie says.
I could take it as another version of the whisper, not least because it feels as if it lacks the final word. 'Where did she go?'
'Who, Simon?'
All four faces look concerned, but I'm not sure whether anyone's pretending. 'The woman who was behind me,' I tell them.
'We were the last ones out of the church.'
'Except her. She was next to me in the pew.'
'That was Mark. There was nobody in it but us,' Natalie says and shares a sympathetic smile with my parents, to whom she explains 'Too much travelling.' Everyone is wearing the expression as they move towards me, even Mark. 'Looks as if somebody else needs his sleep for Christmas,' says my mother.
FORTY-FOUR - NOEL, NOEL
I dream of being summoned out of darkness by a bell. It's the ringing of a mobile, but not mine, because the tune that it's wordlessly shrilling is 'We Wish You a Merry Christmas'. I twist in bed, dragging at the emptiness that's Natalie, and grope so blindly at my old bedside table that it shakes with age. I baptise my fingers in the mug of water before I find the mobile. It's mine after all, and when I sprinkle my ear I'm greeted by voices singing the song of the phone. I'm beginning to feel it has programmed their brains by the time Mark dispenses with the last few words to say 'Guess what I got for Christmas, Simon.'
'Hurry up, son,' my mother calls. 'Somebody's getting restless.'
'He's been,' my father shouts loud enough to be audible through the floor as well. 'The fat lad.'
They both sound determinedly animated, which may be a show they're putting on for Mark. First I want to learn 'Who's been altering my ringtone?'
'I did it for you,' says Mark.
However well he meant, the idea of interference while I was asleep makes me uneasy, and so does his expertise. I have to thank him as a preamble to saying 'I'll be down as soon as I'm decent.'
Mark giggles until I cut him off and scramble out of bed. I'm in my childhood room, which has acquired a musty smell too faint for me to locate or identify. The entire room looks faded, not just my teenage posters of the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges that cover much of the white walls. The furniture helps it resemble a museum of my youth, especially the wardrobe that still won't shut tight. When I was a child the surreptitiously open door put me in mind of an entrance to some unimaginable place, but now, even in the pallid daylight, I don't care for it. I remember holding it shut from within when I was playing hide and seek.
I've yet to feel awake. I could almost fancy that I'm dreaming the large bathroom, where the white tiles date from before I was born. I'd be happy to accept that I dreamed some or indeed all of last night's visit to church. Even once I've showered I have the sense that my consciousness is strained close to breaking – that it's in real need of closing down for a spell. I take the chance to rest my jittery eyes while I dress, and then I set out down the childishly prolonged corridor.
A wave of dizziness seems to render the stairs as steep as they were in Amsterdam. Everyone is in the front room, where a tree is fluttering its lights beside a television as decrepit as the one in Egham. My mother is wearing silk pyjamas that look sharpened by the angles of her bones, my father is stuffed into a suit and shirt. He leaps up at the sight of me, or intends to. 'A drink,' he pants as he makes a second attempt.
It's clear that he and my mother have had at least one, and Natalie's quick Christmas kiss tastes of alcohol as well. 'Aaah,' says my mother at the spectacle and gives my father a reproachful look for not imitating us with her. 'Sherry,' she adds, perhaps on my behalf.
My father staggers off the couch and fills a brandy glass with sweet sherry. 'Get that down you,' he tells me. 'You've got some catching up to do.'
My throat feels so raw I might have been shouting for hours, even if I never heard myself. It's suffering from the harsh smell of dust on the orange bars of the electric fire embedded in the hearth, a lump of the past set in an earlier one. Several mouthfuls of sherry do little to restore my dried-up voice. I smile and gesture my thanks for the various presents my father hands me from under the flickering tree: bunches of socks, underpants printed with grinning cartoons, a computer mouse pad. 'It's the youngsters' time,' my mother declares more than once, and watches anxiously while Mark unwraps books aimed at boys of about his age. 'You can change them if you like,' she assures him. 'We didn't know you were so old for your years.'
'It's all right, they're funny,' he says with his broadest grin.
Perhaps she feels he's overstating his enthusiasm. She takes to uttering an irritated grunt each time my father returns from distributing presents and drinks to plump beside her on the couch. I've bought Mark a computer game set in a haunted city where no route leads to the same place twice and you can never be sure what's beyond a door you've already used. He thanks me hard, though he won't be able to play it until we're home. I feel starved of access to my own computer, not just for working on my book. Could this be another reason why my mind is
