That Christmas her room in the Professor’s house was cold, of course, with no heating, no rugs and the hard, dry snow bashing against the clean windows. Cruel and scheming, the Professor chilled her and forced her out of the room he had claimed was hers and she was forced downstairs, to warm her bare feet in front of his fire and watch the Professor indulge himself. He opened the best of his wine and made her drink and watch him burning books, book after book, on his real fire. It was his secret vice, he said, one that nobody knew about, that he bought and rebought and annotated afresh new books and then incinerated them, when he felt the urge.
That Christmas Mandy watched his fire and licked the wine off her lips.
I went to see my bears at Christmas. I hadn’t been in ages. They were still the same, which I found disappointing, rather than reassuring. Father bear, black bear loomed with his forepaws up in supplication, Grizzly mother shambling beside him, and looking sideways. Various cubs were heaped in colours ranging from burnt umber to ginger: there was even a yellow bear with a curious, simian, old man face. Beside them, in a glass case of his own, the great granddaddy: the recovered skull and chipped skeletal revenants of a cave bear. His jaws were like the front of a Volkswagen Beetle. Timon came with me, eager to see the bears I’d told him about. His Christmas present from Belinda—who was usually so frugal, and timid with her sheaf of credit cards—was a very compact video camera, wit which he’d already been filming us. His batteries weren’t very good, and didn’t last long and after each hour of filming he had to switch himself on to recharge. He whizzed through batteries because he liked to cut very fast from shot to shot, composing these bewildering collages of views. His own cut and paste technique, he told us, delighted, showing us some of the results on the telly on Christmas night. By then we were used to him looking at us through his machine. When he cut and pasted, swiftly pressing STANDY-BY and RECORD, he gave a shrill bleep-bleep. He cut into sentences, so that when we watched ourselves eating Christmas dinner, it was a jumbled and punctuated version we got, our sentences running abruptly into each other’s.
A cracker with me I want someone to pull a sauce there’s more sauce in gravy is too I fetched out the lumps with a strainer that thing isn’t on me the state of me you shouldn’t you again is it me to say? What do you want to me to for posterity I’ll believe that when I see David, he’s filming you pull my cracker with me put that thing down did you know your red light’s flashing? What does that mean? Anne’s in the hall on the phone to that fat Christian charity after all it’s the time of the year it is some music on carols and we went four times a day ten candles all lit all weathers I love you Timon get my good side trifle and I put the hundreds and thousands on not very well I’m afraid Uncle Pat is asleep Uncle Pat? At the table get that bottle down this end of Aye, to you as well best of the compliments of the season.
Timon filmed the bears for a while. He had decided that he was making a proper film. He put me on my bike, in my blue riding helmet and followed me in the oddly quiet streets of the city when we went to the museum.
It was Boxing Day. Uncle Pat was spending the day in bed. Most of the others were taking it easy, sleeping off the too-much they had eaten the day before. Timon and I were full of energy and we came out to film the bears.
“Your uncle,” he said, taking care for it not to come out on the soundtrack. “He didn’t look too good yesterday, hon.”
“He was exhausted by the end of last night,” I said.
These were all the unsayable things, however. We both knew, and so did the others, that Uncle Pat had been waiting for Christmas, he wanted a nice Christmas and then… where would he go from there? Was it over yet? When did Christmas actually end? Epiphany? Our mam always took the decorations down before New Year. They depressed her, she said, once the real day was over.
We walked back to the Royal Circus. I wheeled my bike. Timon said he and Belinda were having dinner together: their own private Christmas tonight. We kissed goodbye on the landing and I still got the urge to ask him outright: was his first reaction to the sight of Belinda the true one? Had this delight been that complete and concealing nothing? I couldn’t ask, though and I left him, going up the last flight of stairs.
Inside, home again, I met Serena Bell for the first time.
Wendy knew someone different was there because they were playing the piano. It was in the living room, which no one used very much. The room was painted blue and faced the dark side of the flat. The piano’s lid was always down, and had become rather dusty. Wendy had lifted it once, giving the cool, yellowed keys an experimental tinkle. She couldn’t play, of course.
She recalled an instance of Mandy’s bravery, her rashness. A school assembly when Mandy was twelve. For some reason the headmistress was asking who could play, who’d like to come out and entertain us? Who’ll give us a rousing chorus of something? I will,
