‘Smoking like Mummy.’
‘Noah, I don’t smoke.’ Roisin was indignant.
‘No, but it looked like you were, Mummy.’
Elsa shook her grey chin-length hair which was as inflexible as she was, thanks to the liberal misting of Elnett hairspray each morning. Roisin watched her lips purse signalling disapproval and it made her think of a cat’s arse. Jaysus, she was really getting into the swing of things, Roisin thought, giving her Christmas finery the once over as they were swept in from the cold. Elsa had teemed her handknitted red reindeer sweater with a pair of fat twin Santa Clauses dangling from her ear lobes. As the front door was closed behind her, Roisin’s sense of smell was assaulted simultaneously with the aroma of roasting goose and her mother-in-law’s heady floral fragrance, Joy. She’d be a nightmare to get stuck in a lift with, Roisin had often thought, sure you’d suffocate from the fumes coming off her before anyone come to the rescue.
‘Shoes off, Noah, please,’ Roisin bossed as Elsa busied herself unwrapping him and hanging his coat up on the hooks by the door leaving her to stamp the snow off her boots and shrug out of her coat. She felt very un-Christmassy compared to her mother-in-law in her plain grey wrap dress. It had seemed simple and stylish when she’d put it on that morning, the perfect outfit for a date with her ex-husband and his mother, nothing flashy, no hint of cleavage or thigh to be disapproved over, but now it just seemed drab. She fluffed her hair up knowing the woolly hat she’d pulled on would have flattened it.
‘Colin’s just on a business call. He works so hard that boy, he never stops,’ Elsa said, herding them into the front room. ‘The fire’s roaring. Go and warm yourselves up. I’ve just got to baste the goose and then I’ll bring some light refreshments through. I’ll be back in a jiffy.’
You’d think she was entertaining the landed gentry, Roisin thought. It was going to be a long day. She poked her head back out the door and called out, ‘I feel terrible arriving empty handed. I would’ve been happy to bring a dessert or a bottle of wine.’ The older woman had been insistent she not bring anything and the bag of begrudged presents she was clutching didn’t count. Elsa’s sprightly form didn’t falter as she marched down the hall waving the comment away.
‘Nonsense, Roisin, I always think homemade is so much nicer than shop bought and Colin has a good nose for wine.’
Roisin mouthed, ‘Bitch,’ behind her back and Colin had a fecking big conker, that’s what he had, nose for wine my arse. She stood still for a moment and breathed in slowly through her nostrils then exhaled in a slow hiss through her mouth just as she did in her yoga sessions. She was a long way from feeling mindful but it did unknot the twisted feeling her mother-in-law was so adept at bringing out in her.
‘Mummy, look at the tree!’
It was real of course, Roisin thought, turning to admire it. It was standing proudly in its bucket giving off a gorgeous scent of pine which was mingling with the woodsmoke from the crackling fire in the hearth. The house had central heating and Elsa only got the fire going on special occasions but there really was something inviting about an open fire, and she looked at the flames leap and dance for a second before turning her attention back to the tree and her son who was squealing with delight at the packages laid out around it.
The decorations dripped from the green fronds which bowed under the weight of them despite the sturdy branches. Roisin knew amongst all the tinsel and baubles were the ornaments Colin would have hung. A new one bought for each of his birthdays. It was a tradition Elsa was carrying on with Noah and five would be set aside for him to place on the tree today. She felt a pang, thinking about the measly fake excuse for a fir tree brought on a rushed trip to Argos earlier in the week. She’d poked it in the corner of their flat trying not to feel let down by its lacklustre appearance which seemed to scream, ‘I couldn’t be arsed!’. There’d been no point in sourcing a real tree though, not with them heading over to Dublin tomorrow.
She’d done her best to make decorating it fun, popping on the Christmas CD she always played this time of year. Christmas wasn’t Christmas without a bit of Band Aid and she did so love doing the Simon le Bon bit. She’d straightened its sparse wire branches, getting Noah to unearth his favourite trimmings from the old suitcase she’d brought with them from their old house. They’d whiled away all of five minutes dressing it, and Noah had asked, as he hung the wooden gingerbread man he’d painted when he was three, if the tree was sick. ‘Mummy, it really doesn’t look very well you know.’
He was right and as she’d stood back to look at their handiwork she’d sighed. She could hear Mammy in her ear and knew exactly what she’d say if she was there, ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, Roisin.’ Feeling Noah’s eyes on her she’d been tempted to tell him that sometimes in life you got what you paid for but he didn’t need to know that, not yet anyway. So, instead she told him she thought the tree might be suffering from tinselitis. He’d whiled away a good hour after that with his little red doctor’s kit. Yes, even dripping with Christmassy embellishments their Argos special came a very poor second to this majestic fir tree that had taken up residence in the Quealeys’ front room. The sheer size of it rivalled Enid Blyton’s Faraway tree.
