Dad has been on the phone a lot lately, asking about what Christmas presents to get for members of the family. I try to persuade him that nobody expects him to give presents, but he brushes this suggestion aside, claiming that he would feel embarrassed if people gave him presents and he didn’t give them any in return. It’s a reasonable point and highlights the unreasonableness of the whole present-giving ritual. I try to suggest some cheap, simple token presents for him to give, but he forgets what they were and rings me up to ask again. In the end I say with some exasperation, why don’t you give everybody the same thing - a small box of After Eights, say? ‘Don’t be daft,’ he says. ‘Imagine everybody opening my presents and finding the same thing inside. I’d be a laughing stock.’ ‘Well, buy them all different kinds of chocolates, then.’ To my relief he accepts this suggestion. ‘But not for Daniel and Lena,’ I remember to add.‘Marcia doesn’t like them eating sweets.’ ‘Who are they?’ he asks. ‘Marcia is Fred’s daughter. Daniel and Lena are her children.’ ‘Gawd,’ he said, ‘I hadn’t reckoned with them. I’d better write down their names.’ ‘No, no, don’t bother! You don’t have to give them anything,’ I say, but it is too late. ‘What about you, son? I can’t give you a box of After Eights.’ ‘Of course you can,’ I say. ‘I love them. I can’t get enough of them. When we have any, Fred eats them all.’ This of course is a total fiction, but it does the trick.
We discuss the logistics of his visit. I will drive down to London on the day before Christmas Eve to pick him up, and take him back to Lime Avenue two days after Boxing Day. ‘It would help if you are all packed and ready when I arrive,’ I say. ‘I’ll have to drain the tank that morning,’ he says. ‘It takes time.’ ‘Why?’ I say. ‘Well if the weather turns cold the pipes might freeze,’ he says. ‘Leave the central heating on, then they won’t,’ I say. ‘
What?
’ he exclaims. ‘Leave it on when I’m not here?’ We have a long argument about this at the end of which I threaten not to come and fetch him if he won’t agree to leave the central heating on while he’s away. Reluctantly he agrees. Whether he’ll keep his word is another matter.
I’ve been to see two more residential care homes for the elderly in our part of the city. The cost is finely calibrated to the degree of comfort offered, like air fares. At the lowest end of the scale you get a stale smell of cooking in the dining room, and of pungent air-freshener in the lounge, fumed oak furniture and faded floral wallpaper in the bedrooms; at the top end air-conditioning and sleek modular furniture and tasteful decor. But there is the same rather melancholy atmosphere in all of them, of lonely old people waiting stoically for death, deepened rather than relieved by the tinselly Christmas decorations in the common rooms. One can imagine them all carefully chewing their Christmas dinners in a couple of weeks’ time, wearing paper hats on their grey or bald heads, and pulling crackers if they have the strength. Well, at least Dad will be able to join us for Christmas dinner if he can be persuaded to move into such a place.The most promising is the one whose brochure I showed him last time I was in London, Blydale House it’s called, a purpose-built place, so the ambience is light and modern and comfortable. It’s a couple of miles from us, but on a bus route that passes the end of Rectory Road. Expensive, but not impossibly so. I have made an appointment to take him there on the day after Boxing Day.
14
th
December
. The last lip-reading class of the year today. We had more exercises and talks to do with Christmas. Ordering Christmas dinner at a restaurant. The origin of Father Christmas. The history of mistletoe. The biggest Christmas cracker in the world. At the end of the class they all went off to have their turkey and trimmings at a local restaurant. I had not signed up for the lunch on the pretext of another engagement, but felt a little guilty about this fib as we split up, wishing each other a Happy Christmas. Beth announced the dates of the next term in the New Year, and a guest speaker. It seems that there really is a deafies’ equivalent to guide dogs for the blind. Not specially trained parrots; they’re called hearing dogs, and we are to have a talk about them in January.
Beth brings to the class magazines published by the RNID and similar organisations and leaves them on the table for people to borrow or read in the coffee break. An article called ‘Researching a cure for deafness’, about the experimental use of stem cells to regrow hair cells, caught my eye. Sadly the programme won’t produce any results for ten years and then will need another five years of clinical trials, so is unlikely to be of much use to me. But it was an interesting article, which began by stating that there are nine million people who are deaf or hard of hearing in this country. I had not thought deaf had undone so many. And the writer used a chilling phrase to describe traumatic hair-cell loss: ‘
exposure to damaging drugs or noises causes these hair cells to die with a kind of suicide program. They basically commit suicide in your ear.’
Is it possible, after all, that that rock band at Fillmore West provoked mass suicide in my inner ears? If I could remember the group’s name I might sue them, but no doubt the statute of limitations would apply. They’re probably all deaf themselves by now, anyway. I hope so. The good news is that the anti-oxidants in red wine may help prevent hair-cell loss.
15
th
December
. Fred came home yesterday evening and reported that Alex had been in the shop and ordered some curtains. ‘I gave her a discount - I thought it was only fair since we’ll have a sale in January - not that we’ll be putting that particular fabric in the sale. She has excellent taste. Her comments on the art we’ve got in the shop at the moment were all spot on.’ Fred was obviously taken with this new acquaintance. ‘I think I’ll invite her to our Boxing Day party,’ she said, to my dismay. ‘Is that a good idea?’ I said. ‘Why not, darling?’ I couldn’t think of a reason that I could give to Fred. ‘The poor girl will be lonely, all alone at Christmas, thousands of miles from home,’ she went on. ‘I’ll send her an invitation. I’ve got her address on the order form for the curtains. She has a flat in one of those new canalside developments.’ ‘Does she?’ I said, in a tone as uninterested as I could make it. The thought of Alex gaining entrance to this house, mingling with the guests at our party, ingratiating herself with members of the family, meeting Dad, who would be impressed by her blonde good looks and no doubt regale her with his wartime reminiscences of playing at dances on American airbases, is deeply unsettling.
18
th
December
. I woke up this morning with a tickle in the back of my throat which presaged the onset of a sore-throat cold. Sure enough, by lunchtime it hurt to swallow: all I need in the run-up to Christmas. And there was a letter for Fred in this morning’s post with Alex’s name and address on the back of the envelope, which I didn’t doubt was an acceptance of the invitation. I put it on top of a small pile of other mail for her on the hall table, and glanced at it apprehensively every time I went up and down the stairs.When Fred came in she brought her letters into the kitchen, as she usually does, to open them at the table over a cup of tea or a drink, according to the hour or her inclination, and I was there, waiting for her. ‘Tea or drink?’ She asked for a glass of white wine, being in good humour because the faulty Italian fabric which had caused a minor crisis some weeks ago had been replaced in time to make up the client’s curtains for Christmas and Ron was going to fit them tomorrow. I turned my back on her to get a bottle of Aligote out of the fridge, and she said something I didn’t catch. When I turned round she had a letter-card in her hand.
‘What?’ I said.
‘Alex Loom is going back to the States.’
‘For good?’ I said. A vain hope had leaped from my brain to my lips - in an instant I anticipated the bliss of Alex being suddenly, miraculously removed from my life.
‘No, of course not, darling,’ said Fred. ‘Just for Christmas. Why would she order curtains if she was going home for good?’
‘Oh, I’d forgotten that,’ I said lamely.
‘Anyway, she hasn’t finished her PhD, has she?’
‘No. I thought perhaps she had decided to pack it in. She’s not very satisfied with the supervision she’s getting from Butterworth.’
‘Well then, you must give her what help you can, darling,’ Fred said. ‘You have plenty of spare time.’
‘Oh, thanks very much,’ I said. There was more irony in my remark than Fred was aware of. Now I have her permission to meet Alex as often as I like - when it’s the last thing I want.
‘She says she’s very sorry to miss the party,’ Fred continued, scanning the letter-card, ‘but her father sent her the money for a flight home for Christmas, so of course she has to go.’
‘Well, God knows there are enough people coming to this party already,’ I said, disguising my emotions behind a familiar grouchy mask. If it is not the miraculous reprieve I dreamed of for an instant, it is at least a relief to know that Alex will not be around to contribute to the stresses of Christmas.
13
22
nd
December. I have spent the last two days in bed, trying to get over my cold before I have to make the journey to London to pick up Dad - the bed in the guest room, to avoid infecting Fred or disturbing her at night with my coughing and spitting. It was also a way of going to ground, avoiding contact with Alex or anybody else. I hunkered down under the duvet with Radio Four on earphones for company and a Trollope novel for comfort reading.
Today I felt better and ready to resume normal life. I had a look at my email this morning, expecting to find a lot of messages from Alex, but there was just one, saying she was sorry to miss the party and looked forward to seeing me again in the New Year. There were a lot of seasonal ads for Viagra -
‘Give her a present she’ll really appreciate! ’ ‘Get a power charge for the Christmas break!’
I wonder what they will come up with for the next big holiday -
‘Rise Again this Easter’
? And there was a computer-generated message from the University library recalling Liverwright’s book on document analysis. I wondered idly if Alex was going to borrow it again and try to remove the turquoise marks with some chemical solution.
23
rd
December
.The epic journey is over. Operation Fetch Dad is accomplished - not without difficulty. Many times today I wondered if it would have been more sensible to do it by train, but whenever I have considered this option in recent years it seems to entail so many possibilities of things going wrong that I decide against it. The trains just before Christmas are crowded, so I would have to reserve seats, and book a minicab from Brickley at a time which, allowing for possible traffic jams in central London, would get us to King’s Cross in good time to catch the appointed train, but not so early that we would be hanging about in the station for ages waiting to board it. Then even if this leg of the journey worked to perfection there was always the possibility that the train would not be ready for boarding when we got to King’s Cross because it had been late in arriving, or had been cancelled, in which case our seat reservations would be invalid, and we would have to join a Gadarene rush for unreserved seats on the next train. All in all, it seemed preferable to take my chances on the road. I knew it would be slow, I knew there would be traffic jams, but once I had got Dad in the car and his luggage in the boot I wouldn’t have to worry about getting anywhere at any particular time, and I could be confident that sooner or later we would get to Rectory Road.
I left home in the winter dark at 6.30 a.m., with only a cup of tea inside me, whizzed through the nearly empty city centre and was soon cruising down the M1 in light traffic, with Radio Four turned up to a volume which nobody with normal hearing could have borne. The road bulletins were making worrying remarks about fog in the south, delays at airports, etc., but I made good progress as far as a service station near Leicester, where I stopped for breakfast. After that the traffic and the atmosphere gradually thickened and I didn’t get to the end of the M1 until just before ten. From there it was a slow drive across a misty London, its streets congested with Christmas shoppers frantically stocking up with food and drink as if for an expected siege, and I didn’t reach Lime Avenue until gone eleven. Dad was waiting for me in the darkened house, the curtains drawn in every room, wearing his overcoat and cap, with his bags packed and his walking stick in his hand. He looked as if he had been ready for hours. We shouted at each other for a few minutes. ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded. ‘I told you I’d get here at about half-ten,’ I said. ‘I thought you said half-past nine,’ he said. ‘How could I get here by half-past nine without getting up in the middle of the night?’ I said irritably. ‘It’s a long way.’ ‘Too bloody long, if you ask me,’ he said. ‘What did you have to go and move up north for?’ ‘The job was there, Dad,’ I said, as I have said many times.
I go through a check list with him:‘Have you cancelled the milk?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Have you cancelled the newspapers?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Have you left the central heating on?’ A sullen ‘Yes’. He has in fact turned most of the radiators off, but I calculate that the hot water circulating through the system will serve. ‘Have you told the Barkers?’ ‘What?’ he says. ‘Have you told the Barkers, next door,’ I repeat, thinking he hasn’t heard me. ‘Told them what?’ he says. ‘Told them you’re going away.’ ‘Why should I, none of their business,’ he says. ‘Don’t you give them a set of keys when you go away?’ I ask. I know he doesn’t, I’m just pretending I don’t to relieve my irritation. ‘’Course not!’ he says indignantly.‘I don’t want them coming into my house nosing around while I’m away.’ ‘I should think they’d have better things to do at Christmas,’ I sneer. We are getting off to a bad start.