Ordinary Miracles (22 page)

‘Sorry if I sounded a bit off.’ Susan has sensed an expla
nation is in order. ‘It’s just that Liam said he might call.’

‘Liam?’ For a moment I have no idea who she’s talking
about.

‘Come on, Jasmine, you know Liam. I met him when we were looking for Hilda – the hunt ball woman at the home.’

‘Oh yes – of course.’ I wish I didn’t have to shout. It seems
to be increasing my sense of hysteria.

‘Where are you, Jasmine? Are you in a pub or something?
You sound like you’ve been drinking.’

‘Well, I’d better not keep you if you’re expecting a call.’
In moments of extreme vulnerability I oscillate between
brightness and blabbing.

‘What’s wrong, Jasmine?’

‘Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s nothing.’ I’ve started to sob.

‘Yes it does. Come on, tell me.’

‘But what about Liam’s call?’ My neediness is somehow
fuelling my scrupulosity.

‘Oh shut up about Liam. What on earth is going on?’

With an enormous sense of relief I blurt out the whole story
about Charlie’s woman and flat-hunting and the Atlanta Delegation. Susan tells me to calm down. She says her
flat-mate may be moving out and if this happens I can move
in instead.

‘You should go home now, Jasmine. You’re drunk,’ she
says.

‘I can’t go home. I have no home!’ I wail. ‘I think I’ll join the Atlanta Delegation for a while. I’ll get myself a little badge.’

‘Just stay there and I’ll come and collect you,’ she says firmly. ‘And don’t run off with any men over for rugby internationals.’

‘I didn’t know there was a match on.’

‘There isn’t. It was a joke, stupid. Now stay there until I come.’

When I get back to the Atlanta Delegation, William gives my hand a welcoming squeeze. He bellows that a line dance has started in another room of the pub and wonders if I’d like to join in. The only thing I know about line dancing is that people who do it shout ‘Ye Ha!’ a lot. I fear it may drive me over the brink, but before I know it I’m caught up and spat out into a sea of Stetsons, like a bit of driftwood in a tidal swell.

‘Oh Lord, please help me to remain upright,’ I pray. ‘Please let me not be driven to throwing myself, howling, onto the floor.’

Redemption can come in many strange forms. Never, not for one moment, did I suspect that one lost December evening it would take the form of line dancing. My fatigue somehow lifts. I’m so busy kicking my feet in the air and trying to learn the steps that I’ve no time to remember that fifteen minutes ago the craic almost made me crack up. The gin makes me stumble a bit now and then, but nobody minds.

‘Take your pardner and swing her round,’ shouts our amiable master of ceremonies.

‘This isn’t proper line dancing,’ a woman beside me shouts into my ear. ‘This is more a barn dance. Line dancing is much more disciplined.’ I can see she’s rather disappointed but I’m not at all sure I would have been up to the real thing.

The music is western and jolly. I feel as though I should
be in a haybarn in Montana with a piece of straw dangling
from my mouth. Someone hands me a Stetson and I wave it
around.

‘Ye Ha!’ I scream. ‘Ye Ha! Ye Ha! Ye Ha!’

Anywhere else it might sound hysterical, but here it’s
almost obligatory.

We’re all flying around the room, dripping with sweat and as high as the high chaparral. I used to love westerns when I was a girl. Especially
The Virginian
and the way he came
galloping towards our sofa at the start of each programme.
Actually it wasn’t The Virginian I fancied so much but his
sidekick Trampas.

Trampas sometimes danced with a girl in a gingham dress
near the end of the programme when the cattle rustlers had
been caught. I’m that girl in the gingham dress now. Life
feels so simple. How did I ever get the impression it was
complicated? You don’t even have to get the steps right.
Nobody here minds.

We’re all holding hands now. There’s another line of
people holding hands opposite us. We surge towards them and then back, lifting each other’s arms up into the air. The
next time I move forwards the person opposite me shouts
‘Ye Ha!’ into my face. I smile at him.

And then I realise it’s Charlie.

I get such a shock that I stop dancing, only someone yanks
me back into the line.

When the music stops I’m puffing and panting, sweaty and
red-faced. I collapse onto a chair and Charlie sits beside me.

‘Ready to go home yet?’ he asks.

‘No. I have to wait for Susan.’

‘Susan’s not coming. Her car’s got a puncture. She phoned
me.’

‘Oh.’

‘So, do you want to dance a bit more or should we leave?’

‘Is that woman still staying with you?’

‘No. She’s gone.’

I get up and reach for my coat and bag. I say goodbye to the Atlanta Delegation and then I follow Charlie obediently
to his van. I feel light-headed from the alcohol and dancing,
but my legs have turned to lead.

‘Are you all right?’ Charlie looks concerned as I walk very
slowly towards the van.

‘I’m okay – I’m just a bit tired after all those G and Ts.’

‘Yeah – tonic water can do that to you sometimes.’

I know there are things I should say. I know I’m supposed
to be angry. But as soon as the van starts to move I head
towards the open plain of a deep and dreamless sleep.

Christmas is over. I
know this because they’ve stopped
playing ‘I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day’ in the
supermarket where I’m demonstrating a new brand of ice
cream. That song is one of the reasons I’m very glad it’s not
Christmas every day. There’s an unyielding, almost hysterical
ring to it.

I dreaded Christmas this year. I approached it as though
it was a military operation. Tinfoil, washing up liquid, paper napkins and lightbulbs had been stockpiled in a
large cupboard for weeks beforehand – along with the more
obscure forms of food such as brandy butter and cranberry
sauce that the season seems to require.

The whole business of Christmas dinner was particularly problematic. But
Avril
helped us out there. Bruce was work
ing right up to Christmas Eve so I suggested it might be more
practical for him to join Katie and myself at Charlie’s place
on Christmas Day. Amazingly Bruce agreed to this, but then
Charlie was away visiting his sister in County Meath. Bruce
doesn’t like Charlie. In the interests of PR I told him about
the woman I’d seen in Charlie’s bed.

‘They slept together and everything,’ I said, trying not to
betray the slightest jealousy. ‘She seemed very nice.’

Before Christmas dinner Bruce phoned his parents and I found myself wishing my mother-in-law ‘Happy Christmas’
o
n the phone – though at the time this well-worn phrase
seemed like a contradiction in terms.

‘I’m so pleased you’re all back together again,’ my mother-
in-law said, as though stating this might somehow bring the fact about. I feared that she might go on and on about Bruce
and myself like she usually does, but Harvey’s Bristol Cream
seemed to have lightened her zeal. If she had gone on and on
I had a plan. I was going to hang up while I myself was in
mid-sentence. People don’t usually suspect anything if you do this. That’s what the woman I was sharing an office with
while working for Mr McClaren said anyway.

I know it’s fashionable to hate one’s mother-in-law, but I don’t hate mine. I approach her with considerable caution,
but that’s not quite the same thing. One of her more
endearingly eccentric features is her firm belief that Bruce
should become a horticulturalist and stop ‘mucking about’
in the more inscrutable soil of television. She herself is an
avid gardener and tried to groom Bruce into being one as
well. He had his own little vegetable patch as a boy. The
luxuriance of his kale, she once told me, ‘had to be seen
to be believed’. She still can’t understand why he put crazy
paving all over our front garden.

In the unlikely event of Bruce ever winning an Oscar, I’m
sure it would never match the glory of that kale in his
mother’s eyes. He pretends to laugh this fact off, but I know
it causes him some despondence. I think that’s why he was
so sensitive when I didn’t share his enthusiasm for
Avril: A
Woman’s Story.

For the sake of harmony, and in order to avoid more
murky topics, I quizzed him about the film during most of Christmas dinner. Katie didn’t say much, she just sat there
watching and listening to us hopefully. It was all being done
for her of course, this show of solidarity. Or was it?

In a funny way I needed Bruce around too. I needed some way of keeping a small sense of continuity. An opportunity to say ‘You pour the brandy on the Christmas pud now Bruce, and Katie – get ready with the match.’ I required to hear us all say ‘Wow!’ as the brandy flamed. I enjoyed having a cheesecake topped with satsuma pieces ready in the fridge because I knew, as a family, we like the spectacle of Christmas pudding but not the taste. I knew we’d all have a little dollop of it, but most of it would go back into the fridge…unless Dad was there.

Dad adored Christmas pudding. Because of Dad my Christmas pudding never, ever, went to waste. If he didn’t eat it with us I always saved it for him. Looking at that pudding as it sat, almost untouched, on its plate, I nearly burst into tears. Then Katie had an idea. She said she thought Rosie might like some Christmas pudding, and she was right. Rosie’s snout quivered as she munched it. Her eyes were bright with pleasure and she tackled the brandy butter with particular zest. Occasionally she paused, as though savouring the new sensations in her taste-buds. She looked most festive with a large red ribbon round her neck. The ribbon was Katie’s idea too.

Katie wanted to bring Rosie into the house, but I said no. I said Bruce had quite enough to adjust to already without having a bright-eyed pig eagerly watching television beside him.

After the Christmas dinner the thought that truly terrified me was that the television mightn’t be working. Television has, as in most households, always been an important part of our Christmas Day. Its crucial contribution seems to be the way it allows people to sit together without talking. Thank goodness the television did work – even though I wasn’t quite so grateful for this fact after I’d sat through a
one-and-a-half-hour recorded concert featuring Katie’s pop
hero, Brian Allen.