The Only Boy For Me (31 page)

Charlie enters the stage with James and William dressed as sheep for ‘While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night’. He flaps his wings enthusiastically, and half the audience begin to laugh, and then try valiantly to smother this with lots of coughing. Their song is completed, and the audience claps. Charlie does more flapping of wings, and the audience claps louder. I can tell Charlie is delighted and is about to launch into an encore when Miss Pike’s arm appears from behind the curtain and he is removed, apart from a few feathers which linger centre stage.

The play rolls on, the baby is born, and the top class attempt a rock-and-roll version of ‘Away in a Manger’ which is a huge mistake, although the boy on drums is very
enthusiastic. Then it’s the final song, and everyone troops back on stage for ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’. Mrs Taylor appears and makes a speech thanking everyone for coming, and says we must all stay inside the hall and buy tea and mince pies from the PTA while the teachers get the children off the stage and out of their costumes. I know without a shadow of a doubt that their chances of getting Charlie out of his costume are nil. Charlie continues flapping throughout her speech, and lots of people give me amused glances. Then there’s lots of applause, and the children all bow and look pleased. The curtain shuts and the lights go back on, and everyone surges forwards towards the tea trolley.

Kate thinks Charlie’s costume is a triumph, and wants to know if she can borrow it for her loathsome nephew, Liam, so he can wear it to her father’s traditional Boxing Day shoot. She says getting Liam shot would do them all a huge favour, and her Uncle Geoffrey always gets so drunk he shoots at anything that moves. Last year he narrowly missed Polly, the family Labrador. Miss Pike finally appears with the children, who run around yelling with relief now that their ordeal’s over. As predicted, Charlie is still in his costume, flapping his arms and pecking people with his beak. Miss Pike comes over to say hello, but a fracas is developing in the corner of the room involving lots of small boys and mince pies so she rushes off to sort things out.

Charlie is now showing people how he can fly by jumping off a chair, so I feel it might be time for us to leave. It’s snowing outside, not actually settling on the ground but with lots of snowflakes whirling about which looks magical. Charlie is thrilled and runs round trying to collect snow in his outstretched wings. A passing van nearly drives into a wall as the driver spots a giant bird-like creature hopping
about while a frantic-looking woman tries to shove it into a car. I have a hell of a job persuading Charlie he can’t sleep in his pheasant costume.

‘I need to keep it on, in case a werewolf comes. Then it will get a surprise and I can peck it.’

‘Charlie, there are no werewolves. And all your feathers will fall off if you sleep in your costume all night. Now stop being silly and put your pyjamas on.’

‘I hate you, Mummy. I really do.’

‘I thought you were brilliant in the play; I can’t wait to buy the video and show everybody.’

‘Will you show people at your work?’

‘Oh yes.’

The sad truth is I probably will, and Barney will have a lovely time saying he can’t believe the poor quality of the video, and was the man blind? Just like he does whenever I take photos of Charlie into the office and he insists on seeing my ‘snaps’, and then goes into fits of laughter and mutters about being astonished that I have picked up nothing after being around experts for so long.

‘If people see them at your work they might want me to be in a film.’

Over my dead body. I cannot begin to imagine the combination of Charlie and a film crew, but I know it would end in tears. Mostly mine.

‘Hurry up and put your pyjamas on, and maybe we’ll have a story.’

‘OK, Mummy, but I’m keeping my beak on.’

It feels very odd reading a book about penguins to a small boy wearing a large tinfoil beak. I go up to check on him later and he’s fast asleep, with his beak still attached, making amplified snoring noises and clutching a small handful of feathers. I can’t wait to get a copy of the video,
which I shall treasure. It will also be a useful bargaining tool for when he’s a teenager and has girls to impress.

The last day of term arrives, and I still have a long list of things to do before Christmas. I’m really getting desperate now, and have taken to muttering about satsumas and cranberry jelly as I drive, in between singing along to a new Whitney cassette, which I felt compelled to purchase when I should have been buying a gift for Auntie Joan. But I’m no longer reduced to a snivelling wreck by ‘I Will Always Love You’, and in fact I’m starting to get rather irritated by it, so progress of some sort is being made. Today is party day at school, and all the children are allowed to take a toy in. Charlie wants to take his Lego castle, complete with knights, cannon and assorted animals including a dragon. I tell him that he’s only allowed to take one small toy, but he will have none of it. In the end I rely on an old trick of Kate’s by pretending to ring up Miss Pike and seek guidance. Charlie hops up and down in the kitchen waiting to hear what Miss Pike says, and when I finish my pretend conversation I confirm that only one small toy is allowed. He accepts this without a murmur. I cannot explain why this is so annoying, but it is.

He finally selects a hideous robot thing that turns into a gorilla and then back into a robot, and shoots small plastic missiles out of the top of its head. I feel sure Miss Pike will not approve, but am not up to another round of pretend telephone calls so we set off for school. There’s no school uniform today, and it’s odd seeing all the children in normal clothes: they look so much more relaxed and unruly. I can see why schools go in for uniforms with quite so much vigour: it seems to break their spirits before they even get in the door.

Kate and I have volunteered to help at the tea party. Mrs Harrison-Black had a clipboard at the school gates, and there was no escape. It was either party helping or carol singing. Last year two boys from the carol-singing group went missing halfway round the village, and the parent helpers spent ages retracing their steps in pitch darkness trying to find them. They were on the point of calling the police when they found them, watching unsuitable videos at a friend’s house. So we feel sure party helping is the soft option. We turn up at two to help set the tables, and realise we have made a tragic mistake. Some mad woman has made enough jelly to feed the entire county. Every single item of food either contains levels of sugar guaranteed to send the average five year old into orbit, or enough additives to bring on epilepsy in those unaccustomed to children’s party food. And some bastard has put us down to help with the reception class, most of whom can barely cope with the excitement of eating a normal packed lunch, let alone party food with jelly.

Kate suggests one of us pretends to faint, and then the other one can drive her home, but we can’t work out who should faint and anyway we suspect someone is bound to be a Red Cross first-aider and will force the fainter to sit with her head stuck in a bucket for hours. So we set the tables, and try to hide the jelly. The party-goers troop in, and the next hour passes in a horrible blur of screaming children, lots of wet crepe paper, food flying about, and very loud music. Miss Pike keeps smiling, but I think she’s gone into a trance. Our Vicar has dressed up as Father Christmas, and is rugby-tackled by a mob of screaming children as soon as he enters the room. He tries to walk around with a small boy attached to each leg, but fails, and then Mrs Taylor restores order by blowing on her
whistle repeatedly and demanding ‘Fingers on lips, everybody, now’.

Kate and I stand with our fingers on our lips, and Miss Pike finally gets the message and does the same. The rest of the staff reappear from the kitchen where they have been hiding, Father Christmas shakes off his hitch-hikers and gradually the riot calms down. He then gives each child a handful of sweets, just to keep the sugar levels at optimum, and they all begin swapping them and throwing wrappers on the floor. Just when it looks like we might actually get out of there in one piece, Mrs Taylor announces we have just enough time for a little bit of dancing before the mummies and daddies start arriving. Is she mad?

Apparently she is. The music is turned back on and we are all doing the hokey-cokey like our lives depended on it. It turns out to be very revealing: some children are quite able to put their left leg in and left leg out as many times as you like, while others have to concentrate very hard indeed to get their left leg in at all. And just when they’ve got that bit sorted, everybody else has moved on to shaking it all about. Charlie and James are doing their own version, which seems to involve sticking out your bottom as far as you can without actually falling over, and Phoebe is doing hopping, without seeming to be aware of the music at all. As Kate says, all those ballet classes have really paid off. There’s so much jelly on the floor children are going down like ninepins, and most of them just stay down and wave their legs in time to the music while eating bits of food they’ve found under the tables.

Parents finally start turning up to take their children home. One very smart dad is clearly horrified to find his two little daughters covered in jelly and crisps, and makes them sit on sheets of newspaper in the back of the car.
Another rota has been organised for clearing up after the party, and we are not on it, thank God. So we all go back to Kate’s house, along with a huge collection of bags full of PE kit, artwork and God knows what else. Charlie appears to only have one plimsoll, but has gained a pair of shorts, and James has no shorts but two PE shirts. The children watch television, and Kate and I hide in the kitchen smoking and drinking gin.

I get so drunk we have to walk home, with a huge torch Kate has lent us that lights up the whole lane, and weighs a ton. It’s very dark and cold, and it feels like it may snow again. Charlie is thrilled to be out at night. He begs me to turn off the torch so we can have an adventure. I’m too drunk to argue, so I switch off the torch and promptly fall into a vast crater which has appeared out of nowhere. I end up landing on a small tree which turns out, naturally, to be a holly bush. Charlie’s delighted, especially as he thinks he heard me say the F-word. We tiptoe forwards and stumble about until I can bear it no longer and put the torch back on, promising to switch it off again when we get near the house, so he can walk the last bit in the dark.

When the house is in sight, I keep my promise and turn off the torch, plunging us back into darkness. We know this bit of the lane really well so we walk along fairly steadily. I look up and see millions of stars, and Charlie pretends he knows all their names and points out the Bear to me, and the Giraffe and the Lion. We finally get back inside, and the fire is still alight, just. Charlie is exhausted and practically falls asleep standing up while I help him into his pyjamas. We’re getting the Christmas tree tomorrow, and I still have a list of things to buy that makes me feel faint every time I think about it. But I’m still drunk so I don’t care. ‘Tis the season to be jolly and I feel very jolly indeed.

Next morning I have a desperate hangover, and Charlie is annoyingly loud and excited about getting the tree. I have Panadol and black coffee for breakfast, and Charlie has Shreddies. Finally I can’t put it off any longer and we drive to the local nursery, choose an enormous tree and then realise I can’t get it into the car unless Charlie sits on the roof. After much shoving and pushing I manage to wedge it in without snapping the top off, and Charlie crouches on the back seat behind me, with his seatbelt on because I insist. He moans that he can’t breathe, and keeps saying he’s swallowed pine needles, but we finally make it home and get the bloody thing out of the car. Each year I buy one of those special tree stands, as I can’t find the one from last year. I’m determined that this year will be different, and begin hunting. I discover all sorts of things I’d completely given up hope of ever seeing again and eventually find it on the top shelf of the airing cupboard, behind piles of old towels and beach mats, which I’d spent hours searching for in the summer. I put the tree in its stand, nearly poking my eye out in the process, and finally manage to get it almost straight. The smell is wonderful. Charlie claps, and does a dance in celebration.

Things then get very fraught as Charlie’s idea of decorating involves shoving everything on the lowest branches, and I want to space things out. He disappears off to get more things to hang up, and returns with various plastic birds to go with the robin we bought last year. The robin is lightweight, feathery and has a ribbon. The plastic eagle weighs a ton and looks as if it is about to swoop down and eat the robin for lunch. The flamingo also looks odd, as does the large black rubber spider, but Charlie is very pleased with the effect so I let him leave them on, and then cover them up with lots of tinsel when he’s not looking. The lights still
work, which is a miracle because Charlie has sat on the box. He sits and stares at the lights for ages, and goes into a sort of trance, and then rushes off to find more plastic animals to put on, so that the birds won’t be lonely.

I spend the last few days before Christmas doing non-stop shopping. The office has closed for the duration, and I manage to survive an endless round of Christmas drinks parties in the village without getting too drunk, or doing anything too embarrassing, though I did manage to introduce myself to the same person twice in the space of five minutes, and could see she thought I was either very drunk or very stupid. Or possibly both. Edna has spent the morning with Charlie, and I’ve got the last-minute food shopping done by the simple process of going into Marks and Spencer’s and buying one of everything still on the shelves. I’m sure tinned kiwi fruit will come in handy one day.

I had to reserve the turkey in June, and cannot remember what I ordered. The butcher’s van turns up late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, and two men stagger up the drive with what appears to be a dead ostrich. I can’t remember why I ordered such a huge turkey, nor can I work out how it will fit in the oven, but a large gin and tonic takes the edge off my panic and I decide to seek help from Mum when she arrives.