he tore the capsule off the wine and twisted the point of the corkscrew downwards Felix heard the women laughing. Jessie wheezed and coughed delightedly, and then Mattie said something that set off a fresh burst of laughter.
Carefully Felix eased the cork out and wiped the neck of the bottle with a clean cloth. He felt the women’s mysterious femininity as solid as a wall.
The next day, Christmas Eve, Mattie put the presents she had bought for Ricky and Sam and Marilyn and Phil into a string bag. There were presents for Rozzie and her husband and the babies too, even something for Ted, and the red and gold paper bulged cheerfully through the netting.
‘I’m going home to see them all,’ Mattie told Julia. ‘Are you coming?’
‘I have to work today. The bloody office doesn’t close until four o’clock.’
There would be mince pies, and the managers would come into the typing pool to wish them all a Merry Christmas. Julia was dreading it.
‘We could go after you finish.’
Julia had been thinking about Fairmile Road. Christmases there were easy enough to remember, although she couldn’t distinguish between any of them once she had stopped believing in Father Christmas. Betty and Vernon didn’t have close relatives or friends, and the celebrations had only ever involved the three of them. Julia had opened her presents beside the tree, with Betty and Vernon watching her. Once that was done, it was hard to know how to keep the festive atmosphere going right through into evening. There was church, and Christmas dinner afterwards. Vernon always put on the paper hat out of his cracker and read the mottoes and riddles aloud. After Christmas tea, when the red and brown plaster robin and the tiny metal-spined Christmas tree had been taken off the cake and stored away until next year, it felt like any other day. Julia went up to her bedroom and read her new Bunty annual, and dreamed of lavish, exotically scented, faintly Victorian family Christmases with plump mothers and twinkling fathers and broods of children who played charades after supper. Later there would be dancing around a towering tree decorated with real candles.
Sentimentally now, Julia wondered if she had a real family somewhere, preparing for the kind of Christmas she had dreamed of as a child. Did her real mother think of the daughter who should have been there, as she watched the dancers around the tree?
‘It’s all right,’ she said to Mattie. ‘You go.’
Julia had bought a pretty blouse for Betty using her staff discount at the store, and a camel-coloured cashmere scarf for Vernon, and she had wrapped and posted them in good time.
She had written to Betty too, in the weeks since Mattie had gone away, almost as many times as she had written to Mattie herself. But she didn’t want to go back to Fairmile Road. Not yet. Certainly not for Christmas. She remembered the silence in the house, that heavy silence that was unlike quietness anywhere else, and Vernon wearing a purple paper crown.
Julia leaned over quickly to turn the wireless up louder. The music was Dickie Valentine’s ‘Christmas Alphabet’. She whistled the tune, and ran to finish getting ready for work.
Mattie went home on her own. It was a relief to find that although the house on the estate was cold and chaotically filthy, the boys seemed to be living safely enough with their father. Ricky looked taller. He talked about when he would leave school and find a job, and he told Mattie that Ted had fallen down drunk on the path late one night, and he and Sam had hauled him in and put him to bed between them.
‘Ricky …’ Mattie began, wanting to say something as an excuse for their father and as a warning, but Ricky cut her short.
‘Stupid bugger, isn’t he? That’s all. But he can’t help it. And we couldn’t leave him out there to freeze to death, could we?’ Mattie nodded, and then laughed. ‘I don’t think I need to worry about you, Rick.’
‘‘Course you don’t. I need to worry about you, more like. How are you doing?’
‘Getting along. So slowly you’d hardly notice, but I think I can see the way now.’ John Douglas seemed surprisingly distant. Mattie told herself that that was all right because he certainly wasn’t thinking much about her, either. ‘You’ll see my name in lights in the end.’
‘When I do, I’ll expect you to buy me a guitar.’
‘Pleasure. In the meantime, you’ll have to make do with a Bill Haley record.’
Mattie went on to see Roz.
The children swarmed ecstatically over her, and Rozzie eyed the black coat. The new baby lay in his pram and Mattie hung over it, slotting her finger into his minute fist to feel the surprising strength of his grip. The baby’s unwinking dark eyes stared up into hers. Mattie wanted to scoop him up and wrap him against her body.
‘He’s so lovely. Can I pick him up?’
Rozzie shrugged. ‘If you want. Mind he’s not sick on your fur. Feeling broody, are you?’
‘I love babies. Just smell him.’ She rubbed her face against his downy head.
Rozzie lit a cigarette. ‘You could have one. All you need is a man.’
The baby kicked in Mattie’s arms, and nuzzled against her breast. Mattie felt the pull of it, underneath her stomach. ‘They’re easy enough to come by,’ she said flippantly, hiding her feelings.
Rozzie turned her attention to the coat again. ‘I can see that.’
Mattie stayed for tea, and saw that Marilyn and Phil were as uncontrollable as any children on Christmas Eve. They looked taller too. They bathed the baby between them, demonstrating self-importantly to Mattie, and Marilyn gave him his bottle.
‘Bed,’ Rozzie said and they went, wanting the morning to come quicker. They included Mattie in the general goodnights, just. She saw that they didn’t need her, or miss her very much.
‘I thought I’d go and have a Christmas drink with Dad,’ she said to Rozzie.
‘Good luck to you.’
Mattie found her father in the nearest of the four barnlike pubs that served the estate. There were coloured paper streamers and tinsel shapes suspended everywhere, and a pianist was playing ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’, but the crowded room seemed bleak after the cosy, firelit corner pubs that Mattie had frequented in the last weeks with John and the others.
I’ve got away, Mattie thought exultantly. I’ve done it.
Ted was sitting at a beer-ringed table near the piano. He greeted her with a mixture of surprise and awkward familiarity.
He was only half drunk. Mattie bought him a pint of beer with the money that Vera had handed her at the last Treasury call – minus the ten shillings that she owed for the coat. She sat beside Ted and told him about what she was doing, watching his face as he drank. She wasn’t afraid of him any more, she realised. Even when she talked about John Douglas, the old, terrifying, bleary jealousy didn’t swell up at her. She thought that it must be because she had walked clean out of his world. Her father’s view was limited. He couldn’t be jealous or angry about what he didn’t know or understand.
They had another drink, and Ted’s eyes lost their wandering focus. A man pushed up to the table, and Ted pulled at his sleeve. They hardly knew each other, but they fell on one another like old friends. Five minutes later their arms were around each other’s shoulders and they were reminiscing about the best days of the War. Mattie listened for a little longer, and then she stood up. She bent down and kissed her father on the grey stubble that masked his mottled cheeks. His head sawed up and down and he proclaimed to his friend, ‘Kids today. They know nothing.’
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