With Love at Christmas Page 2

  ‘How nice,’ I say. ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘Lovely?’ Rick has gone quite purple in the face now.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘We’re the house that has lights up,’ he points out.

  I shrug. ‘Now we’re one of the houses that has lights up. I think it looks pretty.’

  ‘Typical female response,’ he snorts. Rick runs a hand through his hair, mussing it into his customary Stan Laurel do. He’s never been able to tame his hair, and now it’s sticking out all over the place. I know that’s the fashion for seventeen-year-old boys, but in a gentleman of a certain age it just looks like mad hair.

  ‘You don’t have to view it as a challenge to your supremacy.’ Clearly Rick thinks that this is Neil banging his chest and roaring in his face. ‘Maybe Neil just likes Christmas lights.’

  Further snorting from Rick. ‘I’ll have to get some more,’ he mutters. ‘I want ours to be the best house.’ He casts an envious glance at the giant-sized blow-up Santa, complete with his own chimney, that’s fixed to Neil’s roof.

  ‘Ours look great, Rick. Especially with a little bit of snow on them. Very festive. Already I feel quite in the Christmas mood.’

  My husband tuts. I’m disappointed that all this pointless willy-waving has soured his mood.

  ‘Come on,’ I say. ‘Help me in with the shopping and I’ll make you a cuppa and you can have a mince pie with it.’

  With an exaggerated sigh, Rick puts down his screwdriver. I flick open the boot.

  ‘Good God, woman!’ He recoils in horror. ‘What the hell have you got in here? It’s not the feeding of the five thousand, you know.’

  ‘It’s Christmas,’ I say. ‘We have to have a little bit extra in. Just in case.’

  ‘Just in case what?’ Rick looks perplexed. ‘You’ve got enough for the Joyce clan to survive a nuclear holocaust. The shops barely shut for ten minutes these days. We can always run out and get a loaf if we’re stuck.’

  ‘Oh, Rick,’ I chide, ‘you know you always enjoy it.’

  ‘You know I always want to go away to the Bahamas, just the two of us, and ignore the whole bloody thing.’ He heaves two carrier bags out of the boot, making a big show of how heavy they are. ‘Instead we’ll stay at home, suffer your mother, the Queen’s speech and eat too much and drink nowhere near enough to ease the pain.’

  ‘It’s not that bad.’

  Again he casts a dark glance at our neighbour’s display. ‘Putting up the lights was the only pleasure I had,’ he complains. ‘Now even that’s been taken away from me.’

  ‘You could go down to Homebase and buy a few more bits if you want to,’ I suggest. ‘They’ve got some very pretty things in.’

  Rick rubs his chin. ‘I need something with more impact,’ he says under his breath. ‘Much more impact.’

  With that, he brightens considerably.

  Chapter Three

  My mother, Rita Britten, is sitting in the kitchen when Rick and I struggle in with the shopping. She’s wearing a cardigan that’s buttoned up all wrong, and it doesn’t look as if she’s combed her hair since getting up.

  ‘Get the kettle on, Rita, love,’ Rick says.

  She looks at him, perplexed. ‘Why would I want to do that?’

  ‘We’ll all have a cup of tea, Mum.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Here, you’re done up all higgledy-piggledy.’ I go to her and she tries to stare me down while I rebutton her cardigan.

  ‘You do fuss, Juliet.’

  ‘That’s better.’ I resist the urge to untangle her hair.

  Rick rolls his eyes at me and I shrug back. My mum’s not herself. I blame her trip to Australia. She’s never been quite the same since. When she turned seventy, she dumped my true and faithful father, who had stood by her stoically despite her being a fairly miserably and demanding wife. She moved in with me and Rick, uninvited. My husband was not impressed, but what could I do? She had to live somewhere and, no matter how we tried to cajole her, she wouldn’t go home to Dad. Then, to make matters worse, she took up with a pensioner toy boy, Arnold. We had to endure weeks of them ‘doing it’ in our back bedroom, which our daughter had been required to vacate to accommodate her. It was horrendous. The only way I could get any sleep was to clamp a pillow over my head. They’d only been together for five minutes when she and Arnold decided that they wanted to see the world. At the age of seventy, I ask you. Before you could say hip replacement they went out, booked two tickets to Australia, rented a camper van and set off touring in the outback.

  I was beside myself. She’d never even been abroad before; now she was going to Australia for the foreseeable future with a man she barely knew. I thought it was children who were supposed to give their parents problems! Isn’t that the way it happens? Rick was delighted, as he thought we’d seen the back of her for good. He was sure that in Australia, being the continent with the most venomous and lethal animals, she’d come to some great harm. No such luck. He hadn’t reckoned on my mother’s tenacity. After six months she was back, bronzed and broke, and poor Arnold had disappeared into the wilderness never to be seen again. I am distraught that Arnold, an elderly and rather pleasant gentleman, is missing in a strange land. My mother, however, doesn’t seem too bothered by this turn of events. Rick thinks that the hapless Arnold most likely threw himself to a pack of wild dingos in an attempt to get away from my mother. He has a point. After spending six months in a glorified caravan with her, I’m sure anyone would feel the same.

  Rick is rooting through the carrier bags. ‘Panettone?’ he says. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s like a cake or bread. A bit of both. You’ve had it before.’

  ‘Really? I don’t remember.’

  ‘We all like it,’ I assure him.

  ‘I don’t,’ my mum adds helpfully.

  ‘Dad does.’

  ‘Your father has gone all foreign,’ she counters.

  Which, I have to say, is partly true. Frank Britten was, until my mother abandoned him, the most unadventurous man on the planet. His comfort zone was never more than a foot away from his armchair. My dad, a man who, until he was seventy-two, thought that anything other than a half of bitter was for ‘nancy boys’, decided he’d been gay all along. Then he met Samuel, a charming bookseller who is younger than both myself and Rick, who has made his life infinitely more colourful. No one was more surprised than me when they moved in together. Well, except perhaps for my mother. I’m still not sure that she fully grasps the nature of their relationship. Anyway, now that Dad is a fully paid-up and enthusiastic member of the ‘nancy boys’ club, thanks to Samuel, his tastes have become distinctly more adventurous – and not just in ‘that’ department. He loves foreign food, foreign travel, enjoys good wine, speaks a smattering of several languages, plays chess, knocks up meals from Jamie Oliver and Nigel Slater cookbooks and is generally very lovely to be around. It’s taken him a long time to discover domestic bliss, but I’m so pleased that he has.

  ‘Your dad phoned to say that he’s coming round later with Samuel,’ Rick says.

  ‘Oh, that’s nice. There are some bits for them in one of the other carrier bags. They can take them home with them.’

  ‘I thought they were coming here for Christmas?’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘So why are you buying them Christmas food?’

  ‘Christmas isn’t just one day, Rick.’

  ‘No,’ he mutters. ‘It’s from bloody August onwards.’ He stamps out to get the other bags.

  ‘Are we having a cup of tea, or what?’ Mum asks.

  Now Mum is back for good, and is currently ensconced in Chloe’s bedroom once again, much to the consternation of my daughter. Chloe had moved out when she accidentally fell pregnant with her first child and was renting a flat with her partner, Mitch – the father of baby Jaden and a man she barely knew. Not surprisingly, they’ve now split up and she’s also back at home with Jaden in tow. But I can hardly wag my finger at her
as, all those years ago, Rick and I tied the knot rather hastily when I fell pregnant with Tom.

  Chloe won’t ever really say what went wrong in their relationship. I guess it comes from having a baby with someone whose favourite drink, film and holiday destination are a total mystery to you. The pressure on them both was enormous. Right from the start she was coming home every two weeks over some row or other. Rick said we should have turned her round and sent her straight back to deal with it, but I couldn’t. That’s what my mother would have done to me, and I couldn’t watch Chloe suffer. I know she found it hard that Mitch was working long hours and, instead of being out partying, she was sitting at home every night with a baby. Then last month, with no justifiable explanation, she flounced home, supposedly for good. Mitch appeared on the doorstep every night for two weeks begging her to go back to him, but she wouldn’t listen.

  She’s just had difficulty adjusting to being a responsible adult with a young child to care for. The fact that responsibility has been thrust on her rather than it being of her choosing must have something to do with it too, a case of too much too soon. Chloe has always been selfish, and still tends to think only of what she wants. Mitch, on the other hand, seems saintly. I know it’s different when you live with someone – you see all their little foibles in sharp relief. But I don’t know what else she could want in a man. Yet only Chloe can decide that. I can only be here for her, help her and hope that one day she’ll realise what she might lose and she’ll grow up, and sooner rather than later.

  As if she’s reading my thoughts, on cue Chloe waddles in. ‘What’s to eat?’

  Oh, and the worst thing is that she’s expecting again. Another little ‘accident’. This time it is the same father, though, so I should be grateful for small mercies, I suppose. Maybe the imminent birth has triggered her flight home; I don’t know. I have no idea how we’ll all manage with another tot in the house. Jaden’s a lovely boy, but he is a handful. I don’t remember Tom being quite so boisterous at his age. I think it’s something they put in the food now – all those ‘E’ numbers. The new baby is due in the middle of January and, already, Chloe is huge. She’s certainly taking the whole ‘eating for two’ thing to heart.

  ‘Who are you?’ my mother asks.

  ‘Don’t be soft, Gran,’ Chloe says. ‘Put your specs on.’ She flops down into the chair next to her grandmother. ‘Hello, Buster, baby,’ she coos at the dog. ‘Didn’t anyone give you your advent calendar choccy-woccy today?’

  The dog barks that they didn’t. Chloe, despite her concern, doesn’t move to rectify the situation. So I get up and open the Simpsons advent calendar and pop the little chocolate Bart in Buster’s mouth.

  ‘What exactly do the Simpsons have to do with Christmas?’ Rick asks as he heaves in two more bags. ‘Aren’t advent calendars supposed to be religious?’

  ‘Get a life, Dad,’ Chloe advises. ‘Christmas is about fun and presents. What’s God got to do with it?’

  I do wonder sometimes if my Christmas excesses have given out the wrong message.

  Chapter Four

  Rick mutters under his breath and stomps straight out again to get the remainder of the shopping. That should be about it. Even I’m concerned about the amount of bags. I’m sure it looks more than it really is. Everything is in such big boxes now.

  I’m worried about Mum. Even for her she’s acting a bit strangely, and it’s not just the usual things. Since she’s been living here we’ve had to get used to her penchant for wearing clothing more suited to a seventeen-year-old, dyeing her hair inappropriate colours, bringing strange men home from nightclubs and smoking marijuana on the sly when she thinks Rick and I aren’t watching. All those things we are, unfortunately, well accustomed to. But now she seems to be developing a whole new range of troubling habits. When she goes into the bathroom, she often leaves the taps running – once with the plug still in, which flooded the place. She’s prone to leaving the rings of the cooker on and wandering off into the garden. More often than not she puts her cardigan on inside out or, like today, buttons it up all skew-whiff. Last week she went out wearing odd shoes, and not in a Helena Bonham Carter way. Perhaps it’s just an age thing. She’s always been, at best, eccentric. Maybe, as she gets older, it’s just ratcheting up a few notches. I’m concerned, though, that these little incidents are happening on a more regular basis.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on, shall I?’ Rick asks loudly as he dumps down the last two carrier bags. I think his blood pressure is getting the better of him.

  ‘Let me,’ I say soothingly. ‘You sit down.’

  ‘I’m going to the shed,’ Rick says darkly. It’s probably just as well, as he currently looks as if he’d like to break something.

  ‘I’ll bring your tea down there for you.’ The shed is his retreat, his sanctuary, the only place where Rick manages to get any peace these days, as the house seems to be bursting at the seams.

  Flicking on the kettle, I lift out the mince pies, which have been strategically placed at the top of one of the carriers.

  My son Tom comes in. ‘Did I hear the kettle go on?’

  ‘Sit down, Frank, love,’ my mother says. ‘I’ll put your tea on in a minute.’ It’s not yet three o’clock.

  ‘This is Tom,’ I gently remind Mum. ‘Your grandson.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looks at him blankly.

  ‘Wotcha, Gran,’ Tom says. He gives her a hug and kisses her dry, wrinkled cheek. It sometimes surprises me that my own mother could have become so old. ‘Got any good weed going spare?’

  ‘Don’t encourage her,’ I implore.

  ‘Break out the mince pies, Mum,’ my son instructs. ‘I’m starving.’

  Tom has been perpetually hungry since he popped out of my womb.

  ‘That boy’s got hollow legs,’ my mother notes.

  He does.

  ‘You wouldn’t eat so much if you had to pay for it,’ Rick grumbles as he goes out of the door.

  ‘Chill, Dad,’ Tom says. ‘I’ll get a job.’ Then, when Rick is just out of earshot: ‘Eventually.’

  This is a frequent refrain from Tom. It’s fair to say that he has had a lot more girlfriends – and boyfriends – than he has had jobs. We can’t quite keep up with Tom’s sexuality. Sometimes there’s a trail of random young men through the house. Sometimes it’s a string of unsuitable women. Sometimes both on one day. We try to ignore it as best we can. I don’t want to think of my children having sex at all, frankly. And, at the end of the day, all we want is for him to be settled and happy. Well, actually all Rick wants is for him to be out of our house and earning his own living.

  ‘Where have you been all day?’

  ‘In bed,’ he says, in a tone that queries why he would ever have been anywhere else.

  ‘Lazy bastard,’ Chloe notes.

  ‘You’ve been in the bathroom all morning,’ he complains. ‘What was I supposed to do?’

  My heart’s desire is to have a house with two bathrooms. With six of us living here, and Chloe using the bath like her personal office, toilet visits have to be timed very carefully. We would live more harmoniously as a family if we had two bathrooms.

  Tom has also just moved back home. Thankfully, he is less fond of washing than my daughter. My son is a twenty-six-year-old university graduate with a degree in nothing remotely useful, it seems. Since graduating, he’s never held down a proper job, and his £30,000-worth of student loan shows no sign of ever being repaid. He’s been away in China, supposedly teaching English as a foreign language. He lasted about a month doing that, then he split up with the girlfriend he went to China with – I can’t even remember her name now, and I suspect Tom would struggle. When they parted company he moved on to Australia and someone new. The bar work he did there failed to keep pace with his bar bill and, eventually, he was forced by his financial circumstances to come home again. We had to book his flight online and pay for it, which Rick was not happy about. Understatement. I do sometimes wonder whether our son wil
l ever willingly leave home. We make it too easy for him, Rick says. He may well have a point.

  With all the bedrooms occupied, Tom’s sleeping in the dining room on a futon that we bought from eBay. I don’t like Tom sleeping in the dining room because I am never sure who – male or female – will wander through the kitchen in the morning wearing nothing but their underwear. We think he’s bisexual, but you don’t like to ask outright, do you? It’s not really our business what his particular orientation is now that he’s an adult. We try to be accepting of his many and varied relationships but, in all honesty, we just do our best to ignore it. It seems pointless to say that as a guest in someone’s house I would never have behaved like that, but they just don’t care now. The fact that we rarely see the same face twice doesn’t help. I’m sure that Rick’s blood pressure will slide down a few notches when Tom does leave for good. It’s not the girls in their undies he finds so distressing, obviously, but a few weeks ago there was a man in pink underpants, and I thought Rick was going to have heart failure. No one needs to see that at breakfast-time.

  ‘Be a love and put the kettle on again,’ I ask him.

  ‘Aw, Mum! Why can’t she do it?’ He flicks a finger at Chloe, who sticks her tongue out at him.

  ‘Because I asked you, love,’ I say.

  He hauls himself out of his chair as if he’s preparing to scale the north face of the Eiger, not make a brew. He helps himself to a mince pie as he passes.

  ‘Give one of those to your gran.’

  ‘’Scuse fingers,’ he says as he hands her one.

  I nearly remark that we do have plates in the house, but that’s exactly the sort of thing that Rick would say, so I bite my lip.

  I want to move Jaden from the little bedroom to share with Chloe so that Tom can have a proper bedroom, but Rick says it will only encourage him to stay. However, there is only a single bed in there, so it would be trickier for him to entertain overnight guests, which I can only view as a good thing. I am well aware that both of my children have sex, I just never envisaged I’d end up having it rubbed in my face morning, noon and night. To have sex when we were young, we had to avail ourselves of the back of Rick’s car or get our own home. There was never any question of having carnal knowledge under our parents’ roof. It simply wasn’t the done thing. I’m just sorry that those standards have gone.