Read a short story

Coming Home For Christmas

by Elizabeth Ashworth

 As Christmas approached I began to worry, and when my bank statement finally arrived I knew that I couldn’t afford to compete with the celebrations my sister Kate had provided last year.

It wasn’t that I begrudged her the good luck and the well paid job and the house in the small village just outside Leicester, but now that I had to meet all the bills on my own there wasn’t much left over for treats.

I thought back to last year and how I’d driven down, with tinsel tied to the car aerial and listening to carols on the radio, to spend Christmas with her in her new home.  I’d stopped for coffee and mince pies in a service station where all the staff were wearing flashing reindeer antlers and I’d arrived at Kate’s cottage in the village of Whalley Bridge just as the first snowflakes were dusting my windscreen.

“Emma!” she’d cried, hurrying out into the snow to welcome me.  “Happy Christmas!”

“Kate!”  I’d hugged her close and realised how much I missed her now that she didn’t live at home any more.

She’d made Christmas really special for me.  Inside there was a huge real Christmas tree, decorated with strings of beads and baubles and lights.  Underneath it were piles of gaudy parcels waiting to be opened.  There was a huge log fire roaring in the grate, mince pies and mulled red wine were warming on the hearth and a gigantic turkey was ready in its dish for the oven.  There were huge tins of chocolates, bowls of nuts, tangerines, apples and Christmas crackers everywhere.  Kate must have spent a fortune.

Next morning I woke to the sound of church bells, sunlight from a pale azure sky glistening on crisp white snow and the aroma of bacon and coffee.  It had all been perfect.

“Next year it’s my turn,” I’d said as I lay in an armchair and watched my exhausted sister stifle a huge yawn.

I’d been planning a huge tree, decorated with red accessories; a ham as well as a turkey and all the trimmings; expensive presents; champagne for breakfast…in fact an even more lavish affair than she’d provided.  But it’s always been like that with me and Kate.  We’ve always competed with one another since we were children to see who could run the fastest, skip the longest, swim the furthest.  Now, looking at the bank statement I had to finally admit to myself that this time I couldn’t compete.

But I’d talked to her on the phone only the night before and she’d said how much she was looking forward to coming home for Christmas.

I thought back to how much I used to love Christmas when I was little girl.  Every year it was the same.  Dad got the artificial green tree down from the loft and set it up on top of the chest of drawers in the front room.  Then he brought down the old cardboard box and Kate and I pulled out the familiar coloured baubles and lengths of tinsel that we used every year to decorate it.  Finally Dad would add the fairy lights and Kate and I would squabble about whose turn it was to stand on a chair and fix the angel to the top.

Then on Christmas Eve we would hang out the same red sacks on the ends of our beds for Father Christmas to fill.  In the morning they would be bulging and crackling with brightly wrapped presents and in the toe of each one there would be a tangerine, a red mackintosh apple and a few shiny new pennies.

Years later Kate confessed that she’d known for years that it was Dad who sneaked in with our presents late on Christmas Eve, when he thought we were both asleep, but she never spoiled my Christmas by letting the secret slip.  And now I wanted this Christmas to be perfect for her.  But how could I manage it, I wondered.  All I could afford was a small turkey and the ingredients to make my own pudding and cake and mince pies.

In the end I pulled the old artificial tree down from the loft and decorated it with the same old baubles and tinsel that we used when we were children.  The angel was a bit faded, but the old fairy lights still worked and it brought back many happy memories of childhood Christmases.  All it needed to be complete was the chocolate Santas.

I shopped on the market for vegetables and fruit and bought lots of shiny red mackintosh apples.  I bought Kate a few small gifts – a box of chocolates which I hoped she’d open and share with me, rose scented soap, pot-pourri, a fragranced candle, bubble bath, a warm scarf, a pair of gloves, and finally I found I had just enough money left for a bottle of wine to accompany our Christmas dinner.

Bythree o’clockon Christmas Eve I was ready; waiting, as it grew darker, for Kate.  She eventually arrived as a fine drizzle was falling and I hugged her tightly, hoping that she wouldn’t be disappointed.

“Sorry I’m so late,” she shuddered.  “There was thick fog all the way fromBirmingham!”

She opened the car boot and began to unload her bags and huge stacks of brightly wrapped presents, and I felt guilty about my meagre offerings as I watched the pile grow.

“Where’s the tree?” she asked.

“In the front room.”  She stared at the scrappy old tree standing lopsided on a small table.

“That’s the one we used to have when we were little!” she exclaimed.  “Gosh!  That brings back a lot of memories.  Do you remember how Mum used to tie the little chocolate Santas onto it after we’d gone to bed and pretend that Father Christmas had brought them?”

“Yes,” I smiled.  “I remember.  Come and have a drink,” I said.  “You must be tired out after that nightmare journey.”

“I could certainly do with something.” She followed me through to the kitchen at the back of the house, but she said nothing as she watched me fill the kettle for a cup of tea.

“Mince pie?”  I asked, taking the plate from the oven where I was keeping them warm

“Home made!” she said as she helped herself.  “They’re delicious!  Did you make them?”  I nodded.  “They taste just like the ones Mum used to make.”

“I kept her old recipe book,” I told her.  “I made a cake as well.”

She lifted the cover and looked at the cake with its spiky white icing and the two bedraggled robins on either side of a weary looking snowman.

“I didn’t know you still had these decorations.  Mum used to put them on the cake every year.  Do you remember?”

“Yes,” I said.  “I remember.”

Then she picked up an apple from the bowl on the table, but instead of biting into it she breathed in its scent and sighed.  “The smell of Christmas,” she said.  “All this is bringing back so many memories that I thought I’d forgotten.”

We took our drinks and sat in front of the warm fire.  I switched on a CD of Christmas carols and Kate took off her shoes and closed her eyes.  She looked tired, I thought, but at least I could spoil her for a few days.

“This is so good,” she said.  “I feel as if I’m a child again.  This is what Christmas should be like every year.  I smiled at her sleepy face.   Upstairs, her red sack was waiting to be hung up.  When I was sure that she was asleep I would fill it with some shiny pennies, a red apple, a tangerine and the little gifts I’d bought her.  But before that I would tie the chocolate Santas onto the tree, just like Mum used to, so that when she woke up in the morning Kate would know that she really had come home for Christmas.

 

Suburban Guerrilla

by Elizabeth Ashworth

Margaret closed the lid of her laptop as soon as she heard Peter coming down the stairs.  Even after thirty years of married life there were things she didn’t want him to know, because she suspected that he wouldn’t approve.

            “Do you have plans?” he asked as he spread butter across his toast and peered around for the marmalade.  His hair was still damp and his glasses slightly steamed from the hot shower.

“I’ll probably have coffee at the garden centre with Helen,” she told him.

“You and your gardening,” he teased, and Margaret hoped that he wouldn’t notice how neglected their own garden looked.  She really must find time to attend to it.

At last he was finished and she kissed his freshly shaven cheek and sent him on his way.

“Have a nice day!” he called, as he always did and she waved him off with mixed feelings of relief and anticipation.  She ran up to their bedroom, pulled on her old clothes and picked up a waterproof just in case it didn’t stay fine.  A blue sky in the morning didn’t always fulfil its promise of a sunny day she had discovered and she didn’t want to be soaked by the rain.

The car started at the second turn of the ignition and Margaret briefly checked the items in the basket sitting in the foot well.  Trowel, gloves, bulbs, seeds, black plastic bin liners and a sack of compost.  Her contributions to the morning’s enterprise.

The others were already there when she arrived, waiting in their cars, amidst the travelling salesmen who were eating bacon baps from a caravan marked ‘Hot and Kooky’ which was staffed by a surly looking man with a bald head.  Margaret parked her car a little way down the road after she’d turned it around to face the exit.  For a quick getaway, she smiled to herself as she got out and reached for her basket.  Tom and Helen and Daphne were out of their cars and ready for action when she reached them.  After quick greetings they pulled on thick gloves and set to work, ignoring the mild curiosity of their breakfasting audience.

The small roundabout was covered in beige plastic trays and striped cardboard containers, some still holding the cold rigid sticks that passed for French Fries.  These went into one bag and myriad cans were quickly and methodically crushed under her boot and dropped into the other.  It was her turn to take them to the re-cycling point today.  Tom was already digging at the hard packed earth with his spade when she returned from putting them in the boot of her car.   Beside him Daphne was lovingly easing a sapling from a plastic pot.   Margaret fell to her knees beside Helen, gouging with her trowel to make a series of deep holes, before adding compost and pushing in the daffodil bulbs, roots down, green tips up.

“Oy!” came a shout from Hot and Kooky.  “What do you lot think you’re doing?”  Margaret had learned that it was quicker not to stop to explain.  “That’s private land.  You’ve no business doing that!”

She glanced up.  He was out of his little caravan now.  His stomach was wobbling with self righteous anger under its grimy apron as he trotted across the road towards them.  “I’m calling the police!” he warned waving a mobile phone in their direction.

Margaret knelt up and eased the aching muscles in her back.  Was she getting too old for this, she wondered, as she glanced at the man.  Their audience was sitting up straighter in their cars now as the entertainment evolved; some had even wound down their windows to hear what was being said.  Furious at their reluctance to either argue or go away Hot and Kooky was now stabbing at his phone with a fat finger.

“Almost done,” breathed Helen as she firmed down the last bulb and scattered more compost over it.  Tom slammed the back of his spade against the earth around the small apple tree that Daphne had planted at the centre of the roundabout.  She grew them from pips on her windowsill and then in pots on her patio until they were big enough to go out into the world.  She poured copious amounts of water onto it from a can and Margaret almost expected her to kiss it goodbye.

They didn’t rush.  “Coffee?” asked Helen as they brushed the dirt from their knees.  “Usual place?”  Margaret nodded and picked up her trowel and the empty bin liners.  She stood back to admire their guerrilla gardening.  Come the spring, the little roundabout would be pretty with pink apple blossom and golden dancing daffodils.  They might have to take the rubbish away again, and again, but at least they had improved one more eyesore.

She stamped hard before she got into her car to get rid of the soil on her feet.  The two black patches on her knee she could do nothing about, but the coffee shop at the garden centre had never complained about their appearance.

The car started at the third attempt, helped by a fervent prayer.  Margaret could hear a police siren in the distance and she couldn’t resist giving a triumphant wave to Hot and Kooky as she accelerated hard and made him leap out of her way.

It had only been a quick job today and later she would attend to her own garden so that Peter wouldn’t have cause to wonder what on earth she did with her time.

 

Next Of Kin

by Elizabeth Ashworth

 “He’s going to be fine,” said Janet reassuringly as she came out of the nurse’s office with a smile of relief on her face.

“But what did the doctor say?”  I asked, angry and frustrated by the petty ruling that had forbidden the doctor to speak to me personally about John’s collapse.

“He said that Dad has had a mild heart attack, but they’ll be giving him some treatment and he should be home within the week.”

I glanced back up the corridor to where John was lying on the hospital bed – his face almost as white as the stiff sheets, his hand resting on the mustard yellow bedspread with his finger clamped into a device that played out his heart rate across a small monitor, reminding me of one of the grandchildren’s computer games as it beeped and dipped across the screen.

“Shall we go back in?”

Janet shook her head and slipped her arm through mine.  “He’s resting.  I think they’ve given him a sedative.  Anyway you look exhausted,” she added, genuine concern in her saddened voice.  “Come home with me and have something to eat.  Come back tomorrow, when you’re both feeling better.”

I nodded.  Now that I thought about it I was tired out – and surprisingly hungry as well, until I realised that I hadn’t eaten all day.

 I’d just filled the kettle to make an early morning cup of tea when I’d heard the thump on the floor of the bathroom directly above.

“John?”  I’d called and getting no response.  “John?” louder and increasingly worried as I hurried up the stairs as best I could with my arthritic knees and found him grey faced and rubbing his left arm as he slumped against the side of the bath. “John what on earth’s wrong?”  I’d asked unnecessarily.  “I’d better call the doctor.”

So we’d spent most of the day in Accident and Emergency.  John on a trolley, wired up to various machines and me on a hard chair, feeling helpless.

“Are you Mrs Cotton?” the nurse had asked.

“Well…”  I began, staring down at my ringless fingers, unsure of what to say.  Even after twenty years I still hadn’t found an easy, unembarrassing way to explain to strangers that even though John and I lived together as husband and wife, we weren’t actually married.  “I’m…I’m John’s partner,” I explained using the currently acceptable term for people who co-habited.  The nurse almost kept her face expressionless but I didn’t miss the slight twitch of surprise that flickered across her eyebrows.  Older people like us were not supposed to be so unconventional.

I was married once, I wanted to explain, and so was John.  You see I was a widow and he was a widower.  My husband died with debts.  John on the other hand was fairly well off and I was thrilled that he even wanted to be my friend, never mind wanted me to move in with him.  But it was difficult, you see.  He had a daughter and she found it hard to accept me at first.  She was only young, just turned twenty-one and she didn’t like to think that her father could replace her mother so easily.  But she was a nice girl, really, and I didn’t want her to think I was a gold digger, only interested in John for his money.  So when John asked me to marry him I refused.  No, I said, not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t want to alienate Janet.  So he’d agreed reluctantly that the time wasn’t right and we’d decided that we could always get married later.  But somehow the years passed – and we were happy and comfortable and there didn’t seem any need for marriage.  In fact most friends and acquaintances presumed that we were married and I was known as Mrs Cotton and it was only in situations like these when I had to fill in an official form that it became awkward.

“So who is his next of kin?” asked the nurse, kindly.

“His daughter Janet.”

“Have you contacted her?”

“She’s on her way.”

“Good,” said the nurse.

John was feeling better when Janet arrived.  The painkillers and the oxygen had restored his face to a healthier colour and he was breathing more easily.

“I’m sorry to be such a nuisance, sweetheart,” he said as she leant over and kissed his damp forehead.

“You’re never a nuisance,” she reassured him, hugging him as best she could through the tangle of wires.  “How are you feeling?”

“I’m okay,” he reassured her.

“And are you all right, Margaret?” she asked, turning to me.  “You’ve had a rough morning.  Shall I try to find you a cup of tea?”

I’d nodded gratefully.  So glad that she’d come.  So glad to see her familiar face.  So glad that there was someone to take charge and look after us.

 Now Janet drove nose to tail through the thronging tea-time traffic and onto the new estate, to the imposing detached house where they lived.  Mike was in their huge dining kitchen peeling potatoes; the grandchildren were round the table, busy with their homework, unusually quiet.

“Is Grandpa going to be all right?” asked Ellie, the youngest.

“Of course.  He’s just fine.  He’ll be home again soon,” she said, hugging her small daughter who looked so much like John.  “Come and sit down Margaret, dinner will be ready soon.”

She took my coat and ushered me into the sitting room like a guest, turning on the lamps, lighting the gas fire, asking if there was anything I needed.

“I’m fine,” I lied.  She hurried off upstairs to get changed and I sat alone and reflected on the day.  I couldn’t get the image of John with his lips parted and blue, struggling for breath and his eyes closed tightly against the pain, out of my mind.  Neither could I rid myself of the nagging selfish thought that had no place in my head on a day like this.  But it just wouldn’t be dismissed.  What would happen to me if John died?  I had no idea if he’d made a will.  I didn’t know if he’d made any provision for me.  All I did know was that if there was no will I would have no right to stay in our home, or receive any money to live on – even though I’d cooked and cleaned and cared for him all these years.

Tears welled at the corners of my tired eyes as scenes from my marriage to Keith returned to taunt me.  I remembered the police calling at the house after the accident.  I remembered the funeral.  I remembered the concerned phone call to say that the cheque I wrote to pay for it had been refused.  I remembered my puzzled call to the local branch of the bank and the girl who asked me to call in to speak to the manager.  I remembered my astonishment, disbelief and final outrage that there were debts – the bills, the creditors, the repossession of my home, my anger that the man I’d trusted could have done this to me.

I remembered how I’d got a job in a local jeweller’s shop.  How I’d rented a small bedsit and tried to keep myself solvent.  I remembered John coming to buy a gift for his daughter’s twenty first birthday and asking for my advice, and how he’d sent flowers and an invitation to dinner to the shop the next day to say thank you.

“Are you all right, Margaret?” asked Mike, opening the door to the kitchen and allowing the delicious aroma of grilling lamb chops to come wafting through.  “It’s about ready?  You don’t mind eating in the kitchen do you?”

“Of course not.  Don’t be silly,” I said, hastily blowing my nose on a tissue.  Mike smiled sympathetically.  I felt guilty because he thought I’d been crying over John when I’d actually been crying for myself.

“Will you stay the night?” asked Janet.

“No.  No.”  I shook my head emphatically.  “I’ll sleep better in my own bed.”  Whilst it was my own bed, I thought.  So Mike drove me home.  He unlocked the front door with my key, turned on the lights and checked the rooms, closing the curtains and asking me if I’d be okay a dozen times before I eventually persuaded him to leave.

But I couldn’t sleep.  I drank tea and wandered the house in my dressing-gown, stroking the furniture and studying the paintings and ornaments that John and I had chosen together.  I strayed into John’s small office near the front door.  I usually only went in there to take him a cup of tea when he was busy at his desk, with his papers.

I pulled down the blind before turning on the table lamp, glancing over my shoulder, as if someone was going to discover me.  I opened a few drawers and glanced inside.  I tried the bureau but it was locked.  There was nothing there to reveal any secrets or ease my pain.  Eventually, ashamed, I came out and closed the door softly.  I went to bed and slept fitfully, dreaming, images of John on the bathroom floor transforming into images of myself in pyjamas, begging on the street.

 

Visiting time was two ’til eight and Janet came for me at half past one.  “Did you sleep?” she asked as we drove in bright sunshine to the hospital.

“On and off,” I said.

She took me up to the ward in the lift.  I was grateful.  I was terrified of them and if I’d been alone I would probably have struggled up all the flights of stairs and my knees would have throbbed and ached for the rest of the day.

John was sitting up in bed.  His eyes gleamed and crinkled as he smiled his pleasure at seeing us.  Janet stood back and allowed me to kiss him first.

“How are you?” we asked.  He dismissed our concerns with a wave of his hand.

“You don’t get rid of me that easily,” he joked.  “I’ll tell you what though, I could do with a Financial Times.  The newsagent chap who came round didn’t have one – though I probably shouldn’t be surprised.  Janet, be a sweetheart and see if you can get one from somewhere.”  She looked doubtful.

“I don’t think there’s anywhere around here…”

“Please?”  She smiled and stood up.

“I’ll try,” she said.

“Margaret.”  He turned to me and took my hand in his as soon as she’d gone.  His hand still felt cold and I gently tried to rub some warmth into it.  “That was a close call,” he said.

“No…”  I began, but he held up his other hand to silence me.

“Hear me out.  There’s something I need to say before Janet comes back.  It was a close call.  And I’ve been lying here awake all night thinking…realising that we might not have as much time left as we thought.  Margaret, do you remember soon after we first met, I asked you something and you refused me.  You said the time wasn’t right – and it probably wasn’t.  But it’s different now – I think the right time has come.”

I’d been watching our hands, both older and frailer now, blue veined through paper thin skin and misshapen joints, but still intertwined.  I looked up and met the blue eyes that had entranced and rescued me twenty years ago.  They were about to do the same again because I realised with enormous relief what he was going to ask.

“Margaret, I’m sorry I can’t get down on one knee this time, but believe me the thought’s there.  Margaret, will you marry me?”

Slowly I raised his hand to my lips and kissed it gently.

“Yes,” I said.  “I’ll marry you.”  And the output on the heart monitor began to race so much that the nurse came briskly down from her office.

“Now what’s caused all this excitement?” she asked.