No worries, good luck with your decision. See you Saturday! R
Life felt like it was moving very fast indeed at the moment, a whirlwind of possibilities. I hadn’t even thought about the musician this afternoon. I logged on to my computer and started researching venues for the Christmas lunch. This was going to be quite the event, I decided. It would be unlike any other Christmas lunch. It would be important to eschew cliché and precedent. I would do something different, something that would surprise and delight my co-workers, subvert their expectations. It wouldn’t be easy. One thing I knew for certain was this: Bob’s ten-pound budget would be the basis of the event, and no one would need to contribute further. I still resented all the monetary payments I’d been forced to make over the years to have a terrible time in a terrible place with terrible people on the last Friday before the twenty-fifth of December.
After all, how hard could it be? Raymond had really been most encouraging over lunch. If I could perform scansion on the Aeneid, if I could build a macro in an Excel spreadsheet, if I could spend the last nine birthdays and Christmases and New Year’s Eves alone, then I’m sure I could manage to organize a delightful festive lunch for thirty people on a budget of ten pounds per capita.
20
Saturday morning passed in a blur of household chores. I’d started wearing rubber gloves to protect my hands, and, although unsightly, they were helping. The ugliness didn’t matter—after all, there was no one to see me.
Gathering up the detritus of the previous evening, I noticed that I had failed to consume all of my vodka allocation; the best part of a half bottle of Smirnoff was extant. Mindful of my gauche faux pas at Laura’s party, I put it in a Tesco carrier bag to present to Keith tonight. I pondered what else I should take for him. Flowers seemed wrong; they’re a love token, after all. I looked in the fridge, and popped a packet of cheese slices into the bag. All men like cheese.
I arrived five minutes early at the train station nearest to the party venue. Mirabile dictu, Raymond was already there! He waved at me and I waved back. We set off toward the golf club. Raymond walked quickly, and I began to worry that I wouldn’t be able to keep pace with him in my new boots. I noticed him glance at me, and then he slowed his steps to match mine. I realized that such small gestures—the way his mother had made me a cup of tea after our meal without asking, remembering that I didn’t take sugar, the way Laura had placed two little biscuits on the saucer when she brought me coffee in the salon—such things could mean so much. I wondered how it would feel to perform such simple deeds for other people. I couldn’t remember. I had done such things in the past, tried to be kind, tried to take care, I knew that I had, but that was before. I tried, and I had failed, and all was lost to me afterward. I had no one to blame but myself.
It was quiet out in the suburbs; the views were open, with no tenements or high-rise blocks to obscure the distant hills. The light was soft and gentle—summer was drifitng ever onward and the evening seemed delicate, fragile. We walked in silence, the kind that you didn’t feel the need to fill.
I was almost sad when we arrived at the squat, white clubhouse. It was halfway to dark by then, with both a moon and a sun sitting high in a sky that was sugar almond pink and shot with gold. The birds were singing valiantly against the coming night, swooping over the greens in long, drunken loops. The air was grassy, with a hint of flowers and earth, and the warm, sweet outbreath of the day sighed gently into our hair and over our skin. I felt like asking Raymond whether we should keep walking, walk over the rolling greens, keep walking till the birds fell silent in their bowers and we could see only by starlight. It almost felt like he might suggest it himself.
The front door to the clubhouse burst open and three children came running out, laughing at the tops of their voices, one wielding a plastic sword.
“Here we are, then,” said Raymond, softly.
It was an odd venue for a social gathering. The corridors were lined with notice boards, all pinned with impenetrable messages about Ladders and Tee Times. A wooden panel at the end of the entrance hall bore a long list of men’s names in golden letters, starting in 1924 and ending, this year, somewhat improbably, with a Dr. Terry Berry. The décor was a discomfiting mix of institutional (a look with which I’m very familiar) and outdated family home—nasty patterned curtains, hard-wearing floors, dusty dried flower arrangements.
When we walked into the function suite, we were met with a wall of sound; a mobile discotheque had been set up and the floor was already packed with dancers, ages ranging from five to eighty, all illuminated randomly by some unimpressive colored lights. The dancers seemed to be pretending to ride a horse in time to the music. I looked up at Raymond, very much out of my depth.
“Christ,” he said, “I need a drink.”
I followed him gratefully to the bar. The prices were gratifyingly low, and I drank my Magners quite fast, comfortable in the knowledge that I’d brought enough money for several more, although Raymond had, despite my protests, purchased this one. We found a table as far away from the source of the noise as possible.
“Family dos,” Raymond said, shaking his head. “It’s bad enough when it’s your own family; when it’s someone else’s . . .”
I looked around. I had no prior experience of such events, and the main thing that struck me was disparity; age range, social class and the sartorial choices made by the guests.
“You can choose your friends . . .” Raymond said, toasting me with his pint glass.
“But you can’t choose your family!” I replied, delighted to be in a position to complete the well-known phrase. It was only a quick crossword clue, not a cryptic one, but still.
“This is exactly like my dad’s fiftieth, Mum’s sixtieth, my sister’s wedding,” Raymond said. “A shite DJ, overexcited kids high on sugar, people who haven’t seen each other for years catching up and pretending they like each other. Bet you anything there’ll be a buffet with vol-au-vents, and a fight in the car park at closing time.”
I was intrigued.
“But surely it must be fun?” I said. “Catching up with family? All those people, pleased to see you, interested in your life?” He looked at me carefully.
“D’you know what, Eleanor? It is. I’m just being a grumpy bastard—sorry.” He finished his pint. “Same again?” he said. I nodded, and then remembered.
“No, no, it’s my turn,” I said. “Will you have the same again?”
He smiled.
“That’d be great. Thanks, Eleanor.”
I picked up my shopper and made my way to the bar. I caught Sammy’s eye en route—he was sitting in an armchair surrounded by friends and family members, as usual. I went over.
“Eleanor, love!” he said. “How are you? Great party, eh?”
I nodded.
“I can’t believe my wee boy’s forty. It seems like yesterday he was off to school for his first day. You should see the photo—he’s got no front teeth, the wee scamp! And look at him now.”
He pointed across the room to where Keith was standing with his wife, their arms round one another’s waists, laughing at something an older man was saying.
“That’s all you ever want for your kids: for them to be happy. I just wish my Jean was here to see it . . .”
I pondered this. Was that what people wanted for their children, for them to be happy? It certainly sounded plausible. I asked Sammy if I could purchase a drink for him, although he did, to my inexpert eye, already seem somewhat intoxicated.
“You’re fine, hen,” he said, “I’ve already got these waiting for me!”