flame-effect log fires courtesy of the Gas Board. Snow for the children.
O’Brien flicked through the Lonely Hearts. There were extra pages of them at Christmas, just as there was extraeverything else. How could it be that column after column of sane, loving, slim men and women, without obvious perversions, were spending Christmas alone? Were the happy families in the department store a beguiling minority?
She had once answered a Lonely Hearts advertisement and eaten dinner with a small young man who mended organ pipes. He had suggested they get married that night by special licence. O’Brien had declined on the grounds that a whirlwind romance would tire her out after so little practice. It seemed rather like going to advanced aerobics when you couldn’t manage five minutes on the exercise bicycle. She had asked him why he was in such a hurry.
‘I have a heart condition.’
So it was like aerobics after all.
After that she had joined a camera club, where a number of men had been keen to help her in the darkroom, but all of them had square hairy hands that reminded her of joke shop gorilla paws.
‘Don’t set your sights too high,’ her aunts warned.
But she did. She set them in the constellations, in the roaring lion, and the flanks of the bull. In December, when the stars were bright, she saw herself in another life, happy.
‘You’ve got to have a dream,’ she told the Newfoundland pup destined to become a Christmas present. ‘I don’t know what I want. I’m just drifting.’
She’d heard that men knew what they wanted, so she asked Clive, the Floor Manager.
‘I’d like to run my own branch of McDonald’s. A really big one with full breakfasts and party seating.’
O’Brien tried, but she couldn’t get excited. It was the same with vacuum cleaners; she could use the power but where was the glamour?
When she returned to her lodgings that evening her landlady was solemnly nailing a holly wreath to the front door.
‘This is not for myself, you understand, it is for my tenants. Next I will hang paper chains in the hall.’ O’Brien’s landlady always spoke very slowly because she had been a Hungarian Countess. A Countess does not rush her words.
O’Brien, still in her red duffle coat, found herself holding on to one end of a paper chain, while her landlady creaked up the aluminium steps, six tacks between her teeth.
‘Soon be Christmas,’ said O’Brien. ‘I’m making a New Year’s resolution to change my life, otherwise, what’s the point?’
‘Life has no point,’ said her landlady. ‘You would be better to get married or start an evening class. For the last seven years I have busied myself with brass rubbings.’
The hall was cold. The paper chain was too short. O’Brien didn’t want advice. She made her excuses and mounted the stairs. Her landlady, perhaps stung by a pang of sympathy, offered her a can of sardines for supper.
‘They are not in tomato sauce but olive oil.’
O’Brien though, had other plans.
Inside her room she began to make a list of the things people thought of as their future: Marriage, children, a career, travel, a home, enough money, lots of money. Christmas time brought these things sharply into focus. If you had them, any of them, you could feel especially pleased with life over the twelve days of feasting and family. If you didn’t have them, you felt the lack more keenly. You felt like an outsider. Odd that a festival to celebrate the most austere of births should become the season of conspicuous consumption. O’Brien didn’t know much about theology but she knew there had been a muck-up somewhere.
As she looked at the list, she began to realise that an off the peg future, however nicely designed, wouldn’t be the life she sensed when she looked up at the stars. Immediately she felt guilty. Who was she to imagine she could find something better than other people’s best?
‘What’s wrong with settling down and getting married?’ she
O’Brien flicked through the Lonely Hearts. There were extra pages of them at Christmas, just as there was extraeverything else. How could it be that column after column of sane, loving, slim men and women, without obvious perversions, were spending Christmas alone? Were the happy families in the department store a beguiling minority?
She had once answered a Lonely Hearts advertisement and eaten dinner with a small young man who mended organ pipes. He had suggested they get married that night by special licence. O’Brien had declined on the grounds that a whirlwind romance would tire her out after so little practice. It seemed rather like going to advanced aerobics when you couldn’t manage five minutes on the exercise bicycle. She had asked him why he was in such a hurry.
‘I have a heart condition.’
So it was like aerobics after all.
After that she had joined a camera club, where a number of men had been keen to help her in the darkroom, but all of them had square hairy hands that reminded her of joke shop gorilla paws.
‘Don’t set your sights too high,’ her aunts warned.
But she did. She set them in the constellations, in the roaring lion, and the flanks of the bull. In December, when the stars were bright, she saw herself in another life, happy.
‘You’ve got to have a dream,’ she told the Newfoundland pup destined to become a Christmas present. ‘I don’t know what I want. I’m just drifting.’
She’d heard that men knew what they wanted, so she asked Clive, the Floor Manager.
‘I’d like to run my own branch of McDonald’s. A really big one with full breakfasts and party seating.’
O’Brien tried, but she couldn’t get excited. It was the same with vacuum cleaners; she could use the power but where was the glamour?
When she returned to her lodgings that evening her landlady was solemnly nailing a holly wreath to the front door.
‘This is not for myself, you understand, it is for my tenants. Next I will hang paper chains in the hall.’ O’Brien’s landlady always spoke very slowly because she had been a Hungarian Countess. A Countess does not rush her words.
O’Brien, still in her red duffle coat, found herself holding on to one end of a paper chain, while her landlady creaked up the aluminium steps, six tacks between her teeth.
‘Soon be Christmas,’ said O’Brien. ‘I’m making a New Year’s resolution to change my life, otherwise, what’s the point?’
‘Life has no point,’ said her landlady. ‘You would be better to get married or start an evening class. For the last seven years I have busied myself with brass rubbings.’
The hall was cold. The paper chain was too short. O’Brien didn’t want advice. She made her excuses and mounted the stairs. Her landlady, perhaps stung by a pang of sympathy, offered her a can of sardines for supper.
‘They are not in tomato sauce but olive oil.’
O’Brien though, had other plans.
Inside her room she began to make a list of the things people thought of as their future: Marriage, children, a career, travel, a home, enough money, lots of money. Christmas time brought these things sharply into focus. If you had them, any of them, you could feel especially pleased with life over the twelve days of feasting and family. If you didn’t have them, you felt the lack more keenly. You felt like an outsider. Odd that a festival to celebrate the most austere of births should become the season of conspicuous consumption. O’Brien didn’t know much about theology but she knew there had been a muck-up somewhere.
As she looked at the list, she began to realise that an off the peg future, however nicely designed, wouldn’t be the life she sensed when she looked up at the stars. Immediately she felt guilty. Who was she to imagine she could find something better than other people’s best?
‘What’s wrong with settling down and getting married?’ she
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