The Christmas List

(a festive short story from 2013)

Hello! Happy Christmas to all who celebrate. Here’s a short story I wrote a long time ago, which might help the general festivities. I hope you’re as happy as you can be. See you in the Merrineum! xx

Pink Fritillary. Only David’s mother would insist on a perfume nobody has ever heard of. Chrissie has walked the length of the West End, and each department store has told her: ‘oh no. We don’t stock that. Try ...”

As she pushes her way through the crowds, she begins to wonder if Diana has done it deliberately. Just so she can sigh, on Christmas Day: “Oh! David said you were getting me perfume. Still... this is... nice.” Chrissie will not give her the satisfaction. She trudges down Oxford Street, dodging the harassed shoppers laden with shiny bags, ducking into shops until her shoes rub. One day, she thinks, she will remember that the 23rd is no time for last-minute shopping.

In Selfridges, another assistant shrugs. She thinks she might cry. Outside it has begun to rain. She does something she has never done. She heads into one of the glossy bars and orders a large glass of wine. She drinks it swiftly, feeling mutinous, and overtips as she leaves, as if she is the kind of woman who does this all the time.

“Right,” she says, as she heads for the doors. “One last push.” And then she sees it, a rare sight on a wet London street: a taxi with its light on. She dives off the pavement and it swerves to meet her.

“Uh ... Liberty, I think.” She hurls her bags onto the back seat and sinks into it, gratefully. She has never been in the back of a London taxi without feeling vaguely as if she has been rescued from something.

“You ‘think’?”

“I need a particular perfume. For my mother in law. Liberty is my last hope.”

She can only see his amused eyes in the mirror, the close-cut back of his head.

“Your husband can’t help?”

“He doesn’t really do shopping.”

The driver raises an eyebrow. There is a whole world in that raised eyebrow. And then her phone pings.

DID YOU PICK UP DOLLARS FOR MY NY TRIP?

She’d had to go all the way home to fetch her passport, because the bank wouldn’t let her without it. It’s why she is late now. YES, she types. She waits a moment, but he does not respond.

“Do you buy presents, then?”

“Yeah. I love all that. Mind you, this year my daughter’s come home to live with us because she’s had a baby so... we’re being a bit careful.“

“Is she on her own?” The wine has made her garrulous. It’s why David doesn’t like her drinking.

“Yeah. She had a bloke, bit older, but he said he didn’t want kids. She fell pregnant, and it turns out he meant it. It’s a bit of a squash, and money’s tight, but ... it’s lovely.”

I don’t want children, David had told her, right at the beginning. I never have. She had heard the words as if through a muffler. Some part of her had always assumed he would simply change his mind.

“Lucky her. Having you.”

“You?”

“No,” she says. “None.”

The taxi queues patiently in the heaving, wet street. Beside it a shopfront blares Jingle Bells at deafening, tinny volume. The driver looks up.

“You looking forward to Christmas?”

“Not really. My mother-in-law doesn’t like me very much. And she’s staying a week. With her other son, who speaks in grunts and keeps the remote control in his trouser pocket. I’ll probably just hide out in the kitchen.”

“Doesn’t sound like much fun.”

“Sorry. I’m a grinch. Actually, I’ve had a large white wine. Which means I’m saying what I think.”

“Don’t you usually, then? Say what you think?”

“Never. Safer that way.” She tries to mask the words with a cheery smile, but there is a short, painful silence. Get a grip, she scolds herself.

“Tell you what,” he says. “My wife used to work for Liberty. I’ll call home. What’s this perfume called?”

She can’t help eavesdropping. His voice, on the telephone, is low, intimate. Before he rings off he laughs at some shared joke. She and David have no shared jokes. Somehow the realisation of this makes her feel sadder than anything.

“Little perfume shop round the back of Covent Garden, she says. Want me to try it?”

She leans forward. “Oh yes please!”

“She knew the perfume. Says it’s lovely. And pricey.” He grins conspiratorially.

“Yup. That sounds like Diana.”

“Well, now you’ll be in her good books. Hold on - I’m going to do a U-ey.”

He lurches across the road and she laughs as she is thrown across the seat. He grins. “I love doing that. One day I’m going to get caught.”

“Do you like your job?”

“Love it. My customers are generally okay ... I don’t stop for everyone, you know. Only people who look alright.”

“I looked ‘alright’, then?” She is still laughing.

“You looked anxious. I hate to see an anxious looking woman.”

She knows immediately what he means. This expression that seems to have taken root on her face; the furrowed brow, the compressed lips. When did I turn into this woman? she thinks. When my boss left and Ming The Merciless took over. When my husband began spending every night behind a laptop, chatting to people I don’t know. When I stopped looking at myself in shop windows.

“I’ve offended you.”

“No... I just wish I wasn’t. Anxious-looking. I didn’t used to be.”

“Maybe you need a holiday.”

“Oh no. We have to take his mother these days. Which isn’t really a holiday. Mind you, he gets loads of business trips to lovely places.”

“Where would you go then? If you could go anywhere?”

She thinks. “My best friend lives in Barcelona. I’d go there. I haven’t seen her for years. We email, but it’s not the same. Oh. Excuse me. Phone.”

- DON’T FORGET THE STILTON MUM LIKES FROM THAT SPECIAL CHEESE SHOP.

Her heart sinks. She had completely forgotten.

“Everything okay?”

“I forgot the cheese. I was meant to go to a shop in Marylebone.”

“All the way over there? For cheese?”

“She only likes one particular kind of Stilton.”

“Blimey. She’s a tough customer,” he says. “You want me to turn round? Traffic’s not great.”

“I’d better get the tube. I’ve probably already blown my taxi budget. Can you pull over?”

His eyes meet hers.

“Nah. Tell you what, I’ll turn the meter off.” And he does.

“You can’t do that!”

“Just did. I do it once a year. Every year. You’re this year’s lucky recipient. Tell you what - we’ll do the perfume, then we’ll go back via the cheese shop and I’ll drop you at your station afterwards. A little Christmas present... Ah don’t...I was trying to put a smile back on that face.”

Something odd has happened. Her eyes have filled with tears. “Sorry,” she says. “I don’t know what’s happened to me.”

He smiles reassuringly. It makes her want to cry more.

“We’ll sort the perfume. That’ll make you feel better.”

He is right about the traffic. They sit in queues, lurching into sporadic action along back routes. The whole of London feels grey and wet and ill-tempered. She feels lucky in the snug taxi. He talks about his wife, of how he likes to get up with the baby at dawn so his daughter can sleep. When he stops she has almost forgotten why she is there. “I’ll wait here. Leave your bags,” he says.

The perfume shop is a gloriously scented haven. “Pink Fritillary,” she says, thinking, as she reads her husband’s handwriting, what a delicate scent to put on such a sullen, lumpen woman.

“I’m afraid we’re out of the 50ml,” the woman says, reaching behind her. “We only have the 100ml left. And it’s the parfum, not the eau de parfum. Is that okay?”

It is twice what she has budgeted for.

“It’s fine,” she says. She will worry about the expense in January. “Got it!” She says, as she clambers back into the taxi. “I got the bloody perfume.”

“There you go! Right. Marylebone it is.”

They chat, her leaning forward through the hatch. She tells him about the passport and the dollars and he shakes his head. She tells him how she loved her job, until the new supervisor arrived. She says little of David, feeling disloyal. But she wants to. She wants to tell someone how lonely she is. How she feels she is missing some clue; the late nights, the business trips. How she feels stupid and tired and old.

And then they are at the cheese shop. There is a long queue, but the driver doesn’t seem to mind. He cheers when she finally emerges with the heavy, stinking, drum. “You’re done!” he says, like she has achieved a miracle, and she can’t help cheering too.

And then her phone beeps.

I ASKED YOU SPECIFICALLY TO GET THE WAITROSE CHRISTMAS PUDDING. YOU’VE BOUGHT THE MARKS & SPENCER PUDDING. I HAVE JUST HAD TO GO TO WAITROSE MYSELF, AS YOU ARE TAKING SO LONG, AND THEY HAVE SOLD OUT.

It is as if she has been winded. She sees the four of them around the table suddenly, David’s pointed apology to his family for her ‘wrong’ Christmas pudding. And something in her gives.

“I can’t do it,” she says.

“Can’t do what?”

“Christmas. I can’t sit there with the cheese and the wrong Christmas pudding and... them.”

He pulls over. She stares at her bags. “What am I doing? You say you have nothing, but you have a family you adore. I have a posh Stilton and three people who don’t even really like me.”

“So what’s keeping you?”

“I’m married!”

“Last time I looked it was an agreement, not a prison sentence. Why not go to your friend’s? Would she be pleased to see you?”

“She’d love it. Even her husband would. They’re... cheerful.”

He lifts his eyebrows. Laughter lines fan out from each eye.

“I can’t just ... go.”

“You have your passport in your bag.”

Something has ignited in her stomach, a flash of burning brandy on a steamed pudding.

“I could drop you at Kings Cross. Get the Piccadilly line to Heathrow, jump a flight. Seriously. Life is short. Too short to look that anxious.”

She thinks of Christmas freed of Diana’s disapproval. Of her husband’s unfriendly slab of a back, his claret-soaked snore.

“He’d never forgive me. It would be the end of my marriage.”

The driver grins. “Well, wouldn’t that be a tragedy?”

They stare at each other. “Do it,” she says, suddenly.

“Hold tight.”

The whole way round the back streets her heart thumps. Bubbles of laughter keep forcing their way out of her chest. She thinks of her supervisor, glaring at his watch when she does not turn up. She thinks of Diana’s appalled disbelief. She thinks of Barcelona and hugs and surprised laughter. And then they are at Kings Cross station. and he is screeching to a halt.

“You really going to do it?”

“I’m really going to do it. Thank you - “

“Jim,” he says. And he reaches through the hatch and shakes her hand.

“Chrissie,” she says. She pulls the shopping bags from the seat. “Oh. All this stuff...”

And then she looks up. “Here - give the perfume to your wife. And the vouchers. For your daughter.”

“You don’t need to - “

“Please. It would make me happy.”

He hesitates, then accepts the bags, shaking his head. “Thank you. She’ll absolutely love it.”

“I don’t suppose you want the Stilton, too?”

He grimaces. “Can’t stand the stuff.”

“Nor me.”

They both start to laugh.

“I feel ... a bit insane, Jim.”

“I think it’s called the spirit of Christmas,” he says. “I’d just go with it.”

She starts to run towards the concourse, her legs flying up like a girl’s. Then she pauses, dumps the cheese ceremonially in a bin, and looks up in time to see him, one hand lifted in salute. As she runs through the crowds towards the ticket office, and he navigates his way back into the crawling Christmas traffic, they are both still laughing.