Mark stood in a glade surrounded by Norwegian spruce, holding the small mittened hands of two of his grandchildren. Elle and Naimah were marching indecisively through rows of firs looking for the one perfect Christmas tree among thousands. Apparently their Christmas depended on the exact height and width, the exact space and shape and form of branches, of a tree he would have to strap to the roof of his truck.
Daisy and Violette, holding his hands, were cold. Mark was cold. He swallowed the desire to bellow down into the small green forest, Oh, for God’s sake, girls, what does it matter? Just pick a tree and let’s go home.
Instead, he hitched a child under each arm and walked towards his daughters. Daisy took off a mitt and placed a freezing little starfish hand to his cheek and left it there as if to warm it. When she removed it the place where it had lain burnt like a small brand. Traitor.
‘Look,’ he called, keeping the impatience out of his voice. ‘Here is a great little tree and just the right size.’
The two girls moved quickly back towards him. ‘Mmm, that’s one of the ones I liked too …’ Naimah said.
‘Yeah, it is quite a pretty tree …’ Elle agreed.
‘Come on you two, make up your minds and go tell the man, these kids are cold and hungry.’
‘OK, Dad.’ They flashed him smiles that took him back to their childhood and disappeared to find a man to dig out the shallow-rooted fir grown just for Christmas. Veronique insisted on a tree with roots every year, which was commendable, but every year another tree died in one or other of his daughters’ gardens.
At that moment Veronique would be cooking and bottling, icing and storing, shopping and hiding so frenetically, that by Christmas day, the whole point of all this yearly palaver, she would be exhausted yet triumphant. Nothing had changed in this Christmas ritual since his first daughter, Inez, was born.
It was as if the entire happiness of their Christmas depended on these small, everlasting rituals, not the fact that they were all together sharing a Christian festival. Something at odds with my wife’s Catholicism, Mark thought. You would think that religion would predominate on this feast day, but it does not. Going to Mass interfered with the perfection of the turkey.
Love makes us cruel to those we have stopped loving.
Standing holding these babies, flesh of his flesh, Mark felt as detached and dislocated as if he had suddenly awoken and realized he was someone else. This year he could conjure no interest, no joy in this regular, vast family Christmas in which he was about to be swallowed.
He set the children on their feet and indicated to his daughters, who had now found a man with a spade, that he was going inside the café to buy these cold children a hot chocolate. Ten minutes later they joined him, took charge of their infants, found small plastic beakers with non-spill lids in which to pour their drinks.
He caught Elle sliding a quick, knowing look at Naimah. She said, ‘Dad, would you mind if we had lunch here? I know it’s a bit grim, but we’re here and everywhere else is going to be so crowded …’
‘Do they serve beer?’ he asked hopefully.
‘Sure they do,’ Naimah said. ‘I’ll go get a menu.’
They ordered scrambled eggs for the children and they ate cardboard sandwiches, but the beer hit the spot and Mark cheered fractionally and joked, ‘Are you sure your mother isn’t back home cooking a four-course lunch for us?’
Again his daughters exchanged glances.
‘Come on, spit it out!’ he demanded fondly. ‘Less of those loaded glances I know so well. What are you hatching?’
‘Oh, Dad!’
Mark had always been able to read his daughters and it annoyed them greatly. It was what he loved most about them, their openness, and for this he had Veronique to thank.
They avoided his eyes for a minute or two, popping mouthfuls of egg into small open mouths like mother birds. Then it came.
‘Dad, while you’ve been away we’ve been wondering about what we could do … how we could …’ Naimah eyed Mark miserably.
Elle said quickly, ‘We thought of ringing you for advice, but we all decided you deserved this sabbatical in peace, away from us all …’
‘You have been such a brilliant dad …’
Mark was worried now. ‘What’s happened? For heaven’s sake …’
‘Dad, Dad, nothing has happened, it’s just …’
‘We don’t want to hurt Maman, she’s so great …’
‘She’s a wonderful mom …’
‘We love her to bits … You too, Dad …’
Mark banged his beer glass down. ‘If you two don’t come to the point I am going to get off this chair and knock your heads together!’
Silence. Then they dropped the bombshell.
‘Maman’s got to let us go, Dad. Let us have our own lives. It’s affecting our marriages …’
‘We’re grown up now. Sunday meals and weekday suppers are lovely every now and then, but not every Sunday, not every week …’
‘We’ll always be in and out of the house, it’s our home and we love you guys, but Maman has got so she expects us all to be there when she wants … I know she picks up the children and feeds them and has a meal ready for us, and it’s sweet of her …’
‘… But we need to get back to our husbands, our chores, our studying, our lives, Dad. The men are getting pissed off.’
Mark had no idea they felt like this. How selfish of me. How blind and insensitive. He closed his eyes, jerked out of his shocking, convenient, complacency. He had always thought, If I ever leave, Veronique has the kids.
‘I had absolutely no idea you all felt like this. You should have spoken to me sooner …’
‘Dad, please don’t look so shocked … it’s no big deal …’
Oh, it is. It is.
‘We’ve been racking our brains over how to say something without hurting Maman.’ Naimah touched his arm anxiously and Mark picked up her hand.
‘How can we do it, Dad?’
‘She’s going to be hurt, initially, there’s no way round that. I think you’ll have to withdraw slowly. Hopefully, when she sees you’re all still around, that nothing threatens her relationship with all of you …’
‘Inez has been trying to get her to think about going back to college, to do a course or something. We found her grades and dissertation in the attic the other day. She was very clever, you know, Dad. We were surprised at some of the papers we found.’
Mark smiled. ‘Oh, she was exceptionally clever; bright and witty, too. The sort of girl who could have done anything she set her mind on …’ he paused, ‘… but a girl with no ambition.’
He heard the wistfulness in his voice and was surprised.
‘Except to have a family,’ Elle said quietly. Both girls were looking at him as if he had now surprised them.
‘Did you mind, Dad?’
‘I was surprised,’ he said carefully, ‘because I just assumed with a first-class degree she would want to work, or teach – use her subject, for a few years, anyway. We were very young, as you know. We got married straight after university, and we were absolutely broke …’
‘We all thought that you hadn’t wanted Maman to work …’
‘Especially when we found all her old university stuff. We assumed that you preferred her at home. You know, because she had been beautiful and clever and men of your generation liked their wives to stay home …’
Mark laughed again, but it was a hard little laugh, too ironic to be kind. He stared back at his daughters. ‘You thought perhaps I felt threatened by a clever wife? That I encouraged her to stay at home?’
Oh, how wrong they were! He had married Veronique because he had thought she was as passionate about history as he was. At twenty-three, he had had romantic visions of them nesting in a little flat talking endlessly of their fulfilled days. Eventually, one day, a couple of kids, but basically an academic, a professional life together.
‘I had taken it for granted she would want to go on to do a PhD,’ he told them, ‘and to have a working life.’
‘So,’ Naimah said slowly, ‘it was Maman who never wanted to work …’
They were both having trouble absorbing this. Had it been a well-worn mantra started by Veronique, as an excuse to daughters who all worked and had families, because that was the norm now?
Both his grandchildren had fallen asleep with small flushed faces, leaning against their mothers. Mark said, getting back to the subject, ‘Let’s get Christmas over and I’ll think of the best way of initiating the subject before the New Year.’
‘You won’t hurt her, Dad?’
‘Of course I won’t. I can prepare the ground, but you must realize it has to come from you lot, not from me. Imagine how your mother would feel if she knew we were talking like this behind her back.’
‘Dad, she is young enough to do something, have her own life still, isn’t she?’
‘You girls are her life,’ Mark said quietly. ‘You have to remember Maman is still very French in her attitude to family. Remember your French grandmother? She was formidable, pure Mafioso in her attitude to family first.’
He grinned at their solemn faces. ‘Don’t let’s get this out of proportion. I think the more casually this is handled, the better. Withdraw slowly but firmly. Of course she needs to realize you have your own lives. I’m pretty annoyed with myself for not realizing something I should have seen clearly, then all this agonizing for you could have been avoided.’
‘Come on, Dad, you’ve been away a lot and you’ve always been so busy.’
‘Someone has to bring in the bacon, we know that.’
Ah! An ancient, buried resentment surfaced. All those years ago Veronique was determined to have a house and garden for her babies. Not a rented flat. She had worked until they had enough for a deposit and then she had got pregnant without discussing it with him. Mark had had to give up his lowly paid research post. He had been straight into a mortgage and a job to process it.
He got up. ‘Come on, let’s get these kids home.’
He did not regret his daughters. He adored every one of them, even if it had been a longer academic climb. He lifted a sleeping child’s dead weight and carried her out to the truck with the Christmas tree neatly attached to the roof. Snow was falling again. Mark buried his nose for a second into the warmth of the child, into that dusky, powdery baby smell.
Out of the blue, like the piercing point of a knife under his ribs, I want Gabriella to have my child.