One Christmas Eve long ago, when I was twenty, I was sitting in the London train at York station, waiting for it to start. I was in a first-class carriage. I had been pushed into it. The rest of the train was packed. This compartment must have been unlocked at the last minute, like they sometimes do. Maybe it was because I had so much luggage. I was very glad to be alone. The compartment was sumptuous, with grey and pink velour seats and armrests and white cloths to rest your head against. I’d never travelled first class.
Just as the last doors were slamming, three people came into the compartment who looked as if they were there by right. They sat down two and one, the young man and the young woman side by side across from me, near the corridor, the old man on my side with the spare seat between us. I kept my face turned away from them but I could see them reflected in the window against the cold, black night. I had my hand up against my face.
I had my hand up against my face because I was weeping. The tears welled and welled. There had been no sign of tears when I was saying my bright goodbyes to the friend who was seeing me on to the train. I had waited to be alone. Now they rolled down my face and the front of my dismal mackintosh, and they would not stop.
I was leaving college a year early, having failed my exams and because the man I loved had told me the week before that he had found someone else. I was going home to my family, whom I despised and who had never liked me and were about to like me less. I had told them everything. Got it over in a letter. I hadn’t yet told my mother, though, something which would cause her deeper distress—she was always in shallow distress—that I had also lately lost my faith. Anthropology had been my subject. I had just come to terms with the fact that it had destroyed my Christianity totally.
My Christianity had always been on a fragile footing on account of my mother’s obsession with it. All she had seemed to be thinking about the previous night when I rang her was that if I was catching this late train I would miss the Midnight.
‘But that means you’ll be missing the Midnight,’ she said. ‘I’d have thought that the least you could do is come with me to the Midnight.’ Then she said something nauseous and unforgivable to a daughter lost: ‘All the mothers will be there with their college daughters.’ Oh my God.
All my mother ever thought about was what the neighbours might say, just as all my father ever thought about was how my achievements might improve his image at the bank, where he had been a desk clerk for most of his life. My father drank. He drank in the greenhouse at the end of our long, narrow garden in Watford. The greenhouse was packed with splendid tomato plants in summer and with heavy-headed old-English-sheepdog chrysanthemums in winter. Under its benches, all the year round, stood several pairs of wellingtons, and in every wellington stood a bottle. The bottles were never mentioned. They changed from full to empty to full again, invisibly. When my father came out of the greenhouse he would go upstairs to bed and cry. Then my mother would rest her head against the sitting room mantelpiece and cry too. Then, as she also did after she and I had quarrelled, she would fling on her coat and dash to the church for comfort.
And she always came back much better. I would hear her feet tap-tapping briskly home along the pavement as I sat in my bedroom doing my homework. I used always to be doing my homework because I so wanted to get to college.
After the church visits my mother would sing to herself in the kitchen and start preparing a huge meal for my brother. She always felt forgiven after her prayers but she never came up to see me. Her life was my brother. He was my father’s life too. He was supposed to be delicate and he had been long-awaited. When I was born, eight years before him, there had been a telegram from my father’s family saying, ‘Pity it isn’t a boy.’ My brother was in fact far from delicate. He was surly and uncommunicative and had the muscles of a carthorse. He detested me.
The only time I had been happy since my brother was born was the summer before, when I was in love. It was amazing how much happier my family had been then, too. Much more cheerful, and nicer to me. My mother had gone round saying, ‘Esther’s engaged to a graduate.’ I put my hand to my face and the tears rolled.
I could not ignore my fellow passengers. The smell of them was so arresting—the smell of beautiful tweed clothes, shoe leather, pipe-smokers’ best tobacco and some wonderful scent. There was a glow now in the compartment. Even in the glass there was a blur like a rosy sunset.
It was the young woman. She had stood up—we were on the move now—to go down the corridor. She drew back the glass door and slid it shut again outside, turning back and looking down through it at the young man. I felt for a handkerchief and took a quick glance.
She was the most lovely looking girl, in a glorious red coat. Her expensive hair was dark and silky, with shadows in it. Long pearls swung. Big pearl earrings. Huge, soft Italian bag. The hand that rested on the door latch outside wore a huge square diamond. Shiny red lipstick. She smiled down. He smiled up. They were enchanted with each other and enchanted because they felt their families were enchanted too.
I was astonished. There she stood. My mother always said that you should not be seen either entering or leaving a lavatory, yet here was this goddess, unhurried, waving her fingers at a man when she was on the way there.
The fiancé leaned comfortably back and smiled across at the man opposite, who could not be anybody but his father. He had the same lanky ease, though he was thinner and greyer and was wearing a dog-collar. This old priest now looked across at me, and smiled.
The trio seemed to me to be the most enviable human beings I had ever seen. It seemed impossible that anything could harm them: easy, worldly, confident, rich, blooming with health; failure, rejection, guilt, all unknown to them. And how they loved each other at this wonderful point in their lives! When the girl came back they all smiled at one another all over again.
I could see that the girl did not belong quite to the same world as the priest. I knew she thought him just rather an old duck and that she had no notion of his job. I don’t know how I knew this, but I did. And I saw that the son had moved some way into the girl’s world, and would go farther into it. He’d got clear of all the church stuff. But nobody was worrying.
Was there a mother? Dead? What had she been? Cardigans and untidy hair and no time for anything? Or well-heeled, high-heeled bishop’s daughter? Was there a sister? No, there was no sister. I knew the old man would have liked a daughter. You could tell that by the loving look he was giving the girl who was to become one to him.
Soon the fiancé fell asleep. Maybe we all fell asleep, for suddenly we were going through Peterborough and I was listening to a conversation taking shape between the girl and the priest, who, now virtually alone with her, was sounding rather shy.
‘We shan’t be in until after ten o’clock, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Of course, it’s much quicker than it used to be.’
‘Oh, much quicker.’
‘I suppose we’ll be able to find a taxi. Christmas Eve. It may be rather difficult.’
‘Oh yes, it may be frightfully difficult.’
‘Andrew is very resourceful.’
‘Oh, he’s absolutely marvellously resourceful.’
‘I’m afraid we shall miss the Midnight.’
‘The Midnight?’
‘The service. The midnight Christmas Eve service. Perhaps you don’t go?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t usually—’
‘D’you know, I don’t blame you. I don’t greatly enjoy it either, unless it’s in the country. In London, people come crashing in from parties. The smell of alcohol at the altar rail can be quite overpowering.’
She looked bewildered.
‘I should leave it till the morning if I were you,’ he said. ‘It’s quieter. More serious people.’
Her red lips smiled. She said she would ask Andrew.
‘I don’t really care for Christmas Eve at all,’ he said. He had removed his glasses to polish them. His eyes looked weak, but were clear bright blue. ‘Now, I don’t know what you think, but I believe it must have been a very dark day for Our Lady.’
She wriggled inside the fuchsia coat and slowly began to blush. She lifted the diamond-hung hand to her hair.
‘Think of it. Fully nine months pregnant on that road. Nazareth to Bethlehem. Winter weather. Well, we’re now told it was in the spring. March. But it can be diabolical in the Mediterranean in March. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Galilee?’
The shiny lips said that they had never been to Galilee.
‘Can be dreadful, I believe. And the birth beginning. Far from her mother. And the first child’s always slow. Contractions probably started on the road. On foot or on a mule of some kind. One hopes there were some women about. And the birth itself in the stable. We’re told it was an “annexe” now, but I prefer stable. Just think about it: blood in the straw . . . the afterbirth . . . ’
He was unaware of her embarrassment.
She had no notion what to say. She was the colour of her coat. At last—‘We always have a family party actually on Christmas Eve. Absolutely lots of us. Terrific fun. I’m afraid we’re not exactly churchgoers, any of us.’
‘You will be having a church wedding, though?’
‘Oh, golly, yes.’
‘I’d very much like to marry you,’ he said, lovingly, ‘if that were possible.’
She looked startled. Then slowly it dawned. ‘Oh—yes! Of course. Actually, I think Mummy has some sort of tame bishop, but I’m sure . . . ’
‘Perhaps I could assist?’
‘Assist? Oh, yes—assist. Of course.’
He hadn’t got there yet. The chasm was still just under the snow. He noticed me looking across at him and, at once and unselfconsciously, he smiled. I turned quickly away to the night, trying not to hear my mother’s voice: ‘I don’t care what you say, Esther, there is a difference. Being a Christian does show.’
‘You might just be interested in this,’ I heard the priest say to the girl. He had brought out of his pocket a leather pouch, squarish, like a double spectacle case, and he leaned towards her, elbows on knees, and opened it.
She made a little movement forwards. Her hair brushed the fiancé’s shoulder. ‘How pretty. What is it?’
Had she expected jewels? A family necklace?
‘What dear little bottles! Sweet little silver thing.’
‘It’s a pyx. A “viaticum”, the whole thing’s called. And something called an “oil stock”. It’s for taking the Sacrament to the sick in an emergency. I like to have it with me. It’s an old-fashioned thing to do nowadays. It was a present from my parishioners. Very generous.’
She touched a little flask. ‘Is it all right to touch?’
‘Of course.’
‘What are these?’
‘Those are the oils. For Holy Unction. We anoint the dying.’
She jumped back. ‘You mean—like the Egyptians? Embalming fluid?’
‘No, just oils. Very ancient idea. Long pre-Christian, I dare say.’ He knew that I was looking across again and he turned towards me and said, ‘Wouldn’t you, my dear?’
‘Yes.’
How did he know me?
‘It’s for people on their last legs,’ he said. ‘Last gasp. In extremis.’
‘Can it bring them back to life?’ she asked. ‘Is it sort of magic?’
‘Well, yes. It has been known to restore life. We don’t call it magic, but, yes—it has been known.’
He was looking at me.
When we reached King’s Cross they were quick at gathering up their luggage. I took much longer to assemble mine, which was mostly in parcels spread about the overhead racks. My two great suitcases stood outside in the corridor. I had no money for a taxi and I wasn’t at all sure how I was going to get all this to the Watford train. There might just possibly be a porter, but I had no money for the tip.
I let them go ahead of me, the girl first, still smiling, Andrew behind, touching her elbow, then the priest winding a long, soft woollen scarf round his neck. A present? From someone he loved? Someone who loved him?
I had no presents for anyone this year. Why should I? They wouldn’t care. There’d be none for me, or maybe just a token. I didn’t care, either. Home in shame. A grim time coming. ‘God help me,’ I said automatically, in my heart.
The priest turned before he stepped out of the train. He smiled at me again. He still held the leather pouch. He lifted it in his hand in blessing.
They had all three disappeared by the time I got myself together and started to shamble after them down the platform. There was a tremendous queue for taxis, so Andrew must have been at his most resourceful.
I didn’t need a taxi, though, or a train, or anything else. Both my parents and my brother were gathered at the platform gate.