Matt hadn’t been in a church for at least ten years, and that was for a funeral for a colleague, conducted less according to the Book of Common Prayer and more in line with Hollywood stereotypes and principles of inclusiveness. His grandmother had taken him to service every Sunday for the first ten years of his life. Religiously, she used to say. It was her other joke. He doesn’t remember whether Penelope was with them or not, except for Christmas. On Christmas Eve they were always there together. After Thora’s death, Christmas was the only time he and his mother darkened the door. He had no idea what she did all those Christmases after he left town.
The rector was just the third since the old goat with whom Thora had butted heads after the service, over sherry at Birch Hall. It was the kind of parish you didn’t leave willingly. The new man — he had been there ten years — had, according to Bernie, tried to introduce the Alternative Service, which was hardly alternative in most places by then. Matt was relieved the man had eventually relented. He found it oddly comforting that his lips could automatically form the hundreds-of-years-old phrases of Cranmer’s prayers even after decades of not even thinking about them. When he dared to peek sideways, he was pleased to see his mother intoning the words of the general confession without a glance at the maroon book that she nevertheless held open in her left hand. The carols were less of a wonder. Everyone always remembered those, but negotiating the syntax of Cranmer was another matter. He thought he should write a note about it for the gerontologist.
Penelope is reminded of how her mother used to try to get the rector to shift the midnight service to early evening, thinks how pleased Thora would be that the times have finally caught up with her, even if she can’t be here to enjoy it. This way, they will be able to enjoy the big meal after church and still get to bed at a reasonable hour. Matt needs his sleep. While her lips form the familiar there is no health in us, her mind races ahead to the feast that is to follow. But she cannot be sure now that she has prepared any of it. Thora will have looked after it. It won’t be turkey or goose. That stopped, she was told, the year her father left them, the year they were freed of George Arnold, Thora would say as she mixed the dough for the pepperkaker, evidently meaning freed of all the Arnold family traditions. They no longer celebrated Christmas. It was Jul. Father Christmas became a mischievous garden elf, one of dozens who had apparently been living around them all along, but you couldn’t see them. Penelope marvelled at how easily her mother recalled the recipes for pepperkaker (we don’t call it gingerbread anymore) and the sugary sand cakes whose Norwegian name even Penelope easily came to recognize as sandkaker. It was only years later, after her mother’s death, when she was talking to a Norwegian tourist about customs, that Penelope learned that cod (lutefisk) was a traditional Christmas Eve dish. Thora would have nothing to do with regular fish; Penelope can’t think why now. She always picked out the lamb for the pinnekjøtt in late October. Her Handworks connections meant she usually had loads to choose from. The ribs would arrive a day later and be buried instantly in the mountain of sea salt Thora had prepared. After three days, the ribs were resurrected — Penelope used to wonder whether her mother had Christmas and Easter confused — and would hang in the summer kitchen for nearly two months. This same Norwegian tourist told Penelope that some people smoked the meat at this stage. Thora disliked anything smoked almost as much as she hated fish though. A couple of days before Christmas, they would soak the lamb to get most of the salt out. Penelope’s favourite part was cutting the birch sticks they arranged in the bottom of the pot to steam the lamb on Christmas Eve. Her mother let her handle the brush axe and the knives all by herself. The birch didn’t add any flavour to the meat. That was part of the beauty of it, though, Thora used to say. There is no reason; it is just how it is done.
Matt is tugging at her elbow. “Mamma, do you want to go up for communion?” She lets him guide her up the aisle and help her kneel at the rail. It is easier than debating what any of it means to her anymore.
They had walked to the church. His mother had insisted. When the service ended, Bernadette joined them outside. He had invited her to join them for dinner. “Where’s the car, boss?”
Penelope looked up and down King Street and then at Matt.
“We walked,” Matt said, wishing his response had been quicker, to save his mother that moment of confusion. “Mamma likes to walk on Christmas Eve. Gran liked to walk on Christmas Eve. Shall we?” He crooked both his elbows and the two women latched on and tottered home along the street.
Penelope wonders who decorated the living room, is about to tell Matt and that old woman he has brought home with them about the nisse, the hobgoblins who live all around them. But then she recognizes a needle-felted sheep in the manger scene on the mantelpiece and remembers putting it there herself. It was one of the first things she made with her own hands. That’s the story that goes with it, but she can’t remember when that would have been, or who would have helped her. Not her mother, though her mother must have allowed it to join the Jul repertoire. She lifts it from the mantel and knocks a rough clay donkey onto the floor. It doesn’t so much shatter as dismember itself. Another of her early works.
“Tough night in the stable,” chirps the old woman as she stoops to pick up the bits. “I never liked that old ass anyway, boss.”
Bernadette. But who is minding the shop?
“It’s okay, Matt, just a minor crèche casualty,” Bernadette calls out toward the kitchen.
Good. Matt is here. It is always nice to have children around at Christmas. When he comes into the living room, though, he is limping and slightly round about the middle. Taller than he should be. And balder. Perhaps he has children he has brought along with him. She can’t think who his children are. Or where. “It smells delicious,” she says. It is a tick. She has always done this: commented on the food when at a loss for anything else to say in a social situation. Now it is a vital survival tactic to help her navigate away from the black holes.
“It’s just one of those boneless stuffed things. Sorry. I couldn’t cope with the full-on turkey.”
Not lamb, then. She wonders what Thora will say, wishes she could spare Matt his grandmother’s inevitable rant about his Arnold ancestors.
“A man who can cook at all is a good man,” says Bernadette. Penelope is afraid she will go on to say something about how that what’s-her-name is a lucky woman. It would be the wrong thing to say at this moment. Penelope knows that, although she doesn’t know why.
“Mamma taught me well.”
Did she? She never cared that much about the kitchen.
Bernadette is fluttering around the Christmas tree — how did that get there? — taking roll call for the ornaments. It is alarming how many of them she claims to recognize. “Do you remember the tree your mother made, boss, that one time, out of new sweaters? The war must still have been on. I was not very old. Matt, your grandmother was the most creative woman. She made a beautiful Christmas tree — although she called it something else, something like jewel without the J — entirely out of sweaters. Spruce green. It was the most amazing thing. Sculpture, I guess you would call it now.”
Matt could see his mother’s mouth tighten when Bernadette started on about the sweater tree but couldn’t figure out how to head the story off, or why it mattered. Let them reminisce, he thought, as he retreated to the kitchen for another slurp of gin and to think about carving the roll of white meat and sodden breadcrumbs.
He knew he probably shouldn’t be having anything to drink after the debacle of the night before. He had drunk-dialled Jennifer at midnight. Was it drunk-dialling if you could recall every detail of the call the next day? She sounded sleepy, blamed the marking, then asked if he had been drinking.
“Do I need to have been drinking to call my wife?”
“You tell me.”
“I just wanted to hear your voice. With Christmas coming and everything.”
“We don’t care about Christmas. Remember?”
“I don’t remember when we’ve ever been apart for Christmas.”
“Before we knew each other. How’s your mother?”
“She needs me.” He waited for Jennifer to say that she needed him.
“And the research? The model villages?”
“I bought a turkey. Well, a turkey roll.”
“Didn’t you tell me your mother does some kind of a Norwegian Christmas or something random like that?”
“Fuck. Right. I’d forgotten. Not random, by the way. My grandmother was —”
“Listen, Matt, it’s late here.”
He didn’t remind her it was actually an hour earlier.
“Maybe let’s talk in a couple of days. You know, Christmas Day.”
He put the phone down. “Frigid bitch.” Then he remembered you had to push the red button to cut the connection.
The potatoes are lumpy. Penelope supposes Matt forgot to peel them until Bernadette congratulates him on leaving the skins on. Apparently, most of the goodness is in the skins, and people do this all the time. Where was Bernadette during the war when potatoes were nearly all there was to eat, and they were always meticulously peeled? She knows the answer. Bernadette was only a girl. And science was not so advanced. Advanced enough to develop that bomb that Jonathan had gone to observe, but not advanced enough to convince people to get the best out of every potato. There was a book, though, something about potato peel pie. She thinks she read that — or at least the title.
The pinnekjøtt is not as salty as she likes. Thora must have gotten distracted, left it to soak too long. She looks for the pickled cabbage to perk things up, finds only a cylinder of what has to be cranberry jelly, its rippled sides remembering the shape of the tin from which it has plopped.
“How did you make gravy from a turkey roll?” the old lady beside her asks.
“It’s from a package,” Matt stage-whispers.
“Still, you’re going to make someone an excellent husband someday.” Bernadette — that’s who it is — laughs as she says it. Matt laughs too. Penelope chokes. There are lumps in the potatoes. Somebody — she thinks it’s Matt, can’t tell who through her tears — gets her a glass of water. It’s good to have children around at Christmas.
After the fruitcake, they said good night to Bernadette. Matt offered to walk her home (he didn’t dare drive the Volvo with the gin he had drunk) and Penelope said she would start cleaning up the kitchen. When he got back, she had gone up to bed. He found the leftover turkey in the dishwasher and the cutlery in the fridge. A mountain of sea salt was dumped out on the counter.