Della knew why they’d sent Clive to share the mulled-wine tent. Everyone knew she was a lush, but no one spoke out of turn to her. For that she was grateful. Many of the residents were middle class, polite, but she knew several ate and drank too much. She’d watched them fatten up over the years, but Christmas was the worst season.
It was a drag to pretend she was enjoying all of this, but it was for a good cause. That was what kept her in the choir and the book club, teaching Pilates and doing foot massage. Knowing she ought to keep up her training didn’t help. It meant going over to Crete. Perhaps when spring came…
Standing in the market square was hard on her feet – she was out of condition – but then a record on the tannoy pulled her down into a black hole of despair. Someone had a load of British and American slushy Christmas songs and up came Johnny Mathis singing ‘When A Child Is Born’. His languid tones rang out across the square and Della clutched her stomach. Not that… not those words. She wanted to rush away from those memories, but she must stay at her post. It brought back all those years in the eighties. Every detail of those days rushed back to her.
*
It was a summer of festivals, a summer of love, and she was living in a psychedelic caravan with Luke, a boy she’d picked up at the Who gig. He was heavily into the scene, cannabis, anything that took him to where the world was a blur of hope and oblivion. They were a good crowd to be with. She was working in a candle shop, selling beads and ethnic goods, hippie cottons and cheesecloth shirts, surrounded by incense. Della had left home, school and all the restraints of Yorkshire to live in this commune of sorts. It was out in the country close to Hardcastle Crags near Hebden Bridge. They were not gypsies or travellers, just dropouts from the nine-to-five, leaving behind restrictive conventions.
Luke was a fraud, a schoolboy from a landowning family in the Yorkshire Dales. He wore silk shirts from hippie market stalls and velour jeans, and smelt of incense and weed. She thought it was love, adoring his body. He liked to swim naked in any lake or river. Wild swimming was what they called it now. He lay in the sun unashamed. In his company she lost all her Catholic hang-ups about sex and sin.
One day a young man arrived in a suit. He was Luke’s elder brother, Ivo, demanding Luke return for his parents’ silver wedding anniversary celebration. ‘Put on this dinner suit,’ he ordered. ‘I don’t want you looking like a tart in front of them. Mummy will be so pleased to see you. Don’t let her down this time. She thinks you’re working in London.’
‘I’m not going without Della.’ Luke clutched her hand in defiance.
‘Then get her something decent to wear.’ Ivo looked her up and down with a sneer.
‘I can dress myself perfectly well, thank you,’ she replied.
Rachel in the shop kitted her out in a long velvet smock with batwing sleeves and put her long hair up in a braid, dotted with fake pearls. She wasn’t going to let him down and was curious to see just where he came from.
‘Smile and say nothing,’ Luke said. ‘Tell them you work in a boutique. You look gorgeous.’
Ivo came for them in a large estate car. He looked them up and down.’ You’ll do, but no hash in the house or my car.’ He was such a supercilious snob, so different from Luke.
The grandeur of their home was a shock – it belonged to another world she’d hardly known existed: it was almost the size of the house in Brideshead on the telly, with a huge lake and a fountain. There was a field full of expensive cars and women in evening gowns, studded with real pearls and jewellery she’d only ever seen in magazine adverts. ‘I can’t go in there,’ Della whispered. ‘It’s not for the likes of me.’
‘Yes, you will. You’re my girl.’ Luke hugged her. She knew then that they could carry it off, but her hands shook as she and Luke made their entrance into the marble hall, which was lined with busts and gargantuan flower arrangements. It smelt like a florist’s shop.
‘Darling Lucas, how wonderful to see you at long last.’ Hermione Fuller-White clutched him to her ample bosom. ‘And who is your little friend?’
‘This is Della.’
‘Cordelia, actually.’ She added her full baptismal name. It sounded posher. They were whisked away by Ivo, who looked at her as if she were shit on his shoe.
‘Don’t think you can have a future with my brother,’ he said, taking her to one side. ‘Lucas will come back into the fold in due course.’
Della knew Luke couldn’t stand his old life, with its snobbery and rigid standards, so she smiled sweetly. ‘Fuck off, wanker!’ The look on his face said everything.
Their life together continued in bliss, but winter was coming and they found the caravan leaking and damp. Luke still took his daily swim, but one afternoon he didn’t return. When it got dark, Della grew afraid and persuaded the rest of the camp to go looking for him. Later the following morning, a gamekeeper found him floating at the edge of the river. Her lovely boy had drowned.
His family came to take him home. The anguish on his mother’s face never left Della. ‘What lies, all lies!’ she cried, seeing the state of their caravan. ‘How could he do this to his family, living in this den of drugs? You should be ashamed of yourself, young lady, leading him into a life of debauchery,’ she snapped at Della.
Ivo stood back smugly. ‘We want nothing more to do with you, or your lot.’
It was a smart country funeral, but none of the commune were invited. Della went anyway. She stood by Luke’s grave, defiant to the last, but they ignored her, leaving her to throw a bunch of rosemary onto the coffin in remembrance of the good times they had shared. By then she had her own secret. She was nearly three months pregnant and desperate. She had no idea how she was to live with the only part of Luke that was left.
Della’s parents were horrified and didn’t want to know. The caravan, without Luke, held no charm. Her biggest mistake was writing to his parents to tell them she was expecting their grandchild. By return she received a solicitor’s letter informing her that the Fuller-Whites had no desire to acknowledge the baby. They wanted no contact with her, suggesting she was a money-grabbing whore. Enclosed was the promise of a thousand pounds with an address for a clinic that would ‘take away’ the problem. She would receive the cheque after she had attended and proof had been supplied that the abortion had taken place.
Such a sum was a life-changer. She could start afresh and get training. Why not just have the money and be allowed to keep the baby? It was nearly Christmas and it was time to make the momentous decision. Della knew it was a mortal sin to submit to an abortion and that kept her awake. Her only excuse was that she was a lapsed Catholic. The rules did not apply to her, did they?
There was no one she could share this with, no friend she trusted enough, not even Rachel in the shop. She sobbed all the way to the clinic in the Georgian square in Leeds. How could she destroy a life? But how could she keep a child with no home, no money and no support? Della went through that door and killed any chance of happiness for the rest of her life.
Afterwards she went into the Merrion Shopping Centre and heard, on the tannoy, Johnny Mathis sing ‘When A Child Is Born’, knowing she had made the worst mistake of her young life. In doing that, she had betrayed Luke and the love they had shared. By ignoring her deepest faith in the sanctity of life, she felt she had been cast into darkness. She wanted to die, but the will to survive is strong.
The money was released. Della went to college to educate herself, slept around, hoping to bring another life into the world but with no luck. That was why she hated Christmas. It reminded her not of new life but of death, of darkness not light, of guilt and weakness. How could she ever be forgiven?
Later, when she got home, Della wept. She reached for the bottle, giving herself up to oblivion.