‘I don’t know why someone doesn’t tell that man to wash,’ says Mrs Griffiths, crossly. ‘It’s a disgrace.’
‘Oh, I know,’ says Mrs Davidson. ‘Polly Wantage told him once, you know, after she stopped him from spitting, and what he said to her was unrepeatable.’
Mrs Griffiths’ eyes widen with a kind of horrified delight. Strong language is so far outside her world that when she overhears it, it is as exotic as Bengal tigers.
Mrs Griffiths buys a big box of Christmas cards because she wants Mrs Davidson to think that she has lots of friends and relations. She will send a card to the vicar and the doctor, and she will drop one through the letter boxes of the more respectable people in the village, so that they will send one back, and then, should anyone call round and glance at her cards, it will be clear that she is well connected and respected. She also buys mincemeat and ready-made frozen shortcrust pastry, because tonight she is going to make mince pies for the carol singers.
Mrs Griffiths has always hated the carol singers, even though they are the children of the better families. They arrive with their guitars and their recorders, and every year they sing the same two songs, ‘Silent Night’ and ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’. They collect for the NSPCC, and Mrs Griffiths would really rather give money to the RSPCA; at least animals cannot be blamed for anything, and do not grow up to be thieves and yobs. Mrs Griffiths secretly resents the way in which the carol singers are so young and bright-eyed, so full of high laughter, so full of the future, and previously she has always turned out the lights when she heard them coming, so that she does not have to go out and listen to them, or give them money, or make mince pies and hot punch as everyone else does. The carol singers have always sung to her closed door and doused lights, and have then departed.
But things have changed. Mrs Griffiths lost her husband in the spring, and is slowly realising that at last the time has come when she has to make an effort to get on with people. She did not love her husband, he was boring and inconsequential, and she had not even loved him when they married. After he died, she felt merely a sense of relief, conjoined with the bitterness of a freedom that has come too late. Sometimes she wonders whether she has ever loved anyone at all, and certainly she has never loved anyone as they do on the television late at night, with all those heaving backsides. But, even though her husband was a cipher, nowadays Mrs Griffiths feels a certain emptiness, a certain need to reach out, a certain need to be reborn. Tonight she will make mince pies and punch, she will leave the lights on, she will come out and listen, and she will tell the children that their music is wonderful. She will ignore the fact that they know only one verse of ‘Silent Night’, their guitars are out of tune and their recorders too shrill, and she will wish them a happy Christmas even though they are beautiful and still have a chance in life.
Mrs Griffiths covers herself and her kitchen in dusting sugar, she deals with the frustration of pastry that sticks to the table and the rolling pin, she conquers the meanness that nearly prevents her from pouring a whole bottle of red wine into the punch, and then she waits, sitting on the wooden chair in the kitchen, warmed by the rich smells of baking pastry and hot wine, and lemon, and rum. ‘After they’ve been,’ she thinks, ‘I will write all my cards, and then I’ll draw a hot bath and read.’ Since her husband died, Mrs Griffiths has taken to reading true-life romances that one can order six at a time from a special club. She has read so many that she thinks she could probably write one herself.
It grows very dark, and three hours pass. Mrs Griffiths goes often to her door, and opens it, to see if she can hear the carol singers coming. The night is very cold; there is a frosty wind, but she does not think that it is going to rain. They will be here before long.
Mrs Griffiths sits in her wooden chair and thinks about what she should say to the children; does ‘Merry Christmas’ sound better than ‘Happy Christmas’? Does ‘Thank you so much for coming’ sound too formal? The young are not very formal these days. During the time when everyone was going on about the Beatles, the youngsters kept saying ‘groovy’, but that was probably not very ‘with it’ any more. She is not even sure if ‘with it’ is ‘with it’ these days. She experiments with ‘Groovy Christmas’, but decides against it.
Mrs Griffiths hears ‘Silent Night’ in the distance. The children are singing to the gypsies in their scrapyard, causing the Alsatians to howl. Now they are singing to the Davidsons, and now they are singing to the baroque musicologist, and now they are singing to smelly Jack Oak. Mrs Griffiths listens very hard for the squeak of her garden gate and the experimental chords of the guitarists. She knows that, in between the houses, the children bray out songs from pop groups with silly names and working-class accents.
The children arrive at the garden gate, and the tall, lanky one says, ‘What about this one?’
‘Not worth it,’ says the other guitarist, who is proud of the fact that he is going to get a shaving kit for Christmas. He strokes his invisible moustache with a nail-bitten forefinger.
‘She’s an old skinflint,’ says the blonde girl who will be beautiful when she loses her puppy fat.
‘Her husband died,’ says the dark, sensitive girl with the brown eyes.
‘It won’t do any harm, will it?’ asks the blonde girl.
‘There’s no point,’ says the lanky boy, ‘she just turns off the lights as soon as she hears us coming. Every year it’s the same, don’t you remember? She’s an old ratbag.’
‘Mum told us not to leave her out,’ says the blonde.
‘Who’s going to tell Mum?’ demands her brother. ‘Let’s go and do the Armstrongs.’
Mrs Griffiths sits on her wooden chair and hears ‘Silent Night’ coming from next door. At first she feels a livid pang of anger, and one or two of those vehement forbidden words spring to her mind, but not to her lips. She is indignant, and thinks, ‘How dare they miss me out. They always come here. Why am I the one to miss out?’ She looks at her inviting heap of mince pies and her steaming bowl of punch, and thinks, ‘I did all this for them.’ She wants to go outside and shout insults at them, but she cannot think of anything that would not sound ridiculous and undignified.
Alongside her anger and frustration, Mrs Griffiths abruptly feels more tired and forlorn than she has ever felt in her life, and she begins to cry for the first time since she was a child. She is surprised by large tears that well up in her eyes and slide down the sides of her nose, rolling down her hands and wrists, and into her sleeves. She had not remembered that tears could be so warm. She tastes one, in order to be reminded of their saltiness, and finds it comforting. She thinks, ‘Perhaps I should get a cat,’ and fetches some kitchen roll so that she can blow her nose.
Mrs Griffiths begins to write her cards. One for the vicar, one for the doctor, one for the people in the mansion, one for the Conservative councillor. She gets up from her chair and, without really thinking about it, eats a mince pie and takes a glass of punch. She had forgotten how good they can be, and she feels the punch igniting her insides. The sensuality of it shocks and seduces her, and she takes another glass.
Mrs Griffiths cries some more, but this time it is partly for pleasure, for the pleasure of the hot briny water, and the sheer self-indulgence. A rebellious whim creeps up on her. She glances around as if to check that she is truly alone in the house, and then she stands up and shouts, ‘Bloody bloody bloody bloody bloody.’ She adds, ‘Bloody children, bloody bloody.’ She attempts ‘bollocks’ but merely embarrasses herself and tries ‘bugger’ instead. She drinks more punch and says, ‘Bloody bugger.’ She writes a card to the gypsies who own the scrapyard, and to the water-board man who had an illegitimate child by a Swedish barmaid, and to the people who own the pub and vote Labour. She eats two mince pies at once, cramming them into her mouth, one on top of the other, and the crumbs and the sugar settle on to the front of her cardigan. She fetches a biscuit tin, and puts into it six of the remaining pies. She presses down the lid and ventures out into the night.