The Decorations (2005)
"Here they are at last,"David’s grandmother cried, and her face lit up: green from the luminous plastic holly that bordered the front door and then, as she took a plump step to hug David’s mother, red with the glow from the costume of the Santa in the sleigh beneath the window. “Was the traffic that bad, Jane?”
“I still don’t drive, Mummy. One of the trains was held up and we missed a connection.”
“You want to get yourself another man. Never mind, you’ll always have Davy,” his grandmother panted as she waddled to embrace him.
Her clasp was even fatter than last time. It smelled of clothes he thought could be as old as she was, and of perfume that didn’t quite disguise a further staleness he was afraid was her. His embarrassment was aggravated by a car that slowed outside the house, though the driver was only admiring the Christmas display. When his grandmother abruptly released him he thought she’d noticed his reaction, but she was peering at the sleigh. “Has he got down?” she whispered.
David understood before his mother seemed to. He retreated along the path between the flower-beds full of grass to squint past the lights that flashed MERRY CHRISTMAS above the bedroom windows. The second Santa was still perched on the roof; a wind set the illuminated figure rocking back and forth as if with silent laughter. “He’s there,” David said.
“I expect he has to be in lots of places at once.”
Now that he was nearly eight, David knew that his father had always been Santa. Before he could say as much, his grandmother plodded to gaze at the roof. “Do you like him?”
“I like coming to see all your Christmas things.”
“I’m not so fond of him. He looks too empty for my liking.” As the figure shifted in another wind she shouted “You stay up there where you belong. Never mind thinking of jumping on us.”
David’s grandfather hurried out to her, his slippers flapping on his thin feet, his reduced face wincing. “Come inside, Dora. You’ll have the neighbours looking.”
“I don’t care about the fat old thing,” she said loud enough to be heard on the roof and tramped into the house. “You can take your mummy’s case up, can’t you, David? You’re a big strong boy now.”
He enjoyed hauling the wheeled suitcase on its leash – it was like having a dog he could talk to, sometimes not only in his head – but bumping the luggage upstairs risked snagging the already threadbare carpet, and so his mother supported the burden. “I’ll just unpack quickly,” she told him. “Go down and see if anyone needs help.”
He used the frilly toilet in the equally pink bathroom and lingered until his mother asked if he was all right. He was trying to stay clear of the argument he could just hear through the salmon carpet. As he ventured downstairs his grandmother pounced on some remark so muted it was almost silent. “You do better, then. Let’s see you cook.”
He could smell the subject of the disagreement. Once he’d finished setting the table from the tray with which his grandfather sent him out of the kitchen, he and his mother saw it too: a casserole encrusted with gravy and containing a shrivelled lump of beef. Potatoes roasted close to impenetrability came with it, and green beans from which someone had tried to scrape the worst of the charring. “It’s not as bad as it looks, is it?” David’s grandmother said through her first mouthful. “I expect it’s like having a barbecue, Davy.”
“I don’t know,” he confessed, never having had one.
“They’ve no idea, these men, have they, Jane? They don’t have to keep dinner waiting for people. I expect your hubby’s the same.”
“Was, but can we not talk about him?”
“He’s learned his lesson, then. No call to make that face at me, Tom. I’m only saying Davy’s father – Oh, you’ve split up, Jane, haven’t you. Sorry about my big fat trap. Sorry Davy too.”
“Just eat what you want,” his grandfather advised him, “and then you’d best be scampering off to bed so Santa can make his deliveries.”
“We all want to be tucked up before he’s on the move,” said his grandmother before remembering to smile.
Santa had gone away like David’s father, and David was too old to miss either of them. He managed to breach the carapace of a second potato and chewed several forkfuls of dried-up beef, but the burned remains of beans defeated him. All the same, he thanked his grandmother as he stood up. “There’s a good boy,” she said rather too loudly, as if interceding with someone on his behalf. “Do your best to go to sleep.”
That sounded like an inexplicit warning, and was one of the elements that kept him awake in his bedroom, which was no larger than his room in the flat he’d moved to with his mother. Despite their heaviness, the curtains admitted a repetitive flicker from the letters ERR above the window, and a buzz that suggested an insect was hovering over the bed. He could just hear voices downstairs, which gave him the impression that they didn’t want him to know what they were saying. He was most troubled by a hollow creaking that reminded him of someone in a rocking chair, but overhead. The Santa figure must be swaying in the wind, not doing its best to heave itself free. David was too old for stories: while real ones didn’t always stay true, that wasn’t an excuse to make any up. Still, he was glad to hear his mother and her parents coming upstairs at last, lowering their voices to compensate. He heard doors shutting for the night, and then a nervous question from his grandmother through the wall between their rooms. “What’s he doing? Is he loose?”
“If he falls, he falls,” his grandfather said barely audibly, “and good riddance to him if he’s getting on your nerves. For pity’s sake come to bed.”
David tried not to find this more disturbing than the notion that his parents had shared one. Rather than hear the mattress sag under the weight his grandmother had put on, he tugged the quilt over his head. His grasp must have slackened when he drifted off to sleep, because he was roused by a voice. It was outside the house but too close to the window.
It was his grandfather’s. David was disconcerted by the notion that the old man had clambered onto the roof until he realised his grandfather was calling out of the adjacent window. “What do you think you’re doing, Dora? Come in before you catch your death.”
“I’m seeing he’s stayed where he’s meant to be,” David’s grandmother responded from below. “Yes, you know I’m talking about you, don’t you. Never mind pretending you didn’t nod.”
“Get in for the Lord’s sake,” his grandfather urged, underlining his words with a rumble of the sash. David heard him pad across the room and as rapidly if more stealthily down the stairs. A bated argument grew increasingly stifled as it ascended to the bedroom. David had refrained from looking out of the window for fear of embarrassing his grandparents, but now he was nervous that his mother would be drawn to find out what was happening. He mustn’t go to her; he had to be a man, as she kept telling him, and not one like his father, who ran off to women because there was so little to him. In time the muttering beyond the wall subsided, and David was alone with the insistence of electricity and the restlessness on the roof.