Eleven AM.
Justine had blown up a tarantula. This was really pretty funny when you thought about it…
Noon.
Outside the cabin: quick, trundling footsteps. Veins throbbed frantically in George’s neck and wrists, seeming almost to break free of his body. His bullet wound ached, and he breathed deeply. Dear God, make this a good day.
A little girl ran into the cabin. Her feet cycled furiously. Her arms opened wide.
‘Daddy! Daddy!’ Though raspy – a cold coming? – her voice still had the angelic tone that George had never heard in any child except his.
‘Holly!’
They embraced, the child giggling and trilling, George weeping. She was warm. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and blocked his incipient tears, Holly being too young to comprehend why anyone would weep out of happiness.
‘It’s so good to see you,’ he said.
‘It’s so good to see you,’ she said.
The war had taken its toll. Her hair looked like yarn. Her smile was interrupted by far more missing teeth than the predations of the tooth fairy alone could explain. She moved cringingly, with a slight limp. But her green eyes sparkled, her face was incandescent, she still had her wonderful compactness, and it was her, it was her!
‘Ahh – look at the tree!’ Holly shouted.
‘Do you like it? You can actually eat those oranges.’
‘No thank you. It’s beautiful. It has a star on top. That reminds me of something.’
‘What?’
‘Those Halloween trees we used to put up.’
‘Yes. We hung rubber bats on them.’
‘And little pumpkins. They were so cute.’
‘I want us to have Christmas,’ George said. ‘You did not get Christmas this year. This was because of the war.’ He was always careful to speak in complete, grammatical sentences around her.
‘Daddy, I have something very sad to tell you. This is important.’
‘What?’
‘This is important. Mommy died.’
‘You are right. It’s very sad. The war killed her.’
‘I know that,’ she said, mildly annoyed.
‘You gave her orange juice, didn’t you?’
‘She died anyway.’
‘Holly, Holly, it’s so good to have you here. See those presents down there?’
‘Are they for me?’
‘Yes. They’re all for you.’
‘All of them? All? Oh, Daddy, thank you, thank you. I’m so excited.’
‘Why don’t you start with this one?’ he said, handing her the gin bottle. She sheared away the aluminum foil. ‘A flower vase,’ he explained.
‘Later could we pick a flower?’ she asked.
‘Of course.’
Lunging for the big box, she stripped it bare. ‘That says, “Super Duper Cooking Set,”’ her father explained.
She pulled back the lid, took out the dishes, cups, saucers, pots, pans, kettles, and tureens. ‘Oh, Daddy, I love it, I love it. Will you play cooking with me?’
‘I think maybe we should finish the unwrapping.’
‘Then will you play with me?’
‘Of course.’ Apprehensively he picked up the doll. ‘Try this.’ She tore at the foil. ‘I know you wanted a Mary Merlin,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t find any.’
‘Couldn’t Santa Claus either?’
‘The stores were out of them.’
‘That’s okay.’ Holly kissed the doll and stroked its hair. ‘I like her so much. Her name is Jennifer.’
She put Jennifer to bed in a roasting pan from the Super Duper Cooking Set, covering her with a blanket of aluminum foil. Next George gave his daughter the white alabaster raven. She unwrapped it, named it Birdie, and laid it next to Jennifer. Soon the doll and the raven were fast asleep.
‘Be very quiet, Daddy.’
‘Okay.’
‘I want to pick out the next one.’
‘Sure.’
She yanked the stovepipe hat from the pile, unwrapped it. Making no comment, she put it on and grinned her ragged, episodic grin. Now the bright cylinder caught her eye. Bits of foil took to the air. ‘Oh, a clown!’ she said, unscrolling the harlequin poster. ‘He’s funny. I want to hang him up.’ They taped the poster to a bulkhead.
‘And now you’ve got this one,’ George said. Gleefully she ripped the foil. ‘It’s a story I once told you,’ he explained. ‘A bunny wants to ride a two-wheeler bike, and—’
‘Read it to me.’
Done.
‘Read it again.’
He did.
‘Read it again.’
‘You’ve got another present over here.’
‘I’ll bet it’s a beach ball.’ She pulled apart the wrapping, continued beaming even after the beach ball proved to be a globe. ‘What does it do?’
‘It shows us what the world is like. Well, it’s really a kind of game.’
‘Let’s play it.’
‘Okay. You need this thing over here.’ He handed her the poker chips, and she unwrapped them. ‘You see, they have the names of countries on them. Everybody gets ten. Then you spin the globe like this, and you keep your eyes closed, and you put your finger out the way I’m doing. And if your finger stops on a country that’s the same as one of your chips, then you—’
‘Is that last present for me too?’ Holly asked, removing her stovepipe hat and waving it toward the tree.
‘Yes. It’s from Santa Claus.’
She freed her civil defense gear from its foil. ‘Oooh, a gold one. Pretty.’
‘It’s called a scopas suit.’
‘I know that.’
‘I thought you might like to dress up in it.’
‘Nice. What’s the matter with the glove?’
‘Something hit it.’
‘Let’s play tea party. I’ll be the sister. You be the visitor.’
Holly distributed her new cooking things around the coffee table. She set out Sverre’s gin bottle, filling it with several tree ornaments that vaguely resembled flowers. The raven was invited, and the doll, and the visitor, and also the scopas suit, which Holly decided was a scarecrow. Everyone had invisible cake and gossamer ice cream. During the course of the afternoon, the scarecrow’s name went from Suzy to Margaret to Alfred.
Later she played alone, giving Birdie, Jennifer, and Alfred their bottles, putting them in for their naps. Outside the submarine, the black of day gave way to the black of night.
Father and daughter went to the galley and had Christmas dinner. The stale pretzels were scrumptious. They sneaked extra sugar into their cocoa.
When they were back in the cabin, George said, ‘Holly, would you like a horsey ride?’
‘No.’
He was grievously disappointed.
Ten seconds later she said, ‘Give me a horsey ride.’
For George it was to be a test. All previous horsey rides had ended with him insisting that he was too tired to continue. In truth he had been too bored. Each time, he had received the impression that there was no point at which Holly herself would end the ride, that she would more likely fall asleep in the saddle.
She climbed atop his big equine shoulders, and he galloped down the corridor. The pressure on his spine was extraordinarily pleasant. Waving her stovepipe hat, she urged him on. ‘Turn… down here, Horsey… go through the door… that’s the way, Horsey.’
Fifteen minutes passed. Horsey became bored. He thought: how can this be? Yet there it was, boredom. I shall keep going, he told himself. Nothing will stop this horsey ride, nothing.
‘This reminds me of something,’ Holly said.