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My parents gave up on Christmas altogether once I left home for university. They had never been people for celebrations and we were a household like Belfast in the religious sense — my father, the Catholic, went to midnight mass; my mother, Anglican, to the parish church at 8 a.m. I alternated, year by year, for the sake of fairness. It was a strained time.
As an adult, living in my own place the moment I could afford rent, I never returned home for Christmas Day, but went to various generous friends — the sort of normal friends who had proper festivities, puddings lit with brandy and paper crowns, the works — and I learned how things ought to be done. Once I was married with children, so they were. But in between those times, there came two strange and yet, especially now I look back on them, wholly delightful Christmases, one when I was alone but not quite, the second when I definitely was.
Voices drifted to me in my eyrie from the family party below, but I was asleep before my tray was collected
I had not felt well for a couple of days and when I went out to buy presents everything seemed gray and I was unsteady and had the odd sense that there was a sort of gauze between me and the rest of the world. I was due to spend Christmas with friends fifteen miles away, driving over on the twenty-fourth, but I woke with a high-ish temperature and a blinding headache. Being out at all seemed perilous and I surely should not be in charge of a car, so before I retired to bed, I phoned to cancel. I was told to put my essentials in a bag and wait. A couple of hours later, I was lying between fresh sheets on cool pillows, the curtains half-pulled together, a glass of lemon and honey and two aspirin beside me. I had barely noticed the huge Christmas tree that touched the hall ceiling, or the fairy lights round the door, and tried not to inhale the smell of cooking meat in case I threw up. I had not felt so ill in many years.
I would have gone to the Cathedral Full Choral Eucharist on Christmas Day, but I could not even bear to listen to one similar on the radio, my head ached so much, so Holy Communion was brought to me at my bedside straight from the service, by the Precentor in whose house I was staying. I thought I could not possibly eat lunch but when a tray appeared, on which were fairy portions of everything, with a sprig of holly and a cracker, and a thimble full — literally — of fine Burgundy, I managed it.
Voices and merriment drifted to me in my eyrie from the large family party below, but I was asleep before my tray was collected. When I woke, it was dark outside, the house was quiet, and I cried, out of weakness, fever and sheer gratitude. The following morning, a doctor appeared, pronounced influenza and bronchitis, and ordered me to remain in situ for at least a week. People climbed the stairs to wish me good cheer but wisely stayed at the door. My hostess did not trouble to isolate herself, on the grounds that she would be brewing my germs by now if she was going to, and spent an hour that evening sitting by my bed reading as I dozed. It was a Christmas like no other, and it might have been the worst ever, but in a strange way, now I look back, I realize that it was one of the best.
So, also strangely, was the one I spent entirely alone out of choice. I did not stay at home but took a cottage in the lee of the Black Hills. It was set apart from but within sight and sound of a hamlet, and an hour after I arrived, on the day before Christmas Eve, it began to snow. I had brought provisions but, with a sixth sense that I was going to need them, dashed out down the slippery lanes to buy more. I woke the next morning to white mountains and a blizzard, but the electricity was working and never went off, so that I had light and power, a pile of seasoned logs outside the back door and a dozen new A4 notebooks to write in. People went by, on foot, horseback or tractor, and waved. A note was left with a tray of mince pies and details of who to ring if I needed help, and who would dig me out of the drifts. I have lived in quiet country places for nigh on fifty years, but never been so lapped in snow-bound silence as during that strange, beautiful Christmas when I was so contentedly home alone.
