CHRISTMAS FATHER


The little girl had been standing a full two minutes on her head, balanced against the front of the sofa, enjoying the blood-rush. She knew she ought to come down so that her tiny body was re-covered in its skirt the right way up, before her father took refuge with her in the small sitting room; before his big, man's out-of-control body burst upon her innocent dream.

She heard him crash through the front entrance, welcomed by a tirade of verbal abuse from the steaming kitchen. He stumbled through the hallway and fell awkwardly before making a grab for the sitting-room door. Slamming it shut with all the ferocity his drunken stupor could muster, he seemed to lose consciousness, leaning heavily with his back against its panels. His legs gave way and he slithered down leaden, like a man shot dead. Although they had lived in the town for two years' now, he still dressed in the thread-bare lounge suit with his trousers tucked into wellingtons, together with the greasy cap that identified him as a struggling yeoman farmer.

The girl held her breath and wished for a chasm to tear the room apart, so that she could remain in the fairy-tale wonder and excitement of this advancing Christmas Eve on the one side - and know that his madness and violence would never be able to reach her from the other. At least he was quiet where he had fallen amost doubled-in-half - like the rag doll she had asked Father Christmas to bring her that night; at least he couldn't make her feel dirty like he normally did, asking her questions which made fires of embarrassment burn within her like a match to paper - although she had no idea as to their meaning.

In spite of the uproar, her mother had not left the kitchen but had determinedly continued with preparations for the family party at six. The sitting room had been as undisturbed as a grave for the past two days, chairs spread all round the walls with space left in the middle for dancing; snack-sticks lay strewn in bowls and the little girl had polished silver trinkets from early that morning, in accordance with the terse instructions that had been barked at her. Everything had to be fine.

Attracted by the movement caught through the venetian blinds, she saw her brother coming up the path dressed strangely incognito in an oversized coat and with an effeminate, wide-brimmed rain-hat lowered over his brows. "He's thrown a brick through Mansell's window", she heard him say as he walked without stopping straight into the kitchen where the air was thick with the smell of mince pies. "It's only a question of time - Mansell will know who's done it..."

The girl knew then that life would be no different today from that of any other. As usual, she had awoken to the sound of her brother's incessant vomiting into the toilet bowl; to the whirring of the washing machine, dissolving the stains from the sheets of the nervous lodger who could exercise no bladder control; to the vision of her mother tireless and working as if demonised, her face creased with frustration and wearing the red lipstick of defiance and grim determination that silenced the girl into becoming an incorporeal shadow about the house.

And, as the hospital warders came with their white-coats flapping to "take Bill home" yet again, she said to her invisible self: "This is going to be a bloody awful Christmas". Returning to the kitchen, her mother snapped on the radio: it was the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols from St Paul's.

The show, and the party, went on.