A Twist of the Knife

A Christmas tradition

Susan took the black lace-trimmed teddy from the bottom drawer of her pine chest, where it had lain carefully washed and neatly folded for twelve months. The satin trickled through her fingers as she held it to her body and she was shocked how rough her hands felt in contrast to its softness, and by how drawn and tired her face looked in the mirror against its sheen.

She was frightened that Tony would not come back tonight, and she could not bear the thought of spending Christmas without him. They had never spent Christmas apart before, but she had a feeling this year was going to bring some break with tradition, and she was uneasy.

Thirty-three and growing old. Growing old and frightened, she thought as she parted the curtains and stared into the darkness, watching the fairy lights on her neighbour’s tree through the ghost of her own face at the window. A mist of fine rain clung like a swarm of midges to the glow of the street lamp, and tears clung to her eyelashes.

She looked up, wondering if he was up there now beyond the canopy of clouds. There were times on clear nights when she had seen navigation lights winking beneath the stars and had wondered if it was him, returning. The clouds frightened her, made her think back... but she suppressed the memory. It was Christmas Eve and he always managed to make it back, somehow.

She had had no message from him, although that was not unusual, and she understood how the wives and girlfriends of hostages must feel, never knowing, never hearing; except Tony wasn’t being held captive, unless it was by temptation. He was one of those mercurial and unpredictable men, with an aura of the untamed adventurer about him and an appetite for life that women found attractive. She had noticed his eyes roving at parties.

And yet he swore he had never been unfaithful. Until recently, Susan had believed him. Her friends had tried to tell her to forget him, to move on, and his long silence and her feeling about the break with tradition were beginning to convince her also. The stewardesses on the small private airline were chosen for their looks. Tony flew the world with them. It was hard to believe he could have always resisted.

Even so, she kept her hope and prepared the bed, let her long brown hair down because he liked it that way, put on his favourite perfume, moisturized her hands and ran them down her slender, freshly waxed legs, savouring their smoothness. She slipped out of her clothes, shivering from the cold air on her naked skin, and put on the teddy, which he had bought her for Christmas five years ago, and which it had become a tradition for her to wear in bed on Christmas Eve.

The first time they had made love was on Christmas Eve, up in her attic bedroom at her parents’ home in Wembley whilst they were out at a party. Afterwards they had lain in silence, the windowpanes drenched in the darkness of the night, wrapping paper rustling at the end of the bed when they moved their feet. She could still remember vividly how they had held each other tightly, urgently, pressing against each other for warmth and reassurance, and they had made one of those vows that young people in love make, and in time can so easily forget.

They vowed that whatever happened in the future, they would always make love on Christmas Eve.

So far, in fourteen years, neither of them had broken the vow. It had become a tradition between them, a night of intense sensuality that grew stronger each year, fuelling in Susan a sense of the magic of Christmas that she remembered as a child but once thought had been lost forever.

Tony had usually managed to wangle the rosters, and on those times when he had not been able to, and all looked impossible, fog had come down and grounded the aircraft, or there had been a mechanical problem and he had been released from duty. Once, in an act of sheer bravado, he had borrowed his boss’s plane and flown in from Monaco at midnight. She remembered that Christmas well. A tear rolled from her eye; her lashes crushed it and she smiled — she did not want him to arrive home and find her in tears.

She lit a candle, as she always did on Christmas Eve, placed it on Tony’s bedside table, slid his card beneath it, and slipped into bed. She read for a while, waiting, listening. It was ten past twelve. At half past she switched off her bedside light. The flame of the candle burned steadily, undisturbed. He liked to make love with a light on, liked to watch her, liked to unclip the fasteners of the teddy himself. ‘You’re my Christmas present,’ he would say, and then lean forward to kiss her. Everywhere.

For a long time they had given each other a stocking, but that was a tradition she had stopped, concentrating instead on the children. Christmas had been special to her childhood and she wanted it to be special to theirs too. But she had never dreamed that it would one day dominate her every waking moment. That it would become a point on the horizon to which each year was anchored. The port in the storm. The magical time when wounds could be healed and sadness forgotten and hope restored.

She had never dreamed that it would be memories of Christmases past that gave her the strength to get up each morning, to get through the spring and into the summer. And that August and September would be months of deep doldrums in which the memory had faded and doubt would seep into her like acid from a corroded battery, eating away, leaving wounds and pain and scars.

Then with the first crisp snap of an autumn chill the memory would come alive again and hope would wrap itself snugly around her with the knowledge that Christmas lay just beyond those first long nights of the autumn and the fierce equinox gales that would vandalize the landscape. Christmas would follow with calm, with serenity, with carols and games of Monopoly, with long walks and mince pies, with the laughter of old friends and the pleasure of old traditions. One very special tradition.

She closed her eyes, but knew, like all the Christmas Eves of her childhood, this was one of those nights when she could not even remember how to fall asleep. In the silence of the house she could hear the insistent rustling of paper, and she smiled — the kids already rummaging through their stockings. They wouldn’t actually open their presents tonight — she had taught them they must not until the morning — but they would be feeling the shapes of the packages, wondering, trying to guess. Then she heard the faint click of the front door and her breathing quickened.

It clicked again, shut. She waited for the next click of the deadlock, and the final clank of the safety chain, then his footsteps. Routine, she thought; she knew his routine so well and you had to be careful in marriage not to turn traditions into routines.

She lay and waited and it was the expectation that gave her her deepest arousal. He moved slowly, hanging up his coat then going into the kitchen and sifting through the mountain of post she had left waiting for him. Her stomach felt like a snowstorm that had been shaken inside a glass paperweight.

He was moving up the stairs, his pace lighter and quicker with every step, as if he sensed her excitement and it was charging his own. He opened the bedroom door and the candle jigged in the sudden draught, and shadows danced beyond her closed eyelids. Her lips released the smile they could no longer contain as she sensed his shadow in front of her now, felt the fresh sheets sliding back and the sudden cold air on her skin, and she knew he was watching, knew he was lowering his head to kiss her; she felt the caress of his hands, then his fingers, fumbling clumsily, as they always did, with the fastener.

‘My very special Christmas present,’ he said.

‘And mine,’ she murmured richly, as his lips touched her.

The morning was dry and cold and an east wind blew. Frost sparkled like powdered glass on the grass, and the crimson orb of the sun hung in the grey silk sky. It was the kind of magical Christmas morning she remembered from childhood.

Static crackled inside the house as she walked across the carpets, lighting the fire, putting out the glasses, paper rustling continuously now as the children tore open more presents. Static crackled inside her veins too, and she felt flooded with the same passion for life that Tony’s presence always fired in her.

She liked this time before the invasion of relatives started. Once they would have gone to church, but Tony did not like that any more, did not want to come with her; they had precious little time together and she could not bear to spend even an hour of it without him. It had become a morning to savour for themselves, a time of reflection and of peace. And a time, she hoped today, to forge a new understanding between them.

A time when the house always felt bright and cheery. The windows decanted light into the room, spreading it evenly so that everything seemed intensely alive, the colours rich, the textures of the carpets and the wallpaper and the curtains emerging from the monochrome shadows which shrouded them for the rest of the year. The holly looked fresh, the berries ripened to a vivid red.

The air became infused with smells of basting turkey, wood smoke and freshly uncorked bottles. There was a quietness outside, stronger than any Sunday, the silence of a night that lingered on into the day and would soon be pleasantly disturbed with laughter, and the clinking of glasses, the chatter and snores of discarded relatives retrieved again for the occasion, like the tangled fairy lights in the tired cardboard box.

And the draughts. Always the draughts.

‘Never known a house with so many draughts,’ her father said.

She watched the light bulbs swaying, the curtains shifting restlessly, the ball of wrapping paper that uncurled by itself and fluttered from time to time. Paper rustled with a roar like the pull of a retreating tide on shingle. Strands of silver lametta and tinsel shimmied between the needles of the tree. The children were engrossed. Lucy was changing her Barbie doll’s dress. Jamie was assembling his Scalextric. Sometimes the coloured baubles on the tree would touch with sounds like wind chimes. Old logs settled into the grate and new ones crackled.

In the kitchen Susan was distracted by Tony and she kept duplicating jobs and spilling things. He was in a more passionate mood than she had ever known, and from his caresses she felt increasing currents of excitement in the pit of her stomach as fresh erotic images formed in her mind, and new desires pulled silky threads tight inside her. She broke a glass. It was lucky to break a glass, he had told her once, a long time ago. She reminded him and they laughed together now.

Car doors slammed outside. The family had begun to arrive. Her father walked with a stick after his heart surgery.

‘Never seen you look so well, Susan,’ he said.

They all told her how well she looked. Years had dropped from her face, they said.

Ronnie Bodkins, the chirpy oaf her sister had married, with his two lawnmower dealerships and his pearls of wisdom trawled from the Reader’s Digest, sat on the sofa and slurped his Pinot Noir (red wine, he assured everyone, was the best thing for your heart) and told his one joke that came out each year as if it came from the same tired box that contained the fairy lights.

Someone always fed him the question. This year it was her brother, Christopher. ‘How’s business, Ronnie?’ he asked.

‘Oh, can’t complain. Christmas is a good time for me. All the little women come in and buy their hubbies gardening presents. Could have fooled me there’s a recession. Well, it was the Good Lord himself who said that a great profit shall come unto the land!’

He always laughed at his joke. He was the only one.

Conversations edged on, the digging and probing of new ventures and old wounds. The morning passed for Susan in a haze of remembered pleasures, and a sense of anticipation she had never experienced before. She came into the drawing room for a quick glass of Champagne and looked at the clock. 1.15 p.m. Lunch, then the Queen’s speech. Some Like It Hot with Marilyn Monroe on the box. Followed by Downton Abbey. And then, probably, to bed. Except something was different about this Christmas and she hardly dared hope it could be true.

‘To absent friends.’

Her brother’s toast at the beginning of lunch was becoming a tradition too. They all raised their glasses. Susan raised hers the highest. She sensed the draught on her cheeks, felt it lifting her hair and lowering it again. Body language. There were signals between her and Tony the way there were between all lovers, a touch, a whisper, a wink. As the years had gone by their signalling had become stronger and they could communicate feelings without the banality of conversation. Tonight, Tony was saying. He wanted to make love again, tonight.

Normally, she stuffed herself, drank herself into a pleasant state of oblivion and collapsed in front of the box, dragging herself to her feet from time to time to make tea, to say farewells, to tidy up with a heavy heart and heave herself upstairs to bed. Instead, today she cut herself a thin sliver of turkey, took no potatoes and just a couple of sprouts, and sipped only her mineral water.

‘Not dieting, surely, darling?’ her mother asked.

She replied with a silent blush.

‘Four years now,’ her father said. His voice resonated in the silence the toast had left in its wake.

Four years since the small plane had gone down, crashed into trees outside the airfield only ten miles from the house. Just a simple error. He had forgotten to adjust the altimeter from Monaco’s sea level setting to Biggin Hill’s. Just the twiddle of a knob. But the magic of Christmas affected everyone in its own way.

‘It must be hard for you, darling,’ her mother said. ‘Christmas must be the time when you miss him the most.’

Susan shared her secret with the candles that tugged sharply on their wicks, and the paper chains that swayed gently, and she felt the draught as warm as breath blowing down her neck, and thought about the night ahead that might be heralding the start of a new tradition. ‘No,’ she said with a distant smile. ‘It’s the one day of the year I don’t miss him at all.’