The nativity was performed by the eight-and nine-year-olds, with younger children playing shepherds as well as trees and stars. A painted sky suspended between shortened broom handles was held up by two tiny children. The angels had cardboard wings and costumes made from net curtains. Next year Mikey would be old enough to take part.
A few weeks ago the teacher had asked Alan for suggestions as to how the nativity should be done. Alan was the administrator of a small touring theatre group. He loved the emotional intimacy that actors created between them; and he still liked the excitement of the ‘show’, the live connection between his colleagues on stage and those who had left their homes for the honest spectacle. There was some sort of important fear that united them all, which made the theatre different from the cinema. His work was badly paid, of course. Some of the actors he worked with appeared on television; the director was married to a rich woman. Alan, though, had no other income. His girlfriend Melanie was an actress. She was pregnant and soon wouldn’t be able to work for a while.
When the nativity started Alan checked his pocket. He had taken a handkerchief out with him, a proper cloth handkerchief given to him, inexplicably, by Anne, years ago. He had not gone out with a pocket handkerchief since his last day at school. But all afternoon he had been afraid the children’s voices would make him break down. To cheer himself up he had thought of his father, in church at Christmas — the only time he went — singing as loud as he could, not caring that he was out of tune. They were celebrating, Father said, not making a record for Deutsche Grammophon.
The parents cried and laughed through the nativity, and the younger children, like Alan’s son, shouted out joyfully.
Alan compared himself to the people he knew there. At the door he had been greeted by a man who had said, ‘I could do with a drink, too, but I’m not allowed.’
Until the man reminded him that he had fixed Alan’s car a couple of times, Alan couldn’t think who he was, for he was thin and decrepit, with a shaven head.
‘But at least you look well, you look well,’ the man said, as Alan moved away uncomfortably, only at this stage becoming aware of how ill the man must be.
There was a woman sitting in the adjacent row. Alan had been told by an acquaintance earlier in the year that she had thrown herself naked from a window, smashing her face and breaking her ribs, before being taken to hospital in a strait-jacket. Another woman, sitting further along the row, had ignored him, or perhaps she hadn’t seen him. But she had walked often with him in the park, as their children played. She had told him she was leaving her husband.
It had been a murderous century, yet here, in this comfortable
corner of the earth, by some fluke, most of them had been spared. For that he sang, wondering, all the same, why they were so joyless.
Melanie hadn’t been pregnant long, but her body had started to change. She was losing her girlishness. Apart from her thick waist, she felt heavy and claimed she was already forced to walk with a ‘waddle’. She wasn’t working at the moment, so it didn’t matter that she had to go back to bed in the morning. When they weren’t fighting he would sit with her, eating his breakfast.
She had an appointment the next day, for an abortion. He would pick her up the day after. A long time ago he had been involved in two other abortions. The first he had avoided by going away to stay with another woman. Of the second, he remembered only how the woman lay on the floor and wept afterwards. He recalled sitting across the room from her with his eyes closed, counting back from a thousand. The relationships had broken immediately after. His life with Melanie would end, too. It would seem pointless to go on. Why was it important that relationships went on? By tomorrow night his hope would be destroyed. He couldn’t go from woman to woman any more.
Their arguments were bitter and their reconciliations no longer sweet. He had locked her out of the flat. She had thrown away a picture his wife had given him. Alan had flung some of her belongings into the street. For weeks they had pounded one another, emerging into the world as if they’d walked out of a fire, their skin blackened, eyes staring, not knowing what had happened. Would they be together for good or only until tomorrow?
Looking sideways at his wife now, over the head of the boy who connected them for ever, Alan knew he couldn’t make such a mistake again.
In their better moods, he and Melanie talked to the child in her belly and considered names for her. They had talked of having a child in a few years. But a child wasn’t a fridge that you could order when you wanted, or when you could afford it. The child in her belly already had a face.
Outside the school, as the three of them walked away, Alan spotted an abandoned supermarket trolley. Instantly he picked Mikey up, dumped him in it and ran with it along the side of the road. The yells of the delighted boy, crouching in the clattering tray as they skidded around corners and over speed bumps, and Anne’s cries as she ran behind, trying to keep up, pierced the early evening dark.
Laughing, breathless and warm, they soon arrived at the house. Anne closed the shutters and switched on the Christmas tree lights. The room had changed since he’d last been there. It contained only her things. There was nothing of him left in it.
She poured Alan a glass of brandy. Mikey gulped down his juice. Anne said he could pick a bar of chocolate from the tree if he shared it with them. As they discussed the nativity Alan noticed that his son seemed wary and uncertain, as if he weren’t sure which parent he should go to, sensing he couldn’t favour one without displeasing the other.
At last Alan got up to leave.
‘Oh, I forgot,’ Anne said. ‘I bought some mince pies and brandy butter. I don’t know why I bothered, but I did. You still like them, don’t you? I’ll put them on one plate for you and Mikey to share. Is that okay?’
She went to heat them up. Alan had told Melanie he wouldn’t be long. He had to go to her. What a terrifying machine the imagination could be. If it was terrible between them tonight, they might do something irreversible tomorrow. He was afraid her mind might become set.
‘You look as if you’re in a hurry,’ Anne said, when she returned.
He said, ‘I’ll finish my drink and have one of these pies, and then I’ll be off.’
‘Will you be coming on Christmas Day?’
He shook his head.
She said, ‘Not even for an hour? She can’t bear to be parted from you, eh?’
‘You know how it is.’
She looked at him angrily. ‘How is it that you can’t spend time with your own son?’
He couldn’t say that Melanie wanted him to be with her on Christmas Day, otherwise she would go away.
Mikey had gone quiet, and was watching them.
She said, ‘It has lasted a long time, with this woman. For you.’
‘It’s going well, yes. We’re having a baby, too.’
‘I see,’ she said, after a while.
‘I’m quite pleased,’ he said.
Melanie had told a number of her friends that she was pregnant; she discussed it constantly on the phone. Anne was the first person he had told.
‘You could have waited.’
‘For what?’ He said, ‘Sorry, I couldn’t wait. You know how it is.’
‘Why do you keep saying that?’
‘It’s a fact. There you are. Live with it.’
She said, ‘I will, thank you.’ Then she said, ‘You won’t be wanting to see Mikey so much, then.’
‘Yes I will.’
‘Why should you?’
He said, ‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘You left us. I only have him. She has everything.’