‘Yes,’ said Luke.
‘They’re intimate presents.’
‘They’re lovely.’
‘The underpants are intimate because you’ll wear them against your bottom. The socks are intimate because you’ll wear them against your feet.’
‘Right. And the hat is intimate because I’ll wear it against my better judgement.’
‘You don’t like them do you?’
‘I do. I promise. Here’s your stocking,’ he said, handing it to her. She unwrapped a pair of ear rings, a tube of the chocolates she loved, and the skimpiest pair of white knickers imaginable.
‘You must be joking.’
‘Are they too big?’
‘If they were any smaller they wouldn’t exist.’
‘You’d be surprised how hard it is to get very skimpy knickers made of cotton. Once you get into that degree of minimalism you’re into porno, a world where natural fibres cease to exist. Speaking of porno, there’s one present you’ve still not unwrapped.’
Nicole unwrapped it gingerly: a vibrator: in special seasonal packaging.
‘Oh how lovely. An electronic toothbrush. Thank you.’
‘Merry Christmas.’
‘Luke, you are too much.’
‘You’ve no idea how embarrassed I was buying that. If it hadn’t been for the holly on the box I don’t think I could have gone through with it.’
‘Have you bought me anything that isn’t totally perverted?’
‘That depends,’ said Luke.
The rest of the morning was spent cooking and wrapping up the ‘offcial’ gifts. An atmosphere of benevolent conspiracy prevailed as the four friends arranged themselves in different rooms to wrap each other’s presents. In order to increase the sense of overflow and abundance Nicole and Sahra began wrapping up bottles of wine from the communal hoard. Alex and Luke joined in by wrapping up a selection of other communal items.
They pulled the crackers (which were useless) and ate lunch wearing coloured paper hats, always on the look-out for the chance to say, ‘Are you still with us, Trevor?’ The presents were unwrapped after lunch, between the roast and the pudding no one felt like eating. Nicole had bought Luke a sweater that he had seen in a shop but which, at the time, he could not face trying on. She unwrapped the present Luke had bought her and found a Polaroid camera. From Alex, Sahra got exactly what she wanted: a leopardskin jacket that was not made out of leopardskin at all. Sahra gave Nicole a pair of socks with toes on. Sahra and Alex had bought Luke a Walkman. Surprised and somewhat disappointed that Luke and Nicole had bought them nothing, Alex and Sahra moved on to the small items that the men had wrapped up. Expecting to find another pair of ear rings, Sahra found a tiny sachet of cocaine; Nicole unwrapped a chunk of hash; then Alex himself tore open the stash of grass he had wrapped up a few hours previously.
‘Look,’ said Sahra suddenly. It had started to snow outside, swirling silently beyond the window. Luke arranged four lines on a mirror like thin streaks of snow and they took it in turns to sniff them up with a red Christmas straw.
By now Nicole had loaded the Polaroid. They started with straightforward group shots, crowding round to watch the first pale smears appear, smudges of pink that traced the ghostly blank of a face. Background blurs became walls and shelves. Hair and eyes emerged, colours. After taking a few of these Nicole began running a fork through the wet prints so that the images, when they emerged, were patterned with luminescent streaks. Alex could not wait to have a go himself and proceeded to score a picture of Luke in such a way that red and gold antlers emerged from his head, like an extreme form of tribal head-dress, some trace of the spirit world, of his animal soul which the Polaroid had picked up. Luke loved these Polaroids, loved the way the present became a memory as soon as it occurred: an instant memory. When they had finished the first film Luke, feeling jittery after a second line of coke, immediately loaded another. He had bought the camera for Nicole but now refused to relinquish it. He wanted, he said to push the form forward, towards more abstract, less representational work in which the image was more severely distressed (‘i.e. ruined,’ said Alex on seeing the results). Many mistakes were made, and not only by Luke. Nicole wrestled the camera away from him, taking an unintended shot of the ceiling as she did so. They were all feeling jittery; Alex rolled a joint to take the edge off the coke. Nicole claimed that she knew how to do multiple exposures but nothing came of her portrait of Sahra except the vague trace of hair and the black dot of an eye, like a fresco worn away over hundreds of years to almost nothing.
It was totally dark outside. They were still high from the coke but now they were stoned as well which was much nicer. Nicole said,
‘I think it’s time Luke, don’t you?’
‘Time for what?’ said Alex.
‘For us to give you your present,’ said Luke. ‘You thought we’d forgotten didn’t you?’
‘Not for a second!’
Luke went out and came back with a bulky, badly wrapped something. Sahra tore off the paper and found a reel-to-reel tape recorder — secondhand, obviously — with only one large spool instead of two small ones. Attached to the rim of this spool was a little red light bulb and, nearer the centre, a yellow one.
‘So, what do you think?’ said Luke.
‘Well it’s great,’ said Alex. ‘But, with respect, what the fuck is it?’
‘It’s something Nicole made. One of her Put-Togethers. Watch — and prepare to be overwhelmed with gratitude.’ He turned off the main light. Nicole switched on the tape recorder. It whirred into life and soon all that could be seen in the darkness were two circles of quivering neon: a red and yellow catherine wheel.
In their bedroom that night Nicole and Luke took a series of pornographic Polaroids. They made love with the images of their passion coming to life on the bed around them: Luke’s prick, veined, swollen, in Nicole’s mouth; Luke with his face between Nicole’s legs, his nose jutting over her pubic hair; the brilliant white of the vibrator — overexposed by the flash — disappearing into a flesh-coloured smear.
After they had made love they lay in each other’s arms while, propped on the bedside table, the pictures went on developing, the colours darkening, the angles becoming more sharply defined, as if they were breathing, living.
The snow that had fallen tentatively that afternoon fell heavily in the night. The friends slept especially deeply because of the silence laid over everything by the snow. Luke dreamed of being asleep, which seemed to prove that he had slept as deeply as it was ever possible to. When he woke in the morning he was aware, first, of the silence. Not the simple absence of noise but a crisp, ringing silence. He looked at the Polaroids which, in daylight, seemed stunningly obscene. Outside, the trees were thick with snow that was still drifting past the window.
In the living room the fire had burned down almost to nothing. He raked the embers and piled on some kindling. When that began blazing he added a few small logs. He could hear the others moving around upstairs. Still groggy with sleep, Alex opened the bathroom door and saw Nicole, naked, one foot on the edge of the bath, rubbing moisturiser into her leg.
‘Whoops!’ he said, closing the door quickly. ‘Sorry!’
As soon as Alex came down Luke hustled him outside. They threw a couple of snowballs at each other and then called up to Sahra.
‘Look at the snow!’ called Luke. He was standing in front of Alex, shielding him. ‘Open the window.’ As soon as she did, Alex let fly with a snowball that fizzed past her head and disappeared behind her.
A few minutes later the door opened slightly. A snowball exploded against it immediately.
‘We’re not coming out unless you promise not to throw anything at us,’ Sahra called. There was no answer. Again there was only the silence of the snow. ‘Quick!’ said Sahra to Nicole. They dashed out of the door and were caught in a crossfire of snowballs. They cowered and screamed and then, suddenly, alliances changed. While Luke was packing snow-balls to throw at the women Alex tackled him from behind and pinned him to the ground while Sahra and Nicole, screaming, shoved handfuls of snow down his collar and trousers. Then they went inside for breakfast.