Lizzie Vogel 1 - Man at the Helm

5

Xmas was a busy time in Flatstone and entailed much more than the advent candle and clove-studded oranges of previous years. Our school became a hive of Xmas industry. There was the constant rehearsing of the school nativity play (Mary Had a Baby). And Xmas decorations to be designed, created and displayed around school. Xmas presents to be made for much-loved mothers and hard-working fathers. Turkey and pudding to be eaten at the Xmas lunch, letters to be written to Father Xmas – who apparently had an elf waiting to take them to the village hall ready for him to read at the Xmas Fayre. And then the special Xmas assembly where the headmistress would remind us that Xmas was not about presents, turkey or Father Xmas, but about Jesus.

The headmistress was neurotic when it came to Jesus, especially at Xmas when she worried that he might be ignored or eclipsed by other nicer features of Xmas. So much so that she got the vicar in. Reverend Derek appeared one morning at school assembly and spoke to us on the subject. We sang ‘Away in a Manger’ quite vigorously and then the vicar produced a sign with the word ‘Xmas’ written across it in huge capital letters.

‘X,’ he said, ‘X-mas. How many of you write Christ-mas like this?’ he asked, smiling, tapping the word.

A good few children put their hand up. I didn’t put mine up, sensing a trick.

The vicar scanned the hall. His smile fell and his face turned stony. ‘More than half of you,’ he said.

He told us it was lazy and insulting. ‘Do you not see how lazy and insulting it is, just to avoid writing four letters?’

He didn’t know when it had started, but guessed it had come over from America, probably with rock ’n’ roll. Whatever, Xmas was creeping in more and more and becoming almost normal. He himself had received two or three Xmas cards with ‘Happy Xmas’ scrawled inside and it saddened him to think that people he knew would insult Christ like that.

‘Because, let’s think about this, children, when you write X-mas, what’s the word you’re not writing … hmm?’

He gazed around the hall. Only about two children had their hands up this time and the vicar pointed to a boy called Daniel.

‘You, what is it we’re not writing when we write X-mas?’

‘Christmas?’ said the boy. And everyone giggled.

‘Christ,’ said the vicar, ‘we’re not writing Christ.’

There was something quite infuriating about that vicar standing up on stage tricking us into admitting we wrote Xmas and then saying what a lazy and insulting thing it was, when, for some of us, it was simply a way of not having to worry about how to spell it – my friend Melody, for instance, was usually a good speller but she often forgot the h, and even Little Jack, who was ‘a precocious speller’ according to his teacher, often missed out the t. The problem was, it was a seasonal word and therefore we hadn’t had the all-year-round practice that you have with non-seasonal words such as Accommodation or Squirrel.

And there was that idiotic little vicar saying it was an insult to Jesus to write Xmas. I didn’t think it an insult, I thought it common sense and wondered why the vicar didn’t just talk about something ordinary like the miracle of his birth, instead of moaning about him being insulted in an abbreviation.

I have written Xmas ever since. And I try to never write the word fully out. I even say Exmas. Not to insult Jesus, but in memory of that idiotic little vicar.

Xmas Xmas Xmas.

And if I’m honest, Father Xmas had become more important to me than Jesus by then. It had nothing to do with the writing of Xmas and even if I’d written it as Christmas I’d still have been more interested in Father Xmas. The thing was, on Xmas Eve in 1968, when our parents were still married to each other and we lived in town, I’d heard him arrive in his sleigh on our rooftop.

A loud thump woke me as the sleigh landed and I heard the tinkle of sleigh bells as the reindeer tossed their impatient heads. And nothing since has quite matched the joy of hearing his boots clomping across the tiles to the chimney. I didn’t expect to see him, or even want to see him, but hearing him was the most magical thing. Thinking about it now, I suppose if I’d heard Jesus – as opposed to Father Xmas – arrive on or near my house, I’d have been quite excited too, but it wasn’t Jesus, it was Father Xmas and personal encounters are powerful things, as my sister knew from locking eyes with a policeman in a traffic jam and overly admiring the police for some while after.

The next morning (Xmas morning 1968) – sitting in our parents’ four-poster – I spoke about hearing the sleigh.

‘I heard Father Xmas land on the roof last night,’ I said, mainly to our mother.

‘You don’t look very happy about it,’ she said.

‘I’m just worried it’s the best thing that’ll ever happen to me,’ I said, ‘and now it’s happened.’

‘It won’t be the best thing, I promise,’ she said.

‘But what could be better?’ I asked.

And our biological father came in and plonked a red and white box on the bed. And before we could begin unwrapping it, a puppy popped its head out (it was Debbie) and I suppose that should have been better and it was, in a way, but also it wasn’t.

That year, our first Xmas in the village, there was a bit of controversy about who should be Father Xmas at the Xmas Fayre. For the previous two years it had been Mr Longlady, the beekeeping accountant, him having stepped in for Mr Lomax, the Liberal candidate, who’d been incapacitated with an ailment that meant he couldn’t sit on a church hall chair for sufficiently long to enact the role. But now, this year, Mr Lomax was ready to resume the position and had agreed a comeback with the vicar and negotiated a better chair.

My family didn’t feel like attending the village Xmas Fayre and queuing for an orange from the Liberal candidate, partly because he’d seen an excerpt of our mother’s play and partly because we had vivid memories of the glorious grotto at Fenwick’s of Leicester from our time of being town-dwellers. Fenwick’s being marvellous at Xmas. Mainly because of the amazing window displays and evocative Xmas music floating around. Also, the opportunity to try out eau de cologne and see the neatly folded woollen scarves on the way through to Santa. And then it actually being the real thing – as opposed to the Liberal candidate with a sore throat in a beard.

So, after a family conflab, we decided to go to Fenwick’s instead, even though that would mean a thirty-mile round trip, a long wait in the queue and various spontaneous things our mother might suddenly do. What we hadn’t bargained for was that our mother would drive into the street where we used to live and park just across from the arched gates of our old house. But she did. And we saw the Xmas tree in the obvious position in the glorious bay window, twinkling. And Mrs Vanderbus’s tree in a similarly pretty window twinkling back at it.

She switched off the ignition and, realizing we’d be there a while, I let myself look up to the roof where Father Xmas must have parked his sleigh, just above my room – my ex-room – some years before. And stupidly I tried to relive it. I’d made a rule when it first happened not to relive it too often so as not to wear out the feeling, but, looking up from the car window that evening, I found I had just about worn it out.

‘Do you remember living here?’ our mother asked us, staring ahead and exhaling smoke through her nostrils. I had my first experience of wanting to be sarcastic, but said instead, ‘Yes, do you?’ and she took that to be sarcastic anyway and gave me a look.

‘Do let’s call on Mrs Vanderbus,’ my sister said.

‘And the Millwards,’ I added.

But our mother couldn’t face it. She wasn’t happy enough – they’d see that she was so much less now. Less of a person than she’d been when we’d lived here and we’d had pleasant folk all around us. Town folk who didn’t mind everything so terribly and who had faults of their own.

And Mrs Vanderbus, being Dutch, would be honest and unafraid and say, ‘Eleezabet, what have you done to yourself? You’re so thin, so tired, oh my Got, you must get away from that evil willage.’ And so forth. And the lovely Millwards would say, ‘You look splendid, Elizabeth, the country air must be doing you a power of good.’ And that would be worse.

‘Do you remember I heard Father Xmas land on the roof?’ I said, laughing.

‘Oh yes,’ said our mother, ‘but it was just the aerial had fallen down and was blowing around.’

‘Yeah,’ said my sister.

‘I know,’ I said, but I hadn’t known.

In Fenwick’s later, our mother left us in the queue for Father Xmas and went to do some shopping, and when we got close to the end of the line I felt I couldn’t go in and I let my sister and Jack go in without me. It wasn’t the real Father Xmas – I knew there was no such person, I’d known for a while. Just as I’d known that the best, most exciting thing ever to happen hadn’t actually happened – I’d just imagined it and clung on.

I sat on a toadstool at the door to the grotto and enjoyed the thought of the TV aerial blowing about on the roof. The new meaning to the old memory. And then, thinking I had about five minutes, I went to look at some gloves.