Sorcha was thinking of her ‘A’ level exams in the summer. She really wanted to go to university; find herself. She stirred the gravy as her mother moved around the kitchen, busy. Last night Mum had spent an age on the food, this morning longer.
‘What do you think?’ her mother eventually said.
‘Are we done?’
‘Yes, I’ll tell your dad we’re ready to eat.’
A corpulent bird was on the table, beads of fat on it glistening. Every year this ritual, Mum exhausted, Dad in his armchair sipping stout, Mum saying, ‘He needs a break. Working on the buildings is hard. I want him to enjoy his Christmas, I do.’
Sorcha supposed that was the reason for the ritual: atonement paid to he who provides.
And now Dad was raising his voice: ‘It’ll only take a minute, sure. Just let me do it, woman, and stop your whist.’
He’d decided to try and fix the lights on the tree now – and so what if the food went cold? Another Christmas watching her mother burying her identity to please others. In the afternoon her snotty, much older sister, Angela, would turn up with her dim husband, and his parents. Angela would blank Sorcha because she presumed herself superior. As if owning a semi in St Mellons and having no academic qualifications made her a goddess. Angela would also ignore her father and belittle her mother, who she thought a footstall. Her mother was bottom of the pile at Christmas and she, Sorcha, was just a notch above.
‘Fecking cheap lights, Masie. Why didn’t you get dear ones?’
‘Be careful with them wires, Liam.’
‘Stand by that bloody socket, woman, and do as I tell you. Not yet! Something’s short-circuiting this poxy flex. Try it now so.’
Her mother turned on the socket. Nothing.
‘Not a peep of light out of the bastards! Jeeze, fecking Christmas, always the same.’
‘Come and have your dinner, Liam.’
‘Cheap bastarding lights.’
/
‘Are you putting the Queen on?’ Ernie, Angela’s father-in-law, was saying.
‘Not in this house.’
‘A socialist house is it?’
‘Socialism my arse!’ Dad replied. ‘I’m not taken in by all that knee-bending crap. We’re watching the film. Masie put that Yank movie on.’
‘She’s my queen, whether she’s yours or not.’ Ernie’s face was red with alcohol and venom.
‘Ah now, the poor working class gobaloons in this country kowtowing to their betters. Well, you can stick that, pal!’
Sorcha saw Angela tutting at her father’s rudeness, and a smile of embarrassment wavering on her mother’s face. Every Christmas the same! Oh she really hoped she got grades good enough for university. She badly wanted to leave home.
Just as the sullen silence in the room had become unbearable, the lights on the tree flickered on.
Her father, sipping his stout, muttered, ‘A Christmas miracle!’
‘Not cheap!’ she whispered to Mum, then thought: defiance? Insight? Am I starting to grow up? The lights shone brightly now. She felt momentarily hopeful.
