Five gold rings

As Julia takes down the last of the silver bells from the tree, the silver wire loop from which it is suspended snags on a twig. The thing slips from her hands and, as she watches, shivers into airy fragments on the floor. She stares at it a moment, stupidly unable to believe her eyes. Reaching to gather up the pieces, she spikes her finger – shit – watching as a bright bead of blood swells from the tiny wound. The silver bell is one of six – now five – which came from her parents’ house. There’d originally been twelve of everything – bells, silver baubles (all broken, now) and birds, with hollow silver bodies and nylon filigree tails. When she and her sister had divided up the household effects after the funeral, they’d taken half each. Although the last time she’d been at Kirsten’s over Christmas there’d been no sign of the old decorations. Kirsten went in for ‘designer’ trees, these days. A minimalist twig sprayed white and hung with white lights, one year; a Victorian tree with tartan ribbons and real candles, the year after that. Unless Fifties Retro trees were the fashion next year, Julia doesn’t imagine she’ll see the old things again.

A memory surfaces of some long-ago Christmas Eve, in Singapore. Her mother in one of those ankle-length circular skirts and high heels, a freshly-lit cigarette in her hand;  her father pouring himself a Scotch from the cut-glass decanter. Come on, then, poppet.  Just five minutes, and then straight to bed. Otherwise Father Christmas might change his mind… Nat King Cole crooning softly in the background, the smell of frangipani drifting in through the mosquito screens and her first sight of the tree (an artificial one, of course, but then she’d never seen a real one), with its fairylights shining mistily through a shroud of Angel Hair. Silver ornaments glittering. Don’t touch. You’ll cut your little fingers to ribbons… She’d never seen anything so beautiful.

She drops the broken ornament in the bin. Funny how they were always gold inside, no matter what colour they were on the outside. Lethally sharp – she should have wrapped the pieces in newspaper, first. She remembers how they’d looked put away in their box: each separated from its fellow by a thin grid of cardboard. That had been her mother’s job, of course – as it was now hers. Dismantling the tree and putting all the decorations away until the next year, when the whole thing started all over again. God, how depressing.

Still, there’d been some good Christmasses at her folks. That time down in Kent, just after Katie was born. It had snowed really heavily, that year. She remembers going for a walk through the orchards with Matt, carrying the baby in a sling. No sound but the scrunch of their footsteps in the powdery snow, the soft thump of snow falling suddenly from a laden branch. Their breath clouding the air in front of them. A round red sun like a Christmas-tree bauble low on the horizon. That had been a good day. Although Katie had been too young to know much of what was going on. The following year, at Matt’s parents’, she’d had a bit more of a clue. Standing solemnly in front of the tree on Christmas morning, its lights reflected in her wide-open eyes. She’d been less interested in the presents than in the wrapping-paper, of course.

That had certainly changed, thinks Julia, removing a small wooden angel from the tree. At sixteen, Katie knew exactly what she wanted. Clothes, make-up and CDs, in that order. Taking down another angel, Julia wonders if her daughter will remember to phone tonight. Had she said she was staying over at Gemma’s, or not? ‘Mum, you fuss too much,’ she was always saying. Still, she was a good kid, really. After the divorce, they’d both worried, she and Matt, that it might affect her. But in fact, touch wood (that was the last angel, now), she’d come out of it okay.

Unhooking a red-and-blue glass star, Julia thinks about another Christmas, eight years ago. They’d been staying at her mother’s; it must have been the year after her father died. She and Matt had gone out for a drink – anything to escape the atmosphere in that house, a compound of left-over cooking smells, damp, and her mother’s pervasive melancholy. In the dreary little pub with its garish tinsel decorations and its fruit-machine jangling in the background, Matt had broached the subject which was on both their minds: ‘I think we should separate for a while,’ he’d said;  and she’d replied, ‘That sounds like a good idea…’

Julia takes a sip from her glass of wine, before proceeding with her task of deconstruction. In fairly rapid succession, she removes from the tree five blue glass baubles, a golden pear, a brace of glitter-covered cherubs (recent additions of Katie’s), a small red velvet drum and an elegant wire-gilt star. With each subtraction, the tree looses a shower of pine-needles, until it is as bare as a plucked turkey. When nothing is left but the angel on top of the tree (fashioned by six year-old Katie, from a clothes-peg, tissue-paper and gold foil), Julia pauses for a minute, thinking about Paul. It irritates her to be reminded of him in this way, but she can’t help it, it’s that time of year.

Four years ago – was it? – they’d spent Christmas together in Barbados. What a disaster that had been.  She remembers drinking rum punch on the beach and trying not to cry. He’d spent most of the day in the hotel room, on the phone to his wife. ‘She wants me to come back,’ he’d said, joining her at last for dinner. They’d eaten red snapper, she recalls. In the background, Bing Crosby was singing about sleigh bells and roasting chestnuts, although it was 90 degrees outside, and Paul was saying, ‘You must understand. I have to think of the kids…’

Julia switches off the lights on the now-denuded tree and begins to unwind them slowly, so as to dislodge as few pine-needles as possible. In spite of this, by the time she has finished, the floor is thickly covered with a soft green, slithery carpet. After Paul, there’d been another couple of disasters – neither of which had spoiled her Christmas.  She begins to unscrew the clamps that hold the tree in its stand. Nearly done. God, what a business it all was. Spending all this time and effort on something which was over so quickly.

Straightening up from her task, Julia catches sight of herself in the mirror over the fireplace. She smiles at her reflection. On the mantlepiece is a folded sheet of paper, on which, a few nights earlier at a New Year’s Eve party, a man she had just been introduced to wrote his name and telephone number. She hasn’t got round to ringing the number yet, but she thinks, on balance, she probably will.

Julia drags the tree towards the door, leaving a trail of pine-needles in her wake. She’ll go over it with the Hoover, later. She opens the front door and, with an effort, heaves the almost skeletal tree outside. There’d been that story she’d had read to her as a child – Hans Andersen, was it? – about the poor Christmas tree, stripped of its finery, and consigned to the flames.  What kind of a story was that for children? Christmas was meant to be a happy time. She leans the tree up against the dustbin for the bin-men to collect tomorrow. Then she goes in, closing the door behind her, to make a telephone call.