Comfort and Joy

By the same author

My Life on a Plate

Don’t You Want Me?

NON-FICTION

The Shops

Neris and India’s Idiot-Proof Diet
(with Neris Thomas)

Neris and India’s Idiot-Proof Diet Cookbook
(with Neris Thomas and Bee Rawlinson)

The Thrift Book

FIG TREE

an imprint of

PENGUIN BOOKS

FIG TREE

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published 2010

Copyright © India Knight, 2010

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Lyrics from ‘Babe, You Turn Me On’ by Nick Cave, printed by kind permission of Nick Cave and Mute Song.

All rights reserved

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN
: 978-0-14-197018-9

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Part Two

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Part Three

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Acknowledgements

For Lynn Barber, with love and admiration

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely
coincidental. Christmas is real, obviously – that’s not a coincidence. But I made the rest up. I do feel I need to point this
out forcefully.
FICTION
, innit. I do love the Connaught, though.

So I’m walking down Oxford Street, sodden by the sheeting rain, like I walk down Oxford Street sodden by the sheeting rain
every single bastarding Christmas. Well, I say Christmas – I mean ‘festive period’ (which always makes me think of menstruation,
except while wearing a jaunty paper hat and blowing a tooter, for fun. Poot poot!). It’s not actually Christmas Day – that
would be tragic or, come to think of it, maybe quite refreshing: just me and the odd tramp and our cosy cider, rather than
me and my sixteen or so, um, loved ones.

No, it’s the 23rd and I’m picking up a few last-minute bits and bobs. Quite why I’ve left these bits and bobs so late is a
mystery, but again, it’s an annual ritual. If you didn’t know any better you would think – fancy! – that there are people
I subconsciously don’t especially enjoy buying presents for, people who pop right out of my head until 23 December every year,
when I remember not only that they exist but that they are coming to spend Christmas at my house, yay and wahoo.

I couldn’t possibly comment, except to point out that the incredibly annoying and pointless thing about my approach – you’d
think I’d have figured this out by now, since it happens every year – is that, in the last-minute panic, I end up spending
far more money on the bits-and-bobby presents for the bits-and-bobby people than I do on presents for people I really love.
Take this grotesque china cat with boogly eyes and improbable eyelashes, the one I am holding in my hand right now (I’ve come
out of the rain and into John Lewis – as, apparently, has half of London). Perfect for my mother-in-law. £200, you say?
Well, my goodness. I stare at the sales assistant in disbelief. Has she looked at the china cat? It’s eye-bleedingly hideous,
it’s not very big, and here she is, saying ‘£200’ with a straight face. Also, ‘collector’s item’. Yeah, maybe, if you’re mad.
I’d rather collect those dried white dog turds you never see any more (why? Where have they gone?). No, not really. I wouldn’t
like to collect dog turds at all, obviously. I’m just becoming bad-tempered, which always makes me go a bit Internal Tourette’s.
It’s just – it’s so much money. Having glared, I smile penitently at the sales assistant and gingerly hand the cat back.

But then I go trawling off round to the bath salts and ‘novelty gifts’ bit of John Lewis, and there are so many people, and
having been cold fifteen minutes ago in my parka, despite the fact that it is designed to withstand temperatures down to −20
degrees, I am now boiling hot, and I think I can’t give her bath salts again, or soaps – it’s got to the stage where it looks
like I’m making a point about personal hygiene – and she doesn’t read books and she doesn’t listen to music and she has no
hobbies except collecting cats, so … off I return to the china animal concession, sweating lightly, forcing a smile that probably
looks more like a death rictus. £200. £200! The financial markets are falling apart, Sam keeps muttering darkly that our mortgage
is about to do something terrible, I’m wearing frankly shabby underwear that I’d like to replace, and I’ve just spent £200
on a china cat that looks like it came via a full-page ad in a Sunday supplement:
Pretty Lady Pusscat needs a home. Look at her pleading eyes and feel your heart give way. Fashioned from the finest porcelain
by skilled craftsmen, Lady Pusscat will be your cherished friend …

It gives me a lurch in my stomach to think of the cost, on top of which I’m now paranoid about dropping Lady Pusscat. I’m
going to tell Pat, my mother-in-law, that this is what it’s called. I know exactly what she’ll say: ‘Oh, isn’t that grand.
Lady Pusscat! What a beautiful name. Isn’t that grand.’ Pat likes to sandwich normal speech between two expressions. The thought
of it makes me smile to myself with a mixture of love and irritation. This is more than I spend on my own mother, I note,
as I hand over my credit card. Well, more than I
initially
spend on my own mother.

But at least Pat will be really pleased with the cat. She’ll appreciate it and say thank you nicely, and put it on her special
cat shelf, and possibly get a little piece of card and write LADY PUSSCAT on it in her best handwriting, and place it reverently
underneath. The problem with Kate, my esteemed mama, isn’t that she’s on the list of people I can’t be bothered to buy presents
for until the last minute. And neither – ha! – is she a person that I forget exists. The problem with Kate is that she has
all the stuff she could conceivably want. She’s on a list of her own, called ‘People Who Have Everything’ (mind you, she doesn’t
have a Lady Pusscat. Now there’s a thought. Maybe I could mix things up a bit and get her a Lord Puppy). There is nothing
I can buy her, though obviously I’m going to have to buy her something.

The thing is – you wouldn’t think it from this rant, even though it’s true – I really love giving people presents. It gives
me pleasure. I put a lot of thought into it. I start early, even if I do finish on the 23rd. And I’ve yet, in adult life,
to give Kate something that provokes the kind of reaction I’m after: the gasp of delight, the genuine grin of pleasure that
makes you think the whole flipping Christmas faff is worth it. She liked a clay ashtray I made at school when I was six. She
still has it on her desk, all beaten up and manky and poignant in about ten different ways. It’s nice that she’s kept it,
but I haven’t been able to match that present in the intervening thirty-four years.

What happens with Kate is I throw money at the problem. I think, if it costs enough, she’ll like it. This is a fatally stupid
approach – it doesn’t work, and all that happens is that when she glances at her present, murmurs her thanks and then leaves
it behind, I feel incensed and want to run after her telling her how much it cost. I did this once, to my shame. I’d bought
her this amazing, hand-stitched sequined stole – beautiful, dull-gold proper sequins, not brash plasticky ones. It cost a
fortune: I was still paying for it months later; in fact, if I remember correctly, there was an unpleasant episode with a
red bill that I’d shoved in a drawer to make it magic itself away. She unwrapped the stole and said, ‘How sweet,’ and then
she put it on the sofa next to her, never to be glanced at again. I couldn’t help myself: I said, ‘It’s by this amazing new
designer. I had it commissioned for you. It, um, it cost …’ and I told her what it had cost. Kate put down her glass of champagne,
closed her eyes as though in an agony of pain, and said, ‘Clara. I beg you. Please don’t be vulgar.’

I said I knew it was
quite
vulgar, but that I hoped she liked it because I’d had it made especially and …

‘Don’t, darling. And you shouldn’t spend that sort of money on me. I’m a simple person. I’d have been just as happy with a
candle.’

‘A candle? What do you mean, a candle? Like, a scented candle?’

‘A beeswax candle.’

‘A beeswax candle?’

‘Don’t repeat everything I say, Clara, it makes you sound dim.’

‘But I’m just checking. That’s what you’d like for your present, ideally? One beeswax candle?’

‘Yes. Beautiful and useful, as William Morris said.’

‘Gosh. Well, I’ll know for next time.’

‘Quite. Pass me a blini, would you?’

What I should really do this year is go wild and buy her one lone stupid waxy candle and see what happens. ‘Here you go,
Mother. Don’t burn it all at once!’ But I won’t, because I want Kate to love my present. I want her to love me for buying
it for her. I want the present to say everything that we don’t say. That’s the thing about presents, isn’t it? Especially
Christmas ones. The judiciously chosen present, the perfect gift, is offered up in the spirit of atonement and regeneration.
It says, ‘Look, I know I don’t call as often as I should, and I know you think I’m grumpy and short-tempered’ – insert your
own personal failings here; I’m merely précising mine – ‘but the thing is, I know you so well and I love you so much that
I have bought you the perfect thing. And so now everything’s okay, at least for today.’ Which is all very lovely but a great
deal easier said than done, and which is why I can feel the hair at the back of my neck curling with heat and stress. For
a present to be eloquent, it’s got to be just right, and everything I’ve seen so far is wrong to the point of mutedom.