Comfort and Joy (27 page)

Option three is to turn my back on what Robert’s mother likes to call ‘bedroom unpleasantness’. I could be like Pat. I could
chuckle comfortably and tell people that ‘my cuddling days are over’. When Maisy’s grown up, I could reinvent myself as a
spinster and take a postgraduate course in anthropology, like somebody in a Barbara Pym novel, and invite curates to tea (why
don’t I know any curates? It’s irritating, though not half as irritating as not knowing Madonna. It’s so crashingly
obvious
that my girlfriends and I should know Madonna, and hang out with her. She’d love it. What a waste). Oddly, this Pym-plan
isn’t as wholly unattractive as it might be: there’s something very appealing about the idea of living in ‘rooms’ with a spinster
friend and having cups of tea and never bleaching your moustache and preoccupying yourself with matters of the intellect rather
than matters of the flesh or kitchen. The thing is, I think the charms of such a lifestyle would pall after a while. The issue
is that the charms of all the lifestyles seem to
pall after a while. It seems a pity. I am, after all, in my prime. Where is the lifestyle for me?

Plus, obviously, the children. To be perfectly honest, I’m not overly troubled – though I know that every single newspaper
or magazine article I read tells me I should be – over the question of ‘what’s best for the children’. I know perfectly well
what’s best for the children: me, demonstrably. I moan about them all day, but they’re extremely nice children. Add the fact
that they have permanent access to their loving fathers and to an equally loving, if lunatic, extended family made up of both
relatives and friends, and I don’t think there’s a problem. The only way of introducing a problem at this stage would be to
produce an impermanent stepfather, or – God – a series of ‘uncles’. (‘Why are you walking like that, Mum, and wincing when
you sit down?’ ‘Hoo, son, it’s been
quite a night.
’) I think that’s probably a scenario that’s best avoided. They’ve met the man from the Connaught, fleetingly, because I don’t
want them to think that I am in fact a nun: it’s not a healthy thing for children to view their mother as a sexless being
with a cobwebbed ’gina. But I’m not overly keen on them meeting a quick-fire succession of his successors – if he has indeed
perished or suffered the indignity of a double amputation. Which I do hope he hasn’t. I liked him more than I let on to Robert.
I liked him enough to feel sad about his absence.

Is it different for men? Robert shags anything that moves, though perhaps his new carpe diem attitude will change that. I
thought he was doing pretty well at carping every diem that he came across, but who knows? I have no idea at all of whom Sam
shags, partly because he’s discreet and partly because I don’t particularly want to know (why not? Is that weird?). I don’t
want his penis to atrophy and drop off, obviously, but I don’t need to know the particulars of its nocturnal activities, either.

‘Are you okay, Clara?’ says Tamsin, who’s appeared in the chair next to mine. ‘You look like you’re daydreaming. Lovely, lovely
dinner, wasn’t it? Just glorious. It’s so fantastic, being here.’

‘Happy as a clam,’ I say, which is true. When I was younger and the boys were small, I used to count my blessings, and I’ve
never fallen out of the habit. My blessings are many. They are legion. That’s the thing to remember. You know: nobody died.
Well, apart from my dad, and possibly the man from the Connaught. Aside from that, though: all alive, wahoo.

‘So am I,’ Tam sighs. ‘Who’d have thought, ten years ago?’

‘You know,’ I say, ‘I thought for ages that you were with Jake because you thought anything was better than being alone.’

‘I know you did,’ says Tam. ‘It’s okay.’

‘I apologize for thinking it,’ I say, squeezing her hand. ‘I always think I’m so right and so insightful, and just now – before
you came over – I was musing on the fact that actually I know nothing at all.’

‘You do,’ says Tam. ‘You know tons.’

‘Well, there’s a massive gap in my knowledge, let’s say. I’m like somebody who seems to function but doesn’t actually know
how to count, or their world capitals, or the names of animals.’

‘But you have experience,’ says Tam.

‘Yes,’ I laugh. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

‘No, I mean it,’ says Tamsin. ‘Remember the pain theory?’

‘Oh yes,’ I say. ‘I’d forgotten about it. We used to be obsessed with the pain theory. When was it – when you had Cassie?’

‘When that awful Boden woman I met at my NCT classes was giving me advice,’ says Tamsin. ‘That’s when we came up with it.
The pain theory is absolutely true. It still holds.’

The pain theory is: you know those people who seem to have charmed lives? Idyllic childhoods, parents totally compos
and healthy and still together fifty years later, lovely time at school, not an iota of heartbreak before meeting their delightful
husband/wife, gorgeous children, zero illness anywhere, no financial worries, professionally successful, wonderful houses,
no doubt or panic or dark thoughts in the middle of the night. Most of us have been broken at some point, and we’re walking
around with a few bits superglued back in place, with varying degrees of effectiveness. Not them: the most terrible or saddest
things to happen to them are mildly tiresome, like painful wisdom teeth or having a flight cancelled. I’m pleased for them,
and long may their joyous existence continue. But there’s one caveat: they’re not allowed to express any serious opinions.
They can have them, obviously, but they’re not allowed to say them out loud. They’re allowed to say that roses are their favourite
flower, or that they prefer bicycling to walking or Devon to Dorset, but that’s it. I don’t want to hear their opinions on
single mothers, or on assisted suicide, or on the rights and wrongs of placing an aged parent in a residential home. I don’t
care what they think about an NHS they never use. I particularly don’t wish to be lectured by them on things – the complexity
of relationships, the pain of separation, the best way of ensuring children stay sane and happy when things go wrong – that
they
literally
know nothing, zero, zilch, about. On these topics, such people are not allowed to talk: it would be like me lecturing people
about nuclear physics, i.e. utterly absurd. That is the pain theory. And using the pain theory’s criteria, both Tamsin and
I have required superglue, which means we know stuff. So has everyone around this table, actually: like tends to stick with
like, artfully patched broken pot with artfully patched broken pot. I wonder if that’s why we were so instinctively hostile
to poor Sophie and Tim two Christmases ago – whether it’s because they were so full of opinions and so seemingly unburdened.
They’re happy now, by
the way. Sophie is pregnant again. They’ve observed – rightly – that that’s what people like them do: keep on banging them
out and try to make everything about their life like a double-spread from the pages of a parenting magazine. It’s not my definition
of happiness, but it seems to work for them, and so I’ve never pointed out to Sophie, who has become quite a good friend,
that I secretly think she’s just given in.

There’s no Christmas pudding in Morocco – well, there’s no Christmas at all, if we’re going to be exact. We’ve all imported
puddings, but they’re for tomorrow. Tonight, Fatima has made us a traditional French
bûche de Noël
, a chocolate sponge filled and iced with chocolate buttercream and rolled into the shape of a wooden log. She has decorated
this with red berries and green holly leaves made of marzipan, and scattered icing sugar over the top to look like snow. The
icing has been scored with a fork, so the chocolate looks like wood. A tiny plastic squirrel is perched jauntily on the cake’s
edge, and I smile at her dedication: God knows where you find small plastic animals among the souks of Marrakesh. The
bûche
looks enchanting, both familiar and exotic, and even Pat volunteers that she wouldn’t mind a little taste. Then she stands
up and clears her throat.

‘Cheers,’ she says, raising her glass, which tonight contains cherry brandy and a dash of advocaat (I often wonder whether
I could persuade Pat to co-author a book of cocktails with me). ‘To everybody that’s here. To all of us at Christmas. I’ll
never forget you.’

‘We’re not dead, Ma,’ says Sam. ‘Nobody’s going anywhere.’

‘I always want to spend Christmas with you,’ Pat continues. ‘If that’s okay, like. I know we’re not the same, but …’

‘I’m going to cry,’ says Evie.

My own throat has gone a little bit tight. I love annoying, plate-sniffing, food-denying Pat. I always want to spend Christmas
with her, too. I want these people – my family and the remnants of my attempts at marriage – to stay with me always.

‘We have such a nice time together. You’re all that unusual. So thank you. For having me here and for … for everything.’ She
sits down again and looks around her in a slightly dazed way. ‘I’ve never made a speech before,’ she says as we all clap and
cheer.

‘I’m glad you did. But there’s no need to thank anybody, Pat,’ says Kate.

‘You’re part of the family,’ I say. ‘And you always will be. Thank you, Pat. That was lovely.’

‘Aye,’ says Pat. ‘I know I’m not good with words, but I wanted to say a wee something. I was thinking about it for ages in
the bath.’

‘That was nice, Mum,’ says Sam, giving her a hug.

‘We’re sorry that there are no pig latrines,’ says Evie. ‘We love you, Pat.’

Christmas morning starts early in Marrakesh: we are woken at what feels like the crack of dawn by the muezzin’s call to prayer.
We all went to bed late last night, aside from the small children, who despite the excitement had conked out by 8 p.m., felled
by their early start. For the rest of us, there were postprandial cocktails, much conversation, a boisterous couple of rounds
of the Name Game, a little bit of singing (by Pat, tipsy and in fine voice), a late-night dip in the pool (by Jake and Tamsin)
and then a collective dash to get the presents under the tree and organize the positioning of the children’s stockings. All
glorious, but what was especially amazing to me was the lack of tidying up required. At home I barely have enough crockery
or kitchen utensils, so that once you’re allocated a glass as you arrive you have to hold on to it for dear life throughout
the day. We have to quickly wash some of the plates between our turkey and pudding because I don’t have enough dessert plates
to go round; and all of this takes place in my hot, overcrowded kitchen, with everybody shoehorned into place. Here, we were
stopped from even attempting to clear up by Fatima and, we were pleased to note, three other women who’d appeared from nowhere.
I felt a bit guilty, but I was so tired by that point that I mostly felt nearly tearful with gratitude.

What’s surprising to me about this whole Christmas-not-at-home malarkey is how comfortable it feels, considering it was conceived
in a moment of madness. Maisy and the boys came into my room this morning to open their stockings, and if they did so in the
pale Moroccan sunlight rather than in the London
gloom – well, so what, really? It’s odd, me thinking this, because Christmas at home is so part of my being – the one family
tradition that still exists to be passed on – that I feel I’m somehow being unfaithful to myself just by being here. It’s
like Pat suddenly discovering that she not only likes all ‘foreign’ food but that her utter favourite is manioc, or sheep’s
eyes. Previously I’d believed that geographical location – my house, specifically – was what was holding the whole thing together:
children, family, husbands, me. Today, I’m not so sure. The idea that we are holding
ourselves
together flits through my brain, only to be dismissed: we need foundations, and Christmas at home is the best foundation
of all. Still, this isn’t bad.

‘Do you miss being at home at all?’ I ask the children. The boys look at me as though I were mad, but they and Maisy eventually
agree, after some discussion, that they wouldn’t want to be away
every
year, ‘because then we’d be used to it, and if we’re going to be used to it we might as well be at home’.

After breakfast of tea and fruit – hard to see how any of us can countenance any more food after last night’s extravaganza,
but we’re now all bracing ourselves for lunch in a few hours’ time, imported giganto-turkey and all – Kate asks if I’d like
to go for a stroll with her. And I would, partly to take a measure of exercise (there’s an awful lot of pastry in Moroccan
food) and partly because I know she wants to talk to me about Felix’s probate, and I’ve been putting the conversation off
for weeks. Christmas Day wouldn’t be my number-one choice, but Robert’s words last night about procrastination are fresh in
my mind.

‘Also,’ says Kate, ‘there’s a shop in the new town, a saddler’s originally, that is described in one of my guidebooks as “the
Hermès of Africa”.’

‘I don’t need bait,’ I say. Then I think about it for a bit and say, ‘But bait doesn’t hurt.’

‘They’re only open for a couple of hours today,’ says Kate, ‘so we’d better step to it. And then we can be back for about
eleven and do presents then.’

We walk through the streets, already crowded, of the medina, and are touched and delighted to note that our European aspect
causes a dozen complete strangers to smile and wish us a happy Christmas.

‘Fundamental difference,’ says Kate, ‘between the eastern and the western mindset. How many times have you walked around London
and wished people you didn’t know happy Eid or happy Ramadan or happy Hannukah?’

‘Never,’ I say, ‘but it would be much trickier. You can’t randomly assume all brown people are Muslims, and the Hannukah thing
is even worse – look for anyone vaguely Jewish-looking and be ready with your cheery greeting?’

‘I suppose,’ says Kate. ‘I still think there’s a generosity of spirit here that we would do well to emulate. You can tell
by the food.’

‘You can tell everything about people by the food,’ I agree. ‘Though let’s try not to have some for a couple of hours.’