I know I said I wasn’t getting back in touch until the new year, but thought you might enjoy a quick Christmassy read.
Jennie’s nose sneaks out from under the covers, and she sniffs the air in her room. “Smells like snow.”
In truth, Jennie’s never smelled snow before, and so this is a wild guess on her part. But it reminds her of the smell from the depths of the Bambina-sized chest-freezer her parents have parked in their garage back home. She takes this as a positive sign.
Her hand snakes out from the warmth of her bed and lifts the bottom of the curtains. She doesn’t want to commit to getting up if there’s no snow. Unfortunately, the ice on the windows means it’s impossible to see outside. She touches the window experimentally and is shocked to find the ice is on the inside.
“No wonder it’s so darn cold.”
Although it’s not as cold in her room as it would have been if Mark hadn’t got the room’s antique radiator working again. He’d sweated over it for hours, and his language had veered from technical to atrocious in short order. Chris had taken pity on his mate and lent a hand, and between the two of them, they’d sorted it out.
Jennie had been concerned when they suggested she leave the room when it was switched on for the first time. Other than some strange gurgling sounds at the beginning, the radiator had settled down and was soon hot enough to cook eggs on.
Going to bed the night before, the room had been toasty, so she wondered if the radiator might have given up the ghost again.
The icy quiet of the room is shattered by her small alarm clock chattering into life.
“Damn!”
She can’t ignore it as there’s a heap to get through if Christmas dinner is to be on the table at one o’clock as planned. She slams her hand down on top of the clock, takes a few hyperventilating breaths and then jumps out of bed. Before her body can register the cold, she drags on her dressing gown and stuffs her feet into her slippers. These are a tight fit given she hasn’t removed her bed socks.
She breathes out experimentally, but the room is so gloomy she can’t see if her breath is visible or not. She checks the radiator and is surprised to find it’s still reasonably warm.
“It must be perishing out there.”
Hoping to have a better view now that she’s standing, Jennie opens the curtains on the window overlooking the road. Luckily, the ice is only halfway up the window, and she’s able to peer over the top. The street and roofs of the cars are shrouded in white. However, it’s a heavy duty frost rather than snow. It doesn’t look pretty. It looks hard and unforgiving.
Her gaze moves from the street to the windowpane itself, and Jennie is alarmed to see the ice on the inside is glistening and there are telltale pools forming on the windowsill.
“Yikes!”
Racing from her room, Jennie flies down to the kitchen before scurrying way back up to her room, armed with a fish slice and a tray. She scrapes the ice off the inside of the front window and, after opening the other curtains, gets to work on the window over her bed and the other overlooking the garden.
If there’s one thing she knows for sure, it’s that she’ll be moving her bed away from the big window. It’s much colder there than in the rest of the room.
With her bedroom windows de-iced, Jennie has a birdbath of a shower rather than freeze to death and dresses in haste, ready for action down in the kitchen. Checking the shelf in the oven is sitting on the lowest rungs, she turns it on, cranking it right up to get the oven heated as quickly as possible.
It will take quite a few hours to roast the Labrador-sized turkey currently taking up an entire shelf in the larder. There had been no choice about where to store it as Jennie had doubted anything other than brute force and a tire-iron would have wedged that turkey inside the fridge.
Retrieving the bird, she’s concerned to find that it’s cold to the touch. With the drop in temperature overnight, the larder is a fair few degrees cooler than the fridge. But there’s an element of relief when she removes the giblets and they’re squishy rather than rock solid.
“Thank goodness.”
It takes a lot of experimentation before Jennie finds an oven dish and roasting rack big enough to hold the Christmas Emu and plonks the bird in it, breast side up. She dabs away with a kitchen towel to remove any moisture to help the skin go crispy, or so her mum had told her on the phone the night before.
After rubbing oil, salt and pepper into the skin and stuffing a couple of peeled onions inside the cavity, Jennie adds some broth to the pan. She then manhandles the not-paltry poultry into the oven. It just fits, with the enormous bird wearing the oven like a metal straitjacket. On closing the door, she worries that one of its wings is dangerously close to the glass. She hopes it’ll shrink as it cooks, otherwise they’re in for truly crispy skin and one hell of a dirty oven.
With the turkey safely on its way to lunch, Jennie sorts herself out some breakfast. She’s finishing her second piece of toast when Sam arrives.
Sam looks closely at the wall of flesh visible through the window of the oven. “You got it in there in one piece! I thought we might have to attack it with a chainsaw.”
“I thought about cutting it up, but apparently that can make it as dry as old boots.”
“I reckon that’s how it tastes, anyway. How in God’s name are we meant to roast the veggies?”
“We’ll have to do them in the electric frying pan, because there’s no way we’ll fit them in with that thing,” says Jennie, nodding toward the oven.
In tandem with getting Christmas lunch ready for the household, Jennie puts together another package.
“What on earth is that for?” says Sam, seeing the pile of newspaper and tinfoil topped with a plastic plate.
“I’m putting together a lunch for Chicken George.”
“Is he still living rough?”
“Yeah. I’d have thought he’d move into a shelter for the winter, but I guess he likes his independence.”
“He must be freezing, living in that glorified woodpile of his.”
Jennie tries imagining it but simply can’t process thoughts of what it must be like to deal with that sort of cold.
“I’m about done here. Do you want to find Mark and see if he can run me down there in the car? Otherwise, it’ll be cold before I can get there.”
Bang on one o’clock, they all sit down at the table in the formal dining room. It’s festively decorated and groaning under the weight of the food piled high in its middle.
The effort put in by Jennie and Sam that morning has both of them feeling frayed around the edges. The others had helped where they could, but the lion’s share had fallen to the two girls.
Once they’ve pulled the crackers and put on their too-small paper hats, they compare cheap plastic novelties and then get stuck in. Any conversation is limited with all of them applying themselves to the enormous amount of food.
They’re having a breather when Mark staggers to his feet and starts clearing dishes.
“Jeez, I’m so full I feel like I’ve polished off a family of hamsters,” says Brenda, massaging her tummy, “including their cage and bloody exercise wheel.”
Jennie looks down at her own stomach, shocked to see how distended it is. “Can we hold off on dessert for a while? I don’t think I could do it justice right now.”
“We can’t stop now. I’ve made pudding,” says Brenda.
This is so out of character that everyone on their feet sits back down with a bump.
Jennie and Sam stare at each other through the candelabra sitting in the middle of the table. It only takes a second before both pairs of eyes are out like a snail’s.
“You didn’t,” they say in unison, their minds going back to the only meal they’d ever eaten prepared by Brenda.
“Jeez, relax, would ya?” says Brenda, pushing herself to her feet. “Eadie talked me through it.”
“What did you make?” says Mark to Brenda’s back, as she pushes her way through the swing door into the kitchen.
The word “Trifle!” comes back at them in slices through the gradually narrowing gap left by the swinging door.
“Trifle?” Now it’s time for Mark’s eyes to open wider than nature intended. He looks pointedly at Eadie, sitting proudly at the head of the table. “Tell me you didn’t?”
“Lighten up, boy. It’s only once a year.”
In response to the questioning looks from Jennie, Sam and Chris, he says, “Eadie’s idea of a trifle is closer to a cocktail than a dessert.”
Jennie thinks he’s being a tad melodramatic when he stands and blows out all the candles, plunging the room into darkness. Jennie doubts she’ll ever get used to the night in winter arriving mid-afternoon. There’s a little weak light still coming in through the large windows that face the street, but not enough to eat without taking your eye out with a spoon.
“Sorry,” says Mark, making his way toward the door, where he flicks on the overhead light. “It’s safer this way,” had only cleared his lips when Brenda stormed triumphantly back into the room, nearly giving Mark a frontal lobotomy in the process.
She’s carrying a large bowl filled to the brim with one of Jennie’s least-loved desserts. Sloppy sponge and custard do nothing for her, and the monster trifle Brenda has plonked on the table looks sloppier than anything Jennie has felt duty-bound to eat to date.
“It’s looking perfect,” says Eadie, peering at the blah-and-yellow concoction that’s doing its best to sneak over the top of the crystal bowl.
Brenda slops out enormous helpings and passes them around the table. Jennie holds up her hand to reject her serving but, at the look on Eadie’s face, gracefully flips her hand over and takes the bowl from Brenda. With any luck, she can get away with a couple of mouthfuls.
She has her spoon with a small glob of trifle poised in front of her mouth when Sam coughs and splutters. Jennie is so busy looking at the now scarlet Sam that she isn’t even conscious of putting the spoon in her mouth until the alcoholic burn hits.
“Delicious,” says Eadie, getting another huge spoonful into her mouth. The old lady gobbles her way through half her bowl while everyone else is getting up the nerve to have a second spoonful. Even Brenda, who’s a hard drinker, is slow to eat her pud.
“Glad you blew the candles out, mate,” says Chris, swiping his napkin across his forehead.
“Lightweights,” cackles Eadie, with obvious glee and what looks to be a second helping of the ninety-proof pudding in front of her.
Mark shakes his head. “This is gonna get ugly.”
Jennie forces down three small mouthfuls before putting her spoon back in the bowl as quietly as she can. Eadie still clocks it though.
“Come on, Jennie,” says Eadie, before polishing off her second bowl and looking hopefully at Brenda for a top up. “S’only oncer yeeer.”
“It’s, ah, it’s lovely, but I’m so full.” Jennie pats her tummy for emphasis.
The look Eadie gives her makes Jennie feel she’s single-handedly killed off the spirit of Christmas Past, while Brenda is steering more toward wanting to force-feed Jennie the rest of the bowl.
Jennie reluctantly takes up her spoon and powers through her plateful of gloop, shallow breathing to avoid the worst of the fumes. The liquid left at the bottom of the bowl when she’s finished all the solids looks to be pure alcohol.
She’s putting her spoon down when Eadie pipes up, “Come on, gal. You drink that. It’s the best bit.”
Jennie isn’t sure if it’s the champagne consumed with lunch or the incendiary device that Brenda’s whipped up, but her temper flares.
“For God’s sake, fine. I’ll finish the bloody stuff.” She slams her spoon on the table, picks up the bowl and swallows the dregs straight from the plate. Putting the bowl down again, hard, she’s appalled at the sarcastic, “Happy now?” that escapes.
She needn’t have worried, because rather than being upset, Eadie grinned broadly. “Seconds?”
Brenda holds her hand out for Jennie’s bowl.
“What the hell,” says Jennie, passing it over.
“It’s only once a year,” say the three crones in unison.
Jennie slugs back three helpings in the end, egged on by Brenda and Eadie. Even in her fully cut state, Jennie is still aware of the looks she, Brenda and Eadie are receiving from the three at the other end of the table.
Sam is laughing but incredulous and Chris looks mildly amused, but Mark is veering between censure and something Jennie doesn’t want to examine too closely. It makes her wonder if getting hammered is a good idea, given how thinly veiled his sensual gaze is when he looks at her.
Once the crystal bowl is thankfully empty, and the plates licked clean, Eadie claps her hands together. Wincing briefly at the pain caused by the momentarily forgotten arthritis, she carefully enunciates, “Time for charades.”
Jennie is keen, and so is Brenda, but there’s a decided lack of enthusiasm from the others. Jennie’s sure she hears, “If you can bloody walk,” from Mark’s direction but when she looks at him, his expression is neutral. Suspiciously so.
It’s not until she’s dragged herself to her feet that she thinks he might have a point. It’s only by slamming her hands down on the table that she stops herself from falling back into her chair. It takes a few more seconds for her to regain her equilibrium and feel safe enough to move away from the stability provided by the furniture.
Eadie is encountering stability issues of her own, but Jennie doesn’t feel capable of providing the help so obviously needed. Luckily, Brenda appears to have full use of her limbs and helps Eadie to her feet and through to the sitting room.
Jennie is safely in the sitting room when she hears Mark say, “No, no. It’s okay, we’ll clear up in here.”
She’s about to swing back into the dining room and rip strips off him when Sam jumps to her defense.
“Bloody right, too. We cooked. You clean.”
Sam joins Jennie and helps her navigate her way to the sitting room.
Sinking ungracefully into the couch, Jennie waves in the general direction of the others, eschewing the favored first spot, preferring instead the upholstered softness currently cuddling up to her. Brenda is on her third attempt at conveying the title of a movie that’s also a book and a play, when Jennie falls asleep.
I hope you enjoyed this festive excerpt from Brush With Fame. Wishing you a wonderful day with family and friends celebrating however you choose, even if that’s just a quiet day at home with a good book, or binge watching Christmas movies.
Andrene
PS: Die Hard is a Christmas movie!
