A peculiar present
One dreadful error was made by a woman on Christmas Eve. At first she thought she was doing everything right. She slipped on boots that looked like soldiers gaiters, pulled on a thick coat and a woolly cap, settled behind the wheel of her Jeep and drove off toward a foolish little house perched on a mistfilled hill. A meddlesome creature, she thought, needed sorting out.
The woman was called Margaret Whitfield, let us say. She had a single son, born to her late in life, and the two of them had shared thirty years together. She adored him with a ferocious love, lived and laboured for his sake, and even built a modest fortune on his behalf. The son fell for a girl named Ethel, who lived in a university hall, and together they soon had a child.
Margaret knew people well. She sensed that this girlEthel, as she called herwas eyeing her sons future and his inheritance. So she set out to confront the girl, to discover where she lived, and to either frighten or bribe her; the method was up to chance. She needed to wrench the snakeher sons loyaltyfrom a mouth that no longer listened to his mother and kept babbling about weddings.
Margarets face resembled a bulldogs: a heavy countenance creased with deep lines and a stubborn set of whiskers. Her eyes blazed with a fury reminiscent of the hound of the Baskervilles. She was a large woman, as solid as the statue of Britannia standing over the Thames. On her way she bought a few apples and pears and a little rattle for the childstill, it was a holiday, and some small gesture was needed to start the conversation. We are not beasts, after all, nor jaguars.
Everything seemed in order, so she rang the doorbell and entered like a oneeyed cyclops, shedding her boots and coat at the threshold. She greeted the girl with a cheerful Merry Christmas, ready to launch her speech, when she spied a babys playpen.
The infant was a pale little boy, called Pip by a shy whisper from Ethel. She stood trembling, as if fearing that Margaret might frighten him. Margaret approached the pen and offered the rattle. In an instant the child burst into such joyous laughter that Margaret herself shivered. Pip clutched the rattle, tottering on tiptoe in his tiny socks, one hand gripping the edge of the pen, performing a dance that seemed both absurd and enchanting. He shook the rattle, never breaking eye contact with Margaret, and shouted with delight, as if a spell of fascination had been cast upon him by her presence.
He reached for her, squealing and giggling, his eyes narrowing into slits, his mouth stretching wide with two little teeth. Here Margaret slipped. Instinctively she lifted the baby onto her arms. Pip wrapped his arms around her tightly, then began to pat her cheek, tap the rattle lightly against her forehead and babble.
She answered his babble with a trembling, affectionate voice, uttering nonsense like Who is this tiny sweetpea? Who is this little sugarcube? Her heart swelled with a sugary warmth, a heat that rose in her chest. Pip never took his lovesick gaze away, clinging to her as though he would not return to his mother. The air around him smelled of happiness, of love, of angelsif angels have a scent, it must be like the breath of a newborn.
Margaret, too, found herself unwilling to part with the child. She would give the world for Pips smile. Love struck her like a sudden thunderclap, and tears of warm gratitude slipped down the creases of her face.
The rest unfolded as it must. Margaret commanded her son to marry, though he had long ignored her orders. He did, for he loved Ethel and Pip. Through blackmail and promises, Margaret lured the young couple into her sprawling country house. Yet she did not hover over them, and they lived peacefully, their days untroubled.
All of Margarets attention was consumed by Pip. They could not exist apart; their love was a bright, impossible thread that bound them together.
So a woman made a dreadful mistakeperhaps not a mistake at all. Who can tell? In the end she discovered her Christmas present out of the blue. Christmas is a special day, and its gifts are strange, surreal, and wonderfully unexpected.
