By Shelley Day Sclater

We should not have gone to the Fergusons’ that night. It’s not as though they were close friends or anything. I did try – a bit half-heartedly – to put Angus off.
    “They just asked us to make up numbers,” I said.
    Angus was straining to fasten a button; he’d put on a bit of weight since last Christmas. He pulled out the blue silk tie, held it up and considered it. He turned his shirt collar up.
    “It’s Christmas,” he said, looking into the mirror. He tied the knot and edged it up. “You like Christmas.”
    “There’ll be nobody there. All this snow…”
    I didn’t want to meet new people. I wanted us to stay exactly as we were.
    “Now,” he said, “where’s that jacket?”
    Angus sorted through the line of suits that hung limply in his side of the wardrobe.
    “There it is, on the bed,” I said.
    He was fixing the tie-pin.
    “Is that straight?” he said.
    He squinted in the mirror, made a minor adjustment, smoothed his hair down. It was starting to go thin. He picked up the jacket, shook it, and put it on. He tugged the shirt cuffs down to just below the sleeves.

It took an hour and a half to get there, the roads were so bad. The snow ploughs had been out and there were great heaps of snow on either side. More was falling. Angus perched over the steering wheel, peering into the snow. The wipers swooshed it away.
    “What if we meet something?” I said.
    “Thank God for 4x4,” he said, checking the gear.
    “But if something comes… you won’t be able to back up in the dark…”
    “Must concentrate,” he said.

The Fergusons had bought the big house at Callaly that used to be Grandpa Kennedy’s. People said the house was haunted, that no one would buy it. When Grandpa Kennedy finally died, it turned out there was nothing left but debt, and Mr Ferguson had moved quickly. It was said he’d had his eye on it, had been hovering, like a vulture. Before long it was said they weren’t getting on, that the wife hated the North East, couldn’t stand the weather, was bored half to death; and him, always away off somewhere. They don’t belong, people said, serve them right when it all goes belly up.
    I’d seen the wife a few times, out and about in Alnwick. Camilla. She was tall, skinny, always well made up, nicely dressed, Joules-type things; kept horses, drove a Saab convertible. Angus said I should make friends with her. You like horses, he’d said. I didn’t think she looked nice at all. Not be-friends-with nice. When men looked at her, you could see their wives shrinking.

The invite to the party was specially printed. Mr and Mrs Angus Watson, on the envelope, in a fancy font. Inside, a plain cream coloured card: Mr and Mrs Marcus Ferguson, At Home, 24th December 2010, 8pm. When Angus came home it was the first thing he noticed. He picked up the envelope, looked at it and shook his head.
    He opened it as he went through into the kitchen. “Ah, this is a turn up for the books,” he said.
    He poured himself two fingers of the Famous Grouse and dribbled some water in from the cold tap. He was drinking more than he used to. He propped the card against the sugar bowl that was still on the table from breakfast. He took a slug of the whisky, turned the little TV on, fiddled a bit with the aerial, pulled a chair out to sit on.
    “That’s nice, a party,” he said, “at the Fergusons.”
    He lit a cigarette and started watching the news.

The snow got worse as we left Alnwick and began the long climb up towards the moor. A few cars had been abandoned in the verges and were already up to the tops of their wheels in snow.
    “What if we can’t get home?” I said.
    Up there on the top, a blizzard was blowing. Angus was taking it slowly, but even so, the Discovery was having trouble gripping.
    “White Christmas!” said Angus. “Eskimos have a hundred and one different words for snow.” He changed down a gear and put the hot fan on.
    “Inuit,” I said.

When we got to the Hall there were lots of cars, mostly 4x4s, parked at angles along the road. Angus pulled up beside the big iron gates. The drive was thick with snow; lots of footprints, but no tyre marks. Angus yanked on the handbrake and got out. “It’ll be alright here,” he said. The locks clicked shut and the lights flashed twice.
    “My shoes,” I said.

We walked up the long, curving driveway, lit all along with strings of little dancing lanterns.
    “Christmas Eve,” Angus said.
    I think we were both trying to forget what had happened last Christmas, and all the hard times in between. His shoes crunched into the snow. At the turn, the big house loomed out of the darkness, a mass of sparkling lights.
    “Bit different from when old man Kennedy…” Angus said.
    I hadn’t wanted to come, but I was beginning to feel the old pull of the place.
    Angus pulled the bell at the big studded front door, which had a wreath of holly with red satin ribbons in the middle. The bell clanked inside. Nobody came.
    “Can’t be that late…” Angus looked at his watch.
    He stamped his feet to get the snow off then pulled the bell again, harder. A woman dressed as a maid opened the door.
    “Come in,” she said, “Mr…?”
    “Watson,” Angus interrupted, “Angus Watson.”
    We followed the maid into the wide hallway, past a tall Christmas tree decorated with glass balls and tiny sparkling white lights. Garlands of holly were roped around the edge of the gilded mirror above the fireplace where logs hissed in the flames. I could smell wood-smoke, mulled wine, cigars, and hear the hum of voices coming from open doors on every side. Someone was playing the piano, Debussy’s Snowflakes. The door of the study was shut. In the vast hall, the Venetian chandelier, its crystal pendants swayed gently, catching the light.
    “What a place!” Angus said, as the maid ushered us to the cloakroom.
    “Coats in here,” the maid said.
    She ignored me, acted like I didn’t matter. There was a sign pointing to the Ladies’ Cloakroom. I left Angus hanging up his coat and went up the wide carpeted staircase that branched into two galleried landings at the top. It was just like I remembered; the bust of old Josiah Kennedy on a marble plinth, the portraits of the ancestors in their thick gilt frames, the faded tapestry depicting the Exodus. Suddenly it didn’t matter that the house wasn’t ours any more.
    The door of my old room swung open before I reached it. I went in. There was my four-poster bed, the matching dark wood furniture, the little desk, the curtains of heavy brocade, the golden tassels along the pelmet. I hung my coat up in the big oak wardrobe; the familiar smell of lavender and old wood. I pulled back the curtains, heaved open the oak shutters and looked out across the garden; there was the cedar tree, its great limbs stretching out black across the snow-covered lawn. In the moonlight I saw her, the little girl, swinging to and fro, to and fro, her hands gripping the ropes that hung from the tree, her ankles crossed, her hair flying out behind her.

Downstairs, I couldn’t find Angus. I looked in all the rooms that were open. I went from one to the other a second time. He was nowhere.
    Everywhere people were standing about in small groups, talking, smiling, laughing, champagne glasses or little pewter mugs in their hands. Some of the men were smoking cigars and throwing their heads back, exhaling clouds of smoke. In the drawing room, a black Labrador was lying in front of the fire. When it saw me, it pricked up its ears and slapped its tail lazily a few times; it half got up, but then lay back down and rested its head on its paws and watched me. Where was Angus? I thought of asking someone, but chances were no one would even know who Angus was. Someone said what a pity it was that Marcus had had to miss his own party, and wasn’t Camilla a brick.
In the kitchen, the old pine table was spread with festive food – a big turkey, two hams, a whole salmon. People were piling up their plates and eating with silver forks that had our family crest on. They were talking and laughing and mopping at their mouths between sentences with pure white damask napkins that matched the tablecloth. There was a smell of cloves and oranges. On the far wall, the big black Aga. People were ladling steaming mulled wine from a stock-pot into pewter cups. The muted sounds of the piano came from the music room, the opening bars of Once in Royal David’s City. The clock on the wall said almost midnight. As the hour struck, people put down their plates, topped up their glasses and pushed their way to the music room.
    As everyone left, I saw Angus. I watched him leave the kitchen by the other door. His tie was loose and his shirt had come out. Camilla was hanging onto it, a champagne glass in her other hand. I saw them cross the hall and go into the study. Giggling, Camilla closed the door. Then, the clock finished striking and, from the music room, the house was filled with singing.

The moment I lost Angus, I knew I would lose myself.

Somehow I made it to the dining room. The last embers of the fire were smouldering in the grate. The tall clock watched me from its moon face, its pendulum glinting in the candlelight. Through the French windows, the black of night, the white of snow, and the creak creak creak of the swing in the cedar tree.

The singing stopped and people were saying their goodbyes. I watched them wander off in twos and threes. I heard car engines starting, muffled by the snow.
    I waited for Angus outside the front door. He came out in his shirt-sleeves, holding up his jacket, slapping at the pockets, feeling for the keys. He didn’t have his overcoat. Camilla stood on the top step.
    “Ring me tomorrow,” she said. “You won’t forget?”
    “Promise,” he said. He leaned forward and kissed her.

Then I was running across the lawn, running through the snow, stumbling towards the gates. I could see Angus walking briskly down the driveway. He was carrying his jacket and swinging his keys and whistling as he walked, Hark the Herald Angels Sing… Angus never whistled. His hair was all messed up. He reached the corner and looked back and waved at Camilla. She was still at the door, waving in the flickering lights. She waved until he turned the corner. Angus passed me at the gate, still whistling as he got into the car.

I looked back at the empty expanse of snowy lawn I had run across only minutes before. Even before I looked, I knew there would be no footprints, that my feet had left no mark. The snow was as smooth as if it had just fallen.
    I went over to the cedar tree and sat down on the swing. I held onto the ropes and I crossed my ankles and I swung and swung as high as I could make it go. The lights went off in the house, one by one, and all the twinkling lanterns in the garden, and the moon and all the stars.

© Shelley Day Sclater

Last Christmas was first published in The Journal, 10 December 2011