Home life
Liberated lady
Alice Thomas Ellis
ell, after all that fuss it wasn't such a bad Christmas after all — really quite agreeable. I always feel a bit daunted as I regard 15 shining expectant faces and glance from them to the turkey crouching in a threatening stance, waiting to be carved, but as I've gone quite limp by that time anyway I leave the carving to any delightful gentleman who cares to try his skill, Michael this year, and a very good job he made of it—and the ham. Someone presided over the claret with his usual urbanity and I even remembered to put the gravy on the table. We all looked particu- larly lovely, especially me in a glitzy coat that Beryl gave me which made me rather resemble a salmon who has been muscle- pumping, since it has Dynasty-type shoul- der pads.
At the moment I am wearing fleecy cotton trousers, a hooded anorak, a full- length coat-dress, a cardie made by Janet from the wool of Icelandic sheep and a fingerless mitten (which I nicked from Jemma) on my writing hand which has gone numb. I look like a cross between Old Mother Riley, a Knight Templar and a troll, and people can scarce forebear to smile as their eyes light on me. I don't care. It was so cold when we arrived in Wales that the lock had frozen on the fuel store and there are Jack Frost patterns on the windows. It got a touch warmer when the snow came but no one is inclined to remove his hat and coat, even with the Aga and all the fires blazing.
The countryside looks more beautiful than at any other time of year; pared to the bone and bright with dead bracken, green pale with rimed grass. A full moon rose over the mountain as we were getting out of the car and I wondered why anyone ever stays in London — until I remembered the `summer' and the relentless rain which gave the whole country the air of a miserable slut. The clarity of the light now makes everything cheerful even with all growth in abeyance. Still, I'm dashed glad I'm not a peasant living here 500 years ago. It must have been remarkably uncomfort- able having to rely on smoky fires and the warmth of the animals shacked up beyond the wooden partition. I don't know how they managed without immersion heaters and the odd electric radiator as back up. I wonder how they forced themselves to wash or whether they ever did. Even now there is not the usual run on the bathroom facilities (except for the daughter who takes a shower about three times a day, causing the water supply to get low).
Speaking of the daughter, she inconveni- enced herself a few days before Christmas. She demanded that as we were too busy to go ourselves we should send a taxi to fetch her a selection of sugar and cholesterol from the hamburger joint, and when I demurred she being a spirited child shot into the study and slammed the door with such aplomb and conviction that it utterly refused to open again. After a while, foreseeing that she was likely to spend Christmas walled up in the west wing she began to wail in a plaintive fashion, but we were all, by this time, suffering from the giggles and too weak to apply the jemmy to the lock, even had we possessed one. God is not mocked, I told her through the intransigent door when I regained my composure. In the end, showing the deter- mination and ingenuity which characterise her (apart from the fiendish temper) she dropped the library steps out of the back window and clambered down into the garden of her friend Isobel, turning up at the front of the house wearing a jaunty expression. I was too reduced by now to remonstrate with her, and she began to complain that she had left her blue nail varnish and her blackhead-removing- cream behind. 'Tough,' said Janet, who takes a firmer line than me. Having reared only one daughter I cannot count myself an expert on the subject, but even with the experience of five sons I'm not sure that girls are not more trouble. Better company for a mother in many ways but more trouble in many more.
I wonder about other peoples' daughters since last night, when four little girls came with the carol singers, opened their tiny mouths and emitted, with entire confi- dence, the most lovely sounds — new Welsh carols, most of them, most of which I understood one word in 25, but sounding perfectly enchanting. They seemed to me as good as gold and I do so hope that sometimes they slam doors.
The daughter is now out on the hills sledging on a bin bag, with pellets whistling about her head as the guns take their toll of the pheasants, and in a while, as darkness descends, I expect I shall have to put on the wellies and go and look for her. I don't know how it happened, but I have a feeling she's the result of women's lib.
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