This true story will be serialised weekly.

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Chapter 2.                                                                                                   

JANE

 

‘Insanity is not a distinct and separate Empire, our ordinary life borders upon it and we cross the frontier in some part of our nature.’

Henri Taine

 

Everyone fears madness, yet the potential for us to take leave of our senses is merely a hair’s breadth away, the dividing line, a fragile one. The crossover into insanity can take place almost imperceptibly. We might be aware of our own bizarre traits, some of which we privately indulge but hide from others to avoid being judged as slightly unhinged or even completely bonkers. The most reckless act for the majority of us is probably that of having children. Reproducing ourselves despite the incalculable risks involved is surely an act of sheer madness.

Christmas is another source of borderline insanity for me. I’m not one of those people who wish it could be Christmas every day or anything, forcing it to extend artificially and leaving all the decorations up all year. But as soon as the nights draw in, I start to feel a magnetic pull towards festive shop windows and Christmas lights. If I walk down any street in December, I don’t get very far before I am sidetracked by an illuminated display. I see it as a type of seasonal affliction. Maybe I just need to invest in a lightbox.

Good Christmas is the title Em gives to the ones we all spend all together as a family, and ‘bad or ‘Boring Christmas’ is her name for the alternate year, when her two married brothers are duty-bound to spend the festive season with their in-laws. I like to unpack the loft boxes as soon as the clocks go back, remembering past celebrations as I unwrap each treasured thing. A happy accumulation of whimsical objects, of no value to anyone else, but holding a wealth of memories for me; where I was when I bought each one, who it was intended for, like this miniature wooden violin dangling from my finger by a ribbon loop. I chose this one for Danny when he started learning the violin, almost sixteen years ago now.

There is a kind of fevered intensity to my preparations a welcome shot of adrenal energy to help me through the dark, depressing months of autumn and winter. Making Christmas happy became an obsession and shows no sign of abating as I get older. I put myself under considerable pressure to get it ‘right’, then make the mistake of thinking that everyone else loves the season as much as I do.

The “Most Wonderful time of the Year” has felt less so, since the death of Grandma Jean.  My mother-in-law had always been a central part of our Christmases. Far from resenting her presence and her influence, I was grateful for her input. In her absence, I now feel responsible for continuing to do things her way. One year, I tentatively mentioned to my own parents that we might visit them instead, because we hadn’t spent a Christmas at theirs for some years, but my step-mum responded both quickly and just a bit too emphatically to my enquiry,

‘We don’t mind! Believe me. We really don’t mind!’  There could be no mistaking the implications.  I make up my mind there and then that I will go out of my way to welcome my children, their partners, and all of my potential grandchildren always, however many there are and not only at Christmas.

Sitting cross-legged on our living room floor with rolls of red, gold and green wrapping paper, scissors, Sellotape, and gift tags surrounding me and the familiar smells of brandy and cinnamon drifting from the bombsite of a kitchen where I have been opening drawers to look for Grandma’s special stuffing recipe at the same time as starting a fruit cake mixture and tipping out currants and sultanas ready for the first batch of homemade mincemeat.

I used to love watching ‘The Sound of Music’ in the holidays. My secondary school was a Catholic Convent, so I had all but decided to become a nun myself until I discovered that they were brides of Jesus and not allowed to get married or have children. Significant losses had punctuated my early life, with the death of my birth mother when I was only three, followed by several changes of childminder over the next few years. The need to fill these holes fed my longing for a large and close-knit family of my own.

I gave birth to two boys in two years, returning from a scan a few short years later to share the thrilling news with my husband that we were going to have another son. I recall Graham’s frozen stare through fogging spectacles, small beads of perspiration breaking out on his furrowed brow. ‘More hassle,’ were his words, barely audible, but hardly the ecstatic response I’d been hoping for!

He has never been an impulsive, nor a reckless man, and coming from a small family with only one brother, I suppose the prospect of three sons might have seemed excessive, inevitably expensive, and my very sensible husband is generally accurate in his prediction of hassles ahead. In the short term, these took the form of relentless pressure from me to provide further seed for the creation of just one more potential baby, the elusive daughter, thus rendering our family complete.

Not that Dan himself was much of a hassle at all, neither as a baby nor throughout his childhood. If I were to pick one of my kids out as the most likely to suffer psychosis, it would not have been Dan. He was the easiest of our four in many ways, crying just a little bit in the back of the car on our way home from the hospital, his two brothers sitting anxiously either side of his safety seat, patting him gently. I let out a deep sigh of satisfaction at the sight of my three beautiful boys, my precious, personal productions. Meanwhile, their father drove us home with a distracted air of prevailing gloom, fretting about another arrival that same morning, an unexpected tax bill which, according to his calculations, was significantly larger than it should have been.

I scoop out a Christmas card from last year’s pile, now strewn across the lounge floor. It is a picture of a steam train winding its way through snow-covered hills. I smile as I remember our weekend bike rides on the disused rail tracks, nine-year-old Robert pretending his mountain bike was a ‘Harley Davidson’ (long distances were never a problem for him). His younger brother Thomas, a more anxious child, always required plenty of reassurance about the manageability of any inclines ahead. And two-year-old Dan sitting bolt upright on the child seat behind me, singing at the top of his voice for the duration of the ride.

With gay abandon, I continued to add to our growing family and Graham’s career accelerated at a comparable rate. We had moved to Belgium by the time my fourth and final pregnancy was underway. The day of my twenty-week scan became an exciting, family day out, brought into sharp focus by the sound of our three boys racing along hospital corridors, proclaiming loudly to the lines of pregnant, Flemish ladies, that they were going to have a sister!

My eyes stray to another card in the heap, an old-fashioned painting this time, of skaters on a frozen pond. This image transports me back to Emily’s birth, which took place during the coldest winter Europe had seen for a century. The local lake had frozen over that year, and Tervuren Park became a spectacular wonderland. People skated and towed sledges overflowing with laughing children. Though tempted, I was forbidden to join them on the ice in my heavily pregnant state, so had to be content with watching.

The Spring thaw arrived, and the sunshine produced an abundance of pink cherry blossoms on the tree branches outside my baby girl’s bedroom window. In my state of benign, post-natal ecstasy, it would not have surprised me at all to see blue blossom instead of pink, had I given birth to another boy.

My family, now complete, was going to become every bit as big, as remarkable and as happy as I had always dreamed. Anticipating challenges and lonely times ahead, I was determined to endure them stoically. I had made my choices. If things proved difficult, I had only myself to blame as I was reminded many times by several people. This didn’t stop me longing for Graham’s return from his lengthy business trips and long-haul travel. I needed him to nurture me, to take over being the grown-up for a while. When he did, dismissive of his jet lag and work stresses and instantly turning his mind to whatever practical things needed to be done in the home, my behaviour resembled that of a thwarted child, demanding attention and unconsciously punishing him for his absence, with little idea of the responsibilities he carried.

Today my brood is fully fledged and ready to fly, my nest, rapidly emptying. Despite my dread of this stage, I realise I must let them go. Only Em is still at home now, the two eldest already married, Rob running his own music production business, Tom a doctor, and Dan in London, finishing his actor training. What will I do when Em leaves? Who will I be, if not a mother? I am going to be a grandmother in the New Year, which will be a new adventure, and I could ask to increase my working hours at school. Graham has also talked about downsizing from our big three-story home, so I’m secretly hatching a plan to move to the countryside, buy some land, a dog, a horse or two, some chickens, goats, alpacas perhaps? I need to fill my emptying nest with something to look after.

I am startled out of my guilty daydream and look up, sensing that Graham has arrived home. He is standing in the doorway, casting a disapproving eye around the room.

‘So, this will be the permanent state of things between now and the New Year, I suppose.’

He has never been a fan of Christmas and is always tired by the end of the day. Just one look or word from him can have the effect of flattening my mood instantaneously. Over the years we have been together, he has attempted to exchange his negative outlook for a mindset of stoic resignation, sometimes successfully. I glance around the room laughing.

‘Not necessarily, but I wanted to get a head start this week, before school starts again. Besides, it’s best to get organised now, don’t you agree? Because you never know what’s around the corner.’

I am not sure what made me say this. My words were almost prophetic in the light of what was about to unfold.

I start tackling the lounge floor, now liberally strewn with colourful and glittering debris. Graham can’t resist getting involved, especially with the kitchen clearing. He is always very thorough and speeds up the process considerably, unable to relax with any mess or clutter around. The atmosphere is always one of extreme diligence and intense industry until everything is thoroughly cleaned, tidied away, or screwed up and thrown into the waste bin.

When Em was little, she decided that her father, had developed a serious dose of ‘repetitive repulsive disease’ evidenced by his constant need to clear up and dispose of things, plus his frequent trips to the refuse site. I think the term she was searching for was ‘obsessive compulsive disorder’, but I have to admit, I prefer her own inventive label.

And I have plenty of obsessive-compulsive tendencies of my own, of course, like… building happy families and making everything perfect at Christmas.