A short scene from Keepers
Grandma took charge of Christmas.
In her airless dining room they squeezed elbow to elbow around the oval table laid with a white linen cloth – and Grandma’s silver and the china which had come with Grandma’s own grandmother from the old country a hundred years earlier – and sweated their way through chicken, duck, roast potatoes and all the trimmings.
Stuffed as they were, they still found room for slices of the Christmas pudding which had been hanging for months in the pantry cupboard, the coolest corner of the kitchen. The sun beat on the old stones in the courtyard, wilting Grandma’s pot-grown lettuces and burnishing the tomatoes a deep, rich red.
In the late afternoon, when dinner was sufficiently digested, Raine and Faye ambled down to the beach with the kids, all of them carrying buckets, spades and towels. Rosie screamed as each breaking wave tossed her in its wet grip, Joy kicked water at Jack, and Jack threw wet seaweed at his sister.
Raine and Faye sprawled in the cooling shallows out of reach of saltwater splashes and wet seaweed.
‘They’ll be okay, won’t they?’ Raine said.
Faye rolled onto her front in the path of the incoming tide. ‘Kids are jack-in-the-boxes. They spring back quick enough.’
‘And they’d not seen much of Pop in the last months.’ Would Raine’s anguish be easier if she’d not had to bear witness to Pop’s sufferings? Her heart filled with the familiar ache. She would give all her worldly possessions, such as they were, to be six years old, hiding under a school desk with her pulse pounding at the sight of Pop’s shoes on the feet of the terrible man in the red trousers. She’d reach out and hug those red legs to her, tight as tight, never letting go.
‘Can we have an ice-cream?’ Jack splashed backside first into the shallows by Raine’s side, throwing up cooling sprays.
‘After Christmas dinner?’ Faye shook her head. ‘Little piggies.’
Joy splashed down by Raine’s other side. She giggled. ‘Oink, oink. Besides, dinner was hours and hours ago.’
‘About two.’
‘Please?’
Raine ran a hand through her wet hair. ‘Great idea. What else is Christmas for, if not to eat ice cream? Just don’t tell Mum.’
You can find the rest of the novel here. Happy Christmas.