Comfort and Joy (2 page)

I’m back on Oxford Street now, headed for Selfridges, sharing the pavement with one billion people and a mere million arsing
pigeons. Can I just say, about pigeons? a) Why aren’t they in their creepy old mank-nests, sheltering from the cold rather
than festooning the streets with guano? Also, more urgently, b) Why do they walk along the pavement in straight lines, as
though they were human? This has bothered me for years, and I find myself thinking about it once again as I slowly shuffle
my way west, with one pigeon keeping pace on either side of me. We are walking three abreast, like a posse. The pigeons are
my bitches: here come the girls. It is so, so wrong. But it always happens because, alone of all the birds, pigeons don’t
just alight, strut about for a few seconds and take off again. No, they walk for miles. They follow the invisible horizontal
for a freakishly long amount of time, pretty much keeping up with us.
Pigeons think they’re people
. It does my head in. It also explains why you see them on the Tube, pottering up and down the platform
before walking into the carriage, calm as you like. In London, pigeons mostly walk – they only fly if you run after them.
It’s bloody odd, is what it is. I don’t like it. Birds should fly.

Here we are. Even my temporarily unseasonal heart gladdens a little bit at the sight of Selfridges’ Christmas windows, a stunning
exercise in glitter and luxe. They’ve done fairy tales this year, but subverted them a bit, so that bosomy Goldilocks is looking
minxy in boned Vivienne Westwood and the three bears give the impression that never mind the porridge, come and sit on our
laps (even the baby, disconcertingly. I’m not mad about the idea of Baby Bear with a boner). Little Red Riding Hood is wearing
fuchsia silk underwear under her billowing cloak, which has fallen open for the wolf’s delectation. So much sex, I think,
as I watch an exhausted-looking couple and their two small children staring at the displays. Sex everywhere. The children
practically have their noses pressed up against the glass, mouths open in amazement and delight. I suppose it goes above their
heads, the fact that everyone looks like they’re about to ravish everybody else. (I find myself wondering how they pick the
fairy tales at the window-display meetings. Does someone clear their throat and point out that yes, you could technically
put the Little Match Girl in sexy knickers but that it wouldn’t necessarily add to the joyous Christmas vibe when she dies,
broken and alone?)

They’ve done a nice thing with ‘The Ugly Duckling’, though: the Mother Duck is old-school glamorous; and the Ugly Duckling
is new-school nerdy, with fabulous clothes that look like a beautiful mess and big black glasses. She looks good, the Ugly
Duckling. She makes the Mother Duck look like she’s trying a bit too hard. I expect the Mother Duck spent the Ugly Duckling’s
childhood trying to wean her out of vintage – then called second-hand – and into Laura Ashley. And I bet the Mother Duck didn’t
like the Ugly Duckling’s boyfriends, because they
weren’t called Rupert or Jeremy. The jewels glitter on the Mother Duck’s hands; the Ugly Duckling is wearing a plastic necklace.
I realize that I, too, practically have my nose pressed up against the glass, and that my mouth is slightly open.

God, Christmas. It makes my brain melt. Because – I’ve finished over-identifying with the Duckling and am now, appropriately
enough, in the beauty hall – I love it so much, and I want it to be so lovely, so redemptive, so right. There’s no point in
doing it craply, is there? I know people who do do it craply, sitting there miserably with their substandard presents and
their overcooked titchy bird, but that’s not how I roll. The idea of that kind of Christmas makes me want to cry: I can’t
bear even to watch pretend people doing it on television. It’s not that I want it to be perfect in the Martha Stewart sense
– I don’t even own any matching crockery. I just want it to be … nice. Warm. Loving. Joyous. All those things. Christmassy.

My feet lead me to the Chanel counter, for Kate. They have these fantastically expensive – of course – special scents, called
things like Coromandel, which I start spraying on thick, heavy paper strips. Why am I not able to roll that way? Why can’t
I just go, ‘Eh, Christmas, it’s just another day – more food, more stuff, but it’s just a day, a mere day, one lone day that
in the great scheme of things doesn’t matter very much’? I don’t know. If I knew, I would fix myself. I just know that I want
it to be right, absolutely exactly minutely right, and that people who bang on about the pressures of commercialism – she
said, from the beauty department of a luxury store – are missing something. That’s not what the day’s about – well, not entirely.
It’s about love, and family, and, like I said, redemption. If I didn’t want to run the risk of sounding like the king of the
wankers, I’d say Christmas was about hope. Yeah. Hope. And optimism. It’s like the fairy tales in the window: for families,
every Christmas is a new opportunity for Happy Ever After.

No pressure, then.

So Kate now has the scent – it’s called ‘31 rue Cambon’ and they package it in a thick black box with a fabric magnolia inserted
behind the grosgrain ribbon, and I feel temporarily reassured, because it really does smell delicious and will be perfect
on her skin. But then, as I head towards Jewellery – crammed with men emergency-buying stuff for their wives without really
looking at it properly – I think: I can’t just give my mother one lone bottle of scent, even if it is super-scent. I’m veering
dangerously into shout-out-the-price territory again (‘I’d have been just as happy with a rose petal’). I need to get her
a couple of other things. Small things. And pick up something for Jake. And I need to bump up Sam’s present. Sam’s present
is too small, because I’ve been annoyed with him recently. And he with me. But it’s Christmas. And while I’m at it, I could
have a quick look for things to add to the children’s stockings. Maisy’s (I know: I did actually name my daughter after a
cartoon mouse whose face is only ever seen in profile) is done, because she’s five and it’s easy, but my boys are teenagers
and when you’re a teenager and the only things you’re into are bands and techy stuff, your stocking suffers. An iTunes card
barely fills the toe; a DVD lies there all flat, making the stocking look tragic. And again, brain-melt: I am whooshed back
through time to my own teenage years, at home with my own much younger sisters, Flo and Evie, clocking their fat, bursting-at-the-seams
stockings and looking down at my own considerably thinner one.

Kate was married to Julian at the time – he is my sisters’ dad. And my mini-stocking was always fabulous: earrings and lipsticks
and thoughtful, hand-picked little books of poetry and suchlike. There was absolutely nothing, nada, zero, to complain about.
But I felt – jealous isn’t quite the right word. I didn’t want more or better stuff. Envious, then. Envious of my
sisters’ fat, teddy-stuffed stockings and everything they symbolized: their childhood, with two parents who were their parents,
two parents who loved each other living under the same roof; the ordinariness of the teddies and little games; the absolute
safe, cosy, family-ness of it.

And now, oddly – or not oddly at all, depending on your viewpoint – my own children are in the same situation, with a stepfather,
and a much younger sibling (just the one) who lives, utterly secure, at home with a mummy and daddy under one roof; a sibling
whose fat, teddy-stuffed stocking may present an emotional contrast that kind of harshes their Christmas morning mellow. Or
not. They’re happier than I was by miles, but still – I’m taking no chances. I hurtle down a floor, to the HMV concession,
to stock up on Xbox games.

It all gets done, eventually. It always does – I don’t know why I get myself in such a flap. Unless I’ve miscalculated, I’ve
now got presents for everybody – enough presents, good presents, the gifts that will bring joy to the family home and would
cause the Baby Jesus to kick His legs and coo with pleasure if His crib were in our kitchen. I take out my tattered list and
double-check: yes, all done, though I’m not sure about the fluorescent underpants for Jake, which seemed a good – well, a
comical – idea at the time. Still, too late now. I’ll do a last-minute supermarket dash tomorrow – this might finally be the
year that we don’t run out of bay leaves – and try to get the bulk of the wrapping done tonight after dinner. I’m laughing,
basically. All that fuss, and here I am, sorted, good to go, like some marvellous housewife in a magazine. Things are looking
up.

The crowds have thinned out a bit – it’s just before 6 p.m. – and even the pigeons no longer seem that keen to walk alongside
me. Maisy’s at home with her granny, Sam’s mum – mine doesn’t do babysitting – who said earlier she’d actively
like to look after her and put her to bed. ‘Take as long as you like, love. It’s what I’m here for,’ she said, in her martyred
but kind way. I have time – ample time – for a coffee and a sit-down.

It suddenly occurs to me that I can probably do better than that. I don’t really want to donkey my parcels and bags around
in the rain only to squeeze myself into an overcrowded, overheated coffee shop, and besides they start shutting at about this
time. A light bulb goes on up above my head: I could go and have a drink somewhere really nice. Somewhere I could leave my
parcels with a matronly guardian, and where someone would take my coat and bring me, I don’t know, a giant Martini. And some
olives. And some nuts. Maybe those little Parmesan biscuit things. Because actually I’m starving. Yes. Who does those things?
Who cocoons you in that way? Why, a hotel. I’ve perked up massively by now: under the giant wet hood of my Arctic parka, I
am smiling in the rain. I’m going to take myself to a glamorous hotel, for a pre-Christmas drink by myself. How festive is
that? Just the one drink (don’t want to spend a fortune), and then home within a couple of hours tops, in time to cook supper.

If I’m going to do this, I might as well do it properly. I don’t want to sit in the bar of a sad hotel, with sad men from
out of town who’ve come to London to see their children before heading off again to spend Christmas all by their lonely, divorced,
broken selves. This leads me to quickly count my blessings, an old hobby that I’ve never quite managed to give up. Chief among
them, tonight: I am not a sad man whose ex-wife only lets him see his children for a couple of hours on 23 December, while
she sits silently in a corner, bristling with resentment and old woundage and he thinks, ‘This used to be my home.’ No. I
may be divorced but I am not sad. Or a man. Also, I’m really good at being divorced. I’m a gold medallist.
I’m an Olympian. Robert, the boys’ father, remains my excellent friend, as evidenced by the fact that he
and
his parents are coming to Christmas, as they do every year. Pat on the head, Clara. (Everyone thinks I’m awfully clever to
be good at divorce, and I smile and look positively crammed with the wisdom of the ancients, but actually there’s nothing
to it. Put it this way: if you’ve been the child of serially divorced parents yourself, you become very, very skilled at How
Not To Do It.)

The Connaught, then. Ha! Why not? The Con-bloody-naught, so chic and refined. I haven’t been in there for years. It’s exactly
the sort of place where a person might go and have a drink and be left in peace and feel like a lady in a hat in an old-fashioned
novel, plus it’s barely a ten-minute walk away. Worry: do I look smart enough under my polar-explorer coat? Why, yes, for
once: I had coffee with my editor this morning and thought I’d better make an effort, so I am wearing an actual dress. A silk
dress, since you ask, nicely cut to emphasize the good bits and minimize the bad (stomach, chiefly. We’ll speak no more of
it). And I have proper shoes on, and make-up in my handbag. No problemo: Connaught here I come. It is fated.

I’m walking through Grosvenor Square now, past the American Embassy, which it is impossible to get near because of all the
anti-terrorist barricades. People huddle past, braced against the rain, which hasn’t let up since eleven this morning; hundreds
of outsize fairy lights glisten from the enormous trees lining the square. Two cars nearly splash me a little, but I don’t
care: I feel elated. I never do anything like this – take myself off to hotels, I mean. Once your default setting is switched
to domestic, as mine has been for nearly two decades, you don’t spend an awful lot of time on your own doing randomly fun,
extravagant-seeming stuff. You only have minutes a day on your own doing non-homey, non-worky stuff, if you’re lucky
and all your children are at school and it’s not the holidays. Some people must really like it, I guess, and I like it too,
the whole big bustling family thing, but I also really like my own company and sometimes I miss it. What’s that awful expression
that makes me gag? ‘Me-time’. That’s what I’m having. Perfect timing: me-time before the onslaught of Christmas Day.

Slight left, and here’s Carlos Place, and here’s the Connaught, shining in the dark with that yellowy light, like a house
in a book, like a beacon of possibilities. A uniformed doorman outside is seeing someone into a Bentley: the scene is the
definition of old-fashioned glamour. I wish I wasn’t wearing the stupid parka, but anyway. In I go. Yes, madam would love
to leave her parcels. Yes, do take madam’s coat. No, I think I remember where the bar is, thanks, and anyway I’m just going
to nip into the Ladies first to put on some make-up. Which is just as well, because when I look in the mirror I see the rain
has washed all of mine away, leaving only two smudged black circles around my eyes: I look like I’ve been crying. New face,
back out down the corridor, and yes – air-punch of a yes – here it is.

Here is my me-time bar. There’s a fire, and dim lighting, and old-fashioned sofas and leathery club chairs and a polished
walnut table just for me, with puffy, monogrammed paper coasters awaiting my drink. I sink into the chair, which seems to
sigh with pleasure upon receiving my bottom, and I unfurl like a flag. Begone, stupidly expensive china animals! Shoo, pointless
panic about presents! All is well with the world, and here’s my waiter, and it’s two days to Christmas and oh man, this is
nice. This is
so nice
. A champagne cocktail, I think, rather than a Martini – I have a vague notion that it won’t be as strong. I don’t want to
be drunk: my tolerance for alcohol has decreased tragically with age, and these days my hangovers can last up to
forty-eight hours. I wouldn’t mind, but they’re so seldom worth it.