Gilliflowers (51 page)

The garden looked beautiful in its sparkling winter garb. I gazed around marvelling to be part of such a landscape. I loved it. My mother’s words came to mind about good coming from bad. Fate had sent me here. I shivered. Fate was a strange thing. It often removed what it gave. IEM parachuted in and took over, sending my thoughts into morbid territory. What would fate ultimately have in store for me?

Death. The stark word struck fear into me. Death stalks all of us. He’s there in all our futures. We can’t escape him. When would he come for me? The thought disturbed me and made me feel colder still. I walked briskly down the garden to the summerhouse telling myself to cheer up for fucking Pete’s sake. I’ve never met Pete, let alone fucked him, but I quite like him, he’s always there in a crisis.

The summerhouse was untidy with residue from summer use: magazines strewn over tables, the chair, sofa and lounger cushions dented and flat. There were greasy finger marks on the windows, crumbs on the floor. It needed a good tidy up before being bedded down for the winter.

I cleaned the windows and dusted the blinds. I washed the tiled floor. I shook the rugs and rearranged the furniture into cosier alignments. I polished tables and plumped up cushions. By the time I was finished the summerhouse looked resplendent. I was proud. I gazed through the windows at the snowy garden. It was like looking out on a Christmas card, and that’s when it came to me, an idea. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?

The summerhouse is right at the bottom of the garden and naturally doesn’t get used much in the winter months, but it has electricity and heating, so there was nothing to stop me turning it into my own personal Christmas retreat. I could have a tree and as many lights and decorations as I liked. Shane could have his austere Christmas lounge. I would have my opulent Christmas summerhouse. I was excited by the thought of it.

I couldn’t wait to make a start. I headed into town to begin scouring the shops for Christmas decorations. I was late back. Dick’s car was on the drive. Shit! In my enthusiasm to get started on Operation Christmas House I’d left home without my phone. He’d be wondering where the heck I was. He worries more these days if he can’t get hold of me.

I slipped my shopping bags in the garage and then went indoors. He was annoyed. I was reprimanded for going out without letting him know and for not taking my phone. I got round him with honeyed apologies and a suggestion we cosy up by the fire instead of venturing out into the dark and cold for dinner. I didn’t feel like cooking though. I asked if he minded me ordering in pizzas. He didn’t. He’s more flexible than Shane when it comes to the evening meal. Shane likes dinner to be just so.

I ordered the pizzas and we had a cuddle and kiss on the couch while waiting for them to arrive. Of course Dick being Dick he didn’t stop at cuddles and kisses. By the time the deliveryman knocked on the door I was naked and well on my way to heaven, a trip Dick ruthlessly postponed until after we’d eaten. Cruel Daddy.

That evening was the last cosy one I spent with Dick, in fact with either of the boyfriends for a while.

The cold snap persisted with snowstorms and high winds causing drifting. The snow wasn’t the only thing to drift. I did too. Over the coming days the summerhouse project consumed me. I thought about it constantly. When I wasn’t thinking about it I was out and about visiting shops and garden centres looking at decorations and planning how I’d arrange them.

As I write my old mates Mr Retrospect and Mrs Hindsight are standing behind me stabbing rude fingers and stating the obvious. I used the project as a means to block things I didn’t want to acknowledge. Over the course of the year my life had changed and there were more changes looming on the horizon. I didn’t want any of it. I created a small fantasyland to winter down in instead of facing up to reality. I didn’t see it as such at the time. I was wilfully blind.

Things accelerated after Shane and I had a falling out in the last week of November. We had one of our ‘sensitivity’ clashes. He says I’m over sensitive and I say he’s insensitive. It happened after I’d ventured forth on the annual expedition to buy Christmas cards. As well as my own list I had a list from Shane and a list from Dick for both domestic and work cards (those men of mine don’t know the meaning of Clintons) I sorted out the individual family and friends cards and then chose a range of high quality boxes of cards, paying heed to Shane’s instructions: nothing overtly religious, nothing rude, nothing sentimental, nothing ‘cute’ or too glittery (it makes a mess) and then I attended to my own modest list.

I was looking at cards for my mother when an image of her came to mind, the here and now mother as I’d last seen her. One of the realities I was endeavouring to keep buried came to the surface, overwhelming me. Death was closing in on her, becoming tangible. She cast two shadows. I glanced at the maternal card in my hand. In all likelihood, barring a miracle, it would be the last Christmas card I ever bought for her.

Her treatment options had been exhausted. The cancer had been quelled a few times, but remained undefeated. It would claim dominion over her body. Her doctors had been brilliant at helping her access the best drugs available. Her relatively young age and positive attitude encouraged them to stretch budgets further than they might otherwise have done. The cold fact remained. Her days were running out. This past year she’s been using the seasons and its various events as goals to be achieved. It’s helped her get through some of the low points.
‘I’m determined to have one more
Easter, Gilli, one more summer, one more birthday, another Christmas.’

I looked around the crowded shop observing people and the different ways they picked their cards. Some grabbed a selection without really looking. It was a chore to be done and an item to score from a list. For others it was a more precise business involving the careful reading of verses and the studying of different pictures. I wondered if any were like me and in receipt of knowledge the card they were choosing would probably be the last for a particular loved one.

Cards are daft things I suppose. They gather dust and most get thrown away, but they’re also important because they’re the physical representation of a good wish.

They’re evidence someone has you in mind. Even during the years of our estrangement my mother and I exchanged cards at Christmas, including the Christmas she didn’t know where I was. She gave it to Lee and told him to pass it on and I did the same. Her card would always find me first and I’d always feel better for seeing it.

I also felt sad and angry and a lot of other things I couldn’t make sense of, and still can’t.

I chose a luxury card for her. It was padded silk and boxed and it cost me seventeen pounds. I didn’t care. I knew she would love the beautiful glittered and glamorous Deco ladies adorning it. On impulse I also picked cards for Shane and Dick. We don’t usually do Christmas cards, but I wanted to this year, another fear surfaced, in case stair and ladder plunging were going to become regular activities and I never got another opportunity.

I took my selection to the checkout, getting an odd look from the checkout lady. I wasn’t sure whether it was because I was buying so many expensive cards or whether it was because the two boyfriend cards I’d chosen picked me out as being not only gay, but a right two timing bastard.

After card shopping I wandered around town. At this time last year I would have popped into a pub for a lunchtime pint and a sandwich, enjoying the gaudy decorations and the pre-Christmas ambience. Instead I had to settle for an insipid latte and a soggy chocolate muffin in James’s coffee lounge before wandering some more.

I bought new jeans and two shirts from Topman for the sake of distraction and the comfort of buying something nice. I then went into Woolworths to buy some new earphones for my iPod to replace the ones that had fallen in the roasting tin on Sunday and got frazzled. I wish I hadn’t. It deepened my sadness. Woolworths was on the way out, another victim of an economy in flux. You could sense it in the atmosphere.

When I was a little boy I used to love being taken to Woolworths around Christmas time to look at all the toys, sweets and Christmas decorations. My memories were of sparkle, glitter and joyous anticipation. The glitter was tarnished. It was an empire in clear decline, shabby, rundown and under stocked. It reinforced the sense of things changing. I abandoned shopping and headed home.

I was almost at destination when my mobile rang forcing me to utter those legendary words
“I’m on the bus
” in response to Shane’s irritable demand to know where the hell I was. He was calling from the quasi mansion having gotten there and found it devoid of houseboy. I’d forgotten he might get home early on account of being in the near locality that day. He was viewing an old cinema, which had also served as a bingo hall and was now derelict. The site has been acquired by a charitable Housing Association. Shane’s company was to be involved in its eventual evolvement into new housing. It was in the early stages and Shane was hoping it would go ahead without falling foul of the credit crunch curse.

He wasn’t pleased to see me lurch through the front door carrying a variety of shopping bags. Laying men off work had turned him into a naggy Daddy about money. I was told in no uncertain terms to take the jeans and shirts back to the shop at my earliest convenience. I had stuff hanging in my wardrobe as yet unworn, some with store labels still attached. New clothing was superfluous to need. He brought up the wallet incident, reminding me I’d recently lost money due to carelessness and should be budgeting even more stringently instead of wasting money on useless items.

I was threatened with being skinned alive if I bought so much as a pair of underpants without asking him first.

Once he’d done tearing me off a strip he sent me off to fulfil his insatiable desire for coffee. It will be a grim day indeed for the coffee industry if he ever gives up the bean.

While I was busy in the kitchen he had a root through the bag containing the Christmas cards, looking for the receipt to put in his accounts folder. He found the expensive card I’d bought for mum and the cards I’d obviously bought for him and Dick, which were also pricey. He isn’t one to hold back if something or someone bugs him, he usually makes sure the bugger knows about it. I was that bugger.

He was appalled at what he called a pointless tossing of money down a sentimental drain. He was sure my mother wouldn’t want me spending a small fortune on throwaway goods and certainly neither he nor Dick had need of such silly things.

I told him, with respect, it was none of his business what card I sent my mother or how much I paid for it. I wanted to give her something beautiful because God knows there was fuck all else I could do for her. However, if he didn’t want my silly sentiments then he didn’t have to have them. I’d sooner wipe my arse on the cards than send them to people who didn’t want them. I stormed off to the kitchen to begin preparing dinner.

As I worked my hurt transferred into tears, which dripped into the sink along with the veggie peelings. It’s a shame there isn’t a profession centred on crying for a living because I’d be bloody brilliant at it. People would be headhunting me to cry at weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs.

Shane came into the kitchen bringing his empty coffee mug. He didn’t exactly hand out tissues and sympathy. He said I was all raw emotion like an oversensitive teenager and needed to toughen up. I snapped if toughening up meant being a hard bastard like him I wasn’t going to bother. He told me to get on with my work instead of feeling sorry for myself because I’d been reprimanded.

I stayed in the kitchen after my preparations were done, preferring to stay out of his way rather than seek his company, as I would normally have done. I put the radio on and read.

Dick came home and knew at once there was tension. I told him what ailed me.

He told me to toughen up too, but in a more roundabout way. He explained Shane wasn’t attuned to cards as a means of expression between partners. It wasn’t something he personally needed, which made it difficult for him to see it as a need in others. To him cards were best left at source as part of a tree rather than being turned into something that would end up in a recycling bin. I had to understand Shane wasn’t a sensitive new age kind of man.

I wasn’t mollified, not even when Dick said he’d be thrilled to receive a Christmas card from a pretty houseboy, if he still felt like sending one after having his feelings crushed by the household lord and Grinch.

Umbrage lingered and re-blossomed at dinner when I was serving wine from a bottle left by Leo when he had lunched with us on the previous Sunday. After the day I’d had I would have loved to wind down with a glass or two of nice wine. I was angry all over again at the denial of pleasure, but mainly what the denial of pleasure represented at root level.

The soup I’d made as a starter had not impressed Shane. He declared it watery and tasteless. As I poured his wine he prodded at the casserole I’d ladled onto his plate, asking what the meat was. Banging down the wine bottle I told him it was insensitive pig so he was bound to like it. If he didn’t then at least he had the glorious option of drowning the taste with wine.

I was marched from the dining room and roughly seated at the kitchen table to eat in isolation as befitted an ill-mannered cur. Dick had no sympathy. He said I’d brought it upon myself.

When my evening duties were done I said I was going over to Eileen’s for an hour or two to help her with some tombola tickets for her church fete, but instead I slipped down to the summerhouse and began to unpack some of the gorgeous Christmas lights and ornaments I had stashed there. I decided I’d order a fresh pine tree next day and make a proper start on decorating the summerhouse.

By early December the summerhouse was transformed into a thing of festive beauty. It sparkled and shimmered with lights, candles, ornaments, tinsel and glitter. I loved it and spent as much time as I could in there, skimping on my household duties in the process. I’d make a big flask of tea or coffee and retreat to my winter wonderland at every opportunity, settling on a sofa or lounger to read and listen to music.