‘I’m only opening one,’ she replied, throwing the paper onto the floor. ‘A hair band.’ She screwed her nose up. ‘I think this would be more appropriate for you.’
‘Don’t you like it?’
‘Mummy could have done a little better than a hair band.’
Leonora was disappointed that Alicia didn’t want to indulge in make-believe. She knew Father Christmas wasn’t real and that her father placed the stockings at the end of their beds before he retired after dinner. But the magic of the tradition enchanted her and she wished she was still small and didn’t know the truth. Alicia thought the whole event overrated. ‘I don’t know why they bother going through with the pretence, after all we’re not children any more,’ she complained.
‘Because it gives them pleasure,’ Leonora retaliated.
‘So we have to pretend we don’t know it’s them to give them pleasure?’
‘Yes.’
‘It seems very silly to me,’ she scoffed. ‘But I’ll do it for one reason only.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Because if we let on we know they might stop stockings altogether and I like presents.’
‘But not hair bands.’
‘One wrong, lots more to go. What’s the time? Can’t we go in now and wake them up? It’s light outside.’
It was six in the morning. Dawn had already broken, painting the sky with streaks of golden honey and the trees were alive with birds making the most of the cool morning air before the heat and the humidity of midsummer grew too intense and sent them deep into the branches to seek shade among the leaves. Audrey lay beside her husband having asked him to return in order to put on a show of togetherness for the children. Cecil was grateful to find himself invited back into the marital bed, hoping that once the twins returned to school the habit would have been established and he would be permitted to stay. Audrey knew in her heart that the children would have thought nothing of it had they found their father sleeping in his dressing room. He had often slept there and she could always have made the excuse that his snoring kept her awake. No, the real reason she had asked him back was that she needed to prevent her own nocturnal wanderings. She couldn’t risk being caught with Louis by the children but she wasn’t strong enough to resist him. With Cecil in her bed there was no chance of escaping down the corridor. She lamented her lack of willpower, but this was the only way. Once more Cecil was seized with doubt. Had he once again misjudged his wife?
Louis had been incandescent with rage when Audrey had told him that Cecil would be returning to her bed while the children were at home. He had disappeared to Gaitano’s ranch for the day to vent his anger riding out across the pampa. Not because he envisaged nights without her, but because he envisaged nights where his brother replaced him in her arms and he couldn’t tolerate what he saw as a hideous betrayal. Either the fresh country air or Gaitano’s piano had assuaged his fury for he had returned that evening with his wide smile and twinkling eyes conveying once again his hope. Audrey loved him and that was all that mattered. But he too lay awake as dawn illuminated the empty space in his bed where she used to lie and he wondered how long it would be before they were free to love each other in the open.
Audrey’s mind was somewhere beyond the realms of time and space when it was brought back to her room with a jolt. There was a gentle knocking at the door and then it opened to reveal two small faces aglow with excitement. The gloom of finding herself in her own bed lifted when she saw her daughters and her heart flooded with joy. She sat up and beckoned them in. Cecil groaned as the twins climbed into the space between them, pulling their stockings onto their knees, uniting them in their duties as parents in a way that nothing else could. Leonora placed Saggy Rabbit carefully on the eiderdown before pulling out the first gift. Alicia poured the contents of the stocking over her father and tore at the wrapping with impatient fingers. Cecil closed his eyes and slept through his hangover while Audrey commented softly on each present, relishing every moment, aware that soon the holidays would be over and she’d be without them again.
Christmas lunch involved the whole family. Henry and Rose arrived with armfuls of gifts to place beneath Audrey’s tree that the twins had decorated with painted stars they had made in art class at school. Aunt Edna came with them, her chins wobbling with humour in spite of the anxiety that curdled her blood each time she saw Audrey and Louis glancing wistfully at each other across the room. Aunt Hilda must have forced Nelly to come for her face was paler than usual and her eyes red from crying. She sulked from the moment she stepped into the house, barely able to look at Louis without tears brimming in her eyes. Albert stood by the piano smoking cigarettes while Louis sat between the twins playing Christmas carols all together with six hands. The younger brothers, George and Edward, lay on their backs in the sunshine discussing girls and football for their parents’ and aunts’ conversations on the terrace bored them.