Cold Air on a Crepe Paper Chain

The magic of Christmas was this, thought Tim, as he drove into Gillirig and parked in the grounds of the Cottage Hospital; the pressures and anxieties – the evils – of all other seasons boxed up and stacked in ‘Sherlock’s Attic’, replaced for a while by the tinsel and twinkling lights, the choirs and angels, the smiles all merry and bright… Charades. How many people were currently playing that?

A moment, he decided. Just one moment, to check himself in the mirror, to smooth back his hair. Suitably Brycreemed, properly shaved. Smile, Tim, smile. No, that looked over-enthusiastic… Fake… Flowers, damn it. He must remember the flowers… and to sound casual when he told Jean who they were from and to pass on her regards.

Netta… If only he could scrub her presence from his mind like he’d scrubbed the scent of her from his body. Look forward now, concentrate on his wife and child. A daughter. He had a baby daughter. Did she deserve a liar for a father? A cheat? Well, too late now… But he could turn things around, could he not? Go back to the way he’d been…? No coming clean, of course. Confession was out of the question. Could land him in all sorts of trouble, and not just with Jean. Coward, he thought, as he crossed the carpark then mounted the steps leading up to the hospital door. Imposter.

Welcome, welcome. Merry Christmas, come on in… A sweep of an arm, the sound of a bell, and the white-capped, starch-aproned-angel Ward Sister stood aside periodically pointing the way to those who came before him, the fur-coated, snow-booted, muffled-up, hand-in-glove bringers of gifts. Paper lanterns hung from the ceiling, looped paper chain along the wall, a glint of silvery tinsel, a tree, and somewhere down the corridor people singing… God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman… And fathers… Fathers just like him, but younger, innocent… let nothing you dismay… One in a poncho, hair to his waist, looked and smelled like an Afghan Hound… For Jesus Christ… Maternity, second door on the right…

Tim! It’s so good to see you, and I’m sure this little one here will be glad to see her daddy as well – that’s if she decides to wake up. You know, she’s been as good as gold, hardly cried at all…

A dream. It was like a dream, but with a nightmare either side. This tiny, perfect being swathed in white, and Jean all pink and lit up in the house-coat she’d considered such an extravagance.

Well give me a kiss then… Pull up a chair… Oh, Tim, you look like you’ve seen a ghost… No need to be nervous, I’m not going to break, and the baby won’t bite…

Flowers. What the hell was he supposed to do with the flowers?

Netta sends her wishes, she said to give you these… I’d have bought some myself, but with it being Christmas…

Oh, that was sweet of her…

Relief. The worst part over. Needn’t mention her name again…

Netta? Netta McIntyre…? A voice from the bedside next to Jean’s… Well, Mrs Jenkins, I must say, I know that you’re neighbours, but I really didn’t think you’d be friends with the likes of her…

An unbecoming black bouffant, turquoise lids and broad pasty face, hands clamped between a crimplene stretch of red and green zigzag thighs. Knees together, lower legs jutting out in a bulge of American Tan, a wrinkled ankle-puff, feet clumped into spindly heels. Who was she to stick her oar in, even if that shape in the bed she sat next to did require more sleep than was usual? Why didn’t she just wake her up, and talk to her? Or anyone else, come to that…? Typical, bloody sticky-beak. The town was full of them, and yet, if it wasn’t for them…

Oh, Mrs Cheyne, that’s unkind, not to mention Unchristian. You know Mrs McIntyre’s been through a lot this past year…

Well… maybe so, I don’t know, there’s them that say she’s much to blame for what happened, but, of course, you won’t have heard the latest. Seems she’s got herself knocked up and not by Dawson either… And that’s why she’s upping sticks. It’s him who paid for that house she’s living in, and he wants her out…

The lies. The rumours. How quickly they did the rounds. And to think he’d started this one as well. Okay, so maybe it had been what he’d wanted initially, but hearing the gossip spread now – and to his own wife - made him feel altogether uncomfortable. Tim loosened his tie, looked to the window. Air, that’s what he needed, a breath of fresh air… He winced… He’d once described Netta like that, had he not? When she’d first shown a spark of interest, and when they’d first began their affair…

He'd been flattered, he guessed, a glamorous woman like her, a singer and actress, paying him such unexpected attention – a scrap dealer ten years her senior, with no looks to speak of, and not much in the way of chat. Oh, he could talk the talk – walk the walk too - when it came to business, but he’d never been a ladies’ man, and having been married to Jean for as long as he had, he was hardly well-versed in the ways of modern romance. Courting, they’d called it when he and Jean had first got together, and with society being more restrictive then, and Jean as God-fearing as she was, it wasn’t only she who’d been Virgo Intacta on their wedding night. Lights off, flannelette nightie on, missionary position only, then and ever since. And, more often than not, there had been prayers to follow… Thank you for this love, oh Lord, please bless us with a child… Fifteen years it had taken. Fifteen years for Jean to conceive. Four months less for him to stray.

So worried he’d been about gossip spreading and Jean finding out, he’d had no choice but to divert attention, for as everyone said at the time, a beautiful woman like Netta was bound to be involved with someone. Big-bellied Andrew Dawson with his pudgy, pock-marked face who’d brought her to Gillirig in the first place, might have looked an unlikely candidate, but he did have money, so a relationship couldn’t be discounted. Just a word in one or two ears and the seeds would be sown. Fiction to fact in a heartbeat. After all, the butcher did park his car in her drive often enough, who could say for sure that it hadn’t been there overnight? Netta had laughed at that, and then told him the truth, that Dawson was, in fact, her half-brother, not that anyone knew this, other than him and her. His younger sister mustn’t find out, nor his father, for if it ever came to light that Dawson knew of his late mother’s war-time affair and the child born in secret and adopted out whilst his father had been fighting for king and country abroad, and that his son hadn’t merely kept this from him, but gone on to seek that child out (and at considerable expense, syphoning funds from the family business to issue backhanders to those ‘in the know’) he would stand to lose everything – his family, his reputation, his inheritance, and possibly even his freedom. Dawson had taken the mother of all risks, Netta had told him, so even he would have to agree that it was better folk thought they were ‘having it off’ as she’d put it, than have the truth come out. Not that Dawson knew about her and Tim. At least not at first. Too possessive and over-bearing was how she’d described her newly acquired brother. Too intent on being the one to introduce her to all the right people, to seal the deal, to pave her route to fame. He was conventionally moral too. Ironic really…

Secret Love. Tim thought back to the night when Netta, playing the lead in the local production of ‘Calamity Jane’, had sung this song to him, and everyone in Gilly had sworn she’d been making eyes at the butcher who sat cheering her on from the front row of the audience, one row down from where he and Jean were sitting… And that, in itself, had been awkward. Looking at Jean, all prim and proper in her Airforce blue two piece, then looking at her. He’d had to place his overcoat on his lap to cover himself. No chance of them meeting up that night, that child, that beautiful child who lay in the crib beside him right now, and who he daren’t go near for fear his touch might somehow taint her, had come about not through any expression of love on his part, but rather as a result of his lustful fantasies, flashbacks, and ardent anticipation… And after, as Jean had uttered her customary prayers… Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not worship false idols… the words had floated around in his mind, together with an awful sense of foreboding… It hadn’t been long after that when the shit had hit the fan, although, devil’s spawn that he was, he’d made sure he’d avoided the splatters…

So, what are you calling her then? Any idea?

Idea…? Tim gave himself a shake as Mrs Cheyne and his wife burst out laughing.

Methinks someone didn’t get much sleep last night, Mrs Jenkins… Haha, he’s away with the fairies, just look at him. Husbands, eh? Who’d have ‘em?

Who indeed?

We’ve not decided on a name yet, have we, Tim…?

Er, no, not yet… Middle name Jeanette, though. Same as his wife. Same as her. Jean's idea.

But having said that, I did do some thinking…

Oh yes…?

The Sister who delivered her, she’s got a beautiful Christian name. Lynette. What do you think…?

Lynette Jeanette?

Laughter. Too much laughter. He wished it would stop. He wished that shape in the bed next to Jean’s would wake up and spirit her Gorgon of a mother away. He wished he could look his child in the face, pick her up and cradle her… He wished…

Of course not, silly. I was thinking more Lynette Jean, or Lynne Jeanette…?

He wished they could drop the ‘net’ entirely. Yes, that’s nice, keep the Jeanette…

Well don’t sound so enthusiastic. Honestly, what’s he like…?

And what was he like? Nothing like Jean or that Gorgon imagined, that was for sure. A man who kept his mouth shut when he should have opened it, and opened it only to tell a pack of lies. The night Dawson had caught them had been the same night that Netta’s young cleaner, Rosie Patterson had taken off in the butcher’s car then sped back down the lane, deliberately hitting her father and killing him outright. It had happened after he’d left his lover’s bed, but nevertheless, it had happened right outside her house, not a stone’s throw from his, and if he hadn’t been with Netta, chances were, it wouldn’t have happened at all, or if it had, and he’d told of what he knew, the courts would have looked more favourably on the girl, and she wouldn’t have got a life sentence.

Oh, the ugliness of that scene when Dawson had flown at them in such a rage that if he’d even heard his car starting up outside (the very car he’d been giving Rosie lessons in) it was unlikely he’d care. And the things that Netta had said, the things she’d screamed about her knowing how Dawson had interfered with the girl, for she’d left her job that very same day, refusing her pay, saying she ‘wouldn’t be anyone’s whore no more’. Tim had got out quick to protect himself, had noticed the car was gone, and also to protect himself, he’d kept schtum when the police came asking questions, same as Dawson and Netta had later lied on oath. Their words and his silence had caused a girl with the mind of a child who’d been cruelly taken advantage of, and further disturbed by events which had then taken place within her own household, to be cast as a cold-blooded killer, and at the same time they'd allowed an abuser to retain his pillar of the community status, but all the while his only concern had been that of saving his own no-good skin… And Jean’s, of course… And their baby’s… He could take comfort in this much at least.

Oh look, Tim, here’s Sister now…

Smiles. Introductions. A tear in the eye at the name choice… And how’s the proud father…? Beaming. A genuine expression, not at all like Netta’s…

He’d told her it had to end, but she’d simply shrugged, said she was leaving anyway. Not because Dawson had made her (no chance of that with the dirt she had on him) but rather she was all set to make it big. London calling. Thames Television. Great back-story, love, the murder. Distraught employer, psychopathic cleaner. Opportunity Knocks… But before that, and only yesterday… Congratulations, give Jean my love, I thought she might like some flowers…

One last time. He knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t resist. Same as when she’d said she was taking off, and he couldn’t resist the urge to blacken her name. Her cheating on Dawson, her expecting another man’s child – such spiteful lies, except, in part, he wished it were true, such was the effect she’d had on him… But over now. No more…

Did you hear that, Tim, the baby’s waking…

A tiny gurgle, the faintest sound. Tim turned towards the crib but as he did, he caught the eye of the hippy he’d seen coming in. Just a lad, although he looked a bit like Jesus, and appeared to be reading his thoughts…

Would you like to hold her, Tim…?

The sinner in Heaven. He didn’t belong.

I would, very much… Hey, gorgeous, Daddy’s here… Daddy…

Beautiful daughter, you’ve got there, man. Merry Christmas, peace out.

And same to you, pal. All the best.

The magic of Christmas was this, thought Tim, as the bell rang at the end of visiting time, and he kissed his wife and child, and joined the other fathers in the corridor, everyone thanking the angel in white as she saw them through the door, paper lanterns and chains and tinsel blown in their wake.