Christmas Shopping
Emma-Jane Walsh

 

I make my way home through the hole in the fog, which follows me step by step. I can’t see beyond a foot in front of me: I am the eye of the storm. Thick, grey clouds, heavy with ice particles have fallen from the sky to wrap everything up in an overcoat. The sky is not blue black, as it should be at 6pm on a December evening. The sky is orange-brown: coloured by the powerful gassy street lamps that buzz and blink fifty times a second above my head. The orange of the streetlights is a fake, fizzy drink orange, with additives. It allows people to walk in safety, but it shrouds detail, making everything a cloudy orange version of reality. At windows, behind the foggy net curtain, are little coloured dots of light, equally false, like luminous sweets, entwined around the branches of a pine tree, which drops its needles in protest at the excess heat inside the centrally heating homes. In the distance, the final notes of ‘Oh come, all ye faithful’ blow away from the brass band on the light, icy wind. I can’t tell if it’s going to snow or not: I can’t see as far as the sky, although part of the sky is right on the pavement beside me now, swirling, as if cigarette smokers anonymous has just met on this corner. My breath only adds to the fog, a brisk white cloud, dashing from my mouth to join with the rest of the mist in the air, afraid it may miss out on all the swirling. I hunch myself further into my politically incorrect sheepskin coat, and walk on.

In my pocket, I feel the ring again. The silver band, the hard, scratchy setting, the smooth, cold diamond. It is far too cold to wear it on my swollen fluorescent pink hands, so it sits, in my coat pocket, until my hands have tingled back to warmth in front of the gas fire three streets away.

There are very few cars around tonight. There was a warning on the radio: do not travel unless it is absolutely necessary. Luckily, the driver of the number 37 bus believed it was absolutely necessary to ferry me and forty one others home from the big town to the small villages. Some of them on the brightly lit bus carried armfuls of plastic bags, one woman had filled up the pushchair with them, forcing her disgruntled two year old to negotiate the high steps onto the bus by himself, which he managed by levering himself up with his mitten clad hands. He had little fronds of blond hair poking out of the bottom of his bobble hat, his blue eyes watered with cold and frustration, and his delicate little cheeks burned red. He sat across the aisle from me, and stretched out a packet of jelly babies towards me. Before I had time to politely decline, his mother pushed him across the seat to the window, plumped herself down next to him, and looked at me as if I was a child molester. I fingered the ring in my pocket to check it was still there, then smoothed down my navy blue shop pinafore, and turned my head to the bus window, which ran with condensation.

I got off the bus at my stop, and was immediately gulped down by the fog, which then spat me out into a little hole of pure, clear, crystal evening air, as I walked back home.

Now, I could see my house, with the lights warm and bright inside. I could almost smell mum’s Yorkshire pudding, lamb and gravy. And roast potatoes. Warm thoughts kept me going, and the hard lump of the ring in my hand kept me going, too. I walked down the driveway, and could see the flickering, fading, dancing lights of the Christmas tree as I turned my key in the lock. As I stepped through the door, I was pleasantly assaulted by heat, cooking smells and the sound of the television.

"Hello, love!" Mum said, as she pulled the roasting tin out of the oven "Just in time. How many roasties do you want?"

I requested three, and pulled off my coat, hat, scarf and gloves, quietly pulling the ring out of my pocket and caressing it again before taking it in to the kitchen, and uncurling my fingers a little so that mum could get a look. She nodded "Perfect" she whispered with a smile. "She’ll love it. Go and put it back in its box, and we’ll have dinner."

But the ring didn’t have a box, so I wrapped it in a tissue, and put it under my pillow for later. Then I joined the family around the table for dinner. Rebecca smiled when I told her there were only 10 shopping days left until Christmas. I smiled to myself thinking of the ring under the pillow, and how delighted she would be when she opened the box on Christmas Day. Box, I must get a box tomorrow.

Back in my bedroom, I looked out of the window. I couldn’t even see the shed at the bottom of our garden anymore. It looked as if the world stopped at the Greenhouse, halfway down the lawn. I took the ring out from under my pillow and slipped it onto my thawed hands. My fingers are the same size as Rebecca’s, and it’s a little loose, but not enough that she’ll have to get it altered. Just as well I got the right one, I think. There would have been a terrible fuss otherwise.

There’s a knock at my door and I can’t get the ring off quick enough, so as Rebecca walks in I fold my hands on my lap. "Have you got my present then?" she asks, her older sister voice joking a little. I nod, and smile secretively. "You know, I hope you didn’t go to as much, erm…trouble as you did last year, Kate."

"Oh, no, it was much easier to get you something this year." The serious look which had entered her pretty brown eyes at the last sentence, became lighter with a sort of relief. It reminded me of the necklace I had bought her last year. I’d had a hell of a time getting it off. I felt the ring still on my finger and almost laughed as I thought I might have a bit of trouble getting this off, too!

The next day, on my lunch break, I went into the shop cloakroom to get a box for Rebecca’s present. I searched through all the bags until I struck lucky: my boss had brought her spare pair of ear-rings in a navy blue plastic box with a gold jewellers name embossed on it. Inside was a little foam pad topped with navy velvet. I took the earrings out of the box, and placed them loose inside the bag, and pocketed the box. Now I could wrap up Rebecca’s ring.

It was foggy again that night. It had been foggy for two days now. The fog allowed me to do things that no-one else could see me do. It had been foggy last year, too. Tonight, the fog allowed me to get off the bus one stop early, and shin down the bank to the canal, where I took the knife from my bag and threw it into the treacly water. I had heard on the radio that there was going to be a frost tonight. I imagined the steel knife washed clean before it set in a block of ice. Carefully, trying not to get muddy, I climbed back up to the road. No-one had seen me, because of the fog.

I thought of the little boy on the bus, and the way his mother had stared at me. I suppose she may have recognised me from the police line-up, when she had picked the wrong person. I mean, could a young female shop assistant really have had the strength to strangle her mother, the boy’s grandmother, with her own necklace? She blamed the man stood next to me, because she said she would recognise that sheepskin coat anywhere.

The fog had allowed me a little cover then, and this year, it had allowed me to sneak into the mortuary without having to hide behind the decorated pine trees in the car park. I had been in there, found what I wanted, and come out without anyone even knowing I was there in the first place. I still had the dead ladies finger, though, but I thought I might bury that under the hedge at the bottom of the garden It was foggy tonight, and mum and dad wouldn’t be able to see me down there. Then, I would go upstairs, put the ring in the box, and wrap it up. Maybe next year, I’ll just buy Rebecca some chocolates.

 

Copyright (c) 1998 Emma-Jane Walsh
Published on the World Wide Web by "www.storymania.com"