Everyone’s plate was piled high with food. My mum nodded as she surveyed the scene. Satisfied. A job well done.
“Sit down and eat your dinner, Cathy, before it gets cold,” my dad told her without lifting his head from his own plate. He was shovelling the food into his mouth in a steady, methodical manner; turkey, roast potatoes, stuffing, carrots, mashed potatoes… and Brussels sprouts. Loads and loads of sprouts. He was the only one who ate them. Everyone else hated them.
“Food of the devil,” my brother always said.
“They’re dirty and they’re wrong,” I would chime in, both of us nodding in mutual agreement. It was just like we were children again. I remembered Christmases past when sprouts would be on our plates. We protested, sometimes silently, sometimes violently, but it made no difference.
“If you don’t eat them, you won’t get to play with your toys,” my dad would say. So we complied, under protest; a sprout pushed reluctantly into the mouth and immediately washed down with a large gulp of milk.
Now we were older. There were no toys and no threats.
“This is lovely, mum,” I said.
“Thanks, Francis,” she said, smiling.
“You’re just looking for extra, Frank,” my brother said.
“Well, there’s still loads left if anyone wants more,” my mum said. “And your brother’s just being nice, Anthony. It’s nice to be nice, you know.”
I grinned and so did he, and for a few minutes the clatter of cutlery off plates was the only sound that could be heard. It was just like all the Christmas dinners I remembered, though I never expected us to be together like this again. Since we’d separated, Susan had the kids for Christmas. I had to make to with telephone conversations, where every excited description of presents left by Santa was like a knife through my heart. Anthony’s partner was coming over to the house later after she’d spent the afternoon with her own parents.
“I’ll put some music on,” my mum said, putting her cutlery down. “Where’s that CD, John?”
“What one?”
“The one with all the Christmas songs.”
“It’s lying there somewhere,” my dad mumbled, his cheeks stuffed with sprouts.
She found it and slotted it into the CD player. There was a momentary pause and then the music started… it was the opening chimes of Do They Know It’s Christmas, the Band Aid song from the 1980s.
I remembered the images of starving, emaciated Ethiopian men and women, lying listlessly in the dusty, barren desert that was their home; the children with bloated stomachs and sunken eyes, lacking the energy to brush away the flies which hovered incessantly around them. Then I looked down at my plate, still piled with food, and as Paul Young started singing, I glanced up at Anthony, who nodded. I waited until Cliff Richard began singing about mistletoe and wine before eating another mouthful of turkey.
You can email me at author@paulcuddihy.com or tweet me @PaulTheHunted
