Jenny Oliver - Four Weddings And A White Christmas

‘Just smother it with gravy and you won’t notice, Dad,’ Silvia said, as she tried to stop her boys from kicking each other under the table.

‘I would, if someone hadn’t messed around with the gravy.’

‘Oh for god’s sake, Dad.’ Harry shook his head. ‘It’s not messed around with, it’s just different. Taste it. It doesn’t all have to taste the same, every day.’

‘It’s not every day, is it? It’s Christmas Day. I like things to taste like they should on Christmas Day.’

‘Urgh. That’s such an annoying thing to say.’ Harry shook his head. He saw Silvia giving him a warning glance across the table. His nephews had stopped kicking each other and were staring, entranced by what was about to ensue.

‘Harry.’ His dad raised his brows at him. ‘You may be some hotshot over there in New York, but here you are still my son and in my house you will respect me, your mother, all of us. You are not too big to be sent to your room.’

‘Yes I am, Dad.’ Harry bunched up his napkin. ‘That’s the thing, yes I am. I knew this was a bad idea.’

‘Harry—’ He felt his mum put her hand on his arm as he was just pushing back his chair. ‘Harry, please.’

Harry shut his eyes for a moment. He saw himself sitting on his bed alone practically every Christmas that he hadn’t been too old to be sent to his room. Banished for some reason or another. Sometimes completely deserving of the punishment, sometimes not, but lonely all the same. His mum would sneak up and give him a bowl of Christmas pudding and brandy butter and her little portable TV that she had in the kitchen. She’d wink and say, ‘Won’t be much longer.’ And he’d wonder why she made him stay there. Why she didn’t just override his dad. Why he got to be the leader.

Now, at the dining table, his unpulled cracker next to his plate, the rain hammering on the window, his dad picking the bits of bacon out of the sprouts, his sister watching warily, his mum’s hand on his arm – wrinklier than he remembered – he used every ounce of willpower that he possessed to force his bum back down on the seat. To focus on his food. To take a bite of beautiful, tender Brussels sprout with the sweet honey flavour of the bacon and try not to wish that his dad might have liked it just because he’d cooked it.

No one said any more about it. Gradually, the atmosphere relaxed. The boys, disappointed that the show was over, went back to their under-table kicking. They pulled their crackers. They wore their hats. Except Harry, who accidentally-on-purpose ripped his trying to get it on, and then they ate Christmas pudding which was faultless, in his dad’s opinion, because Tesco had made it and made it the same every year.

‘So you’re over for business?’ his dad said when the presents had been opened and the kids were playing with their new stuff and his mum was asleep on the sofa.

‘Yeah. It’s meetings with the owners. Looking at the future. What we’re going to do, how we might expand – what we can achieve with the brand. That kind of thing.’

‘Sounds very fancy.’

‘Not really. Just, you can’t stand still, can you?’

His dad sank back into the squashy cushions of his chair – perfectly moulded to his contours over the years. ‘I worked in the same company all my life. Never wanted to do anything different. Got a good pension. Good friends.’ He shrugged. ‘I think sometimes there’s too much weight put on moving on. Moving forward. Growth. Growth? How much can we grow? Economy flatlines and we’re all still trying to grow.’

‘Hear, hear,’ said Harry’s uncle, who was opening another bottle of sherry.

Harry shook his head. ‘It’s not just about expanding for the sake of it, Dad, it’s meeting a demand. If a company is successful then they have the potential to grow. People want what we’re offering so, by expanding, we’re filling a need in the market.’

‘I just can’t believe there’s room for any more restaurants.’ His dad shook his head. ‘I was driving down the high street the other day and what do I see? Another coffee shop. How much coffee are people drinking? And the whole riverside’s been dug up and turned into restaurants. Everyone out there stuffing their faces.’ He folded his hands in his lap and did a sigh of distaste. Then he sat forward and pointed a finger at Harry. ‘It’s because they’ve got nothing else to do. No hobbies.’

Before Harry could reply, Silvia leant over the back of the sofa and said, ‘Not sure golf and watching the snooker count as hobbies, Dad.’

Harry knew she was trying to steer the conversation onto safer, jokier ground but he couldn’t let it lie. ‘Dad, you can’t compare what I do at The Bonfire with some mass-produced high-street chain restaurant. They’re two different things. We’ve won awards.’ He edged forward on the sofa, trying to emphasise his points by getting closer to his dad. ‘We’ve changed the way people cook. We have critics queuing up to eat there. I built that. You know? From nothing.’

His dad frowned. ‘But at the end of the day, it’s just food, Son.’

‘It’s not just food.’

‘I think it is.’ His dad did a half-laugh as if Harry was fighting the obvious. Harry felt the same frustration as he felt as a kid boil up inside himself. ‘I do see what you’re trying to say, Son, but it’s really just food. And what’s food? Fuel to get us to the end of the day. Admittedly yours is fancy food, but still food.’ His dad sat back and Harry noticed that his attention was being diverted to the sweet sherry his uncle was splashing generously into glasses. Clearly distracted by the fact the alcohol might be being wasted, he added, ‘No. I just can’t agree, I don’t think we need more of it,’ before getting up and retrieving the sherry bottle.

Harry saw Silvia wince out the corner of his eye.

It’s just food.

He felt like he’d been skewered on the sofa.

Three years ago he’d sent his parents the money for plane tickets to New York for the opening of the restaurant. His dad had said there was no way he’d be getting on a plane, not with all the terrorism in the world and his mum had said that there was no way she could come without his dad because she’d be completely out of her depth in such a big city. They’d given the money to Silvia and her husband, who had gladly accepted, left their kids with the grandparents, and come to New York for what had been one of the best weekends of Harry’s life. In his head his sister had always been this slightly annoying person who’d appeared in the world when he was about to turn eight, after years of his parents trying for another baby and never getting anywhere. But suddenly, in New York, after a good few years absence from each other, he’d seen her as the person she’d grown up to be. Funny, a bit snarky, beautiful, cool in her own way, and they’d had their time. Finally. It had almost made up for his parents not being there.

‘Don’t worry, he’s just pissed,’ Silvia said, coming round to sit next to him on the sofa. The problem with them knowing each other better was that she could now see how much his dad affected him, and Harry couldn’t just sulk silently in the corner.

Harry nodded and leant back against the cushions with a sigh. ‘I don’t think I ever knew he thought like that.’

‘Oh come on, you know he’s never got it.’

‘Yeah I’ve always known he didn’t really understand what I did. But, Christ, I always thought he respected it. What an idiot.’

‘Who? Him or you?’ Silvia asked, rolling her head to look at him with a half-smile.

‘Me,’ Harry said. ‘And him,’ he added. ‘And you as well if you want.’

She laughed then, patting him on the thigh, said, ‘Come on let’s put Lord of the Rings on and play Bananagrams.’