Muriel Spark - The Complete Short Stories

Christmas Fugue

As a growing schoolgirl Cynthia had been a nature-lover; in those days she had thought of herself in those terms. She would love to go for solitary walks beside a river, feel the rain on her face, lean over old walls, gazing into dark pools. She was dreamy, wrote nature-poetry. It was part of a Home Counties culture of the 1970s, and she had left all but the memories behind her when she left England to join her cousin Moira, a girl slightly older than herself, in Sydney, where Moira ran a random boutique of youthful clothes, handbags, hand-made slippers, ceramics, cushions, decorated writing paper, and many other art-like objects. Moira married a successful lawyer and moved to Adelaide. Beautiful Sydney suddenly became empty for Cynthia. She had a boyfriend. He, too, suddenly became empty. At twenty-four she wanted a new life. She had never really known the old life.

So many friends had invited her to spend Christmas Day with them that she couldn’t remember how many. Kind faces, smiling, ‘You’ll be lonely without Moira … What are your plans for Christmas?’ Georgie (her so-called boyfriend): ‘Look, you must come to us. We’d love you to come to us for Christmas. My kid brother and sister…’

Cynthia felt terribly empty, ‘Actually, I’m going back to England.’

‘So soon? Before Christmas?’

She packed her things, gave away all the stuff she didn’t want. She had a one-way air ticket, Sydney—London, precisely on Christmas Day. She would spend Christmas Day on the plane. She thought all the time of all the beauty and blossoming lifestyle she was leaving behind her, the sea, the beaches, the shops, the mountains, but now it was like leaning over an old wall, dreaming. England was her destination, and really her destiny. She had never had a full adult life in England. Georgie saw her off on the plane. He was going for a new life, too, to the blue hills and wonderful colours of Brisbane, where his only uncle needed him on his Queensland sheep farm. For someone else, Cynthia thought, he won’t be empty. Far from it. But he is empty for me.

She would not be alone in England. Her parents, divorced, were in their early fifties. Her brother, still unmarried, was a City accountant. An aunt had died recently; Cynthia was the executor of her will. She would not be alone in England, or in any way wondering what to do.

The plane was practically empty.

‘Nobody flies on Christmas Day,’ said the hostess who served the preliminary drinks. ‘At least, very few. The rush is always before Christmas, and then there’s always a full flight after Boxing Day till New Year when things begin to normalize.’ She was talking to a young man who had remarked on the number of empty seats. ‘I’m spending Christmas on the plane because I’d nowhere else to go. I thought it might be amusing.’

‘It will be amusing,’ said the pretty hostess. ‘We’ll make it fun.’

The young man looked pleased. He was a few seats in front of Cynthia. He looked around, saw Cynthia and smiled. In the course of the next hour he made it known to this small world in the air that he was a teacher returning from an exchange programme.

The plane had left Sydney at after three in the afternoon of Christmas Day. There remained over nine hours to Bangkok, their refuelling stop.

Luxuriously occupying two vacant front seats of the compartment was a middle-aged couple fully intent on their reading: he, a copy of Time; she, a tattered paperback of Agatha Christie’s: The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

A thin, tall man with glasses passed the couple on the way to the lavatories. On his emergence he stopped, pointed at the paperback and said, ‘Agatha Christie! You’re reading Agatha Christie. She’s a serial killer. On your dark side you yourself are a serial killer.’ The man beamed triumphantly and made his way to a seat behind the couple.

A steward appeared and was called by the couple, both together. ‘Who’s that man?’ — ‘Did you hear what he said? He said I am a serial killer.’

‘Excuse me, sir, is there something wrong?’ the steward demanded of the man with glasses.

‘Just making an observation,’ the man replied.

The steward disappeared into the front of the plane, and reappeared with a uniformed officer, a co-pilot, who had in his hand a sheet of paper, evidently a list of passengers. He glanced at the seat number of the bespectacled offender, then at him: ‘Professor Sygmund Schatt?’

‘Sygmund spelt with a y,’ precised the professor. ‘Nothing wrong. I was merely making a professional observation.’

‘Keep them to yourself in future.’

‘I will not be silenced,’ said Sygmund Schatt. ‘Plot and scheme against me as you may.

The co-pilot went to the couple, bent towards them, and whispered something reassuring.

‘You see!’ said Schatt.

The pilot walked up the aisle towards Cynthia. He sat down beside her.

‘A complete nut. They do cause anxiety on planes. But maybe he’s harmless. He’d better be. Are you feeling lonely?’

Cynthia looked at the officer. He was good-looking, fairly young, young enough. ‘Just a bit,’ she said.

‘First class is empty,’ said the officer. ‘Like to come there?’

‘I don’t want to —’Come with me,’ he said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Cynthia. What’s yours?’

‘Tom. I’m one of the pilots. There are three of us today so far. Another’s coming on at Bangkok.’

‘That makes me feel safe.’

It fell about that at Bangkok, when everyone else had got off the plane to stretch their legs for an hour and a half, the passengers had gone to walk around the departments of the Duty Free shop, buy presents ‘from Bangkok’ of a useless nature such as dolls and silk ties, to drink coffee and other beverages with biscuits and pastries; Tom and Cynthia stayed on. They made love in a beautifully appointed cabin with real curtains in the windows — unrealistic yellow flowers on a white background. Then they talked about each other, and made love again.

‘Christmas Day,’ he said. ‘I’ll never forget this one.’

‘Nor me,’ she said.

They had half an hour before the crew and passengers would rejoin them. One of the tankers which had refuelled the plane could be seen moving off.

Cynthia luxuriated in the washroom with its toilet waters and toothbrushes. She made herself fresh and pretty, combed her well-cut casque of dark hair. When she got back to the cabin he was returning from somewhere, looking young, smiling. He gave her a box. ‘Christmas present.

It contained a set of plaster Christmas crib figures, ‘made in China’. A kneeling Virgin and St Joseph, the baby Jesus and a shoemaker with his bench, a woodcutter, an unidentifiable monk, two shepherds and two angels.

Cynthia arranged them on the table in front of her.

‘Do you believe in it?’ she said.

‘Well, I believe in Christmas.’

‘Yes, I, too. It means a new life. I don’t see any mother and father really kneeling beside the baby’s cot worshipping it, do you?’

‘No, that part’s symbolic.’

‘These are simply lovely,’ she said touching her presents. ‘Made of real stuff, not plastic.’

‘Let’s celebrate,’ he said. He disappeared and returned with a bottle of champagne.

‘How expensive …’

‘Don’t worry. It flows on First.’

‘Will you be going on duty?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I clock in tomorrow.

They made love again, high up in the air.

After that, Cynthia walked back to her former compartment. Professor Sygmund Schatt was having an argument with a hostess about his food which had apparently been pre-ordered, and now, in some way, did not come up to scratch. Cynthia sat in her old seat and, taking a postcard from the pocket in front of her, wrote to her cousin Moira. ‘Having a lovely time at 35,000 feet. I have started a new life. Love XX Cynthia.’ She then felt this former seat was part of the old life, and went back again to first.