David Szalay - London and the South-East

He notices that his mother’s mood has changed. She seems tetchy, and he listens for a moment. ‘There’s just not much in it compared to before,’ she is saying. ‘And if the local press aren’t providing local news, where else are we going to find out what’s going on around us? This week they didn’t even print the Amersham Community Voice column. Or Little Chalfont. It’s all about Wycombe. Apparently, the head office for the Advertiser is in Uxbridge, which is why there’s so many adverts for the Uxbridge shops, but since they joined forces, there’s been sweet Fanny Adams about Amersham …’

‘There is an Amersham edition,’ Geoff mutters impatiently.

‘Yes but it’s usually exactly the same! Only the front page is different. Sometimes. And not very different.’

Geoff shrugs and turns his old rugby-player’s head to the window. Someone is parking in the street outside.

Mike and Joan look nervous. Their jollity is a little tense and overplayed. Mike is wearing a Father Christmas hat. When Angela sees it she smiles snowily. She and Geoff have never met Mike and Joan, and Paul makes the introductions while Heather goes to get the children, who are upstairs. The men shake hands warily. Fleetingly, the woman kiss each other. It then takes about five minutes for the Willisons to unload their presents, Joan taking out the wrapped parcels and handing them to Mike, who squats by the tree, placing them on the papery pile already there. Paul notices his parents look at each other in alarm when Joan takes out a bottle-shaped thing and, handing it to Mike who is waiting impatiently, says, ‘And this is for, um … Geoff.’ Angela, flushed and agitated, whispers something to her husband, who touches his tonsure and purses his lips. Paul says he is going to get more champagne. In the kitchen, he lights a cigarette and starts to remove the heavy foil from the next bottle. His hands are shaking. He does not feel well. When he returns to the lounge, his mother is speaking, everyone else listening in silence. ‘And it’s because all the reporters, I think there are four of them, work out of Chalfont St Peter or Uxbridge. Not a single one in Amersham …’ That she is nervous is obvious from the speed and volume of her voice, and the flushed points in her slack cheeks. Joan and Mike look tired. His father, Paul notices, keeps glancing at Joan, who is listening with a patient, though increasingly strained, smile. Mike, if he was smiling before, has stopped. Seeing Paul come in with the bottle, though, he perks up. ‘All right, Paul?’ he says. ‘How’s tricks?’

‘Very well, thanks, Mike. Very well. Champagne?’

‘I think I need a refill, darling,’ Angela says.

Mike stands aside. ‘Ladies first.’

‘Of course.’

‘Have you got an ashtray somewhere, Paul?’ Joan asks, holding an unlit cigarette, her forehead furrowing apologetically. ‘Sure, I’ll just get you one.’ He sets the bottle down, happy to be able to leave the room again. As he leaves, he hears his father and Mike tentatively start talking about the traffic.

They do not sit down to lunch until two thirty, and everyone is quite tipsy when the order finally comes to move to the table, which is lost under silver-sprayed pine cones, candles, and a twinkling mass of polished cutlery and glass. Smoked salmon and cold toast, posh-looking white wine and some sort of dill sauce are slowly ferried out. Heather sits down last, at the head of the table, flushed with heat and alcohol, and dabs her brow with one of the new linen napkins. Mike, who is sitting next to her, pours her some wine. ‘Thanks,’ she says, and takes a quick sip. ‘Mm!’ She seems pleasantly surprised. ‘Merry Christmas, everyone.’

There is something slightly insane about the way that Angela is still talking about the Bucks Advertiser . ‘Since they joined forces,’ she’s saying, ‘there’s been less and less about Amersham every week. I can’t believe nothing’s happening. It’s that the paper only has satellite offices now. They’ve closed the old offices, and that’s because they’re only interested in advertising revenue, rather than local news …’ Paul helps Heather take out the small starter plates and washes the wine glasses. It is obvious that his mother and Mike hate each other. When he returns to the table, she is wearing her half-moons and holding a piece scissored out of a newspaper — a letter to the Bucks Advertiser . ‘I have a friend who is a journalist on the south coast,’ she is saying, ‘who once had someone complain to her about their event not being covered. When she asked them who they had contacted at the paper, the person complaining admitted they hadn’t told anyone …’

‘Paul, where’s the toilet, mate?’ Mike says loudly, standing up.

‘My friend jokes people think she has a crystal ball on her desk,’ Angela presses on, markedly increasing the volume of her voice. ‘Considering the amount of stuff which appears in the papers, I’m sure the Advertiser ’s quartet of reporters put a lot of work in and find out what they can and then tell us the readers.’ She is almost shouting now. ‘But why assume, just because you know something, that they have been told, or would know. Yes, they’re supposed to inform the masses, but someone has to tell them first. Or maybe someone knows a repairman who can fix their crystal ball?’ She laughs delightedly.

Joan, too, politely laughs.

‘Haven’t we heard enough about the Advertiser , Mum?’ Paul says.

She ignores this, but the atmosphere is momentarily icy.

Joan says, ‘I sometimes read the Hounslow Chronicle .’

‘Oh, don’t you start!’ Mike says, standing in the doorway. Then he laughs, to pretend that he was joking.

‘Do you need any help, darling?’ Angela asks Paul, putting a hand on his arm. ‘No, I think it’s all right actually,’ he says.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’ll ask Heather.’

‘Let me know if you need help carving the bird!’ Mike shouts after him as he leaves.

Heather is in the kitchen. She looks upset. She says, ‘I think it needs another ten minutes. At least. It’s still a bit pink inside.’

‘That’s okay. Why don’t you go in there? I’ll keep an eye on it.’

‘I don’t want to go in there,’ she whispers, laughing.

‘Where are the kids?’

‘Upstairs.’

Paul opens the door and steps out. It is wonderfully still outside. An empty Christmas silence hangs over all the dead gardens. Though no yuleophile, Paul normally has no problem with Christmas. He is usually able to take it for what it is — which is, for him, primarily a sort of obligation to drink more than usual. This year, though, he has felt oppressed by it — by the unending hysterical imprecation to purchase things; by the tired, insincere imagery of snow and reindeer and holly (none of which he ever sees in real life); by the empty jauntiness of the advertising jingles, and the Christmas singles, and most of all by the sense, screaming out of the TV, in newspapers and magazines, on illuminated billboards in the street, that if you are not happy with all this stuff — look how happy the people in the pictures are! — there must be something wrong with you. Yes, the festival of shopping oppresses him this year.

There is no one in the kitchen. Saucepans bubble quietly on the hob, and the hot oven hums. Everything is eerily quiet. It is as though everyone has left — only a CD of carols still playing in the empty lounge. (Paul recognises it as Carols from King’s , sung by the choir of King’s College, Cambridge — one of a number of Christmas CDs that Heather purchased the previous week.) Wondering where everyone is, he is shocked to see Heather’s parents and his own still there, listening to the prim prepubescent voices sing ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen’. ‘Oh,’ Paul says, unable to hide his surprise. ‘All right?’ Something seems to have happened.