Bread and Chocolate Read online

  Eleanor made a gesture that took in the flat, its pale washed walls, the smooth neutral floors, the expensive ceiling-to-floor curtains which framed the iron-grey view of the river. ‘It wouldn’t go,’ she said lamely. ‘And I don’t want the work, dropping needles and having to water it …’

  ‘I’ll water it,’ he said firmly. ‘And a bit of mess doesn’t do any harm. I’ll sweep up.’

  Eleanor had a strong sense that she had lost control of the conversation, and Eleanor never lost control. ‘I don’t think you quite understand,’ she said, her voice very cold. ‘My husband and I have not ordered a tree, and we don’t want a tree. We never have a tree or any Christmas decorations. We’re not Christians, we think that Christmas has become absurdly over-commercialised. We never even have a turkey …’

  ‘No turkey?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘No mince pies? No Christmas pudding? No stockings, no presents? No decorations? No carols? No candles in the windows? You poor child!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why on earth should you deny yourself these things?’

  Eleanor glanced around the flat, as if its pale stylish décor would answer him. ‘I think we’re rather too sophisticated for that sort of charade.’

  ‘Sophisticated?’ He said it as if it were the name of a rare and perhaps fatal disease.

  ‘Yes.’

  He shook his head. ‘My poor girl, my poor girl.’

  Eleanor opened the door a little wider. ‘I’m very sorry but we don’t want your tree. And now, I’m very busy, so perhaps you would go …’

  ‘But I’m here to stay!’ he announced as if it were delightful news. ‘I’ve come for Christmas! I’m Robin’s Uncle Nicholas, from the old country.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That’s why I brought the tree,’ he said. Gently he leaned it against the wall and wiped his hands on his disreputable reddish jacket. The tree filled the little hall with its powerful green presence. ‘It’s my little gift. To my hostess.’

  ‘Rob didn’t say,’ Eleanor protested faintly.

  He chuckled. ‘Because he didn’t know!’ he exclaimed. ‘A surprise, you see! I just had a sense – you know how it is – that it was time the two of you had a visitor, and had an old-fashioned Christmas.’

  Eleanor briefly closed her eyes. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? And I’ll telephone Rob. He’s at the gallery right now. But I know he’ll want to come straight over.’

  She showed the unwanted guest into the living room and seated him on the white leather sofa before the broad panoramic view of the river. A light sleet was blowing against the picture windows and the overhanging sky was grey. The steely colours of the view matched the white and off-white of the living room. This room had once been featured in a house design magazine as the most coolly elegant in London; and Eleanor and Rob had never changed it since that day except to get everything dry-cleaned, almost continually.

  Eleanor telephoned from the bedroom, so the old man could not hear her. ‘Rob? You’ll have to come here. There’s a man who says he’s your Uncle Nicholas, and he thinks he’s staying with us for Christmas.’

  There was a brief astounded silence.

  ‘My who?’

  ‘Your Uncle Nicholas.’

  ‘What? My mother’s cousin? We used to see him all the time when we were kids.’

  ‘Well he’s here now.’ Eleanor kept her voice low. ‘And he’s brought the most appalling vulgar tree with him.’

  ‘A tree?’

  ‘An enormous Christmas tree. He clearly thinks he’s doing us a favour. It’s huge and bushy, and it …’ Eleanor broke off. She could not put into words how disturbing the tree was, how its passionate green life seemed to challenge and contradict the little apartment where everything was made from plastic, or vinyl, or steel. It was as if the old forests which had grown here long before bricks and concrete and cement had suddenly broken through and were alive and powerful in the very heart of the city.

  ‘I’ll come straight away.’

  ‘Good,’ Eleanor said shakily, and went back into the living room. The old man was standing opposite the window and tapping the wall with strong firm taps. When Eleanor came in he turned and beamed at her. ‘You’ve got a fireplace here!’ he said. ‘I’m sure of it! Listen!’

  He tapped along the wall and the dead sound of thick plaster suddenly echoed.

  ‘We boarded it over! We have underfloor heating. We don’t need a fire!’

  ‘You need something alive in the room,’ he said. ‘A little movement, a little colour. Something to come home to – a place for the cat to sit.’

  ‘We don’t have a cat,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Such a pity. But a fire is a companion in a way.’

  ‘I don’t need a companion,’ Eleanor said. Even to herself her voice sounded thin and lonely. ‘I have my work, and we go out most nights.’

  ‘To see friends?’

  ‘Business dinners, and private views, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Well you’re young,’ he said as if to comfort both of them. ‘And soon there will be babies coming along …’

  ‘We don’t plan on children,’ Eleanor said abruptly. ‘We don’t like them.’

  He looked shocked. ‘You don’t like children?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t dislike them,’ she said hastily. ‘But we don’t want any. We don’t feel the need! There’s my career: I’m a freelance corporate designer, and Rob has the art gallery. We’re too busy for children, and …’ She looked around the white sitting room with the grey curtains ‘… we don’t have a lifestyle that children could fit into.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘They tend to make you fit in with them.’

  There was the sound of the key in the lock. ‘Oh Rob!’ Eleanor said in relief as he came into the room.

  They had parted on a quarrel in the morning, and usually they would not be speaking. But this was an emergency.

  ‘Hello,’ Rob said. He crossed the room to Eleanor, so they faced the stranger together.

  ‘I doubt that you remember me,’ the old man said. ‘It sounds as if you’ve forgotten everything you ever learned.’

  ‘Are you my Uncle Nicholas?’

  The man grinned. ‘Little Robin!’ he said. ‘And I was afraid that the two of you were a lost cause!’

  ‘Now, I understand from Eleanor that you have nowhere to stay,’ Rob started.

  ‘Oh I have, I shall stay here.’

  Rob laughed his professional laugh. ‘I wish you could. But unfortunately we don’t have a spare room.’

  ‘There’s the study,’ he suggested.

  Rob shot a swift look at Eleanor which accused her of showing the awkward old man around the flat. She shook her head. ‘I need the study for my work,’ she said.

  ‘No you don’t,’ the old man said acutely. ‘You’ve got no work at all over the Christmas holidays – nothing till February, actually.’

  Rob looked at Eleanor again.

  ‘That’s true,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘But something could come up at any moment.’

  The old man shook his head. ‘It won’t,’ he said decisively. ‘Companies are trying to save money, they won’t bring in freelance designers like they used to. Times are changing.’

  This was so close to what Eleanor had been thinking recently that she gasped.

  ‘So I’ll sleep on the sofa in the study,’ the old man said.

  ‘I don’t really think …’ Rob started.

  ‘Till when?’ Eleanor demanded.

  The old man smiled at her as if it were all agreeably decided. ‘Twelfth night, of course,’ he said.

  Dinner was surprisingly pleasant. Eleanor and Rob usually fetched a take-away, or microwaved a ready-cooked meal from the delicatessen on the rare nights when they were both home. But while they were hidden in the bedroom, having an anxious whispered discussion about their unwelcome guest, he started cooking in the little white and steel galley kitchen. Saucepans which had been chosen only fo