He lit some candles in Our Lady’s side-chapel, one for each of his family: and one for Lisa. He sat a while in the silence, picturing them all, eyes fixed on the unwavering candle-flames.
Joe Malone looked out the kitchen window of his roadside cottage to see what the December day was doing. The morning was overcast. Two fields away he could see the lit-up Santa on a sleigh glimmering on the roof of O’Gorman’s bungalow. Out of sight – on the front lawn – he knew there was an array of Christmas figures: elves, reindeers, carrot-nosed snowmen: and a fat Santa. He’d walked up there late one evening to see them lighting up the winter darkness of the countryside.
‘Houses with children are lively and bright at Christmas,’ he thought.
He smiled ruefully, remembering a childhood Christmas when the second-hand set of fairy lights that someone had given their father wouldn’t light up for them here in the kitchen. They didn’t have a Christmas tree to hang them on anyway – but the bulbs were fat and colourful, so they’d strung them along the mantelpiece. And they’d hung brightly-coloured streamers across the kitchen ceiling. And put sprigs of berried holly on all the pictures and around their crib.
There was life and light in the cottage in those days. The whole family was here then: his mother, father, brother and sister. It was just himself now, though – and the cracked heifer that he’d let out on the acre for a few hours. And Bimbo, of course, stretched in front of the range, whimpering away in a dog-dream: not bothered about Christmas lights or decorations.
Yesterday morning they’d made their Christmas pilgrimage across bleached December fields to the ancient holly tree, hidden deep in the wood at Grove. Christmas after Christmas he’d been drawn to that old holly tree: in childhood years, and now in older days – and years ago when he was home from London at Christmastime. And there was that one precious Christmas Eve when he’d walked through the wood to it with Lisa.
Always he’d find consolation in the constancy, year after year, of the holly tree’s glossy green leaves and red berries – and in how it stood there, old and defiant, bent, but not broken, by the storms it had endured.
‘We’re two of a kind, old friend,’ he’d murmured.
This morning the holly that he’d taken, apologetically, from the tree was as clean and bright in the kitchen and around the crib as it had been in far-off Christmases. He had some on the carrier of his bike for Mon Tobin who lived further down the road. Alone since Tom, her husband, had passed away a few years back.
It looked as though he’d have a dry Friday morning cycle to town to collect his pension and few messages. He dragged his bike from the shed a little earlier than usual – he’d have to call on Mon first with the holly, and he might have some listening to do, if she was in a talking humour. He planned to have his pension drawn before getting ten-thirty mass at the Abbey. And he wanted to meet Fr. Henry to have his family remembered in masses over the Christmas, just a few days away now. And Lisa, he would have Lisa remembered too. Not that he’d ever forgotten her.
The December air chilled his hands as he pedalled away from the cottage. Life was strange all the same, he thought: here he was, after all his years in London, back cycling this familiar country road that wound its way into the old town. He’d come home from London to look after his brother during his final illness. And hadn’t gone back. Fifteen Christmases had passed since then.
He pedalled along, heart gladdened to see the happy twinkle of lights on Christmas trees: some inside road-facing windows, others outdoors. He’d always loved this time of year: the lighting of Advent candles at Mass on the four Sundays before Christmas, the child-like anticipation swelling in his heart all through Christmas week as he waited to begin his journey home from London – and the strange, otherworldly, stillness of the countryside on Christmas Day.
For most of his thirty-five years labouring in London he’d lived in an upstairs bedsit just off Broadway in Cricklewood. Sharing a metered cooker on the landing with Paddy Duignan, an Offaly man, who lived for a while in the room opposite his. Many a time they’d whiled away December nights chatting and reminiscing about old Christmases – wearing overcoats against the cold. Sometimes on Saturday nights they ventured out to dances in The Crown, on Broadway – on one such night Paddy had met Sally Mooney from Leitrim. Two years later they were married and living in Bayswater.
Without Paddy he’d stopped going to the Crown – on his own he was shy and awkward around girls. Asking a girl to dance was an ordeal for him. For a couple of years it seemed he was destined to remain alone in London with only a dream of love– until he met Lisa Tierney, who lived barely ten miles from him back home. Lisa was a barmaid in The Windmill, round the corner from his bedsit. He’d go there on week-nights when he knew she was working, listening to the juke box and chatting to her. Slowly, shyly, they got to know one another – and his life was transformed. For three unforgettable years they were inseparable, laughing, happy together, riding the busses and crowded tube trains all over London – seeing the sights, imagining nothing but a long future with happy days in store for them. Until that fateful December day in 1973.
Passing the ancient graveyard at Red City his eye was drawn to a splash of red from the berries and bows on a holly wreath placed early on an old grave. He would be making two simple wreaths himself from the holly he’d gathered in the wood – one for the family grave, the other for Lisa’s, a ten-mile cycle away.
Mon wasn’t at home when he called: gone Christmas shopping in the car with her daughter, he figured. He left her holly on the doorstep.
After Mass in the Abbey he chatted with Fr. Henry, then lit some candles in Our Lady’s side-chapel, one for each of his family: and one for Lisa. He sat a while in the silence, picturing them all, eyes fixed on the unwavering candle-flames.
From the Abbey he went to the grocery shop on the Green for his few messages. He included two bottles of wine for his niece and a box of chocolates for her two children. She would be taking him to her home for dinner after second Mass on Christmas morning.
Back home he coaxed the heifer into the shed with a sop of hay. He stoked the range, and sat in the warmth of the kitchen working on his holly wreaths. Christmas music playing softly on the radio eased him into a reflective mood.
Lisa’s life, and their time together, had been so short, like the snatch of a beautiful song, heard for a mere moment, then suddenly cut off into silence. But his life had been made so much better by her presence in that short time. They had been denied long years together by that hit and run accident in London. But he didn’t dwell on that. The agony of Lisa’s loss had mellowed: he no longer yearned so intensely for her – because he carried much of who she was in his heart, and felt her always near him: especially at Christmas.
She would fade into the background sometimes – and come sweetly to mind again in quiet moments.
‘My beautiful Christmas ghost,’ he thought.
He took the only photo he had of her from his inside pocket. They’d laughed so much as they were taking it; in one of those instant photo booths at Paddington railway station – as they waited on the teeming concourse to start their journey back to Ireland for the only Christmas they would have together.
‘Look at you, Lisa,’ he murmured, ‘smiling, so young – as bright as a sprig of holly on Christmas Day. And look at me now: like a faded sprig in January.’
They’d had a quiet Christmas, the Christmas that she’d come. Away from the rush of London. They had simply been together – and simply being together had filled the ordinary Christmas things they’d done with meaning beyond words: sitting in this kitchen, chatting, walking, planning, visiting the crib in the ruined wing of the old Abbey. Lighting candles.
Love had illuminated those simple things.
Late on Christmas Eve they’d gone to see the holly tree in the wood. Two ducks had risen off a pond as they passed near the old Norman keep – one winging westward away from the other, a fading silhouette in the December sky. A redbreast had flown from the holly tree to keep them company as they sat on the trunk of an old, dead sycamore. And there, as the robin watched and the wood whispered, they’d promised their future to one another.
‘Just think Joe, we’ll be man and wife when we come here next Christmas,’ Lisa had said.
But the following Christmas, and every Christmas since, he had come to the holly tree alone. And so, on the morning of Christmas Eve, he will set out once more on his bike – a quiet country-man with an untold story of love, heartache, and hope, living in his heart. He will pedal unnoticed along winding country roads carrying his Christmas holly wreath to the peaceful churchyard where his one true love lies. His love for her is undimmed – through all the years he has held true to his promise: despite what the future had brought.
Jon Fog 