A VILLAGE CHRISTMAS

Marta stared at the scene in half contempt, half envy. Chocolate box cottages with thatched roofs lightly frosted with snow, wreaths and ivy adorning every window and door. The people, with their red cheeks and button noses, looked like a cross between gnomes and elves.

It was ridiculous.

So why, Marta asked herself silently, was she opening the door to Magical Memories, a shop specialising in commemorative plates and useless crystal ornaments--in other words, she thought, sentimental rubbish--to take a closer look at the Christmas village scene?

It was miniature, the cottages little bigger than matchboxes, villagers on iceskates following a track on a revolving ceramic plate. When she wound it up, the skaters began to move to the sound of tinkling music.

Her mother would shudder at it. She should shudder at it.

Yet she found herself staring at the scene, so tiny, so glowing, so, all right, magical.

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” The shop assistant, a granny type with glasses on a beaded chain around her neck, smiled in warm approval.

“Yes, if you like that sort of thing,” Marta agreed, trying to sound dismissive and failing.

“So charming,” the assistant continued, ignoring Marta’s not-so-subtle putdown. “And a perfect centrepiece for your Christmas decorating.”

Marta wanted to laugh. What Christmas decorating? She stared at the village scene for another moment, wondering why it fascinated her.

“A bargain, really,” the shop assistant said with a kindly smile, and then bustled away again. They weren’t too pushy at Magical Memories.

“I’ll buy it,” Marta said abruptly. She’d marched over to the till, her hands clenched on her bag. “Could you wrap it up, please?”

“Certainly. You won’t regret it.”

Regret it? Almost certainly, Marta thought as she looked round her sleek, modern flat, wondering where to put the ‘centrepiece of her Christmas decorating’.

Her only nod to the season was a small, silver tree that looked more like sculpture than fir.

She hesitated, torn between discreetly hiding the village scene--on top of the loo, perhaps--and wanting to put it somewhere important and centre-ish.

“Oh, why not,” she muttered, and placed it on the glass and chrome coffee table. It looked absurd, country charm clashing with urban sophistication, but there was nothing she could do about that.

A knock on the door startled Marta out of her thoughts.

“Sorry, but may I borrow a cup of sugar?” The man asking the question had melting brown eyes and a thatch of chocolate coloured hair. He smiled disarmingly.

“A cup of sugar?” Marta repeated incredulously, for surely no one in this day and age actually knocked on his neighbour’s door for a cup of sugar? She didn’t even know her neighbours.

“Yep.” He shrugged. “I’m not such a dab hand, but I thought I’d try some Christmas baking. Cheaper pressies, you know.” He grinned, and Marta’s lips twitched in something like a smile. “Anyway, I don’t normally stock sugar in my kitchen--frankly, I’m more of a takeaway man, and my coffee is black. I bought all the essentials--or so I thought--and then I realised I’d forgotten one thing.” He paused, his eyes friendly and yet strangely assessing.

“Sugar?” Marta guessed, even as she shook her head regretfully. “I’m sorry, but I’m a takeaway and black coffee person as well. I don’t have any sugar.” Or flour or baking powder or whatever else he might need. Her cupboards were very nearly bare, and they generally stayed that way.

“Never mind, then. Another trip to the shops, I suppose.” He turned to leave, then looked back. “Ben Wethers, by the way.”

“Marta.” Marta found herself shaking his hand, and wondered who had initiated the contact.

“I live downstairs, moved in two weeks ago. You might have noticed the moving van?”

Marta shook her head minutely. She’d been vaguely aware of the activity, but it hadn’t troubled her too much. “I’m not here much,” she explained, trying not to sound sniffy.

“Ah.” He nodded knowingly. “Well, when you are here... since we’re both takeaway people, perhaps we could get one together sometime? I’m partial to curry.”

Marta stared at him in surprise, then found herself stammering, “oh, yes. I mean, maybe. Sometime.”

He grinned, as if he knew exactly how discomfited she was, and then disappeared.

Two days later Marta was just kicking off her shoes after a long day at work when the doorbell rang. She answered it warily. No one rang her doorbell.

It was Ben, holding two foil takeaway containers. Marta simply stared.

“One curry, one tikka masala,” he announced breezily. “I figured you’d had a long day at work, and wouldn’t be up to cooking.”

“You figured?” Marta repeated in disbelief even as she stood aside so he could enter. The smells wafting from the takeaways were making her feel dizzy with hunger.

“I like to take chances. Shall I set them down here?”

He indicated her teakwood kitchen table, never used for meals since she always ate standing by the sink. “Quite a place you have here.”

“Thank you.” Marta glanced around her flat, trying to see it as Ben must. Chic? Yes. Sophisticated? Yes. Sterile? Perhaps. She pushed the thought out of her mind. “Which one’s mine?”

“Whichever you prefer. Ladies first, naturally.”

Marta suddenly giggled. “You have some nerve.”

“I like to think of it as friendly.” He looked serious for a moment. “Not that you’re emanating let’s-be-friends vibes all the time.”

“What do you mean?” Marta realised how stiff and prudish her voice suddenly sounded.

“Exactly that. You’re prickly. Where are the forks?”

She was not prickly, Marta thought, as she opened a drawer and thrust two forks into Ben’s hand. He handed one back gently, wrapping her fingers around the handle.

“You need one too.”

“Right.” Realising how ungrateful she must seem, Marta mustered a smile. “Thanks for the takeaway. You were right. I was starved, and didn’t feel like...”

“Cooking?” With one eyebrow raised, Ben looked like he knew exactly how bare her cupboards were. She didn’t even have sugar, after all.

“Ordering out,” Marta admitted ruefully.

They dug into their takeaways, chatting with surprising ease about their jobs. Ben was a photographer, and he told her all about his horror stories covering weddings where the bride did a runner or the groom’s father got a bit too tipsy.

“And what do you do?” Ben asked after their laughter subsided.

“I’m a PA,” Marta said, hearing the note of pride in her voice. “For a solicitor. It’s very long hours at times, but incredibly rewarding.”

Ben made a little face. “You sound like you’re reading a brochure from the job bank.”

“What?”

“The question is, do you enjoy it?”

“Of course I do.” Marta pushed away the empty foil container. “Why wouldn’t I?” She’d made it her life, after all. She’d better enjoy it.

“I don’t know.” Ben shrugged. “Just asking.” He stood up, walking over to the coffee table where the Christmas village lay in all of its sentimental splendour. He glanced at it silently, is face strangely solemn, before winding it up so the people revolved around the village on the little track.

The tinkling music filled the flat, and Marta stood up hurriedly, wanting to somehow explain the village away.

“Sweet.”

“It’s a bit sentimental, I know--”

He crouched down so he was eye-level, watching the skaters solemnly. “Do you ever wish you could shrink? Jump into a scene like that?”

“What do you mean?” Marta asked uncertainly, even as she walked closer to him.

“Look.” He tugged on her hand till she was crouching next to him, gazing at the revolving village. “That pair, there.” He pointed to a boy and girl, rosy cheeked and grinning, arms around each other, scarves blowing in a makebelieve breeze as they skated round and round. “Wouldn’t you like to be them?”

“How?”

“I just mean... having fun. Enjoying the moment. Simple pleasures, you know?”

Marta stared at them for a moment, their ridiculously happy faces and painted lips and eyes, before standing up quickly. “Don’t be silly. They’re like gerbils in a cage, going round that track.”

Ben stood up as well. “I suppose. But sometimes it’s nice to pretend.”

“Life isn’t like that,” Marta said a bit sharply. She was being silly--it was a Christmas decoration, that was all. Yet she felt unnerved.

“I know.” Ben’s smile was almost sad. “That’s why I liked it.”

Over the next week Marta found herself recalling Ben’s visit, his words about the village scene. What did he mean, pretend to be like them? It was nonsense. She should throw it out, sentimental rubbish that it was...

Yet she didn’t. Couldn’t.

Why did she keep the thing, she wondered moodily, even as she wound it one more time to watch the skaters make their neverending journey. It was sentimental, silly, stupid...

Sweet.

Life wasn’t like that. They’d both agreed. Was that why she kept the village scene? Because part of her wanted life to be like that? Simple, Ben had said, simple pleasures. She looked round the flat, all of its sleek lines of striving, and shook her head.

Life wasn’t like that.

A knock on the door had her coming out of her reverie. It was, as she was coming to expect, Ben. He was the only person to ever knock on her door.

“You want to go out?”

“Where?”

He smiled, holding a finger to his lips. “It’s a secret.”

Marta began to shake her head. “I don’t think...”

“Oh, come on, Marta. What do you have to lose?”

Not much, she realised as she let Ben pull her out of the flat. “Don’t forget your coat,” he told her as he grabbed it from the hook. “Where we’re going, it’s cold.”

They were both silent as he drove his car, Marta a bit apprehensive and Ben humming softly under his breath. Marta realised it was the tune from the Christmas village, one of those old holiday songs that everyone knew the tune to, but not the words.

“Where are we going?” she asked at last, and he just smiled.

“You’ll see.”

Then he turned into the car park of the town’s skating rink. Marta didn’t say anything till they were inside, queuing to hire skates.

She looked at Ben. “Life’s not like that,” she reminded him quietly, and he glanced at her, solemn faced yet eyes sparkling.

“No, of course not. But we can make it like that, a little bit, can’t we?”

Marta thought for a moment. “Maybe. Except... I don’t skate.”

Ben grinned. “Me neither.”

They were, she reflected wryly, pure comedy. Both of them clutching the sides of the rink for dear life, and then yelping in alarm whenever they let go and wobbled hopelessly.

Finally, Ben took the initiative and skated out, losing his balance, arms wheeling dramatically, and then righting himself at the last moment. He held out his hands. “I think it takea two. To balance, you know.”

“Really?” Marta tried to look scepitcal, but then as easily as if she had always meant to, she took his hands.

They were terrible. Wobbling this way, then that way, both of them falling flat on their backs at different times, and always breathless with laughter. Marta couldn’t remember when she’d had so much fun. When things had been so simple.

It was only afterwards, when they were seated at the rink’s cafe, sipping the kind of hot chocolate that came scalding from a machine, that Marta was able to say, “thank you for that.”

“I’m glad we did it.”

She stared down into the muddy depths of her hot chocolate. “You know, we never had Christmas growing up,” she admitted quietly. “My mum waged war against it. She always thought baking cookies, decorating, that sort of thing... well, that it was all antiquated. Sentimental rubbish.” She thought briefly of her mum, the dinner out they had on Christmas day, the expensive present that was the one concession to the holiday, usually a piece of jewelry she didn’t want, resting on the restaurant plate.

“Well, it is.”

Marta looked up in surprise. “What?”

“It is sentimental. That doesn’t mean it isn’t lovely.” Ben smiled wryly. “We had perfect Christmases when I was little. Just like that village. Wreaths on every door, roast turkey and mistletoe and gingerbread houses. It was almost too much.”

“Then... something happened?” Marta guessed.

“My parents divorced when I was nine. After that, I alternated Christmases. The Canary Islands with Mum on one of those holiday package tours, or frozen dinners in front of the telly with Dad. Both were miserable.” He paused, stirring his drink thoughtfully. “I suppose that’s why I liked your little village. I stopped believing in the reality of it ages ago, but...”

“It’s nice to pretend?”

“Yes. For an evening.” He paused. “Maybe longer?”

Marta thought of her job, her flat, the life she’d carefully cultivated to mirror her own mum’s obsession with her career, the tangible signs of success. Was it what she really wanted?

She was beginning to think it wasn’t.

But, Marta thought with a little smile, she didn’t want to join the elves in their village either. Life wasn’t like that.

It really wasn’t.

Perhaps it could be something better, something of their own making. Something real.

“I don’t want to just pretend,” she said softly, and Ben laced his fingers with her own.

“Me neither.”

“So...” Marta shrugged. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” Ben grinned. “More skating? Or how about a new tradition? Christmas in our village. Say, dinner and a film?”

Marta nodded, laughing. “That could be good.”

It could be wonderful, she thought, wonderful and real. Christmas in their village. She liked the sound of that.

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Copyright © 2008 by Katharine Swartz