Post by ian on Jun 11, 2009 11:07:15 GMT
CHRISTMAS DINNER
Steve Harris
Nothing happened. Nothing that he would be able to identify later and note as the moment when everything changed, anyway. There was the merest flicker as he slowed down for the zebra crossing in Hook high street; a tiny feeling that he had slipped to one side. It could have simply been the chill of the falling snow penetrating the snug interior of his car; or it might have been a single rear tyre momentarily losing traction on the road surface or, perhaps, a small jolt of the suspension. It was nothing he would remember. There was an old lady on the crossing, weighed down by a heavy bag of shopping and walking carefully through the thin layer of slush that treacherously coated the road. A tiny worn-out dog shivered beside her, its damp fur spotted white with snowflakes.
"Careful girl," Graham said, changing down to second and finally bringing the car to a halt. Since the schoolboy incident he had always stopped at crossings, even if the person using them appeared to have reached the other side. People could change their minds. Graham knew this to his cost.
The wipers batted snow from the screen, the heater blew hot on his feet, cooler on his face. From the radio Lennon sang, "So this is Christmas" for what must have been the eighteenth consecutive year. Slade, Greg Lake and Bing Crosby were certain to follow.
The side windows were misting. Thinking of the scarcity of white Christmases these days and blaming the Greenhouse Effect (or maybe the Moorhaus effect, ha ha), Graham directed the dash vents towards the side screens. He was happy. He had done things this year, if Lennon was interested. Graham Harper was back together again. It was Christmas Eve, the trauma had gone, things were looking up with Sara and the five-parter mini series he had sweated, sworn, cursed, hated, cried over and, after the accident, finally abandoned (thus invoking the wrath of Moorhaus Associates over clause 23b "Delayed/Non Delivery Penalties" of his contract) was now complete, in the can and due to be shown on consecutive nights from Boxing Day to the 30th. He and Sara had even been invited to Moorhaus' New Year's Eve party at Groucho's.
Money in the bank, Frank! Graham thought as the old woman with the shivering dog reached the far pavement and held her gloved hand up in thanks.
Graham smiled sweetly, selected first, and like the good boy he was, looked over his right shoulder just before he began to pull away.
On the side of the road where the old woman had come from there was a small parade of elderly shops. Their window display lights glowed brightly in the gloom and through the eddies of falling snow they looked positively Dickensian. Graham glanced at them, then back at the - now empty - crossing then drove away.
It wasn't until the car was rolling that it finally sank into his mind exactly what it was he'd just seen hanging up in the window of the butcher's shop.
His head snapped around in an unbelieving double-take. Those were not the goosepimpled pink-white carcasses of four fat turkeys plucked and trussed and hanging up in the butcher's shop window; those were the corpses of four small children. Human babies. Graham's stomach contracted and his mind reeled savagely.
The terribly familiar thud of the car's front end hitting something slowed down time for Graham, just as it had with the schoolboy. In a soul destroying replay of that other incident, he turned to look out of the windscreen, realised - even as his feet were hitting the brake and clutch pedals - that everything was happening in exactly the same way - except - whoever he'd hit wasn't on the bonnet this time, rolling up toward him...
leaving bloody handprints on the paintwork with each rotation, Graham: Thock thock thock thock slap!
...but had gone under the car...
as his broken face came to rest against the screen leaving him peering in as his fingers clutched at the wipers
...and was trapped underneath, being scraped along the road and torn to shreds. The rasping noise of this was clearly audible and seemed to go on almost forever. As Graham gasped in a breath that would be expelled as a scream of anger at the deadly blow of betrayal his senses had dealt him and, fear about what was to become of him now, a cool and distant part of his mind spoke to him.
There you go pard, it said. Frank Moorhaus always said you were a cowboy and he was right. You'll have two notches on your six-gun tonight instead of one, you ole desperado!
The back end of the car slewed out into the opposite lane and Graham pointlessly steered into the skid, knowing that the slushy road had taken the car out of his control. While his hands worked the wheel and his legs powered into the pedals, the same cool part of his mind was assuring him it was the old woman underneath the car and wondering if the dog was a goner too and if so, would it count as an extra notch on the old shooter.
Headlights flickered through the car's windows as it spun. Horns were blaring all around him and still he could hear the noise of the woman under his car being scraped across the tarmac.
Then it was over. The car had turned through 180 degrees and thumped into the kerb, teteered as if it was about to go over and settled. Graham was now facing the zebra crossing from the other side. The car's engine was still running, the wipers still implacably flicking melting snow from the screen. Gazing into the headlights of the car that had been following him, Graham put the car in neutral, applied the handbrake and turned off the engine. In spite of feeling as if he'd been squeezed into a steel tube with a diameter of about an inch, Graham's hands were steady. In spite of being so filled with dread he could barely breathe, his mind was clear and telling him: You'd better get out and see what kind of a mess you've made of her, cowboy.
On the radio, Bing started to croon "White Christmas".
Graham was crouched down gazing stupidly underneath the car when a voice said, "I thought you'd noticed it."
He looked up into the face of the old woman he'd thought he'd mown down, aware that his face was flushed and wet with the tears of his own relief. He didn't care. God had smiled on him today; rearranged things in his favour; made a retraction.
"I don't know who left it there," the old woman continued, referring to the cardboard box that was trapped under Graham's car. "Everyone else has been driving round it. I would have moved it but it's dangerous to mess about in the road in this weather. Cars can't stop very quickly. You could get run over."
"I know," Graham said quietly. No notches today, pard, his mind informed him. Maybe another time, eh? Graham vowed there wouldn't be.
The old woman watched while he reached under the car and fought with the crumpled box, easing it out inch by inch. It was heavy.
"Fell off a lorry I expect," the woman volunteered. "Don't you, Dino?" Graham looked up but the woman was talking to her dog. The dog just shivered.
There was something horrible inside the box. Graham already knew this by the time he had freed it. The lid flaps were crushed and stained with blood. For a moment, as he slid the box out from beneath the car, Graham's mind told him that God had taken everything back and someone had abandoned several babies in the carton. Triplets or quads.
Aware that the traffic had started moving again, Graham opened the lid and was instantly joined by the shivering dog. The box was packed with off-cuts of meat; knuckle joints, carved bones, pig's trotters; a lower jaw complete with teeth.
"Fell off a lorry coming away from the butcher's, Dino," the woman said as the dog strained at his leash. "You mustn't eat any of it."
Graham's stomach was clenched. There was a sour taste in the back of his throat and he thought he might lose his expensive lunch. He didn't want to look back up the road at the butcher's shop, but he had to.
The four pink-white things were still in the window, but he was too far away to see what they were. He walked back up the road past the crossing and stood for some time staring into the window.
At the four turkeys.
The merest flicker.
"Hiya Sassy, I'm home," Graham yelled as he let himself in through the front door. He was calm. He was calm. A good stiff brandy wouldn't go amiss, but his stomach had settled, he was back in his warm safe house, Sara was here and things were looking up.
"I'm in the kitchen," Sara called back. "I'm pretending to be domesticated for once. I'm starting to feel quite Christmassy. If you're having a nip, get one for me too."
"Telepathy," Graham replied.
"What?"
"Nothing."
He went into the lounge, opened the drinks cabinet and peered in, his hand already reaching for the bottle of seven star Metaxa he'd brought back from Greece. That would do. He set two glasses on the shelf and opened the bottle. It wasn't until he was pouring that he realised the label didn't say Metaxa at all. It said Meltaka.
You got ripped off, that's all, he assured himself to allay the feeling of discomfort that had returned to the pit of his stomach. And yet he'd looked at this almost empty litre bottle a dozen times before and was certain he would have noticed the spelling error. When you wrote for a living you noticed things like that. Meltaka. Apart from this the label was identical to the real thing. The stars were in the right places, the layout and the manufacturer were the same, the bottle appeared to be a real Metaxa bottle (right down to the odd plastic pouring device in the neck) and the brandy looked smelled and tasted like the real McCoy. Except that this had to be one of those cheap fakes you heard about from time to time.
He took the bottle to the kitchen to show Sara.
"Hi Gray," Sara said, wiping her hands on her apron. She kissed him lightly on the nose and asked if she had to drink from the bottle.
"It's a fake," Graham declared, showing her the bottle. "Look!"
Sara looked. "Yeah, it says Meltaka seven star. So?"
"What do you mean so? It's spelt wrongly."
Sara frowned. And shook her head. "It's always been spelled that way as far as I know," she said, looking questioningly at her husband.
A cold stream seemed to open up in Graham's heart. "Metaxa, surely?" he protested uncertainly.
Sara shook her head. "I'm sorry. Metaxa? What exactly do you mean."
"Greek brandy. It's Metaxa not Meltaka," Graham said.
"Are you okay Graham?"
He took a deep breath. He didn't think he was okay. "I'm fine," he replied.
"Bad day?"
"Good day," he said and managed a tight smile.
Sara cupped his cheeks in her hands. They smelled greasy and unpleasant. "You been having the willies again?"
The "willies" was what Graham had suffered from for a couple of months after the accident. Nightmares; paranoid tendencies; self doubt; self pity; the odd hallucination; the list was endless. All of it was caused by stress, the doctors had advised him, and would gradually abate. He was still seeing the shrink once a fortnight, but it was unnecessary now - things were back on an even keel.
Tell her, pard! his mind spoke up.
"No," he said shaking his head as far as her hands would allow. "All that stuff is over now. I hardly ever think of the accident. I'm better. I know it wasn't my fault now. I've realised that. I'm okay and I haven't had an attack of the willies."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
"So what's the beef, 49?"
In spite of the freezing stream filling him Graham managed a smile. "Nuthin' gal. Just looks like I've mislaid a little of my spelling."
"They said it could happen." Sara kissed him.
"I'll get it back," he said.
"You will."
He took a swig from the bottle, set it down and went for the glasses, still wondering why he felt so wrong.
"What have you been up to while your sugar daddy's been setting up a new deal for January?" he asked her.
"I've been defrosting the baby," Sara said, smiling.
The cold water in his heart froze. He felt a painful urge to urinate.
"Sorry?" he heard himself saying.
"Defrosting the baby." That quizzical look was back in her eyes.
Graham shook his head. Hard. "I thought you said 'Defrosting the baby'", he said.
"I did."
"My words have got fouled up Sass," he said, wondering if he was going to faint. "Whenever you say 'turkey' I hear baby."
"Turkey?"
Graham's mind began to race. "What did I say?" he asked.
"You said 'Turkey'."
"Right," he said, nodding quickly. The words had somehow become transposed in his mind. "I meant baby, of course."
Sara smiled. "Yep, you sure did."
You saw babies hanging up in the butcher's shop, cowboy, that cold part of his mind reminded him. Don't matter what you call 'em, you know exactly what they are.
Sara sipped at her brandy and smacked her lips. "Who on earth would want to eat a turkey?" she asked. "They'd have to be mad!"
"Yeah," Graham agreed, knowing that Sara definitely had said 'Turkey' and that this was not an auditory hallucination. He'd had some in the days after the schoolboy and they were always imbued with an echoing quality as though spoken in a large empty room.
"I s'pose there are people who would eat them," Sara mused. "You could if you were starving on a desert island or something. I suppose there's some kind of nutirition in them just as there is in bugs or earthworms. Eat a turkey? Yuk I'd rather starve!"
Graham drained his brandy, but it simply turned to ice inside him. The words were not transposed. If he was hearing "turkey" instead of baby then, for a woman who had just been discussing eating babies, Sara's reactions were completely askew. He didn't want to know the answers, he just wanted to die; here now and painlessly.
"I'd better take the giblets out and stuff it, I s'pose," Sara said, going to the larder. "We'll have to put it in the oven early tomorrow. It says three hours for a ten pounder, but they always take a little longer. Gosh Graham, I'm so looking forward to Christmas this year. It'll be our new start!"
Shortly afterwards Sara took the platter from the larder. As she had assured him, there wasn't a turkey on it, but a fattened, trussed, headless child, its skin yellowed with the self-basting fat that had been injected into it.
He stared at it until Sara peeled back the flap of skin covering the neck cavity and thrusting her hand inside, withdrew the large sealed bag of giblets
And then he fainted
That night Graham dreamed - or hoped he dreamed - that Sara had a conversation during which he asked her to define the word cannibalism. Sara claimed there was no such word. He asked her if she thought there was a moral problem with the eating of babies. Sara petulantly argued that she had always eaten babies at Christmas and she would continue to do so. There was nothing inherently wrong with the practise. But what if it was your baby? He challenged. If it was the runt of the litter we'd eat it of course, Sara replied, admitting that it would be a sin to eat a good baby.
The merest flicker.
Graham dreamed of a land where there was Greek brandy called Metaxa and where turkeys hung up in butcher's shop windows at Christmas. It was a strange land and very far away.
Graham dreamed there was worse to come.
He was groggy the following morning and while he and Sara exchanged presents, Graham fought to retain his control. It wasn't just Metaxa that was different now. Now there was "Broot" instead of "Brut" and Bing "Crossley" sang "White Christmas" on the "Jalanese" "Suny" multi-band radio that Sara gave him. Graham drank a great deal of "Bull's" ten year old whisky that morning and stayed away from the kitchen, knowing there was worse to come.
Graham toyed with the idea that his mind had warped. Maybe things had always been this way and the memories that seemed to him to be the "truth" had arisen after the schoolboy and implanted themselves in place of the ones he thought to be false. It was either that or he had travelled somehow. There was no distance involved in this theory. Perhaps you could simply slip sideways a fraction of an inch and shift to an alternate universe. During the morning he asked Sara about the Twilight Zone. She had never heard of the series. After that, he tried to shift himself back to the universe of his choosing (even if it was a spurious one) but he had no idea as to how he should set about it. He wondered if there was another - worried - Sara somewhere who was frantically trying to locate him; or if she was wondering about his recent fit of the willies that had made him lose his spelling. Or maybe he was getting better; his cold and cynical mental voice had fallen silent and had no opinions to offer - that was surely a sign of some kind. Whether good or bad he did not know.
When Sara called him to the table, he still hoped that he was going to be wrong about everything. Even though the odour of cooking pork pervaded the air, he hoped he was wrong.
When she set the brown, crisp body down before him and asked him to carve, Graham screamed.
Steve Harris
Nothing happened. Nothing that he would be able to identify later and note as the moment when everything changed, anyway. There was the merest flicker as he slowed down for the zebra crossing in Hook high street; a tiny feeling that he had slipped to one side. It could have simply been the chill of the falling snow penetrating the snug interior of his car; or it might have been a single rear tyre momentarily losing traction on the road surface or, perhaps, a small jolt of the suspension. It was nothing he would remember. There was an old lady on the crossing, weighed down by a heavy bag of shopping and walking carefully through the thin layer of slush that treacherously coated the road. A tiny worn-out dog shivered beside her, its damp fur spotted white with snowflakes.
"Careful girl," Graham said, changing down to second and finally bringing the car to a halt. Since the schoolboy incident he had always stopped at crossings, even if the person using them appeared to have reached the other side. People could change their minds. Graham knew this to his cost.
The wipers batted snow from the screen, the heater blew hot on his feet, cooler on his face. From the radio Lennon sang, "So this is Christmas" for what must have been the eighteenth consecutive year. Slade, Greg Lake and Bing Crosby were certain to follow.
The side windows were misting. Thinking of the scarcity of white Christmases these days and blaming the Greenhouse Effect (or maybe the Moorhaus effect, ha ha), Graham directed the dash vents towards the side screens. He was happy. He had done things this year, if Lennon was interested. Graham Harper was back together again. It was Christmas Eve, the trauma had gone, things were looking up with Sara and the five-parter mini series he had sweated, sworn, cursed, hated, cried over and, after the accident, finally abandoned (thus invoking the wrath of Moorhaus Associates over clause 23b "Delayed/Non Delivery Penalties" of his contract) was now complete, in the can and due to be shown on consecutive nights from Boxing Day to the 30th. He and Sara had even been invited to Moorhaus' New Year's Eve party at Groucho's.
Money in the bank, Frank! Graham thought as the old woman with the shivering dog reached the far pavement and held her gloved hand up in thanks.
Graham smiled sweetly, selected first, and like the good boy he was, looked over his right shoulder just before he began to pull away.
On the side of the road where the old woman had come from there was a small parade of elderly shops. Their window display lights glowed brightly in the gloom and through the eddies of falling snow they looked positively Dickensian. Graham glanced at them, then back at the - now empty - crossing then drove away.
It wasn't until the car was rolling that it finally sank into his mind exactly what it was he'd just seen hanging up in the window of the butcher's shop.
His head snapped around in an unbelieving double-take. Those were not the goosepimpled pink-white carcasses of four fat turkeys plucked and trussed and hanging up in the butcher's shop window; those were the corpses of four small children. Human babies. Graham's stomach contracted and his mind reeled savagely.
The terribly familiar thud of the car's front end hitting something slowed down time for Graham, just as it had with the schoolboy. In a soul destroying replay of that other incident, he turned to look out of the windscreen, realised - even as his feet were hitting the brake and clutch pedals - that everything was happening in exactly the same way - except - whoever he'd hit wasn't on the bonnet this time, rolling up toward him...
leaving bloody handprints on the paintwork with each rotation, Graham: Thock thock thock thock slap!
...but had gone under the car...
as his broken face came to rest against the screen leaving him peering in as his fingers clutched at the wipers
...and was trapped underneath, being scraped along the road and torn to shreds. The rasping noise of this was clearly audible and seemed to go on almost forever. As Graham gasped in a breath that would be expelled as a scream of anger at the deadly blow of betrayal his senses had dealt him and, fear about what was to become of him now, a cool and distant part of his mind spoke to him.
There you go pard, it said. Frank Moorhaus always said you were a cowboy and he was right. You'll have two notches on your six-gun tonight instead of one, you ole desperado!
The back end of the car slewed out into the opposite lane and Graham pointlessly steered into the skid, knowing that the slushy road had taken the car out of his control. While his hands worked the wheel and his legs powered into the pedals, the same cool part of his mind was assuring him it was the old woman underneath the car and wondering if the dog was a goner too and if so, would it count as an extra notch on the old shooter.
Headlights flickered through the car's windows as it spun. Horns were blaring all around him and still he could hear the noise of the woman under his car being scraped across the tarmac.
Then it was over. The car had turned through 180 degrees and thumped into the kerb, teteered as if it was about to go over and settled. Graham was now facing the zebra crossing from the other side. The car's engine was still running, the wipers still implacably flicking melting snow from the screen. Gazing into the headlights of the car that had been following him, Graham put the car in neutral, applied the handbrake and turned off the engine. In spite of feeling as if he'd been squeezed into a steel tube with a diameter of about an inch, Graham's hands were steady. In spite of being so filled with dread he could barely breathe, his mind was clear and telling him: You'd better get out and see what kind of a mess you've made of her, cowboy.
On the radio, Bing started to croon "White Christmas".
Graham was crouched down gazing stupidly underneath the car when a voice said, "I thought you'd noticed it."
He looked up into the face of the old woman he'd thought he'd mown down, aware that his face was flushed and wet with the tears of his own relief. He didn't care. God had smiled on him today; rearranged things in his favour; made a retraction.
"I don't know who left it there," the old woman continued, referring to the cardboard box that was trapped under Graham's car. "Everyone else has been driving round it. I would have moved it but it's dangerous to mess about in the road in this weather. Cars can't stop very quickly. You could get run over."
"I know," Graham said quietly. No notches today, pard, his mind informed him. Maybe another time, eh? Graham vowed there wouldn't be.
The old woman watched while he reached under the car and fought with the crumpled box, easing it out inch by inch. It was heavy.
"Fell off a lorry I expect," the woman volunteered. "Don't you, Dino?" Graham looked up but the woman was talking to her dog. The dog just shivered.
There was something horrible inside the box. Graham already knew this by the time he had freed it. The lid flaps were crushed and stained with blood. For a moment, as he slid the box out from beneath the car, Graham's mind told him that God had taken everything back and someone had abandoned several babies in the carton. Triplets or quads.
Aware that the traffic had started moving again, Graham opened the lid and was instantly joined by the shivering dog. The box was packed with off-cuts of meat; knuckle joints, carved bones, pig's trotters; a lower jaw complete with teeth.
"Fell off a lorry coming away from the butcher's, Dino," the woman said as the dog strained at his leash. "You mustn't eat any of it."
Graham's stomach was clenched. There was a sour taste in the back of his throat and he thought he might lose his expensive lunch. He didn't want to look back up the road at the butcher's shop, but he had to.
The four pink-white things were still in the window, but he was too far away to see what they were. He walked back up the road past the crossing and stood for some time staring into the window.
At the four turkeys.
The merest flicker.
"Hiya Sassy, I'm home," Graham yelled as he let himself in through the front door. He was calm. He was calm. A good stiff brandy wouldn't go amiss, but his stomach had settled, he was back in his warm safe house, Sara was here and things were looking up.
"I'm in the kitchen," Sara called back. "I'm pretending to be domesticated for once. I'm starting to feel quite Christmassy. If you're having a nip, get one for me too."
"Telepathy," Graham replied.
"What?"
"Nothing."
He went into the lounge, opened the drinks cabinet and peered in, his hand already reaching for the bottle of seven star Metaxa he'd brought back from Greece. That would do. He set two glasses on the shelf and opened the bottle. It wasn't until he was pouring that he realised the label didn't say Metaxa at all. It said Meltaka.
You got ripped off, that's all, he assured himself to allay the feeling of discomfort that had returned to the pit of his stomach. And yet he'd looked at this almost empty litre bottle a dozen times before and was certain he would have noticed the spelling error. When you wrote for a living you noticed things like that. Meltaka. Apart from this the label was identical to the real thing. The stars were in the right places, the layout and the manufacturer were the same, the bottle appeared to be a real Metaxa bottle (right down to the odd plastic pouring device in the neck) and the brandy looked smelled and tasted like the real McCoy. Except that this had to be one of those cheap fakes you heard about from time to time.
He took the bottle to the kitchen to show Sara.
"Hi Gray," Sara said, wiping her hands on her apron. She kissed him lightly on the nose and asked if she had to drink from the bottle.
"It's a fake," Graham declared, showing her the bottle. "Look!"
Sara looked. "Yeah, it says Meltaka seven star. So?"
"What do you mean so? It's spelt wrongly."
Sara frowned. And shook her head. "It's always been spelled that way as far as I know," she said, looking questioningly at her husband.
A cold stream seemed to open up in Graham's heart. "Metaxa, surely?" he protested uncertainly.
Sara shook her head. "I'm sorry. Metaxa? What exactly do you mean."
"Greek brandy. It's Metaxa not Meltaka," Graham said.
"Are you okay Graham?"
He took a deep breath. He didn't think he was okay. "I'm fine," he replied.
"Bad day?"
"Good day," he said and managed a tight smile.
Sara cupped his cheeks in her hands. They smelled greasy and unpleasant. "You been having the willies again?"
The "willies" was what Graham had suffered from for a couple of months after the accident. Nightmares; paranoid tendencies; self doubt; self pity; the odd hallucination; the list was endless. All of it was caused by stress, the doctors had advised him, and would gradually abate. He was still seeing the shrink once a fortnight, but it was unnecessary now - things were back on an even keel.
Tell her, pard! his mind spoke up.
"No," he said shaking his head as far as her hands would allow. "All that stuff is over now. I hardly ever think of the accident. I'm better. I know it wasn't my fault now. I've realised that. I'm okay and I haven't had an attack of the willies."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
"So what's the beef, 49?"
In spite of the freezing stream filling him Graham managed a smile. "Nuthin' gal. Just looks like I've mislaid a little of my spelling."
"They said it could happen." Sara kissed him.
"I'll get it back," he said.
"You will."
He took a swig from the bottle, set it down and went for the glasses, still wondering why he felt so wrong.
"What have you been up to while your sugar daddy's been setting up a new deal for January?" he asked her.
"I've been defrosting the baby," Sara said, smiling.
The cold water in his heart froze. He felt a painful urge to urinate.
"Sorry?" he heard himself saying.
"Defrosting the baby." That quizzical look was back in her eyes.
Graham shook his head. Hard. "I thought you said 'Defrosting the baby'", he said.
"I did."
"My words have got fouled up Sass," he said, wondering if he was going to faint. "Whenever you say 'turkey' I hear baby."
"Turkey?"
Graham's mind began to race. "What did I say?" he asked.
"You said 'Turkey'."
"Right," he said, nodding quickly. The words had somehow become transposed in his mind. "I meant baby, of course."
Sara smiled. "Yep, you sure did."
You saw babies hanging up in the butcher's shop, cowboy, that cold part of his mind reminded him. Don't matter what you call 'em, you know exactly what they are.
Sara sipped at her brandy and smacked her lips. "Who on earth would want to eat a turkey?" she asked. "They'd have to be mad!"
"Yeah," Graham agreed, knowing that Sara definitely had said 'Turkey' and that this was not an auditory hallucination. He'd had some in the days after the schoolboy and they were always imbued with an echoing quality as though spoken in a large empty room.
"I s'pose there are people who would eat them," Sara mused. "You could if you were starving on a desert island or something. I suppose there's some kind of nutirition in them just as there is in bugs or earthworms. Eat a turkey? Yuk I'd rather starve!"
Graham drained his brandy, but it simply turned to ice inside him. The words were not transposed. If he was hearing "turkey" instead of baby then, for a woman who had just been discussing eating babies, Sara's reactions were completely askew. He didn't want to know the answers, he just wanted to die; here now and painlessly.
"I'd better take the giblets out and stuff it, I s'pose," Sara said, going to the larder. "We'll have to put it in the oven early tomorrow. It says three hours for a ten pounder, but they always take a little longer. Gosh Graham, I'm so looking forward to Christmas this year. It'll be our new start!"
Shortly afterwards Sara took the platter from the larder. As she had assured him, there wasn't a turkey on it, but a fattened, trussed, headless child, its skin yellowed with the self-basting fat that had been injected into it.
He stared at it until Sara peeled back the flap of skin covering the neck cavity and thrusting her hand inside, withdrew the large sealed bag of giblets
And then he fainted
That night Graham dreamed - or hoped he dreamed - that Sara had a conversation during which he asked her to define the word cannibalism. Sara claimed there was no such word. He asked her if she thought there was a moral problem with the eating of babies. Sara petulantly argued that she had always eaten babies at Christmas and she would continue to do so. There was nothing inherently wrong with the practise. But what if it was your baby? He challenged. If it was the runt of the litter we'd eat it of course, Sara replied, admitting that it would be a sin to eat a good baby.
The merest flicker.
Graham dreamed of a land where there was Greek brandy called Metaxa and where turkeys hung up in butcher's shop windows at Christmas. It was a strange land and very far away.
Graham dreamed there was worse to come.
He was groggy the following morning and while he and Sara exchanged presents, Graham fought to retain his control. It wasn't just Metaxa that was different now. Now there was "Broot" instead of "Brut" and Bing "Crossley" sang "White Christmas" on the "Jalanese" "Suny" multi-band radio that Sara gave him. Graham drank a great deal of "Bull's" ten year old whisky that morning and stayed away from the kitchen, knowing there was worse to come.
Graham toyed with the idea that his mind had warped. Maybe things had always been this way and the memories that seemed to him to be the "truth" had arisen after the schoolboy and implanted themselves in place of the ones he thought to be false. It was either that or he had travelled somehow. There was no distance involved in this theory. Perhaps you could simply slip sideways a fraction of an inch and shift to an alternate universe. During the morning he asked Sara about the Twilight Zone. She had never heard of the series. After that, he tried to shift himself back to the universe of his choosing (even if it was a spurious one) but he had no idea as to how he should set about it. He wondered if there was another - worried - Sara somewhere who was frantically trying to locate him; or if she was wondering about his recent fit of the willies that had made him lose his spelling. Or maybe he was getting better; his cold and cynical mental voice had fallen silent and had no opinions to offer - that was surely a sign of some kind. Whether good or bad he did not know.
When Sara called him to the table, he still hoped that he was going to be wrong about everything. Even though the odour of cooking pork pervaded the air, he hoped he was wrong.
When she set the brown, crisp body down before him and asked him to carve, Graham screamed.