Free Second Time Around by Marcia Willett Page B

standing on a table beside the fireplace. It was a small plastic thing, with fairy lights attached to its tinselly branches, and beside it were several gaily wrapped parcels—two for Tessa and two for Custard. The labels bore Freddie’s good wishes and Tessa stared at them, a lump rising in her throat. She had been surprised to find that she was always much in demand over Christmas and the New Year. The elderly went away to visit their families and many couples went skiing. She was relieved not to be spending a quiet Christmas with Cousin Pauline, who spent the festive season watching the James Bond reruns on television and eating chocolates, but it was nevertheless a very lonely time for Tessa.
    However hard she tried she could not help but remember those
wonderful holidays with her own parents and her brother and, as she sat alone in some stranger’s house, she would feel all the force of her loneliness. It was while she was fingering the presents beside the little tree and swallowing back her tears that the telephone rang.
    â€˜Everything OK?’ asked Kate. ‘Custard behaving himself? Good. So what time shall we expect you on Christmas morning?’
    Tessa was quite silent. ‘Christmas morning?’ she asked at last. ‘Of course.’ Kate sounded surprised. ‘I hope you weren’t thinking of leaving David and me in solitary splendour. Guy got himself married last week and he and Gemma are off on honeymoon to some romantic place abroad and Giles is on a photographic job in America and won’t be home till the New Year, so we’re counting on you.’
    â€˜Oh, Kate.’ Tessa bit her lip and blinked away her tears. ‘I should love to come. If you’re sure?’
    â€˜Don’t be a twit,’ said Kate.
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    MATHILDA WAS GLAD TO be back in the cove; glad, too, that she’d made the effort to see Delia. She knew that they would never meet again, in this life, and it had been a comfort to take such a gentle satisfying farewell of Nigel’s sister, who was her oldest friend. After Christmas Isobel had driven them both to visit a mutual friend, now in a nursing home. This was a mistake. The old lady was beyond recognising them or holding any kind of conversation. She sat smiling vacantly, slipping in and out of sleep, waking to make disconnected remarks. Her hair was greyish-white and tufty, like sheep’s wool caught on barbed wire, and there were gravy stains on her cardigan. A television, large as a young film screen, blared in the corner, and relatives and friends sat with desperate smiles attempting to communicate with their unheeding loved ones.
    Mathilda and Delia were silent during the journey home whilst Isobel railed against the system and deplored the loss of the extended family.
    â€˜Poor old thing,’ she said indignantly. ‘It’s so undignified. What a
way to finish, amongst strangers. Hasn’t she any children who could look after her?’
    â€˜I’ve always thought that it must be so humiliating to be “looked after” by one’s children,’ mused Delia. ‘One comes full circle. As if one’s life and achievements have gone for nothing. Perhaps it is better to disintegrate in the privacy of a nursing home without inconveniencing one’s family. At least there would be no guilt.’
    â€˜Why should there be guilt?’ demanded Isobel, changing gear noisily—the Morris did not take kindly to dramatics—and pulling in outside Delia’s house. ‘The elderly should be treated with love and dignity by their families.’
    â€˜Invariably?’ asked Mathilda. ‘As a right? Even if they have been cruel or tyrannical or selfish to their children?’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Isobel. ‘Well … How d’you mean?’
    â€˜I was merely testing your theory.’ Mathilda prepared to alight. ‘If you believe that old age confers such rights automatically then