Christmas Crackers

“Merry Christmas Jennifer” was never an easy thing to say with a cleft palate - or harelip in the more brutal parlance of the fifties. Beaming on the doorstep clutching a large colourful box and proudly rattling his car keys would be Peter. He was my mother’s youngest surviving brother, she his lifelong champion against those who sought to abuse and bully. Beside him fluttered my tiny twice-widowed grandmother with whom he had continued to live. A few yards away stood the current love of his life, a blue bubble car, in which they had negotiated the ten miles between our homes. “Nadolig llawen cariad” bubbled grandma, the little Welsh milliner, in her latest hat, tailored suit and lacey blouse, a glum fox fur draped around her neck, and tiny size three court shoes that made her a little taller than me. Peter was always essentially dapper. Rosily close-shaven under a jaunty trilby, a wide-shouldered camel coat rode over his high barrel chest, and sharply pressed beige trousers skimmed his gleaming brogues. Brown leather driving gloves were his hallmark, concealing his poor scarred hands.

From the time that I could first reach the handle, I was always the Christmas front door monitor, gawkily modelling the new party dress for which grandma would have measured me up some weeks previously. After her scrutiny of what the royal children were wearing, my frocks were always fit for any suburban princess, however dishevelled and tomboyish her default setting may be.

They arrived on the dot of noon. Christmas day was ever thus. Lunch, always intended for one o’clock, seldom began before two, and small serial glasses of sherry helped to bridge the gap and stoke the appetite of our guests. An element of underlying tension always lurked, on account of a critical wireless appointment with the young queen at seven minutes past three. For this, we needed to be perched expectantly in the adjacent sitting room, with a pot of tea and the best china. A few years hence, she would virtually join us, gazing regally if monochromatically out of the small box in the corner.

At long last, after the queen, we would open our presents from beneath the fast shedding tree, then whilst my parents washed up, and I explored my treasure, our visitors would doze and snore until tea time - usually ham sandwiches and trifle by the fire. Nobody ever had either heart or appetite to break into dad’s iced Christmas cake creation. Then around eight o’ clock the little bubble car would splutter back up the road with a cheery beep. On Boxing Day, we would visit them, when the routine was more relaxed, triggered by the remaining crackers for fresh hats, a lighter lunch, and after- dinner parlour games, whilst off-duty Peter could sink a few beers and get the serious giggles.

Being the only child in this annual formula, aside from the occasional addition of remote ancient relatives, I recall a mixture of cozy familiarity and guilty suffocating boredom. With hindsight I suspect that maybe Peter felt the same.

Throughout his life he was a cause for family concern, for though vulnerable, he had a buoyant spirit of adventurous self-confidence. Forever obsessed by cars, he graduated from wooden toys to cleaning every real vehicle in the neighbourhood, and when war broke out he was eager to sign up, becoming a frontline truck driver with the Eighth Army in North Africa. His idolised older brother had joined the airforce, and was lost in action, so Peter came home alone. He was massively traumatised and sick in both mind and body, but his ever-present sense of both style and duty had remained untouched. For his family, there would follow years of anxiety, challenge, embarrassment, and compassion. He spent time in mental hospitals for his frequent psychiatric breakdowns, and long months in jail on account of a cruel homosexual frame-up. So Peter knew he was burdensome, and his mental episodes revealed all his paranoid self-loathing. Yet he was always chirpily eager to reward the love and unconditional support of his family.

For some years he proudly occupied the little booth that was his domain as a council carpark attendant. Then came the day when a family friend helped him to become nothing less than the uniformed chauffeur to a rich businessman with a factory making toys and knick-knacks. Here was the job of his dreams, jaw firmly set, a gleam in his eye, and the occasional leaked giggle at the wheel of a gleaming grey Bentley. Peter thrived like never before. Ever loyal and dependable, he was valued and trusted by his new boss. Now he earned enough to buy his own car, smart clothes and the occasional flamboyant shirt; a time to be his own man, and to hold his head high. There were perks too: boxes of slightly damaged ornaments and toys which he grandly distributed amongst family and friends, though his taste was often oblique. But his annual highlight was in December, when he was sent to the far side of London to the Christmas cracker factory, where he would collect some fifty special boxes for the staff.

Peter positively glowed with pride and glee when he presented his box at the family table to trigger the proceedings. Crackers that surpassed anything on the general market in those lean days: lavish design, bright paper hats, generous contents, daft jokes - we all felt rather special.

Then came a very particular year, to be called ever after Peter’s Christmas. Everything was on track: poor old mum juggling the precious roast ensemble in a small oven in a cramped kitchen; dad the engineer in charge of icing and decorating the cake out in the garage; petulant pre-teenage me, having laid the table with all the best clutter, now skulking in a purple shot-silk frock resembling a large Quality Street bonbon. Twelve o’clock - doorbell: “Merry Christmas Jennifer!” Peter bearing cracker box, tiny be-foxed Grandma spilling Celtic incantations, interim glasses of sherry, maybe even a reluctant teenage Moonlight Sonata piano interlude to drown out the stressy kitchen percussion. Then table-time at last, poor flushed mum finally sits down, dad enters with sacrificial carcass, and Peter distributes the crackers, to liberate the ceremonial headwear, and so we all cross hands, grab a fistful of paper, shout Merry Christmas, and pull ….

…. well, as the contents tumbled onto the table, there was a cumulative intake of breaths and widening of eyes, and from Peter a sustained giggle of superglee. My father held up a shiny amethyst bracelet, Grandma a miniature toolkit in a leather case, my mother a roll of fine lace handkerchiefs, Peter a sparkling peacock brooch, me a small ivory penknife. Even the jokes were upmarket on gold-edged cards. We traded treasures and donned bright crowns of metallic card, not paper, and marvelled at such unexpected Christmas manna.

Peter proudly concluded that his kindly employer obviously now held him in the mightiest of esteem, and prepared to deliver him a speech about his family’s gratitude on his return to work. However, when he entered the office, he found his boss ranting down the phone at the cracker factory manager about his shock and humiliation at the cheap nasty crackers that his family had had to endure, and demanding to know the whereabouts of his usual customised order. It transpired that the specific marking of his box had not been applied, that it was thus lost to circumstance, and compensation would have to be made.

And our dear, loyal dependable Peter stood quietly by and didn’t flinch as he proffered his heartfelt sympathy, whilst declaring with thanks that ours had, as always, been very very special. We were never more proud of him.