A Christmas to Remember by Anton Du Beke

Author:Anton Du Beke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bonnier Publishing Fiction

Chapter Nineteen

A

FRIDAY NIGHT AWAY FROM THE ballroom was a rare luxury for Raymond de Guise – and, as he helped Nancy out of the taxicab onto the frosted paving stones of Whitechapel Road, he felt as light as the air.

Arm in arm, the two lovers walked on – until, some time later, they looked up at the face of one of the tumbledown red brick terraces. Lights were playing in the windows. There had been times, in the past, when approaching this house filled Raymond with a sense of regret. Now, as he looked up at the restored chimney stack – once turned to rubble and dust – and the new windows, where there had once been old boards, he felt the warmth of a homecoming. It was between these narrow walls that Raymond de Guise – then the roustabout Ray Cohen – had learned his first dance steps, standing on the feet of his departed father Stanley. Stanley Cohen, the devil of the dance halls. The whole terrace seemed to echo with his memory.

The door had opened, and there stood Raymond’s mother, Alma, with her apron patterned in gravy and blackberry jam.

‘Ray Cohen!’ she said, and then, ‘The future Mrs Cohen as well. Get inside, you two, it’s getting too nippy out there.’

It was ‘nippy’ inside the house too. Alma Cohen had inherited her frugality from her dear departed Stanley, who had refused to light a fire in the hearth until the first snow fell each year. Even now, nearly seven years after his death, his eccentric rules lived on.

‘I’m going to light it, Ma,’ said Raymond, as Alma showed them into the living room – where the table had been set for six, with all the best china and the silverware Stanley had brought home the Christmas after the Depression first bit, refusing to tell them all how he’d been able to afford it. ‘You’re not as young as you used to be. And Aunt May and Rebecca too . . .’

In a flash, Alma had whipped up a wooden spoon and rapped him over the back of the knuckles.

‘You’ll do no such thing. We’re hardier than you lot, up there in that Buckingham Hotel, and don’t forget it. You’ve got too coddled, Ray. I’ll bet there’s a servant bringing you a hot water bottle every night. Somebody checking in to put blankets on you while you sleep.’

Nancy herself couldn’t help but laugh at this.

‘Do you know, Alma,’ she said, ‘you’re almost right.’

‘And anyway,’ Alma went on, ‘my soup’ll warm you up as good as any fire. Now sit – sit! Artie’s on his way, and we’ve been cooking up a storm.’

*

The finest dinners of the Queen Mary restaurant could not compare to Friday night with the Cohens.

Somehow, nights like these had started to feel like home for Nancy too. The chicken was fat and crisp with butter and sage, and the potatoes were crisp but fluffy inside. There was nothing that made Nancy think of family, now, like a night with the Cohens.

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