Page 72 of Kiss Me at Christmas
“I don’t like being judged and I don’t like Sid being judged, either. People like you just decide whatever you want about people like me, and you don’t care if it’s true or not. Being old doesn’t automatically give you the right to be respected, it just means you’ve lived a long time, not that you’re a good person. I’m sorry that you’re lonely, but that’s not an excuse to give everyone else a hard time.”
Oh boy!At this point, Harriet wasn’t sure if this intervention was making things better or worse. James’s expression was one of trained professional blankness.
“You’re sorry that I’m lonely?” Grace’s voice was small. Her clasped hands had tightened, whitening the papery skin across her knuckles. “Do you understand what it is to be an aging woman? To be all alone in the world and be a woman that society has deemed past her prime?” She faced Billy, her expression a challenge. “Of course you don’t. How could you? I am invisible. I am the invisible woman. When I walk down the street, people look right through me as though I’m not even there. When I’m in the supermarket, nobody pays me the slightest bit of attention. Age has stolen my identity. I am powerless. I live with the knowledge that if I disappeared tomorrow no one would notice. I don’t want respect because I’m old, I want to be acknowledged as a member of the human race.”
Harriet’s heart grew heavy. It was hard to believe that someone as prim and upright as Grace could feel invisible. Silence choked up the small room.
“Billy?” Harriet touched his arm in encouragement. “Is there anything you would like to add?”
His brow furrowed even deeper than usual.
“Yeah, all right,” he muttered as he cleared his throat, daring a look at Grace. “Me and Sid have been through some stuff, but we have each other. I feel lonelysometimes, but I’m not actually alone, if that makes sense. But I do understand about being powerless. I’ve had no control over my life, still don’t really, not till I’m eighteen. Till we went to live with Tess and Arthur, I never knew where we’d be sent next or how long we’d get to stay there, or if it would be better or worse than the place we were at before; a lot of times it was worse. I’ve felt invisible for most of my life.”
Harriet swallowed hard to push down the lump in her throat. She turned to James and saw that he was struggling to keep his face neutral.
Grace looked up at Billy and nodded. “You and Sid don’t deserve to feel invisible,” she said.
“Yeah, well, nor do you,” he mumbled in reply.
Grace cleared her throat tentatively. “Perhaps we could begin again, you and I, with a little more understanding on both sides. I’ll try if you will.”
It seemed to Harriet that for the first time since she’d met her, Grace was actually acting her age.
“Sure,” Billy agreed. He turned to Harriet. “Can I go now?”
“Yes, of course.” She smiled at him. “Thank you for talking with us and for your honesty.”
“Didn’t really have much choice, did I?”
“No, I suppose not.”
He made to leave, and James stepped to one side to let him pass. In the doorway he looked back, glancing between the floor and Grace, teenage awkwardness leaching from his every pore.
“I’ll see you around, Grace, yeah?” In the absence of a smile—Billy didn’t dish out smiles often—he squinted his eyes at her in a kind of friendly way, and she nodded back in acknowledgment.
“Yes, I’ll see you around, Billy.” She gave him adiminutive smile, and then he was gone like a rabbit at a dog race.
Back in the auditorium, rehearsals were in full swing despite the hammering, sawing, and drilling and half of the stage being taken up with people on all fours painting backdrops. Gideon, cape flung back over his shoulders to reveal a blue velvet waistcoat with embroidered fish motif, was in his element as he readied the actors for a read-through of Act 1, Scene 2.
“Now then, Isabel, you will be farthest away from Ahmed on the stage because you are shivering beside your one measly lump of coal, warming your hands against a candle as you work.”
Isabel took her chair and placed it as far away from Ahmed as the painters on the floor would allow.
“Splendid!” His compliments were aggressive, like a sergeant major yelling out orders. “Let us have the narrators for this scene gathered in a loose semicircle between Scrooge and Roberta Cratchit as though you were a group of carol singers. Mallory, darling, could you arrange them, please, they look like they’re waiting for a bus. Yes, you too, Leo, if you could leave your canvas for a short while, that’s it, and Ricco be ready to enter stage left. Odette, you will begin. Annnnnnnd action!”
“Once upon a time—of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve…”
Harriet stood a little way up one of the side aisles, hidden in the shadows, surveying the action across the auditorium as she sipped a well-earned decaffeinated tea. James came to stand beside her.
“I think that went as well as could be expected,” he said.
“Let’s hope they each keep their end of the bargain.”
James nodded and then observed, “Gideon is a man of great passions.”
“He is indeed.” Harriet smiled into her mug.
“Would we describe him as eccentric, I wonder?”
