FROM the depths of our generously rounded wooden bowl, a pyramid of fruit arose, gently releasing the scents of many faraway lands – tangerines, some still on their sprigs; a proud pineapple crammed with flavoursome fibres ready to torment the dentures of dear Aunty Gwladys; swollen, wide-smiling melons of yellow and green; the dazzling skin of eye-watering lemons; dark grapes peeping out like nipples; full-bodied pippins from our own English orchards; red apples polished like cricket balls; russets as brown as toads and limes with calypso hearts.
At the top of this perfectly sculpted feast, there sat like Buddha, an orange from Morocco, whose explosion of juice was contained in the glow of stretched peel that beckoned the hand. I reached for it, as the saliva of anticipation gathered in my mouth. And then I heard the clip-tap-flump of rapidly accelerating feet that could only be attached to the slender ankles fashioned by the angels for a person of my very close acquaintance. “Put that back at once!” thundered my wife, passion blazing in the lovely turquoise of her eyes. “Can’t you see the orange isn’t for eating?”
“What’s it for then?” I asked, mouth agape and dribbling. Despite years of experience, my wife’s foibles can still leap from the blue with alarming alacrity, causing me to blink with amazement, in much the same way as the long-burrowing worm that finally surfaced under a neon parade in Manhattan. In those seconds, another picture began to form in my mind. The rulers of Birkenhead had reintroduced the stocks to entertain the downtrodden masses, whom, they felt, were in need of a jolly good fillip during this period of austerity, high unemployment and general gloom. To this end, I was dressed in sackcloth, sprinkled with ashes, charged with slothful conduct and dragged before the beak. “How do you plead?” he asked, all bewigged and as severe as the sky.
“Guilty as charged, m’lud. I am a wretch in need of correction,” I replied, as my wife nodded her approval vigorously from the public gallery. “My man’s a stranger to toil,” she whispered to a friend. “Nary a drop of sweat has troubled his brow since first we met. He might be able to scribble out a poem or gargle a seasonal melody with mulled wine, but he’s totally useless with a feather duster and vacuum cleaner.”
In the following interlude, I saw the pyramids of fruit as well as rotting vegetables being laid before the gleeful mob in the pillory yard. “Penny a pitch,” barked the two-toned jester in pantaloons, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Simon Cowell, the popular talent show host. But, as the splatting began in earnest with the shine on my bald patch becoming an irresistible target, I returned to reality.
“Silly old me,” I said to my wife. “There was I thinking that with it being an orange – and an orange in prime condition, even an orange of voluptuous curves, if I may be so bold – that it would be for eating.”
“Wrong!” said my wife. “That orange is to be seen, not eaten. The bowl of fruit is part of our co-ordinated Christmas theme for visitors. Nothing is to be eaten before the day itself. But, instead of standing there gormlessly, why don’t you climb into the loft and fetch the rest of our Christmas decorations? Up the ladder you go. Mind you don’t bump your old head on the low beams. Oops, I did warn you.”
And there they were lying still in the cardboard boxes of memory – the streamers and baubles, the bells and stars, our little boy’s snowman with his carrot nose and jaunty hat, frail threads and unmelted frost, the crib and Wise Men, the battery charged Father Christmas and knotted fairy lights. It is a moment, perhaps the moment of the whole year – when the decorations are placed before a new tree, still smelling of the forest, and the choir in your head sings, “In the bleak mid winter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; snow had fallen, snow on snow . . .” You can see again the red berries and the deep green of the English Nativity. The coals of childhood glow, the chestnuts crackle and the coffin-shaped boxes of dates are angled into the stocking. “You know that perfect orange,” said my wife with a gentle smile. “We could eat it on Boxing Day.”
LISTEN to David Charters on his picture podcast at www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk
