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⠀⠀The infant giggled as his father pressed his small hand, coated in white paint, against the festive ornament. The imprint he left upon the shiny glass was roughly the size of his father’s fingerprint beside it.
⠀⠀The gold-tinted ornament would hang on the Durhams’ Christmas tree for decades to come, reading:
⠀⠀ “CLIVE’S FIRST CHRISTMAS”
⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ┄┄┄──────┄┄┄
⠀⠀Five years later, the boy shifted in the stiff pews of a Christmas Eve service. While young Clive bore a strong connection to God, knowing His Word as well as any child could, the sermon seemed to be the same every year, with a suffocating stillness hanging over the congregation. Clive’s mind had long since wandered from the vicar’s booming voice. His blank eyes, instead, found a stained glass window depicting the Holy Virgin holding her infant son.
⠀⠀Then, the hushed voice of Pippa brushed against his ear.
⠀⠀“Do you think that Father Swynford’s wig itches when he sweats?”
⠀⠀While his sister managed to stifle her laugh, Clive snorted aloud.
⠀⠀His father reprimanded him as soon as the car pulled back into Penge, shouting that a Member of Parliament’s son must behave accordingly in church, but Clive could not bring himself to create sincerity behind his apology.
⠀⠀Christ himself was once a boy. Hadn’t he ever fallen short in some way?
⠀⠀
⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ┄┄┄──────┄┄┄
⠀⠀
⠀⠀After his first semester away at St. Alban’s Preparatory School, Clive had sorely missed Penge—the embrace of his mother, the stories of his father, the jokes of Pippa, and the kindness of Florence. Like most things, Clive only learned to fully appreciate them when they had gone.
⠀⠀The night before Christmas, a knock roused him from his bed.
⠀⠀“I can’t bring myself to sleep,” Pippa murmured upon finding him awake, fighting the persistent smile upon her lips, “and Florence has tired of my pacing back and forth.”
⠀⠀The two sat up all night, much like Clive had become accustomed to doing with Benedict, his golden-haired bunkmate at St. Alban’s, whose melodious laughter that coloured the world around him. Clive spoke eagerly of him to his sister, wishing with a pang of sadness that his friend could join them for Christmas.
⠀⠀How could the season be complete without his light?
⠀⠀
⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ┄┄┄──────┄┄┄
⠀⠀The boy poked his ham indifferently with his fork, sliding it around his plate, staring with dead eyes at the empty chair at the head of the table. To address the elephant in the room—that it was his first Christmas as the man of Penge, before he had even attained an age of double digits—would have been to violate some unspoken rule. His extended family had come to their estate to celebrate, after all, not to grieve again for Mr. Durham, who had been buried in the spring.
⠀⠀His mother’s tight smile, he astutely recognised, was a costume piece no different from one at the masquerade ball they had attended some time ago. The cheer of the holiday seemed hollow, as if he could slap his palm upon it and hear the echoes of anguish from within.
⠀⠀To hang up the ornament with his father’s fingerprint beside the hand of his infancy had stricken him as particularly difficult that year.
⠀⠀How could his finger ever fill that mark left by his father?
⠀⠀He caught a glimpse of his distorted reflection in its surface as he set it upon the pine branch.
⠀⠀Tears sat idly in his eyes.
⠀⠀The gold-tinted ornament showcased what the son once was—and what he must become.
⠀⠀
⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ┄┄┄──────┄┄┄
⠀⠀
⠀⠀At fifteen years old, every word uttered during the vicar’s Christmas sermon landed like a knife to his heart. Clive listened attentively, embracing the pain—craving it. Perhaps enough of it would purify him.
⠀⠀“For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son…”
⠀⠀It was a sacrifice that he knew he would never be worthy of.
⠀⠀Christ himself was once a boy. Hadn’t he ever fallen short in some way?
⠀⠀Hadn’t he ever felt drawn to other boys?
⠀⠀
⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ┄┄┄──────┄┄┄
⠀⠀
⠀⠀Pain had not purified him. The months of isolation through which he intended to cure himself had only rendered him utterly unstable.
⠀⠀“Don’t make me go. Please, Mother! He’ll strike me dead if I enter His house!”
⠀⠀And yet he lived.
⠀⠀He sometimes wished he hadn’t.
⠀⠀
⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ┄┄┄──────┄┄┄
⠀⠀
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Three in one, and one in three,
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Ruler of the earth and sea.
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Hear us while we lift to Thee
⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀Holy chant and psalm
⠀⠀The Christmas prior, he had choked on his own guilt attempting to raise his voice in the hymn, being infinitely and irreparably dirty beside the Trinity. It now produced no effect at all upon him as he obediently sang with other churchgoers, as was demanded of him.
⠀⠀Father, Son, Spirit—those beliefs had vanished from him that year, along with their power over him. While Christmas traditions were an irritant, a violation of his newfound polytheism, they could no longer carve out his insides and leave him a quivering wreck.
⠀⠀Why should they? The divine never abominated him, he had finally come to understand. To repress his attraction to his sex would be to deny the influence of the goddess of beauty herself.
⠀⠀Aphrodite had given him solace, but it was through Athena that he had found strength. To cherish beauty shamelessly could take him far, but only the goddess of wartime strategy could guide him through the battlefield of Penge.
⠀⠀
⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ┄┄┄──────┄┄┄
⠀⠀After his first semester away at Cambridge, Clive could hardly stand being back—the criticism of his mother, the absence of his father, the quiet sadness of Pippa, and the apparent indifference of Florence. He had returned, however, with a new conviction: to experience a holiday that he could truly celebrate in his heart. Saturnalia, the greatest festival of the Ancient Romans, commemorated the year’s harvests and the coming of the spring. Through it, thought Clive, he may connect with both his gods and his family, even if the latter weren’t privy to what, exactly, he was celebrating.
⠀⠀Indeed, his sisters appeared utterly bewildered by his insistence on giving them presents a week early, but, recognising the spark of festive joy in his eyes that had long since been absent, they indulged him.
⠀⠀His mother, however, refused to open any gifts until Christmas Day, despite how simple the gesture would have been.
⠀⠀His heart turned with disgust more than ever before.
⠀⠀
⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ┄┄┄──────┄┄┄
⠀⠀
⠀⠀Mrs. Durham’s reaction to her son’s unorthodoxy several months prior had been mundane—dismissive, belittling, but otherwise unremarkable. It was only on Christmas Day, when she insisted that he partake in communion for all to see, that their conflict had come to a boiling point.
⠀⠀As Clive prayed to the gods that night, humbly requesting their guidance, the vitriolic interaction vividly replayed in his mind like a nightmare. She had raised her voice, red in the face, brow furrowed, lips downturned, as she spat at him the word “wicked”.
⠀⠀Centred around her appearances rather than his salvation, the outrage of his mother seemed hollow, as if he could slap his palm upon it and hear the echoes of pomposity from within.
⠀⠀Tears sat idly in his eyes.
⠀⠀Had his mother always been an empty shell, or had she lost herself somewhere along the way?
⠀⠀As he stood, palms opened towards the heavens, uttering his prayers, his mind drifted instead to Maurice Hall. The young man from Cambridge had a strikingly similar background to his own: a late father, a mother, and two sisters. Perhaps he would know how best to navigate the situation. Perhaps he could offer more direct wisdom than Pallas Athene, whose presence he felt but whose insights he could not discern.
⠀⠀His heart ached at the thought of Maurice’s lovely face so far from Penge, though, in truth, he knew the young man very little. He nevertheless felt drawn to him in such a way that he dare not verbalise.
⠀⠀How could the season be complete without his light?
⠀⠀Clive thus shifted his prayer to the deity he had seldom consulted since he was sixteen years old: the goddess of beauty.
⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ┄┄┄──────┄┄┄
⠀⠀Rose quartz was once speculated to have sprung from the combined blood of Aphrodite and Adonis. Clive doubted that Maurice had heard such a myth, but that did not stop him from gifting his beloved a ring encrusted with the lovely stone one Saturnalia.
⠀⠀“It’s a promise,” Clive murmured as he slipped the shining band onto Maurice’s finger, sitting on the floor by his feet.
⠀⠀“Of what?”
⠀⠀Clive rested his head against the other man’s knee knee. Maurice’s gentle fingers, as if instinctively, found their way to his brunet hair, gently brushing through it. They moved in soft circles on his head, engulfing Clive in a wave of calm.
⠀⠀“My devotion.”
⠀⠀Just as the sturdy stone, his love would endure. He was sure of it.
⠀⠀“Wherever you are, I shall be.”
⠀⠀If he were any more bold, he would have fitted the band to Maurice’s ring finger rather than the index. If he were any more vulnerable, he would have verbalised the mythological explanation behind the gesture. Instead, he simply said:
⠀⠀“Won’t you add the Metamorphoses to your list?”
⠀⠀
⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ┄┄┄──────┄┄┄
⠀⠀“The tree is coming along wonderfully!”
⠀⠀A wife’s was not the voice he once envisioned he would hear every holiday for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, Clive’s lips pulled into a tight smile—a trait he had inherited from his mother—as he greeted Anne with a nod. Seeking a fuller view, he stepped back from the tinsel-wrapped Christmas tree that he once would have refused to decorate, to which he now acquiesced for the sake of appeasing his colleagues from Parliament. To recognise the occasion when he hosted them for dinner around the holidays was purely transactional, an empty gesture in exchange for their support in the upcoming session. The joyous holiday of his youth, once spent eagerly sitting up with Pippa, now appeared utterly foreign to him; he doubted if he would even see his sisters, who had become wives and mothers with obligations of their own, for the occasion.
⠀⠀“Here’s another round,” continued Anne, setting a small box of decor on the nearest table to the tree.
⠀⠀“Thank you, Anne.”
⠀⠀As he reached for the box, she caught him in a tender embrace, setting her arms upon his shoulders, their faces near—their bodies, too.
⠀⠀The bump in her belly grazed his stomach.
⠀⠀As he gazed into her adoring eyes, he awaited some stir of affection within himself that never arrived. Worse, perhaps complicated by his decoration for Christmas for the first time in years, or perhaps by the thought of his impending fatherhood, a physical wave of illness came over him. Those eyes gazed upon their entire world, and he felt nothing in return. His marriage suddenly struck him as being an even hollower gesture than the festive pine tree—as if he could slap his palm upon it and hear the echoes of self-preservation from within.
⠀⠀Instead, when he reluctantly pressed his hand against Anne’s belly, he felt the faint movements of the heir for Penge which his mother had long pressured him to produce—the one he had long resisted, insisting that true beauty lay in love which ends where it begins. But beauty, he had come to understand, must give way to strategy in the end.
⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ┄┄┄──────┄┄┄
⠀⠀Tears sat idly in his eyes.
⠀⠀Mistaking their origin for paternal joy, Anne smiled sweetly and cupped his cheek, but he knew the truth.
⠀⠀Had he always been an empty shell, or had he lost himself somewhere along the way?
⠀⠀Obliged to fill the space between them, his lips pressed against hers like muscle memory.
⠀⠀He had kissed only one other in his life, and her lips against his inexplicably transported him back. His time with Maurice vividly replayed in his mind like a nightmare—the holidays spent with those fingers in his hair, the rose quartz ring.
⠀⠀It was around this time some years ago that he had gifted it, he realised. What had become of that promise of devotion? Had Maurice disposed of it, or did it remain sitting in the bedroom of his abandoned home? Or—he shuddered to think—did he carry it with him still?
⠀⠀Perhaps it had simply vanished from Maurice as surely as Maurice had vanished from his home.
⠀⠀The mutual sacrifice of Hall and Scudder, thought Clive, was one that he would never make himself.
⠀⠀It was a sacrifice that he knew he would never be worthy of.
⠀⠀“Let’s finish it off, shall we?” he asked regarding the box, abruptly pulling away from Anne and finding great relief in doing so.
⠀⠀Among the collection sat the gold-tinted ornament that had hung on the Durhams’ Christmas tree for the past twenty-nine years, reading, “CLIVE’S FIRST CHRISTMAS”.
⠀⠀As he reached to pick it up, his grasp fit perfectly upon the fingerprint of the man who had preceded him.
⠀⠀How had his finger ever grown to fill that mark left by his father?
⠀⠀He caught a glimpse of his distorted reflection in its surface as he set it upon the pine branch.
⠀⠀He fancied that his father stared back at him.
⠀⠀His heart turned with disgust more than ever before.
⠀⠀Unable to support its weight, the branch bent. By the time Clive realised what would happen, he could not prevent it. The ornament slipped from the pine needles, shattering into unsightly fragments upon the floor.
⠀⠀Anne gasped. The world seemed to freeze.
⠀⠀He knelt, desperately collecting the pieces, as if he could ever place them together again.
⠀⠀A jagged edge pricked his finger. He recoiled.
⠀⠀His wife swept the mess into a dustpan and promptly disposed of it, while his fingertip, despite the pressure applied beneath his handkerchief, continued to drip red.
⠀⠀Some dark corner of his mind wished that this little injury would never cease to bleed, that he may finally enter some eternal state of rest—a state of tranquility he had never known since that day in the meadow spent with Maurice, in his arms, far from the rest of the world. Although he reminded himself that those three years with Maurice had been barren, he found himself yearning for Charon to dip him in the River Lethe that he may forget those carefree days—and, deep down, more sickeningly, to live them again.
⠀⠀Like most things, Clive only learned to fully appreciate them when they had gone.
⠀⠀And yet he lived.
⠀⠀He sometimes wished he hadn’t.
⠀⠀That year marked Clive’s thirtieth Christmas. The dreams of his youth, like the ornament of his infancy, had shattered, been swept away, disposed of. What did he have to show for it but blood?
⠀⠀
⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ┄┄┄──────┄┄┄
⠀⠀
⠀⠀The infant giggled as his father pressed his small hand, coated in white paint, against the festive ornament. The imprint he left upon the shiny glass was roughly the size of his father’s fingerprint beside it.
⠀⠀The gold-tinted ornament showcased what the father once was—and what he had become.
⠀⠀
⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ⠀⠀ ┄───┄ ⠀⠀FIN. ⠀⠀┄───┄