Christmas Pudding for Two

Christmas Pudding for Two

It was, without any doubt whatsoever, the most pathetic thing I had ever seen in my entire fucking life.

I was looking for the tomato ketchup when I found it, right at the back of the cupboard, hiding behind the tinned heart attack and the rest of that guaranteed-devoid-of-all-nutrition rubbish he calls food.

Wrapped in red and gold foil, in its own little china bowl--one Fortnum and Masons' Individual Christmas Pudding. I'm still not sure which was the most pathetic part, the "Individual" or the "Fortnum and Masons'". The whole idea of an individual Christmas pudding is not exactly cheerful at the best of times, but I think the Fortnum and Masons bit was worse. If he'd bought an ordinary, common or garden Christmas pud, like the ones my mother used to buy because she couldn't be bothered, it might just mean that he liked the taste. This was after all the man who ate Hot-Crossed Buns in October and ice lollies in February. The fact that the King of the Junk Food had gone all the way to Fortnum and Masons and spent a grossly excessive amount of his hard-earned cash on it, meant he was trying to do it properly, because it meant something.

Now, I learnt all I know about celebrating Christmas from my parents; which is why I've volunteered for duty on Christmas Day every year since I joined the Met. Obviously young Mister Bodie had happier memories than I did, and he'd bought himself a Christmas pudding to remind him.

I stood in his kitchen for a couple of minutes with the ketchup in one hand and the pudding basin in the other and I felt--I dunno--winded or something. I had this horrible vision of the poor bastard sitting down one night, knackered from another day on the front-line, eating the damn thing all alone, with that fucking awful just-add-water custard from a packet poured on top.

I didn't say anything. I realise I'm generally held to have the sensitivity of a rhinoceros but even I have limits. Apart from anything else I was a bit surprised at how bothered I was. Almost the worst thing was the fact that I knew it wouldn't taste at all how he remembered. F and M's don't go in for that "just like mother used to make" taste and chances were the damn thing was chock full of exotic fruits and other stuff that doesn't go with custard. I don't know much about Bodie's early life but I'm pretty sure it didn't contain much from Fortnum and Masons.

Thinking it over on the way home that night, I realised the whole thing made me angry. It just wasn't right! There he was, laying his all on the line for England, Home and Cowley and he ends up eating a one-man Christmas pudding on his own. It wasn't fair. He deserved better.

Which thought was the start of the great "Give Bodie a Proper Christmas Dinner" campaign.

My first idea was to try and fix him up with a nice girl, with a nice family, who'd take him in for Christmas, give him the meal with all the trimmings and the parties and stuff. I soon scratched that. If that was what he'd wanted, he could have gone out and got it himself. I even knew why he hadn't; when you've got no one yourself (or no one you want to remember) the last thing you need is the sight of other people playing Happy Families round you. I tried it once and the whole experience was so unreal I had to treat it as an undercover op to get through it.

So on to the second idea--I'd make him a proper Christmas dinner, with all the trimmings and a pudding so large we'd still be eating it on Ash Wednesday. 'Course chances were we'd end up eating Christmas dinner on New Years Eve, if the last few Christmasses were anything to go by, but at least he'd have a decent, home-made pudding and he wouldn't have it alone and that was the main thing.

Mind you, I knew I had to be careful--if he thought I was doing it because I felt sorry for him, I'd be lucky not to be singing soprano for the next 12 months--so a certain amount of cunning was required. A couple of deadly dull days on stakeout gave me the opportunity. A few generalised grumbles about commercialisation, a few mildly mournful stories about Young Raymond and his 'orrible Christmasses and I got him earnestly explaining how good it could be and what it had been like when he was a kid.

Best I could work out, Christmas when he was very small had been great, just him, his Mum, his Gran, all the traditional stuff, presents and young Master Bodie at the centre of it all, lapping it up. Then his Gran died and it all went to hell in a hand basket.

Little did he know that, while he was telling me the story of his life, I was making careful notes--turkey, chestnut stuffing, sprouts (sprouts!--normally the only green thing you could get him to eat was mint choc'chip ice-cream) carrots, roast and mashed potatoes, little sausages wrapped in bacon, bread sauce and of course the pudding. I even managed to find out which recipe the Bodie household used.

Right that was the menu sorted--now the invite. This was trickier. There was no way I could pass all this trouble off as a spur of the moment thing, the pudding alone was going to take 10 hours to steam, and the only thing I could think of was to try and get him to think he was doing me a favour by coming along.

I got the chance about a fortnight before Christmas--we were in a Police canteen somewhere north of Luton and the food was more than usually disgusting. It was the sort of place that starts serving turkey in November because it's so cheap, with the end result that you're thoroughly sick of it by the second Sunday in Advent. Even Bodie couldn't choke the gristly mess down. A few scornful comments about how easy it was to cook it properly, a wistful reference to there being no point when you're eating it alone, a long pause and then a choked-off sentence about how my childhood Christmasses had been nothing like his et voila--one thoroughly suckered partner agreeing (nay offering) to come for Christmas dinner.

I have to admit I quite enjoyed the preparations. Apparently old Mrs Bodie used a recipe book you get from a flour company free with packet tops--they still send them out and I got one and made the pudding on the Saturday, when I was reasonably certain we wouldn't be called in. Bodie came round with a few beers and we watched the football and a mouldy old movie and it was...nice. Peaceful.

It was the last peace we got for a very long time.

The week before Christmas was hell on wheels. The IRA Christmas bombing campaign would have killed and maimed dozens if we hadn't found the flat they'd been hiding out in. Dave Tomlinson was the inside man, working deep cover, and they rumbled him. We found his body in the river with his tongue cut out. Cowley went to tell his father and came back like the hounds of hell had him by the balls.

We were running round like scalded cats after that. I think I had four hours sleep in as many days and, for all our efforts, it was sheer fluke we spotted Terry Hanlon in an Irish pub in Kilburn. I was sitting there, sandwiched between two tiny old girls, singing "The Wearing of the Green" and hoping my accent didn't slip, when in he strolled, large as life and twice as ugly.

Unfortunately for me, when I stood up, he recognised me; unfortunately for him, Bodie was near the door. I tipped him the wink and, when Hanlon ran outside, Bodie was waiting for him and we hauled him back to HQ.

Cowley did the interrogation with Dave's partner Sammy. I don't know what they did to Hanlon and I don't want to know, but he was crying when they took him off to the maximum security cells at Paddington Green nick. There wasn't a mark on him, but he was crying like a baby.

The Cow was in a funny mood too. He didn't even read the reports when we went to hand them over, just sat there, looking at us. He looked bloody awful and, when he picked his glasses off the desk, his hands were trembling. Sometimes we forget he's not a young man any more. When he did speak it was to tell us we were off duty until Boxing Day. I tried to say we were rostered for duty over Christmas but he just looked at me and said, "I want you both back here, well rested, on the 26th. I've a special job for the pair of ye."

Fucking marvellous--now we had three days to wonder what sort of horrors he was lining up for us. We'd been on his 'special jobs' before and come too bloody close to ending up like poor Dave.

Normally, one of us (probably me) would have said something, but we were out on our feet by then. I don't know about Bodie, but I was so tired I'd got to the stage when all the lights are too bright and you can't stop shivering. So we trailed out of his office and home to bed. I don't remember undressing. Hell, I don't remember the drive home, and I didn't surface until tea-time Christmas Eve.

**********

The minute I woke up I knew there was something I should be worried about, though it took me half a minute to remember about the 'special job'. When I did remember, I felt like pulling the covers back over my head and hiding; maybe, if I tried really hard, I could stay asleep until the New Year. Ironic really--I was trying to recreate a childhood Christmas for Bodie and all I'd done so far was recreate one of mine, lying under the covers on Christmas Eve, scared spitless.

It was remembering about our dinner that finally got me out of bed. In our line you never know whether you'll make it to another Christmas, even without 'special jobs', so I was going to do my damnedest to make this a bloody good one and hell's bells it was half-past four and the turkey I'd ordered was still at the butchers!

A bout of last minute running around got the blood moving and cheered me up a bit. Luckily everything else was in and, after an unpleasant half-hour gutting the turkey, (a uniquely nasty experience), I was just about ready. The Nine Lessons and Carols was on the radio while I was pottering round the kitchen and I remember listening and wishing I could believe. Gets a bit bleak being on your own all the time, just the two of you against the world, be nice to know there was Someone or Something looking out for us. Seems to work for George. Wish I could take his word for it.

I looked round the place before I went to bed. Somebody in Accommodations didn't like me--this place was even worse than the Purple Palace they'd stuck me in that time we had to arrest Uncle George. There wasn't much I could do to tart the place up but I'd done my best. The ceiling was too damn low for much by way of decorations, but I'd found some holly (to be honest, I 'liberated' it from a garden three doors down), and I dug out a couple of nice lamps I'd found on Camden Market a few months back and, with the table all set up, it didn't look half bad.

He arrived about 11.30 next morning with a weirdly-shaped parcel, half a dozen bottles of wine the cooking would have to work hard to be worthy of and a tree. I'd told him I wouldn't be getting one, I'd told him the place was too small. So he'd bought me a bonsai--lovely thing, tiny and utterly perfect, with decorations so small I couldn't think where he'd got them from. The parcel was an exhaust manifold for the Norton, a part I'd seen at a dealers and hadn't been able to afford.

Predictably, he complained about the lack of paperchains but, as I told him, I wasn't drying my underpants on the radiators--what more did he want?

It was a really good day. The food turned out so good even I was surprised and Bodie loved it. I got a real kick out of seeing how much he was enjoying himself. There's a lot of the kid left in him but that's not all there is and for once we found ourselves talking, really talking. I even told him about Jack and the Boxing Day rugby, the only time I've ever told anybody about the poor old boy.

But it wasn't mournful, not a bit of it; it was friendly and warm and...I dunno...generous is the best I can come up with. We were laughing a lot of the time but it wasn't the raucous laughter you get on the job, two parts anger, to one part amusement; it was something not much quieter but infinitely less tense and aggressive. For the first time I could see at least some of what he'd been trying to recapture when he'd bought that damn pudding.

We ended up in armchairs in front of the world's ugliest electric fire, not drunk but with a pleasant buzz on, stomachs full, at peace with the world.

Then the bastard had to go and spoil it all.

The End

Half a Loaf Each

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