Christmas short story: The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth

The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth, by William Boyd
Illustrated by Carolyn Gowdy

Bethany Mellmoth is in a quandary — and she doesn’t like quandaries. It’s December 20th. Five days until Christmas. The fact that this is a Christmas quandary makes it no more bearable. In truth she thinks that this fact makes it more unbearable. Her mother and father — nearly two decades divorced — both demand her presence on Christmas Day. The quandary will be resolved — Bethany is good at resolving things — but she hasn’t quite figured out how — yet.

Her father — Zane Mellmoth — texted her from his home in California. ‘Coming to London. Must see you Christmas Day lunch. Big surprise. Lots to celebrate.’ Bethany had felt the first prescient pang of worry: all her life, all her 22 years, she had eaten a Christmas Day lunch with her mother. She was four years old when her father left home and she has no memories of a Christmas lunch with him ever — although, logically, she assumes she must have had four. She telephones her mother, Alannah. Mum — what do you say to us having a supper this year, this Christmas? ‘Our having,’ her mother corrects her grammar. ‘Gerund.’ Then adds. ‘You must be joking. Don’t. You know how important it is to me.’ Bethany does. Zane Mellmoth walked out on his wife some time between breakfast and lunch on Christmas Day, 1991. Alannah and Bethany had a lunch alone. Four-year-old Bethany and her mother. It is a sacramental, immovable feast for Alannah Mellmoth that has nothing to do with the notional birth of one so-called Jesus Christ in Bethlehem millennia ago. For Alannah Mellmoth, Christmas lunch with her daughter is symbolic proof of her ability to survive and flourish without that sad pathetic bastard she once called her husband.