I spent one Christmas with a Hungarian girl. I was a couple of years older than her. She had a circular scar on the small of her back. When I first saw this I asked her if it was a birthmark or a tattoo. She told me no, it was a scar. We met when she was cleaning for the building I was working in. I was selling cameras, telescopes and lighting equipment to birdwatchers and amateur filmmakers on the internet. She cleaned the offices next to where I worked. She wore glasses only when she was driving. Her car - a Fiesta - had failed its MOT because of a cracked screen so she never wore the glasses.
We spent Christmas Eve shopping. We went to Marks & Spencer and Argos. We ate lunch in a sandwich bar. She had a tuna & mayonnaise bap and I had a sausage and turkey baguette. It was a seasonal promotion. £2.95 with coffee. It was quite nice but there was a little too much sausage. She said hers was very nice and told me I should have had the same. I agreed.
After we were done we went to my parents' house. I always spent Christmas Eve there. She had not met any of my family before. She told me on the train she was a bit worried. I told her not to worry. I was a bit worried about being on the train. I've never liked it. I prefer to take a taxi. I didn't tell her.
When we got there she said hello to my mum and dad who were cooking sausage rolls and had santa hats on. We went up to my room to wrap the presents. She done most of mine too because I was never very good at it. Nothing had changed in the room since I had left school. She went through the drawers and found timetables for exams and homework books. She found school photographs from when I was nine or ten which amused her very much. I bet her she couldn't find me on there. She did.
We went back downstairs when my brother and his fiancé arrived. I had not seen him for some time. He worked on gas boilers. He had lost a lot of weight. His fiancé had put a bit on. I'd gone on holiday with them a few years before, when they'd first met. I walked into their room one morning and saw her naked through a cracked bathroom door. Ever since that we'd never been entirely comfortable together.
We started drinking. My Hungarian was still nervous. She was quite shy. She went to the toilet often, at least five times in two hours. She was probably drinking too much. At one point when she was in there my brother told me he thought she was nice. His fiancé said nothing.
We went to bed quite early. The heating was always on high in my parents' house which made me feel tired and a little nauseous. We had to sleep on the sofa bed in my room which was broken and awkward. We watched Emmerdale, Coronation Street and Eastenders on TV. She told me how the agency in Hungary that had found work for her in the UK had given her videotapes of Coronation Street to prepare her for life here. We started to watch Only Fools and Horses. I'd seen it before but she hadn't. She thought it was very funny. We both fell asleep before it was over.
In the morning we all exchanged gifts and thanked each other. Just after one we had finished lunch and we left in a taxi. It was very expensive and the driver had a novelty hat on. He offered me a cracker but I'd had too much to drink for that. I told him I was paying him too much money to pull his bloody cracker for him as well. She told me to shush and apologised to the taxi driver. When we got home we opened the presents we'd said we wouldn't buy each other. She got me a tie with Homer Simpson on it and a book about a helicopter pilot and I gave her a jar of expensive honey and some wine. She had a bath after that and I fell asleep on the sofa with one shoe on my foot and the other upside down on the rug. I must have slept for a long time because when I woke up she was watching the second part of Only Fools and Horses.
We spent most of Boxing Day in bed. I got up after noon, made some breakfast and telephoned a few people to say thank you and ask them how they'd enjoyed their day. She was still asleep when I went back. When she woke up we watched an old film on BBC Two about a plump old French resistance fighter in World War Two. It was quite good. He was trying his best to fight the old Germans, but there was just too much wine in his cellar for all that. He had a pretty daughter who flirted with the SS. I forget how it ended.
The next day we went back to work and we never spent another Christmas together.
IKIRU - Akira Kurosawa
THE MIRROR - Andrei Tarkovsky
VERTICAL RAY OF THE SUN - Tran Anh Hung
