Ruth's First Christmas Tree: A Ruth Galloway Short Story

envelope and takes it out to him.
    ‘Thanks very much, love,’ says the postman, who dreads the daily trek out to the Saltmarsh. ‘A very merry Christmas to you.’
    Ruth clears away the broken decorations and puts the tree by the back door. It looks sad standing there, shorn of all its finery. So much for Ruth’s first Christmas tree. Kate seems upset too. She keeps trying to put the star back on, jumping up and down trying to reach the top.
    ‘Star! Star!’
    ‘Maybe next year, Kate.’
    Ruth gets out her recipe book and looks doubtfully at the instructions for gingerbread men. Although Ruth loves buying cookery books she’s not really much of a chef. And she’s not sure if she even likes gingerbread anyway. She just likes the idea of baking something, decorating the gingerbread men with chocolate-button eyes and icing-sugar clothes. But where the hell is she going to find chocolate buttons or icing sugar? The nearest shop is five miles away and she doesn’t feel like going out. It’s bad enough that she has to go out this evening. She shuts the book. Both Kate and Flint are staring at her.
    The phone rings. It’s Clara, Ruth’s babysitter. She’s so sorry but she has flu and doesn’t think she’ll be able to make it tonight. Ruth sympathizes but she does wonder whether Clara had just had a better offer. It’s not much fun for a young woman to spend the night before Christmas Eve babysitting in the middle of nowhere. For a glorious few minutes she contemplates skipping the party altogether. After all, she has a genuine excuse now. She imagines sitting down with a mince pie and the remains of the mulled wine and watching
Miracle on 34th Street.
But Shona would never forgive her. She keeps saying that this party is her last fling before the baby is born (Shona and Phil are expecting their first child in March) and has twice rung to check that Ruth will be coming. Sighing, Ruth dials Cathbad’s number.
    Cathbad says that he will be delighted to babysit. He says that he can be there at six.
    ‘I’m going to visit Driff at the hospital but visiting ends at five and I’ll be straight over.’
    ‘How is he?’
    ‘Not good. He’s got a chest infection, which is the worst thing possible. I spoke to his daughter last night and they’re all really worried.’
    ‘Any sign of the missing wood?’ asks Ruth, more to distract him than anything.
    ‘No,’ says Cathbad. ‘Driff keeps asking about it. It’s really weighing on his mind.’
    ‘Are they sure it’s not at the museum? Those places can be very shambolic.’ Ruth is thinking of the Smith Museum in King’s Lynn, a place where, until recently, chaos reigned supreme.
    ‘Not this museum. It’s all very high-tech.’
    ‘I remember,’ says Ruth, thinking of the vast tanks that kept the henge posts in immersion. ‘The timber needed really specialist treatment.’
    ‘Exactly,’ says Cathbad. ‘Driffield’s little piece of wood could be dying.’
    ‘Dying?’ This seems a melodramatic choice of word, even for Cathbad. Ruth takes an involuntary glance at the drooping tree by her back door.
    ‘If it’s left without treatment it’ll disintegrate altogether.’
    ‘But I thought you wanted the wooden posts left where they were. They would have disintegrated eventually if they were left in the open air.’
    ‘Yes,’ says Cathbad, ‘but that would have been a natural process, part of the cycle of nature. But for a piece of wood just to be lost like that, it’s all wrong. These were sacred timbers. You remember what Erik used to say? “Wood represents life; stone is death.”’
    Ruth doesn’t argue because she is grateful to Cathbad for offering to babysit. Besides, she knows what he means. She will never forget her first sight of the henge, rising up out of the flat landscape like some prehistoric monster. Erik, the archaeologist in charge of the dig, had fallen to his knees in the centre of the circle. ‘Sacred ground,’ he had said. She remembers, too, Erik’s thoughts on wood and stone. ‘Our journey is from the flesh of the body to the wood of the coffin to the stone of the tomb.’ She shivers. She doesn’t want to talk about Erik, whose ghost still haunts her.
    ‘I hope Driffield feels better soon,’ she says.
    *
    After that, the day goes downhill somewhat. Ruth rings her mother to be told how sad it is that she’s not coming home for Christmas. ‘Simon, Cathy and the boys have just arrived. They’re asking for their