All families have their own Christmas traditions, and the Metcalfe family was no exception. Christmas Day was strictly for immediate family only, but Boxing Day was Open House for all and any of the extended Metcalfe and Blake branches of the family. This year, much to the pleasure of his parents, Captain Scarlet had reached the top of the coveted Christmas Leave list, and had arrived at the family home just outside Winchester late on Christmas Eve.
***
Paul Metcalfe stretched and yawned and seriously considered getting up. It was unusual for him to sleep in so late, but he refused to feel at all guilty, despite the fact that his bedside clock was currently informing him it was getting on for 11am. However, coffee wasn’t going to make itself, and he rolled out of bed to have a quick shower and head off downstairs.
He had been surprised to see an unexpected addition to the household – Mary Metcalfe, General Metcalfe’s long-suffering and usually fairly equable wife, had put her foot down and informed her husband that this year, she was going to have help in the house over Christmas, and damn the expense. The housekeeper was worth her not-inconsiderable weight in gold – a veritable female Jeeves – and Mary was already wondering wistfully if she would be amenable to staying on. The doorbell rang, and the she-Jeeves went to answer it –
Standing at the top of the stairs, and (so far) mercifully out of sight, Paul watched in horror as what seemed like hundreds of elderly ladies and the occasional elderly man (probably the seldom-seen and largely mythical Uncles) streamed through the door. Somehow, the starched-pinny-clad guardian of the door managed to take all of their coats and spirit them away to some distant hanging area without apparently leaving her post in the hallway.
General Metcalfe started to usher the uncles into the library. As he did so, he spotted his son lurking at the top of the stairs. “Ah, Paul!” he boomed. “Up at last! Come and say hello to your aunts. They were just saying how they never see you these days.”
Paul shot his father a pleading look as he came reluctantly downstairs to be surrounded by elderly females. “Don’t leave me!” he whispered frantically. “I’m drowning in blue rinse here!” But the general simply grinned at him in the way of all fathers who have suddenly been presented with a means of teaching their cocky offspring that life’s a bitch, and left.
***
In the drawing room, there was tea. Also cake and little gold-wrapped chocolates. There was also an abundance of elderly women and a much younger man. The young man was wearing a bright orange sweater that was only a couple of sizes too big for him, and only his very closest friends would have been able to tell that Paul Metcalfe’s expression of enjoyment in the company of the senior female members of the Metcalfe and Blake clans was fake. The sweater was a gift from one of them – Paul had already forgotten which one – and his mother had threatened him with several fates worse than death if he neglected to wear it, expertly skimming over the fact that she couldn’t remember who it was from, either. Therefore, he was doing his filial duty and baking to death in the process.
It wasn’t often that the aunts got together. Strictly speaking, some of them were cousins, but this was a distinction that was hardly ever made as most of them were roughly of an age, and had known each other all their lives. To Paul, they seemed to have been old ladies forever – frail and wrinkled, but with an apparently limitless capacity for tea and sandwiches. He had once said, not entirely jokingly, that they reminded him of mastodons lowing plaintively across a primordial swamp; he also admitted that he had considerable difficulty telling them apart and wouldn’t have been at all surprised if they simply got together before descending on whichever relative they were visiting, and drew their identities out of a hat. Paul could have sworn that Auntie Hatty had been Auntie Susan last time he’d been caught in one of these aunt-stampedes.
One of the herd of Interchangeable Aunts looked over her teacup in Paul’s direction, then metaphorically lowered her head and charged.
“Not married yet, Paul? You need to find a nice gel and settle down. You’re not getting any younger, you know.”
Paul hid behind his slice of cake and wished he could tell her that, yes, perhaps that was true, but he wasn’t getting any older, either.
Some of the others joined in with the interrogation, and Paul was getting desperate for a way out when he spotted the ideal escape route. He leapt to his feet.
“More tea, Auntie Helen? Let me get you a clean cup…”
Ignoring his mother’s protestations that she was paying good money for people to do that sort of thing, Captain Scarlet, Spectrum’s premier agent, collected several used cups and saucers onto a tray and fled with them into the kitchen.
***
Having been ousted from the kitchen by the Jeeves-ess, Paul was standing irresolutely in the hallway outside the drawing room, vacillating between going to hide in his bedroom, where one parent or other was bound to find him and drag him back down again, or go back into the drawing room and run the gauntlet of The Aunts. He was just about to toss a coin to decide, when his phone rang.
“Hi, Paul! Happy Christmas! Sorry I couldn’t talk to you yesterday, but we were a bit busy up here. You Brits have an extra day’s holiday today, don’t you? Something to do with boxing?”
With considerable relief, Paul recognised Captain Blue’s voice. “Boxing Day, yes. A time for families to get together… and in the case of my family, not one of them is under 70. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked why I’m not settled down with some nice ‘gel’ yet…”
Blue chuckled. “Families… the same on both sides of the Pond.”
“Can't you fake a Mysteron threat, Adam? Get Black to come to the house? ANYTHING except what I’m going through here!”
“Paul, it’s just a bunch of harmless old ladies...”
“‘Harmless old ladies’? Have you MET my family?”
“Some of them... They seem like reasonable people to me...”
“In that case, you must have some strange idea of reasonable. Adam – these women could silence my mother AND yours. Together.”
“Tough going, Paul. Your mother and MINE? You sure?”
“Oh, you have no idea HOW sure. Save me...”
“Oh. Well... in that case... Maybe I’ll give it a bit of thought.”
“Adam – do you really want me to beg?”
“Might be nice. No, forget I said that!
“Gee, thanks... get off your arse, Svenson, and DO something! I'm being aunted to death here!”
“Like what? I have problems of my own, you know. I'm on Cloudbase – with Karen.”
“What did you get her for Christmas?”
“Not enough.”
“Shit. We're both screwed.”
“Yeah... There's a bright side to every situation...”
Paul was just trying to come up with a snappy rejoinder to that, when a voice boomed out behind him: “Ah, so this is where you’re hiding! Your mother sent me to find you. You’re sounding very furtive – got something to hide?”
“Uh, no, Dad. Just talking to Ad-er-Captain Blue. Didn’t want everyone to hear Spectrum business.”
“Spectrum business? On Boxing Day? Can’t they leave you alone for even a couple of days?”
We were a bit busy up here, Adam had said… In a flash of inspiration, Paul said, “There was a Mysteron incident. They need me back on base.”
“Let me talk to him,” General Metcalfe said, holding out his hand for the phone.
Praying that Adam had heard, Paul handed it over. His enhanced hearing picked up the conversation easily: good old Adam was being non-committal but firm – Captain Scarlet had to report back to Cloudbase immediately.
General Metcalfe handed the phone back, eyeing his son with deep suspicion. Paul radiated innocence as he signed off.
“Must go and pack,” he said, trying not to sound too jubilant. “They’re sending a plane for me. I need to get to the airport as fast as I can.”
“Well, I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to your mother...”
“Thanks, Dad. I owe you one.”
And I owe Adam something really special…
AUTHOR’S NOTES
A bit of plotless seasonal fluff!
The usual disclaimer applies - while I might wish it were otherwise, I am not making any profit from my use of concepts, characters and vehicles from Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.
Many thanks go, as always, to Marion Woods for her comments, and for hauling me back on course when I drift off into unrelated gibberish. Also to Chris Bishop for starting and maintaining the largest library of Captain Scarlet fiction anywhere in the world!
And last, but never least – to Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. For everything.
Hazel Köhler, December 2019