Page 2 of So This is Christmas

WALTER

Was there anything better than Christmas in Vienna?

As he left his apartment early that morning, Walter Wynter didn’t think much could come close.

The magical city was quieter than it would be later, when the crowds made the most of the markets that had sprung up in celebration of another Christmas.

It might only be the end of November, but Vienna was ready.

He was careful not to walk too fast or he might wobble; he took it slow, his mission an important one.

The aroma of warm and comforting roast chestnuts grabbed him even before he turned down the next road, spotting the little street-corner stand that roasted the nuts in an open drum.

In his gloved hand he clutched the precious Christmas letter from Greta, his wife of almost sixty years, which would soon be making its way from Austria to London and bringing the same light to Bea Kern’s life that she brought to Greta’s with every single one of her correspondences.

The pair had been friends since their school days in Vienna, and ever since they’d started the traditional Christmas letters to each other when they were sixteen years old, neither Bea nor Greta had missed a single year.

Walter had never been one to sleep in, so getting up early this morning to be first in line at the post office when it opened was easy.

He’d been out of bed as soon as the heating creaked to life, drawing its first breaths of the day.

It had always been Walter who took his wife a cup of tea in the morning rather than the other way round, it was Walter who filled the kitchen with the smell of toasting bread ready for the butter to melt and jam to be spread, the way they both liked it.

But he’d never minded. And he’d never admitted to Greta that he enjoyed an hour or two to himself while she slept on.

He’d get things done – catch up with emails, pay some bills, and finally indulge in a crossword or puzzle.

It was like his brain had been rested so long overnight that it was bursting at the seams to leap into action the next morning, and he was thankful for being that way, even at the ripe old age of eighty-one.

Like any couple who had been married for as long as they had, Walter and Greta had weathered storms along the way, but they’d always managed to get to the other side and emerge stronger.

When Greta had asked to return from England to her native Vienna almost three years ago, Walter hadn’t hesitated.

By that time their son Nick and Jennie, the woman who was like a daughter to them and a sister to Nick, had both gone to Vienna within months of each other, having found career opportunities.

It was as though the pieces had slowly begun to fall into place.

They’d been sad to leave their little cottage in Yorkshire behind but he would never forget the way Greta’s eyes lit up when they’d moved in to their apartment and begun to call this city home.

She’d lived away from it for so long, but she’d always wanted to return, and he was glad he’d been able to give her that.

This morning, mug of tea in hand and trusty slippers on to keep his feet warm, Walter had shuffled his way along the brushed oak parquet floorboards in the hallway and into the smallest room of their third floor apartment in Wieden, Vienna’s 4th district.

He’d sat on the chair in front of the bureau and pulled down the hinged writing surface.

Greta always returned everything to the insides of the bureau – the drawers and the double cupboards below – once she was done with what she was doing.

He’d opened this year’s Christmas letter on the laptop stowed inside the main section of the bureau.

When Greta’s friend Bea had moved into a care home in England with failing eyesight that had continued to worsen over the years, Walter had upgraded their printer and Greta had started typing her letters rather than writing them by hand because it meant she could enlarge the font.

She’d wanted Bea to be able to read her letters for as long as possible.

A lovely young lady called Sophie, who they’d met in person once briefly and again on video calls with Bea, worked in the care home, and had started to read the correspondence out loud when Bea began to struggle.

Sophie had gone on to write the replies to Greta when Bea couldn’t manage it any more.

Sometimes she’d write a few pages, other times shorter greetings on beautiful stationery cards, and each year Sophie had made sure that Bea put together a Christmas letter for Greta as was their tradition.

Greta was incredibly touched by Sophie’s patience and kindness, and both she and Walter could see why Bea loved her company so much.

What none of them could have ever foreseen was the link Sophie had with their Jennie.

Greta always left the printing of her letters including the Christmas letter to Walter – she said the task was too technical for her and that creativity was more her forte.

She’d been that way ever since they married.

Anything she thought of as gadgety, whether it deserved that label or not, had been passed to Walter immediately.

But he hadn’t minded. Working out the puzzle as to why the toaster was playing up, why the vacuum cleaner didn’t pick up all the debris, why the radiator in their main bedroom was temperamental, or why the front door was sticking was never an issue.

He loved to look after Greta in whatever way he could and in return she did the same.

She cooked delicious meals everyone loved, she mended clothes in a way he could never manage, she was a great conversationalist if he had a conundrum he needed to sort, and more than anything she made him laugh and she made him happy.

Walter held his breath as the printer dragged the text-filled sheet back into its belly to print on the other side.

Sometimes their printer liked to misbehave.

It would run out of ink, flash up with obscure messages, or jam up with paper.

But today it was as if it knew to behave, that it had a very important job to do, and soon he was holding the first of three – thanks to the enlarged font – still-warm pages ready for reading through one more time.

Greta always liked him to do the final checks; she said a pair of fresh eyes helped.

And lucky for British-born Walter, Greta had switched to writing her correspondence in English many years ago.

Bea had done the same and now, of course, it was Sophie who took care of things from Bea’s end.

If the letters weren’t in English, Walter would have real trouble doing the check.

He knew some German and was improving, but he definitely didn’t know enough to identify mistakes.

This Christmas letter was another beauty, with photographs as well as the letter itself.

There was a picture of him and Greta standing in the snow-covered gardens of Schonbrunn Palace earlier that year, one of a smiling Jennie holding up a plate with a slice of Sachertorte on top having mastered the recipe, another of Nick and Jennie standing side by side on the steps of the Wynter Hotel with the tree in the foyer in the background.

Another photograph showed the lit-up Wiener Riesenrad, the big Ferris wheel that the two friends had been on many times in their youth.

And finally there was a photograph of the comfort teddies he and Greta knitted every year, working on them on and off until they were boxed up and delivered to the hospital in time for Christmas.

One winter when Nick was only two years old, he’d fractured his wrist after falling on the ice and had to go to the hospital.

He’d been terrified, and a kindly nurse had handed him a knitted bear and told him he could take it home, it was his.

It was the only thing to calm him down, and when Walter and Greta were clearing out his old bedroom a few years ago and found the teddy bear, they decided to get involved in a similar endeavour at their nearest hospital.

And when they returned here, they’d investigated and found there was demand in Vienna too.

Walter folded the letter into thirds and slipped it inside the envelope with Bea’s address already written on the front.

He took out the wooden stamp from the back of the bureau and the small tin of ink.

Greta always ensured there was a stamp covering the seal of the envelope because it was part of her tradition with Bea to mark the season.

Over the years, their letters had travelled across the miles with a gift box design over the envelope’s seal: a Father Christmas, a Christmas tree, and this time it was a reindeer from the stamp Greta had found at the festive markets last winter.

He opened the tin of ink and rocked the foot of the stamp back and forth across the spongy bed to pick up the dark navy colour.

And then he added the reindeer design to the back of the envelope.

The letter was ready. He set it down on the table beside the front door and once he was dressed, he paired his slippers and set them down neatly beside the wardrobe next to Greta’s.

He put on his outdoor shoes, pulled on his coat, hat and scarf, plucked his keys from the hook next to Greta’s set in the hallway and picked up the letter.

‘I’ll be back soon,’ he’d said quietly before he’d closed the door to the apartment behind him.

He had walked to the post office slowly this morning but he was still five minutes early, and while he waited for the doors to open he looked up at the skies.

Would snow come soon? Never mind the chaos it brought with it, like an unwelcome guest at the dinner table; when the snow came, so did some of his favourite memories from the eighty-one winters he’d been alive for.

He and Greta had met in the winter when he was visiting a relative in Vienna for a few months.

Greta had admitted that his British accent had drawn her in the moment he first spoke to her, and they’d had their first date as the city began to really wrap up against the cold.

Greta had asked him that day whether he had worked some magic to make the snow fall around them at the very moment they had their first kiss on the Wiener Riesenrad.

She’d told him it was the stuff of movies.

First in line when the doors opened, he handed the Christmas letter over to the post office clerk.

It was up to the Austrian postal service to take this correspondence safely across the miles, and as long as Royal Mail kept their end of the bargain, Bea’s Christmas letter would light up her life in the same way as hers always brought such joy to Greta’s.

And as long as Sophie kept reading those letters too, maybe some day they would get her and Jennie to find a way to connect and move on from their rocky pasts.

At least that was what he and Greta had always hoped for.

They’d given Sophie an open invitation to come to Vienna and look them up; Greta was good at talking about the city and about how welcome Sophie would be. So, who knew, maybe it could happen.

With an open heart and a whole lot of hope, he set off for home.