The Christmas Invitation

by Trisha Ashley

  River’s email began, predictably, with,

  Blessings of the Goddess upon you, dearest child! I will be with you early on the 21st for I will be staying the previous night with my old friend Gregory Warlock, who has a museum of witchcraft in the village of Sticklepond, not far from Starstone Edge. I will bring my cloak and staff, in case required. Oshan is having to have much larger robes made for the ceremony.

  He certainly would, for Oshan seemed to have inherited genes for height from his strapping Ukrainian mother, even if he got his deep blue eyes and fine features from River.

  River’s vaguely pagan ways had never quite added up to any kind of religion, so far as I could see, but by Goddess he always meant Gaia, the earth and all of nature. Gaia could apparently just shrug us all off the surface of the planet like annoying insects, if she felt like it, but I was so glad that to date she’d resisted the temptation.

  I felt slightly soothed and comforted by the two emails: River and Oshan knew what kind of person I was and it definitely wasn’t the monstrous one Lex had created in his mind and shared with Al.

  But I still felt an urgent need now to talk about it to the one person who knew the whole truth: Fliss.

  When I glanced at my watch, it seemed a good time to try. She taught art in a private school in the mornings and should be home again, though I had no idea if her brand-new spouse would be or not, since Calum had to travel abroad a lot for business.

  She was alone, however, and we had a good catch-up, including all the details of her wedding that she hadn’t had time to tell me during our brief meeting before I left.

  ‘We did miss you, though,’ she finished.

  ‘And I was really sorry not to be there … but maybe not sorry about wearing that terrible bridesmaid’s dress. It so wasn’t me.’

  ‘I don’t know what happened in the wedding shop,’ she confessed. ‘There’s a sort of Bridal Mania that sweeps over you and you just go with it.’

  ‘Well, the knot’s tied now,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, and we really need to get you knotted next.’

  ‘I think I am well and truly knotted, just not in the way you mean,’ I said gloomily.

  ‘Is the family awful?’ she asked sympathetically.

  ‘No, it’s not that. They’ve made me very welcome, even if Clara Mayhem Doome is a bit … overbearing. I like her, but I don’t really know how to describe her, except that she assumes everyone will fall in with what she wants. And I suspect they all usually do. But her husband, Henry, is very kind … and paintable. I’ve really got my artistic mojo back.’

  ‘But that’s great, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is, and I’m really looking forward to starting Clara’s portrait tomorrow. I’ve already done a drawing.’

  ‘You’re a quick worker, I know, but won’t painting two portraits take you very close to Christmas?’

  ‘Yes, and they’ve invited me to stay on, but you know I don’t do Christmas. I always go home to the Farm instead, for the Solstice.’

  ‘You could do something entirely different for once: aren’t you tempted?’

  ‘I might have been, because it does sound fun. But, Fliss, something dreadful has happened! It’s made me wish I’d never come here at all and I’m leaving the moment I can possibly get away!’

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

  ‘The first person I set eyes on when I arrived was Lex Mariner!’

  ‘Oh, hell!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Precisely,’ I agreed drily.

  Clara

  As I look back at it, our childhood in Starstone seems a forgotten idyll – a village life that should have ended with the war, but instead was to be wiped out as if it had never been by the creation of a reservoir.

  That last summer remains clear in my mind. On the surface we carried on doing what we had always done: messing about in the stream, riding Henry’s pony, lessons in history and ancient and modern languages with Father and Mother … generally just being the precocious and happy brats we were.

  Of course we were aware of the dark cloud hanging over the valley, even though we tried to ignore the changes taking place around us, as if by doing so we could prevent the destruction of our lovely village and community.

  But people were already moving out and building work was well advanced on the wall of the dam at the lower end of the valley, where the hillsides pinched in. Maps had been pinned up in the village hall, showing the upper limit of the waters. It would spare the manor house and the hamlet of Starstone Edge, but soon everything else, so loved and familiar, would be fathoms deep and lost for ever.

  At the end of that summer, our belongings were packed into a large van and we left for a new parish in Devon.

  Henry was to go off to boarding school a week later and we said goodbye on the bridge, both numbed and unbelieving at the way our world was tumbling around our ears. When the moment came to leave, our hands had to be prised apart.

  It would be nearly ten years until we saw each other again.

  12

  The Bare Bones

  I was awake earlier next morning and I’d slept surprisingly well, considering. Perhaps being able to share with Fliss my shock at coming face to face with Lex had somehow helped, though the frequent references by Clara at dinner the previous night to ‘Lex, the dear boy, is always so helpful with …’ or ‘… and when Lex is staying here after the Solstice …’ certainly hadn’t.

  While I ate my breakfast, Tottie told me Den had taken Teddy to school and then she discoursed enthusiastically about bees, gardening and horses, which seemed to be the only topics her weather-beaten face registered any passion about, though she did also seem deeply attached to Teddy.

  Henry and Clara were apparently very early risers and had already breakfasted together and gone to work in their separate studies. I hoped I wouldn’t disturb Clara too much when I set up my painting gear there shortly.

  But after breakfast I found Den had returned and already moved my easel into position in Clara’s study.

  ‘I left the paints and stuff, though. Didn’t know what yer wanted, did I?’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Den,’ I said gratefully. ‘That’s very kind of you.’

  I popped my head cautiously round the study door and saw that a rattan mat had been laid over the ancient and beautiful carpet to protect it and the smaller painting table from the studio placed nearby.

  Clara was already dictating dark crime into her microphone and took no notice of me, so I closed the door gently and went to the studio, where Den was contemplating the clutter on the big table.

  ‘I dunno what else yer want.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right, I can manage the rest, Den, and I’m sure you must have other things you want to get on with.’ I’d noticed the large spanner sticking out of the pocket of his brown linen overall.

  ‘Only a bit of a blockage in the downstairs cloakroom sink,’ he said. ‘Deal with that in a mo, when yer settled.’

  He took the big wooden paintbox and a tiered plastic one full of things like pastels, Conté crayons, pencils, putty rubber … a small portable art shop, in fact, except that all the contents were battered and used.

  I carried the canvas, the mahl stick and the jar of brushes and palette knives.

  We tiptoed into the study with our burdens and then when Den left, closing the door silently behind him, Clara looked up absently, clicking off the microphone.

  She blinked and said, ‘There you are, Meg. Let me know when you want me to pose for you.’ Then she clicked on the microphone again and resumed dictating, with no discernible pause for thought.

  I’m sure she’d immediately forgotten I was there, but she’d already naturally fallen into the right pose, sometimes holding the stone paperweight and turning it over in her hands when she paused briefly between scenes.

  I sketched her directly on to the canvas this time, in soft pencil, and then stood back and studied it.

  Yes, I’d got it: the bones of the portrait we
re there, awaiting their fleshing out. I lightly erased the lines with the putty rubber until only the ghost of the drawing remained and then laid out my palette, before beginning to paint. I like to work using trowel-shaped palette knives at first, though later often dragging the paint together with a brush or even, sometimes, my fingers.

  As always, as soon as I began, an electric energy seemed to take over my hand and make the sharp, sure movements that would create the flesh, the character and, I hoped, capture the inner essence of my sitter.

  I was vaguely conscious of Clara’s melodious deep voice dictating on while I worked.

  ‘The crumpled golden mask, slippery with blood, fell from the murderer’s fingers and landed by some fluke askew over the terribly mutilated visage of Vernon Tate, spread-eagled like a sacrifice in the trench below … End of chapter eight,’ she finally intoned, then added, slightly plaintively, ‘May I move, now, Meg? I’ve carried on and written two chapters today instead of one, but I’m feeling a bit stiff and it must be lunchtime.’

  ‘I can hear Lass howling,’ I said absently, stepping back so that the smears and squiggles of paint magically resolved themselves into Clara’s face.

  ‘That was my stomach.’

  I looked up then as the import of what she’d said dawned on me. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry! Yes, of course, do move! Just say whenever you need to stretch, or have had enough for the day.’

  She got up, tall and sturdy, and stretched. Then she came round to have a peer at the picture.

  ‘Hmm, interesting the way you’ve put a patchwork veil of colour over the bones of my face.’

  ‘I like to start like that and then work over the wet surface more thickly afterwards. Sometimes I’m practically mixing the colours on the canvas.’

  ‘Why are there random little blobs of paint dotted here and there over the rest of it?’

  ‘Colour notes: I don’t suppose you’re going to be wearing the same clothes every day, for a start, so it will help me later.’

  ‘Interesting!’ she said. ‘Well, I think we’ve both done a good morning’s work, because not only have I written two chapters of the novel, but before that I added a little more to my memoirs. And after lunch, I’ll be back to the day job. I’ve had an idea about that inscription I’ve been working on.’

  I cleaned my palette knives and stuck them in the jar that I’d found in the studio, encrusted in ancient blobs of oil paint, like strangely coloured lichen.

  The day had brightened and I carried the portrait through to the studio and set it on the old easel there, intending, once I’d had lunch, to spend the afternoon blocking out the background.

  But it only seemed like I’d been back in the studio for five minutes before Clara winkled me out and insisted I go with her to Underhill.

  ‘Sybil rang to invite us to tea. Tottie’s already there because they’ve been for a hack on the moors. We can bring her back with us, which will save her the walk up, though it’s much shorter over the paddocks. And Henry will collect Teddy from school and then they’re going to call in on Lex at the pottery.’

  ‘It’s very kind of Sybil to invite me, but really, I’m here to work and—’

  ‘To convalesce and have some fun, too,’ she interrupted firmly. ‘Come along. The fresh air will do you good and I’m curious to see what Mark is up to at Underhill. I haven’t been there for ages.’

  ‘Here we are,’ announced Clara unnecessarily, driving through a stone arch and pulling up in the middle of a cobbled courtyard, scattering a gaggle of hens. They were the kind with frivolously feathery ruffles round their ankles, if hens have ankles.

  The manor was a rambling, L-shaped low stone house of some charm, but no great architectural merit, having evidently been randomly extended and cobbled together over several generations. A large attached barn or coach house formed one side of the courtyard and I thought the original building might have started life as a farm.

  ‘This was the back entrance to the house, of course, before they built the reservoir,’ Clara said. ‘Come along!’

  I left the warmth of the car reluctantly, because heavy spatters of rain had been added to the icy wind and it felt as if someone was casting giant handfuls of water at us.

  ‘It can’t have been fun out riding in this,’ I remarked, but Clara said Tottie and Sybil were tough as old boots and wouldn’t let the weather stop them.

  ‘Though Mark might, unless Sybil starts paying all the bills for the horses’ keep and part of Len’s wages for acting as groom,’ she added sardonically.

  ‘Did you say Sybil’s son was turning Underhill into a wedding venue, or hotel, or something?’

  If so, he could call it Bleak House; that would bring the punters in … not.

  ‘Something like that. He’s nearly finished converting the coach house over there into a wedding reception room, I think, but he’s fallen out with the builders and he won’t find any willing to come up here till at least the New Year – if they can even get up here then.’

  That sounded ominous. The prospect of being snowed up in the Red House over Christmas with Lex Mariner was not an enticing one.

  Clara led the way into the house through a large, metal-studded oak door and along a narrow passage, then, without any ceremony, threw open an inner door and shouted into the dark, cavernous interior beyond it, ‘Coo-ee, we’re here!’

  Her deep, rich voice echoed around a very large hall, from which a splendid staircase ascended. There was about half a tree trunk in the vast open fireplace at the far end of the room, but since it was unlit, it was nearly as cold in there as it had been outside.

  ‘There’s always been a fire kept burning in here right through the winter, Mark,’ Clara said, as a thin young man emerged from a nearby passage. He had very dark auburn hair and straight eyebrows twitched into what looked like a permanent frown, but he wasn’t unattractive in a slightly foxy kind of way.

  ‘I can’t afford to keep huge fires going in all the rooms,’ he said shortly.

  ‘That’s false economy in an old house like this, darling, because your central heating isn’t up to much and you need to keep the whole place warm or it will soon get damp.’

  He scowled at her, though her suggestion had sounded very sensible to me, then turned his brooding tawny eyes in my direction and stared.

  It was dark in there, so what with my very pale skin and the green hair, I probably looked a bit spectral. He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off me, anyway.

  ‘This is Meg Harkness. I expect your mother told you I had a portrait painter staying with me over Christmas?’

  ‘I … think she did mention it,’ he said, his eyes still fixed on me. ‘She’s painting your portrait, Aunt Clara, isn’t she? I’m Mark Whitcliffe,’ he added to me, holding out his hand. ‘The Doome – or doomed – heir.’

  His wry smile was rather attractive and I found myself answering it.

  ‘You wouldn’t think he was a Doome really, because they’re mostly fair and blue-eyed. He takes after his father,’ said Clara. ‘By the way, Mark, the hens are out.’

  ‘Oh, great. I’ll tell Gidney to round the little bastards up, before a fox gets them,’ he said gloomily.

  ‘Let’s get out of this freezer and somewhere warm. Where’s your mother?’ Clara asked.

  ‘In the morning room with Tottie. She’s only just told me you were coming over, so Mrs Gidney’s going to cut some more sandwiches.’

  ‘Good, I’m ravenous. Come on, Meg, this way!’

  As I followed her across the flagged floor, a door opened in a pool of warm light and two dachshunds raced towards us, yapping excitedly.

  ‘Get down, Wisty,’ said Clara, as the largest jumped up at her, while the other, who seemed to be barely in charge of her body, like a teenager still growing into it, sniffed interestedly at my feet and wriggled.

  ‘This is Princess Wisteria of Underhill and that’s the runt of her last litter, Pansy,’ Clara told me. ‘Sybil hasn’t managed to offload her on to a
buyer yet.’

  ‘Oh, come in, both of you, do,’ urged Sybil. ‘It’s so cold out there!’

  The morning room was quite small and thankfully warmed by both a radiator and open fire of more modest proportions than the one in the hall.

  Mark, who had followed us in and closed the door, had to reopen it, to let the two dogs back in.

  Tottie was sitting near the fire with her long, booted legs stretched out.

  ‘Hi, Tottie – good ride?’ Clara asked.

  ‘Yes, thanks, we had a lovely hack over the moors. We met old Jonas from Oxberry farm and he said there’s a cold spell coming. He’s always right.’

  The weather seemed pretty cold to me already.

  ‘I’ve told Mrs Gidney two extra for tea and it will be along in a minute,’ Mark broke in abruptly and then added, rather resentfully, ‘She’s going to cut into the ham, which I thought we were saving for Christmas, Mum.’

  ‘Oh, no – remember, we always have a Westphalian ham for Christmas, Mark, and it’s on order.’

  ‘Then cancel it! They cost a ridiculous amount and there’ll be only the two of us.’

  ‘Three, with Uncle Piers, and I think it’s too late to cancel the order,’ she said doubtfully. ‘It’s on its way.’

  ‘Then cancel the turkey instead, because I’m sure you have some ridiculously huge bird on order, too. We can have ham instead. Or one of those blasted hens – they’ve got out again.’

  Sybil began to look distressed and I said quickly, ‘Please don’t cut into the ham on my account. I don’t eat meat.’

  ‘And you know very well that I don’t either, Mark,’ Clara said. ‘You go right back and tell her not to bother.’

  He glowered and strode off again and we joined Tottie on a shabby tapestry sofa drawn up near the fire.

  ‘I see what you mean about the penny-pinching,’ Clara said to Sybil, who was making small distressed twitterings. She subsided into a chair and Wisty promptly lay on her feet. Pansy jumped up on to my lap and curled up.