The Christmas Invitation

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘Isn’t it getting a bit late?’ I suggested instead. ‘And I’m sure they must be way too busy for visitors right now.’

  ‘We’ll have about half an hour to spare and the school is only a minute or two away. Lex won’t mind, because that stately home consignment has gone off and they’ve dispatched most of the stock ordered for Christmas ages ago. This is actually a quiet time for them.’

  By now I’d squeezed myself into the back of the car between Teddy’s child seat and the overflow packages and we were heading for the Thorstane road. I resigned myself to my fate.

  Henry was still talking. ‘Alan’s wife, Tara, makes very interesting jewellery and sells it online, as well as through shops, so she tends to work till the last post goes. I mean the last posting of parcels before Christmas, of course, not the trumpet one.’

  However, I was pretty sure I heard the trumpet version sounding as we turned through the archway that pierced the front of the mellow brick building and came to a halt in a stone-paved yard surrounded by a hotchpotch of outbuildings.

  ‘Interesting old place, isn’t it?’ Henry said. ‘The original smithy was that large building to the left. That’s the pottery now, but there was an old brick kiln at the far end … and then some of the other buildings had people like stonemasons working in them at one time. It’s had a varied life, but it was empty when we helped Lex to buy it.’

  ‘A right dump, it was, and the cottage at the front falling down,’ Den said.

  ‘A slight exaggeration,’ Henry said as we got out. He led the way through a small Judas door cut into the large one that filled the front of the old smithy. It was labelled ‘Office’, though when we got in, that seemed to mean an unoccupied cubbyhole to the left, with a desk and computer screen.

  We were in a large room with the original cobbled floor and it was filled with the varied shapes of huge terracotta pots, mostly fastened to wooden pallets, ready for delivery. It reminded me of that terracotta army in China … but actually, once my eyes adjusted to the gloom, it was more like a strange version of Ali Baba’s cave, except no one popped out of a pot.

  A door to one side opened and Lex appeared, a mug in his hand. ‘I thought I heard a car, Henry. Trust you to turn up when I’ve just made a pot of coffee!’

  ‘I hope there’s enough for three extra, because I’ve brought Meg to see the pottery, too,’ Henry told him. I’d been hanging back till then, so I don’t think Lex had spotted me.

  One dark eyebrow went up. ‘So I see – but you did say you’d bring her down here one day.’ From his tone I inferred that he hadn’t expected me to fall in with the plan, though.

  ‘Well, there’s plenty of coffee. This one’s for Al – he’s slip-casting in the back – but help yourselves while I take it through.’

  We went into a small room with a stove, table, microwave and a big glass coffee pot on a hotplate.

  Den said he’d be mother and pour, and then rootled around in an open tin of biscuits for one with chocolate, but I refused them when he offered them round. I thought they’d probably choke me. I wished I was somewhere – anywhere – else.

  There was a small electric heater and I was just warming my hands when Lex returned and picked up his own mug. His dark green eyes regarded me over the rim thoughtfully. ‘I suppose now you’re here, I’d better give you the guided tour.’

  ‘We haven’t really got time,’ I said quickly. ‘We don’t want to be late collecting Teddy.’

  ‘Oh, there’s plenty of time for a quick look,’ he said, then to my surprise, added, ‘I’d like to show you what we’re doing.’

  It occurred to me that there seemed to have been some kind of small but significant seismic change in Lex’s attitude to me since I last saw him in the studio. Perhaps he really had been so shaken by Clara’s portrait that he’d actually started seeing the real me again, the one he’d once known, rather than the alternative version he’d constructed over the years.

  In fact, he now appeared quite eager to show me round, though Henry and Den elected to stay where they were, and after only a few minutes I’m certain Lex had entirely forgotten who I was, because his enthusiasm for what he was doing was so great.

  He showed me the finished pots and described where he’d learned to make each individual shape. The only thing they had in common was that they were all terracotta and large, some of them huge.

  ‘I learned most of my craft in Greece,’ he said. ‘It takes about twelve to fourteen years of practice before you’re said to be an expert at throwing the biggest pots, so when I started up Terrapotter, I was really still officially a beginner.’

  Many of the finished pots were decorated with impressed or raised designs, often very subtle: faces, sea creatures, swirls of seaweed, coral growths …

  He’d taken something traditional and made it unique and his own, and I was deeply impressed.

  ‘I do most of the designing and make the moulds for decoration,’ he told me. ‘Al helps me throw the pots. It’s a two-man job for the biggest ones, because you throw them in two or three pieces and then put them together.’

  ‘That sounds tricky,’ I said as he led me through into another big area.

  ‘It’s the fun part!’ He grinned, a hint of the old Lex back again. ‘We have to buy the clay in. I mix three kinds together in a long process of washing and sieving out the grit and impurities, then put it through the pugmill a couple of times, before it’s ready.’

  There was a lot of machinery involved, though all quiet at the moment: I supposed production had stopped for Christmas. ‘I can see you need such huge quantities that you couldn’t wedge it by hand, like they do in college,’ I agreed.

  ‘The blend of clay had to be trial and error too, before I got one that was right – not too porous, so water doesn’t freeze inside it and crack the pots in winter.’

  I saw the big throwing wheels and then the racks of pots drying out in the chamber above the kiln, before they were fired.

  The staircase up to that was fairly steep and I wondered how they got the pots up and down again, until I noticed a large old pulley-style hoist, like a sort of ancient dumb waiter.

  ‘Heat rises, so when the kiln’s firing its warm up here. There’ll be one final firing before we stop for Christmas.’

  ‘Can you leave all the clay and everything for a week or so?’

  ‘Yes, if it’s either in the tanks or wrapped in plastic to keep it damp,’ he said. ‘We’re going to load the kiln later, which takes a while. Al designed a really clever system of hand-pressed interlocking smaller planters that fill in the lost space around the big pots,’ he enthused. ‘You can add them on in any direction, or stack them, and they’re very popular in garden centres.’

  Those did sound a clever idea, but I was sure Lex was the real original mind behind the business.

  I liked the smell of damp sacking and clay. It took me back to art college where, apart from the scene with Al, I was mostly very happy.

  ‘That’s the kiln room through there,’ Lex gestured. ‘Tara has a small kiln of her own that fires very high, because she combines porcelain and silver in her jewellery. Her studio’s next to the office.’

  ‘Yes, Henry told me about her,’ I said, and if she hadn’t been Lisa’s sister I’d have been interested to see what she made.

  By this point I was perfectly certain that Lex had forgotten I was anything other than a fellow artist who would appreciate what he was doing. Now he told me how sometimes, if things were quiet, he did a few random ceramic sculptures just for fun and they sold well in a gallery up in Halfhidden.

  ‘A painter runs it – he’s really good – and he only stocks artwork that’s first class. People come long distances to visit it and pay good prices.’

  ‘It’s strange you should mention Halfhidden because someone just told me about the village. It’s haunted, isn’t it?’

  ‘They’ve certainly made a big thing of the haunted trail around it and built it into a tourist draw. Ther
e are teashops and this gallery, and an architectural salvage place, too – not to mention an ancient Roman bath in the woods and a pub nearby called the Screaming Skull!’

  He grinned again and the years fell away. He’d always had that dark, attractive gypsy look about him, a touch of devil-may-care, and it hadn’t completely been extinguished over time by the grief and guilt.

  I found myself laughing. ‘Now I really will have to go and look at this place, if the weather lets me before I go.’

  That, unfortunately, seemed to recall him to the present and to who I was. His face sobered. ‘Let’s see what Al’s doing. He’s in here, but I warned him I’d be showing you round when I took his coffee in.’

  ‘Let’s not—’ I began, but he’d opened the door by then and there was Al, glancing briefly up at me from the bench.

  Then he went back to concentrating on carefully pouring slip into a cast, tapping it to release any air bubbles and setting it aside. Only then did he look at me directly and his expression wasn’t any friendlier than it had been the last time I saw him.

  He was tall – though not as tall as Lex – loose-limbed and with nondescript brown hair and hard grey eyes.

  ‘Long time, no see, Al,’ I said.

  ‘When Lex told me you were staying up at the Red House I thought you’d at least keep clear of the pottery,’ he said.

  ‘Al, let’s not go there,’ Lex said wearily. ‘Let it go: Meg’s leaving in a few days, when she’s finished the portraits, and it was Henry who insisted on stopping here today so she could have a quick look round.’

  ‘The quicker the better,’ Al said. Time did not seem to have taken the edge off his anger. I’d always suspected he was more than half in love with Lisa himself, which might have had something to do with it.

  I was starting to feel angry all over again when a thin, red-haired girl came in, a dimmed and fuzzy version of Lisa, who must be Tara. It was evident from her expression as she looked at me that she knew about the past – or at least, the parallel reality version.

  ‘So you’re this Meg Harkness! Al’s just told me all about you.’

  ‘So you’re Lisa’s little sister,’ I said, returning her inimical stare.

  ‘Al, you really shouldn’t have told—’ began Lex angrily, but broke off as Henry suddenly appeared in the doorway behind Tara.

  ‘Oh, there you all are! Meg, my dear, we’d better leave now, or we’ll be late. You can come back again another time because I’m sure you’re finding it all fascinating.’

  ‘I’m as riveted as a nest of snakes by a mongoose,’ I said, following him out, but I don’t think he heard me.

  Lex caught me up by the door and grabbed my arm, pulling me back. ‘Meg, I hadn’t realized Al had told Tara about that night. I’m sorry they—’

  ‘Oh, get potted!’ I snapped, and then, wrenching myself free, stepped through the Judas door into the darkening afternoon.

  It’s hard to brood – or even seethe – in the company of an over-excited eight-year-old, or among a lively group of people over tea, when they very naturally want to discuss their day.

  When I finally slipped away, Teddy followed me into the studio, where he finished the picture he’d started of me with green hair. Luckily he’d painted the hair while it was still greener than its present ever-fainter tint. I, in turn, sketched him.

  Dinner, and the ebb and flow of conversation over it, soothed the tensions away a little more, but anger was still bubbling somewhere beneath, like molten lava, and if I was ever alone again with Lex, Al and Tara, I was sure it would erupt dramatically and I’d put them all right in no uncertain terms.

  Not that I thought they’d believe me, but the truth should out, I could see that now.

  Tomorrow I’d start Henry’s portrait. I knew I could complete enough of it to leave after the Solstice with River, but now, not only did I not want to, I’d become convinced that fleeing would seem like an admission of guilt and an act of cowardice.

  Clara

  The joy of our reunion in that first Michaelmas term was only slightly marred by an early visit from Henry’s older brother, George, who was now an army officer and based somewhere within reach of Oxford.

  Henry brought him to tea in my rooms, where we were permitted to entertain our male friends during the afternoons, because obviously nothing of an intimate nature could possibly take place until after the danger hour of seven in the evening.

  George was now large, handsome, in a ruddy-faced, bold kind of way, and had the same cornflower-blue eyes and fair hair as Henry. He looked bored even while politely expressing pleasure at meeting me again.

  Nessa must have caught sight of the arrival of this manly embodiment of her wildest romantic fantasies, for not five minutes later she intruded under some pretext. Of course, she and George immediately hit it off and began a heavily flirtatious conversation, so that there was no getting rid of her. Indeed, we became a foursome for the rest of his leave, and very tiresome it was, too.

  I was glad to see the back of him, but Nessa was full of gushing enthusiasm, having cast George as the perfect, gentle knight of the legends and poems she so adored.

  I warned her not to lose her heart to him because Henry had told me he’d had several affairs, despite having a fiancée of long standing.

  Nessa assured me I was quite wrong about his character and that George had already told her about the engagement. ‘It’s just a family thing that he’s trying to end without hurting this girl’s feelings.’

  This seemed unlikely, for Henry had also said that George’s fiancée’s main attraction was that she was an only child with wealthy, doting parents and he hoped that once they were married he could sell out of the army and embark on a life of idle pleasure, which seemed to be his only ambition.

  I suspected that Nessa ignored my advice and was in contact with George, and perhaps had even met him since that first introduction … but if so, I hoped the attraction would quickly fizzle out.

  ‘Though by now he probably knows she’s an heiress, because she tells everyone. She even told you,’ I said to Henry.

  ‘Yes, but she’s also told everyone that she won’t gain control of her capital until she’s thirty, so that’s not going to tempt him to jilt his fiancée for her, is it?’

  I hoped he was right. Nessa might end with a broken heart, but I’d warned her and could do no more.

  My life had become so full of interest and pleasure that I soon forgot all about Nessa and George.

  Henry and I had begun to plan for the Christmas vacation: he was to return home to the vicarage with me to reacquaint himself with my parents and then I would travel up to spend the New Year at Underhill, the family home at Starstone Edge. It was the first time I would have returned there since I was eight, when the reservoir was built, and I viewed the prospect with mixed feelings. While I longed to go back to the place where I had been so happy, the village itself would be invisible beneath the water.

  Henry’s father was gregarious and I would be one of a house party that would include George’s fiancée and her parents.

  But before that, in November, something disquieting happened.

  Nessa had obtained leave to go to London, ostensibly for the purpose of seeing her dentist, but really to stay with her godmother, Lady Leamington, and attend some grand Society party.

  I was not much interested … until I glimpsed her, early on the morning of her departure, getting into a car with George.

  I sincerely hoped that he was just driving her to London, but as Henry said later, there was nothing we could do about it anyway and perhaps she’d just wangled him an invite to this fabulous party too.

  Nessa returned in an unusually quiet and subdued frame of mind and showed no inclination to confide in me, other than describing the grand party and the famous people she’d met. She didn’t mention George directly at all, but instead threw out a few dark remarks about the animal instincts and earthiness of men, and how they had no romantic souls. This
made me think George had perhaps made a heavy pass at her on the way to London and disillusion had set in.

  Nessa turned to her studies with renewed interest and solaced herself with the company of her coterie. I’d already suspected that she preferred women to men and perhaps she now had some inkling of that herself …

  She spent Christmas in London with Lady Leamington and on her return seemed to be forever dipping into a box of chocolates, or consuming cream cakes, so that she rapidly began to resemble the sugar plum rather than the fairy.

  20

  Resolution

  Henry kindly gave me the first portrait sitting early next morning and I spent ages getting the light right, so that it shone on his bony, interesting face under the fine, silvery hair. It also had to shine on his book, for he was reading an old paperback Agatha Christie.

  ‘Clara doesn’t rate them – she says Agatha Christie’s all plot and no character,’ he said – ‘but I can happily read them over and over again, even though I know what happens.’

  ‘I’m reading Clara’s first crime novel and really enjoying it,’ I told him. ‘She’s a lot gorier than Agatha Christie.’

  Lass, who had come in with Henry and, without any prompting, arranged herself over his feet like a black, grey and white rug, went straight to sleep.

  ‘Perfect,’ I said, stepping back. I took a photo on the iPad for reference, then decided to draw straight on to the canvas without any preparatory sketches, sweeping the soft black pencil over it until the bare bones of what I wanted to show filled the space. Then I stared at it for what must have been a long time, for Henry finally broke the silence.

  ‘How is it coming along?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t like to speak before, you looked so intensely absorbed.’

  ‘The drawing’s really come together quickly. If you don’t mind, I’ll just make a very quick pencil drawing of you in my sketchbook, too, then you can relax.’