‘What private matter?’ asked Henry.
‘It wouldn’t have been private if he’d announced it, would it?’ Clara pointed out. ‘Shush and let Tottie tell the story.’
‘Well, I suggested she take him into the library and I’d make us all some coffee. You know the library door never catches properly … Anyway, on the way back I could hear them talking, and I wouldn’t have stopped and listened if I hadn’t heard Piers say something that caught my attention.’
‘Well, you’ve got us all agog now, Tottie: what did he say?’ Lex demanded.
‘That something – I don’t know what – was the only solution, because otherwise, if the truth came out, things could be very difficult for her. Then he said he looked forward to spending more time at Underhill and that it was still her home, after all, so Mark couldn’t stop him.’
‘That sounds a bit like blackmail to me,’ Henry said thoughtfully. ‘Did you hear any more?’
‘No, because I thought I’d better take the coffee through before they came out. When they did, Sybil was white as a ghost and looked totally trampled, but Piers seemed pleased with himself. Flora insisted they leave as soon as they’d had the coffee and Sybil said she’d started another migraine and went upstairs to take a pill.’
Tottie looked at us all, as if trying to read an easy answer on our faces. ‘What does it all mean?’
‘I smell a rat,’ said Clara. ‘A Piers-shaped one.’
‘Can he possibly have some hold over Sybil?’ I asked.
‘I can’t imagine what,’ said Clara. ‘I do suspect he’s been sponging on her since George died and that’s why she’s always short of money, but she might just feel she owes it to him in some way.’
‘What are we going to do?’ asked Tottie.
‘I think we need to have a serious talk with Sybil and get her to open up – and there’s another matter we want to talk to her about, too,’ she added. ‘But let us have a peaceful Christmas first! Then I’m sure we can sort this all out afterwards.’
‘Yes, though I think we should try to keep Piers away from Sybil as much as we can until then,’ suggested Henry. ‘Certainly no more tête-à-têtes.’
Clara checked her watch. ‘It’s almost time for the carol service.’
‘Which carol service?’ I asked, puzzled.
‘It’s on the radio: Nine Lessons and Carols with the choir of King’s College, Cambridge,’ explained Henry.
‘Yes, so do go into the drawing room while I quickly put Tottie in the picture about the night of the Solstice,’ urged Clara.
Since there was no way of stopping her telling Tottie, I thought perhaps I’d better put River in the picture too, at the first opportunity. I hoped it wouldn’t be too great a shock to him.
Henry switched on the radio just as Tottie and Clara came in, with Teddy following, still lightly dusted with flour or icing sugar from helping Den in the kitchen.
Tottie was carrying a large box and while we were listening to the service, she and Teddy unpacked a set of beautifully carved wooden Nativity figures and a crib and set them up on a wide window ledge.
‘It’s lovely,’ I said, admiring it after the radio was switched off. ‘But where’s the baby Jesus?’
‘He hasn’t been born yet,’ Teddy told me. ‘It’s his birthday tomorrow.’
‘Of course, silly of me,’ I apologized.
Clara told me later that Tottie thought the idea of Sybil attempting to push me over a precipice was ludicrous, and just the product of an overactive imagination.
But River, when I got him alone for a few minutes and told him everything, just said sadly, ‘Poor lady! I suspected as much at the Gathering.’
‘You did? And it would have been poor Meg if she’d succeeded!’
‘The Goddess protected you. I saw straight away that you believed you’d been pushed and knew it must be Sybil, for her aura was not right … and her expression when she saw you enter the hall for the Gathering was one of pure relief.’
‘Well, that’s something! Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I thought it better to let the pattern work itself out,’ he said obscurely, then smiled like a wise but infuriating elf. If he’d been wearing his pointy knitted hat, I’d have been tempted to ram it down over his eyes, like those little Scandinavian nisee or tomte gnomes.
‘Violence is never the answer,’ he added, though whether he was continuing his original train of thought or had read my mind, I had no way of knowing.
Clara
This next part of my memoir deals with more current events although, as you will see, connected with the past.
Recently our lives took another new and surprising turn when I was struck by an idea that was to have far-reaching consequences.
An old Oxford friend, Professor Priscilla Longridge, had recently had her portrait painted and had crowed about how she intended to leave it to posterity, i.e. the National Portrait Gallery. (This was amusing, since the portrait was such a speaking likeness that I could tell she secretly hated it, even though it was so brilliant that she couldn’t reject it!)
But having seen it I felt it would be great fun for Henry and me to have our portraits painted too. I very much liked the way the artist had caught the more crocodilian aspects of Pookie Longridge’s face. She was the artist for me and since I had to be in London to give a talk, I thought I would arrange the matter at the same time, though this proved slightly more difficult than I had anticipated.
However, in the end all was arranged and within a couple of days Meg Harkness, a delightful young woman, was established at the Red House and beginning the first of our portraits.
She soon became one of the family. Indeed, both Henry and I felt from the start that there was something oddly familiar about her unusually pale colouring and light, almost turquoise eyes.
But it was only when I reached that part of my memoirs dealing with my first year at Oxford that the penny dropped and I slowly came to realize that she must be the granddaughter of Nessa Cassidy and Henry’s brother, George.
How strange are the twists of fate that brought us all together!
37
Gifted
Sybil came down looking as if this might be her last meal before doing a Nurse Cavell next morning, rather than an enjoyable family Christmas Eve dinner.
She had applied a brave red lipstick, but entirely forgotten to change out of her breeches, so that a faint but not unpleasant fragrance of horse hung about her.
I preferred that to the unsettling perfume.
Everyone was very kind to her, as if she was ill … which I suppose she was, or at least had been at the point where she attempted to kill me. But I, too, found myself talking gently to her about innocuous subjects, like favourite honeys and the way bees danced to communicate with one another.
‘As a written language, that could present some interesting translation problems,’ said Clara.
‘Bees don’t have hands,’ Teddy pointed out. ‘I don’t see how they could write.’
‘It would certainly make things difficult for them,’ agreed Henry.
Den joined us for dinner, but then said he was off to his flat afterwards, since he’d marked a full evening’s TV viewing in his Radio Times. ‘And I’ve got a tub of Cheese Footballs and some Twiglets, ’aven’t I?’
‘The old ones are the best,’ commented Henry, though I thought it was odd that a man who could whip up delicious party savouries would prefer bought snacks himself.
Teddy grew steadily more excited as the evening progressed and I didn’t see how he’d ever calm down enough to go to sleep that night.
We listened to Henry read the second half of A Christmas Carol, then Lex, Zelda and I played Monopoly with Teddy until he began to flag a little.
‘Time to get the snack ready for Santa and the reindeer?’ suggested Tottie eventually.
A mince pie, two carrots and a small glass of whisky were laid out on a pedestal table by the fireplace, and Lex promised
he’d be sure to extinguish every last ember of the fire, long before Santa was due to descend the chimney.
Teddy was finally persuaded to go to bed and Tottie took him up, but not before he’d issued his commands: ‘Mummy has to come too and sing “Little Donkey”, then Uncle Henry can read the special book.’
‘Special book?’ I asked.
‘The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore,’ explained Henry. ‘Do you know it?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘I’ll bring it down with me afterwards and then you can read it. It’s a lovely little story.’
When he was called upstairs to perform this annual rite, Clara said cheerfully, ‘There we are, then: we’re on the last lap before the big day! Just the presents to arrange and Teddy’s stocking to fill.’
‘I did love filling Mark’s stocking when he was a little boy,’ Sybil said. ‘It seems odd not being with him on Christmas Eve … or when he opens his gifts in the morning.’
‘But he’ll be here for Christmas dinner,’ said Clara. ‘River, do drink Santa’s whisky and eat the mince pie if you fancy them. We can return the carrots to the kitchen. Teddy won’t notice.’
‘I’ve never had a Christmas stocking,’ I said. ‘Do you hang it on the end of his bed?’
‘No, Teddy hangs his on the outside door handle to his room and Santa then fills it and hangs it on the inside.’
‘That way, you don’t have to wait hours for him to fall asleep before you fill his stocking,’ said Lex, then added, ‘It’s odd that though Zelda and I never hang our stockings up any more, Santa still keeps leaving them.’
He grinned at Clara, who remained deadpan.
Zelda and Tottie came down and Henry soon followed, carrying a large, knitted stocking with a red velvet ribbon loop at the top.
‘Fast asleep,’ he reported. ‘I barely finished reading the book and he was off.’
He handed me The Night Before Christmas, an illustrated version, and I read it with interest: I could see why it had annual appeal.
The presents were brought out and Teddy’s ranged around the tree in the drawing room, while ours went under the one in the hall.
We all added our own contributions and there was something for everyone … including, to my surprise, Piers.
‘We had a couple of spare bottles of whisky in the larder, so we thought we’d let him have one,’ said Henry. ‘Deirdre runs the alcohol stocks down for autumn at the guesthouse, so he’s probably down to a choice of crème de menthe or Curaçao by now.’
‘It’ll keep him quiet when they get back to the guesthouse on Christmas Day, and give Flora a little peace,’ agreed Clara.
In a generous moment, I’d wrapped a jar of humbugs up for Rollo. He was full of humbug, but I didn’t think he’d get the joke. I didn’t feel the need to give anything to Flora … though perhaps I already had, in the form of Rollo, if she’d got a grip on him and could negotiate a deal with the Mother Dragon.
The gaudily wrapped presents added the final festive touch to the scene: the fairy lights twinkling on the trees, the spice and cinnamon smell of baking and the fragrance of pine underlying all.
I could feel the magic seeping into my bones and the house itself seemed mysteriously to be expectantly waiting for something.
I didn’t understand any of it, but on some level I got it – and I was hooked!
Hello, my name is Meg and I’m addicted to Christmas …
To my surprise, River had thrown himself into the whole thing, too, and I thought a few new elements might creep into the Farm’s Solstice ceremony and the Feast next year.
In the drawing room, Clara, Tottie and Zelda began stuffing Teddy’s stocking. The traditional tangerine went in the toe, where it made a satisfying full stop of a bump; then a net bag of chocolate coins and one huge penny in a round tin, which Zelda had bought in Fortnum and Mason.
She also contributed a pencil case shaped like an Egyptian sarcophagus and a small model of the cat god, Bast. Tottie’s additions were a pink sugar mouse, a retro ray gun that made a noise and flashed lights and a small paper accordion. I thought we might all come to regret that last one.
To finish, Clara pushed in one of the Horrible History paperbacks and then my beanie dragon, with his purple corduroy head poking out of the top.
We all agreed that it looked very exciting and, more to the point, would keep Teddy occupied for a while, after he woke up at some unearthly hour of the morning.
Henry was dispatched to hang this on the inside of Teddy’s door, first donning an ancient and tattered red Santa jacket and a pair of spectacles with white beard and moustache attached.
‘We really must replace this,’ Henry said, cinching red folds in round his narrow waist with a black belt.
‘It’ll look fine, if Teddy wakes up, which he won’t,’ said Clara.
‘And he didn’t stir,’ reported Henry, coming back down with an air of relief.
In fact, there was now a general feeling of unwinding and we broke out the mead and mince pies.
Henry, Clara, Sybil and River settled down to mah-jong while the rest of us played Scrabble, though Zelda wasn’t concentrating. I guessed where her mind was from her dreamy expression.
I really wanted to beat Lex, though I don’t know why, but my letters kept forming themselves into words so rude, I simply couldn’t bring myself to use them, even when they’d have got me the triple word score.
We wished each other happy Christmas at midnight with a toast of elderflower champagne, and then Tottie popped the baby Jesus into his crib in the Nativity scene before she and Sybil went up to bed.
Lex had volunteered to let the dogs out for a last run in the garden again and I went with him for a breath of air before I went to bed. It was very still out there, just glimmering snow and darkest indigo skies, studded with a million stars.
The dogs raced around as if the cold had sent them crazy, and a window over the garage, from which the light of a TV flickered and glowed, was flung open. Then a voice called, ‘’Appy Christmas and Gord bless Tiny Tim!’
‘Happy Christmas, Den!’ I called back, laughing, and the window closed again.
Lex was throwing snowballs for the dogs to chase, though they broke into pieces the moment they caught them.
I looked back up at the stars. I thought I could feel the world turning and planets moving in their ordained paths …
Something light and cold touched my face.
‘Snowflakes are fallen feathers from angels’ wings,’ Lex said whimsically, then spoiled the effect somewhat by adding, ‘I heard Flora telling that to Teddy once. But if it was true, then there’d be a lot of bald angels circling over Starstone Edge.’
‘Chilly bald angels,’ I agreed.
‘How are you enjoying your first Christmas so far?’ he asked, sending the dogs racing after another snowball.
‘It’s certainly different from anything I’ve ever experienced before,’ I said truthfully.
I woke very early on Christmas morning with a strange sense of anticipation. I could understand Teddy’s feelings entirely now! It was still dark, so I switched on the bedside light … and immediately spotted that there was something hanging on the handle of my door!
It was a long, knitted sock, to which had been roughly sewn a ribbon loop. It bulged enticingly.
I stared at it … and then I remembered Clara’s insistence last night that she was still so wide awake that she intended working for an hour or two before she went to bed … and Lex saying earlier that he and Zelda still got Christmas stockings. Now I had one, too!
I fetched it, got back into bed, then began to delve into it. The contents were loosely wrapped in light green tissue paper and out came Clara’s latest paperback, personally signed to me, a small bottle of Tottie’s mead, a chocolate orange, a set of tiny Mexican worry dolls and a very pretty long silk scarf, marbled in shades of green, that I was sure I’d seen in Preciousss.
In the toe was a tangerine, wh
ich I ate, then went across to the bathroom to wash the citrus off my hands.
On the way back there was a thudding of bare feet as Teddy hurtled down the landing, hissing loudly, ‘Meg! Meg!’
‘Shhh!’ I warned him. ‘It’s still very early and I think everyone’s asleep.’
‘I know. I’ve already tried Lex, Mummy and Tottie,’ he said disgustedly. ‘I’m glad you’re not, though, because I want to show you what was in my stocking!’
‘I had one too,’ I told him, getting back into bed.
‘Lex and Mummy always get one. Santa mustn’t have realized you’ve all grown up.’
He made a nest of the eiderdown that had been folded across the end of my bed and emptied out his treasures.
Of course, I already knew what was in there, but I pretended I didn’t. Like me, he’d eaten his tangerine, but also the bag of chocolate coins, which had been reduced to empty foil cases.
‘We’ve both done pretty well, Teddy, haven’t we?’ I said finally, looking at my watch. ‘I think I could decently have a shower and go downstairs, now.’
‘Everyone has to get up soon, because I’m not allowed to open my presents till we’ve had breakfast – and I can’t wait!’
‘I know what you mean,’ I admitted. ‘The stocking was an unexpected surprise, but now I want to see what’s in those other parcels under the tree with my name on them!’
‘I bet Den’s in the kitchen by now,’ he said, sliding off the bed. ‘I’ll go and see. Then I can show him my stocking, too!’
‘Good idea, but after that I’d come back up and get washed and dressed, Teddy—’
But he’d vanished before I’d finished.
I showered and came back to my room to find Pansy waiting inside. And unless she’d learned to open and close doors, somebody must have let her in. She was trying to chew something attached to her collar, but abandoned the attempt in order to greet me with near hysterical pleasure.
The Christmas Invitation Page 40