A Cornish Christmas

by Lily Graham

  ‘That’s good, I like fairy lights...’ he mumbled, resting his weary face on his arms, and closing his eyes. I smoothed Stuart’s dark, silky black hair off his forehead, worried at how stressed he’d become.

  So this year, when he’d suggested a different pace, I readily agreed. We were fortunate enough to have some savings and, with the royalties from The Fudge Files, the most we’d ever achieved, we were able to buy the house. But to keep the inflow of cash ticking over and I suspect, more importantly to keep Stuart busy, he’d begun a series of successful and some not so successful (see pak choi incident) home industry creations under his Sea Cottage label, which I’d helped design.

  I placed Mum’s box of things on an empty spot on one of the heaving shelves that lined the wall at the back of my studio. Only to pause, open it, remove the unfinished postcard and Christmas card and place them in the writing desk, along with a display of my fine watercolour brushes in a glass jar, a haphazard pile of watercolour paper, a large dusk-pink paper peony, blotting pads and a photo of Mum and me – both with identical grins and teary eyes – taken on my wedding day.

  Stuart found me sitting there not long after, staring at the little Christmas card, deep in thought. ‘Pretty,’ he said, giving me a kiss, his head nodding towards the card. ‘Getting in the spirit?’ He smiled at me with those dark, gentle eyes that crinkled at the corners.

  ‘It was Mum’s – I found it in her desk. She hadn’t finished it.’

  He studied it, and then shook his head. ‘She was very talented; it’s gorgeous. Are you going to finish off his little nose?’

  I tilted my head, considering. ‘I’ve been trying to decide.’

  He pulled up a chair from the old dining table that was now my official studio table (the long-ingrained paint marks had helped this decision along), his impossibly long legs stretched out in front of him, and stared at me, his hand in his palm, dark eyes thoughtful. ‘What’s to decide?’

  ‘Well. It’s a bit mad, I know. My first thought was that I would... but now...’

  ‘But now?’

  ‘But now, I’m not sure I should.’

  He nodded slowly, eyes solemn. ‘Well, you’ll figure it out.’

  I smiled at him and shook my head. ‘You know, that’s one of the things I love about you. You always get it.’

  ‘Just one of the things that you love about me?’ he said in mock affront, eyes wide, sitting up straight.

  I raised a brow. ‘Well, it certainly won’t be turnip jam,’ I replied, unable to hide my grin.

  He frowned. ‘Am I due a talk?’

  I nodded. ‘Mr Everton, we need to talk,’ I said seriously.

  He sighed, dramatically, flinging his forearm across his head in mock horror. ‘Is it about the jam?’

  I nodded. ‘It is about the jam.’

  He hung his head.

  I patted his knee. ‘My love, the truth is... not everything is meant to be jam. I think that some vegetation is destined for other possibilities, wondrous and transformative, definitely... but not in the jam family really. Maybe they’d be better off as pickles, or curd possibly, not that I am entirely sure what curd is, but possibly that, or even chutney.’

  ‘Chutney?’ he said, his eyes lighting up at the possibility.

  ‘Chutney,’ I concurred.

  He got that look in his eye, so I hastened to add firmly, ‘But not for turnips.’

  ‘Ah.’ His shoulders drooped. ‘Tomas said much the same thing,’ he said, with a small sad sigh, referring to his eighty-five-year-old French vegetable guru, who lived at the far end of the village and who was giving Stuart a very practical education on vegetable preservation, to Stuart’s rather creative chagrin.

  ‘Good man,’ I said with a wink, silently thanking the heavens for Tomas’s wise counsel.

  He nodded, eyes amused, laughter lines crinkling at the corners. ‘He’s trying.

  ‘And what’s this?’ asked Stuart, picking up the empty postcard. ‘My God,’ he said, looking at the old card in awe and noting Mum’s fine script. ‘It’s addressed to you,’ he breathed.

  I nodded.

  ‘Level?’ he asked, eyes grave.

  ‘Eight on the Everton Scale.’

  Stuart and I had developed our own emotional pain scale based on our surname, during the Mum passing and our failed conceiving years. Eight was code for: Mild heart attack.

  ‘I can imagine,’ he said, leaning over and giving me a hug. ‘Though the weird black tracks leading to your ears are a bit of a clue,’ he teased.

  I smacked his arm.

  ‘It’s just so strange. I mean, why would she start writing me a postcard from a place we’d gone to together?’ I asked. ‘And then... stop?’

  He shook his head and leant the card back against the pink paper peony. ‘Very strange,’ he agreed. ‘But it’s nice that she was thinking of you.’

  I nodded. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder... what had she left unsaid?

  Stuart didn’t offer much in the way of speculation. He was comfortable with it just being a mystery.

  Men. Honestly.

  He gave the card a last frown and said, ‘I’m thinking rocket pesto and prosciutto linguine,’ and I answered with, ‘I’m thinking: yes. Starving,’ and grinned.

  He left with a salute, clicking his brown wellington-clad heels together. I shook my head and laughed.

  I am one of those lucky marvels whose husband has banned them from the kitchen; the last and now permanent ban was during an Everton Three: Door slamming on hand when he’d lamented, in a crazed manner, to no one in particular, after my failed tomato soup experiment, ‘She’d burn air, so she would,’ accompanied by wild pacing around the tomato-splattered linoleum.

  I took the time, while he was occupied, to call my best friend, Catherine Talty, from our first day of primary school, when Ted Gramble lifted her long red plait and asked if he’d get gingivitis from touching it, and she replied, ‘No... but I’ll give you something, anyway,’ and she punched him point blank. I was thoroughly impressed and offered to match his other eye for her. Now we write children’s books together that I illustrate.

  She answered on the second ring. ‘Was it brutal?’ she asked, in lieu of a hello, well apprised of the writing desk expedition. Muppet seemed to sense her presence and began whining for her favourite unlawful feeder, while gently scraping off the skin of my shin with her paw.

  ‘You’ve no idea,’ I said, filling her in on the day and how difficult it was packing up Mum’s desk, while I redistributed my shins to safety.

  When I told her about the postcard though, the creator of Detective Sergeant Fudge offered a few ideas. The last – and the worst – unfortunately seemed to offer the most sense and I had to conclude that it seemed the most likely.

  Catherine suggested, ‘Maybe it was just a mistake – like she was talking to you and meant to write a card to someone else and put your name instead? I mean, it happens to me rather a lot, I’m afraid. Just the other day Ben was trying to get my attention, shouting at me that he wanted to watch the bloody Minion movie again, and I wrote “Minion” four bloody times...’

  Since she was a writer, I took her word for it. But the prospect that it was simply a mistake was rather awful. I’d hoped, despite the pain that it would no doubt cause me, that maybe Mum had had some final thing left to say; perhaps one last ‘I love you’ or a bit of her typically idiosyncratic, but usually sage wisdom. Anything besides this.

  At my silence, Catherine hastened to add, ‘Ivy, I could be wrong. I mean, who knows? You know your mum. She wasn’t the kind of woman to leave things unfinished. If she’d done that – made a mistake with your name – chances are you would have gotten it anyway. She’d have told you the funny story and that it was probably because she was meant to tell you that she loved you, or something, and mailed it to you. She was like that...’

  I smiled at the recollection, my throat a little tight. She was right too. It still amazed me how well Catherine knew
Mum. Though, then again, we’d grown up together. Catherine hadn’t had a mum – hers had died when she was born – and she loved Mum rather fiercely. It was a very mutual affection. Mum had loved absentminded Cat, who spent most of our childhood with her head in a book, dearly too. So perhaps her intuitive knowledge of Mum wasn’t surprising at all.

  She had a point though; Mum wasn’t the type to leave things undone. She was thrifty and imaginative and could be counted on to turn a faux pas into something special. It was one of her best qualities that I hoped to emulate some day. My eye fell onto the little Christmas card and Rudolph’s missing nose.

  Why would she have left these unfinished?

  Perhaps the simplest answer was that, in the end, faced with such pain, it was hardly surprising that a few things would have come undone.

  After Catherine rang off to ‘feed the horde’, which consisted of her husband Richard and three sons Tim, Jason, and Ben, all under the age of seven (I didn’t mention that Stuart was cooking dinner as it seemed far too cruel), I decided I’d give Rudolph his nose. I crossed the wooden floor to the shelves behind, in search of the perfect shade of crimson gouache, only to shake my head in puzzlement as my search left me empty-handed. I scratched around and behind all the boxes, paints, and paper, to no avail. I walked the length of my studio, searching the long table and even the open writing desk, though I knew I hadn’t placed it there. Nothing. And I knew I’d had it. I’d bought the crimson just days before, in an art shop in Penzance; it was the colour I’d used for Mr Tibbles’s special raincoat.

  The more I looked, I noticed something stranger still: it wasn’t just the crimson that was gone, but every last shade of red in every medium I owned was missing as well. From my watercolours, acrylic, ink, pen, gouache... all the burgundies, clarets, scarlets and all the shades in between... it was all simply gone.

  It was desperately odd. I have my scatter-brained moments, sure, but nothing like this. Especially not as a professional artist. We’re often, despite the label of ‘creative messiness’, neat and tidy out of sheer necessity, as damaged £100 paintbrushes can attest. So where were they?

  I set Rudolph down next to the empty postcard, wondering if perhaps Stuart had decided to take up homemade signage with my supplies. Though I really would have thought he valued his life more than that.

  I found him in the kitchen, his face bathed in steam from the simmering contents in the pan, which he was scenting with blissful intensity. He caught me staring and beckoned me over with a dreamy smile and inclination of his head. I breathed in the aromatic bouquet of garlic and cream, forgetting instantly why I had come down to confront him in the first place.

  ‘You should bottle that,’ I said.

  ‘Eau de Sea Cottage?’ he asked, with a grin.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  He laughed. ‘Well, it’s ready if you are.’

  I quickly fetched two plates from the Welsh dresser I’d restored from a charity shop in the village, and painted a deep Provençal blue, piling the thick ceramic plates high with the creamy pasta, while Stuart carried the cutlery to our little conservatory in the front of the house, where another charity find had become our dining room table, the repaired legs and old, scarred wood painted a soft dove grey.

  The conservatory had become a favoured winter retreat, catching the last of the sun and the sunset while we dined.

  I had plans for a velvety, blue chaise longue and a fireplace and perhaps some flowers and plants. I’m sure I could keep one alive. Stuart would probably help.

  ‘Red?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes! I’ve been looking everywhere!’ I exclaimed over my shoulder, almost cricking my neck as he passed me on his way back into the kitchen. Suddenly reminded of why I’d come down, before I was distracted by Stuart’s kitchen wizardry.

  He pivoted on his heel, two wine glasses in his hand. ‘Sorry?’ he said, dark eyes puzzled.

  I shifted the plates in my hand. ‘Oh, you meant wine... though you know I can’t. I thought you were referring to my missing red paint.’

  He frowned. ‘Missing paint? I was going to offer you apple or cranberry juice so you don’t feel left out.’

  ‘Thanks, the cranberry please. Never could abide white wine; not about to start now,’ I joked, and then raised a brow, undiverted. ‘You didn’t by any chance take all my red paint? Like every last shade in every single bloody medium I own, by any chance?’

  His eyes popped. ‘You’re joking. I value my neck a little more than that... I still remember the brush incident of ’06, Everton Four: Broken toe at least.’

  I laughed. ‘Damn straight... that was a pure, Kolinsky sable red, a legend amongst watercolour brushes, at an eye-watering seventy pounds a pop and you used it...’ I took a steadying breath; the memory, even now, caused mild panic.

  ‘To paint glue on the loose skirting board,’ he said, head down, foot doing a half circle on the wooden floor in mock shame. ‘Muppet and I took shelter for weeks afterwards,’ he said dramatically, a theatrical shudder at the memory.

  I raised a brow. Muppet, who had been eyeballing our exchange and the plates in my hands hopefully, cocked her head, almost in doubt.

  ‘I’d hardly say weeks... and Muppet was on my side,’ I pointed out.

  Muppet didn’t argue; she just stood in a puddle of her own drool.

  ‘Days surely? And, no, she wasn’t; she hid with me in my shed,’ he insisted, in mock horror.

  ‘More like an hour or two and if by “shed” you mean your man cave outside with your Xbox, well... Muppet knows where you keep the crisps,’ I laughed.

  Muppet gave me a rather scornful look, followed by a bulldog huff. All she saw, apparently, was that we were ignoring food, food that could be coming to her.

  I took the food outside while he went to fetch the bottle of red and my cranberry juice. Later, after we had finished dinner and cleared up the kitchen and were relaxing and watching the last remnants of the sunset with its wash of pink and gold, Muppet snoring loudly, I remembered the missing paint, and considered the possibility that I had in the emotional residue of the day just overlooked it in some way. Though I didn’t see how that was possible.

  * * *

  Just before bed, my mobile rang. It was 12.30 p.m. Turning to look at the screen, I stifled a groan.

  Genevieve. Stuart’s mother.

  Let’s just say that taking her only son to live far away from London was causing her some distress – no matter how much Stuart pointed out that the move was his idea, she remained, resolutely, unconvinced, and since he refused to answer her calls in general, she phoned me instead. Because there was the faint, very faint possibility it could be important, I invariably answered. I blame my own mother for this; I find it hard to be rude due to years of her coaching against bad telephone manners and so I habitually find myself on the receiving end of countless marketing calls... and endless tirades from his mother. I never learn.

  In the months since we’d moved, Genevieve had found several, admittedly creative, ways to try to get us to change our minds. As if selling our old house, working out the notices on both our jobs, buying a home over five hours away, and packing up all our belongings hadn’t been decisive enough.

  The trouble was that Stuart turning sustainable farmer was not how the Everton men were meant to go, apparently. As far as she was concerned, she’d indulged him long enough. Yes, that’s what she termed it, an indulgence. Which was laughable really, as Stuart didn’t and wouldn’t ever ask for her indulgence in the first place.

  Thankfully, John, Stuart’s father, didn’t seem to share her opinion. In fact, every time he visited he seemed to stay just that little longer, with a look in his eyes of unmistakable longing. When he’d suggested that they consider retiring down here, she’d snapped, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, why would I ever retire?’

  He never pointed out that maybe he would like the opportunity. Which, to me, was the saddest part. When I’d opened my mouth to tell her, Stuart had said, ‘Just
leave it.’

  John would either stand up for himself or he wouldn’t. Though why we should stay out of things that weren’t our place when she never gave us the same consideration was at times beyond me.

  ‘Hi Genevieve,’ I said, attempting and failing to stifle a sigh. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she replied in her customary clipped tones, completely oblivious to the hour. I could picture her sitting in their London manor house in Knightsbridge (one of several homes here and abroad), in her velvet-lined Queen Anne chair, twisting her Cartier watch around her wrist, legs crossed at the ankle (naturally) in their silk trousers. Her bobbed hair neat in its no-nonsense style – the same one she’d been sporting in every company brochure since the 1990s. A CFO for a large global firm she co-founded called ‘Women in Finance’, Genevieve was so well-used to issuing orders and subsisting on her customary five hours of sleep a night – a source of baffling pride to me – that it would never occur to her that other people would feel differently. And as I suspected most of her employees were a little afraid of her, I sometimes felt a kind of contrary-like sense of duty to introduce her to the real world, or at least the part of it that didn’t fall under her reign.

  ‘Oh... well, it’s a bit late, Stuart and I were just about to turn off the light.’

  Stuart gave me a sympathy eye roll, and held his hand out for the receiver, his shoulders slumping ever so slightly. I held up my own to say don’t worry – it usually took him much longer to calm down following one of her calls than it did me.

  Genevieve didn’t miss a beat. ‘Oh, well, good that I caught you then.’

  I sighed again, and she continued, oblivious, impervious, or both. ‘I’ve come across a rather interesting article about a fertility specialist, Dr Marcus Labuscagne in Chelsea. It says that he’s developed a new technique that has shown real promise for women in the last years of their fertility cycle, like you. He has a sixty-eight percent success rate.’

  My eyes closed. Mentally, I counted to three. I was barely in my mid thirties. As far as Genevieve was concerned that meant I was premenopausal. Despite me pointing out to her time and again that women were able to have children much later in life and that the fertility cycle only started slowing down at around the age of thirty-eight, a woman who was responsible for the financial success of entire organisations, whose mission it was to enhance the lives of women in business, just failed to grasp it.