A Cornish Christmas

by Lily Graham

  The truth was, unless it was on a spreadsheet in black and white, it was a grey area for her; one that needed to be resolved, now.

  ‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘I’ve made you an appointment for this Friday. Shall I send James along with the car, or will Stuart be driving you?’

  James was her assistant. Her rather abused assistant. She took pleasure in having a male secretary. James did not. Though he had on more than one occasion corrected her with the term ‘executive assistant’, she pish-poshed it every single time – even though I had once heard her go to war with her husband, John, for daring to call the flight attendant an air hostess. Somehow, to her, sexism didn’t occur the other way. If it did, she referred to it as ‘sexism in reverse’, which was both confusing, and well, frankly insulting as far as I could see.

  I took a breath. ‘Actually, Genevieve,’ I began. ‘The truth is, we’ve decided to take a break... just for a little while. You understand.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘A break?’ she repeated.

  ‘Yes,’ I lied.

  Stuart gave me a look. It was almost a Should we just tell her and get it over with? sort of look. I shook my head vigorously: no. I was not prepared for that, not yet. The last time we’d told Genevieve, she’d quite simply taken over.

  My house, my health, and the absolute edge of my patience.

  Without word or warning, I’d come home after a long day at my full-time post as an illustrator at a busy publishing house to find a nurse with the figure of an army tank and the personality to match ensconced in my spare room, who’d followed me around only to bark orders at me to my complete and utter bewilderment. Looking back, I’m not entirely sure why I didn’t send her packing straight away. Perhaps it was simply shock. She’d strapped a heart rate monitor onto my arm, dismissing all my protestations, and within the first hour she’d hollered at me, ‘Your heart rate is up!’

  ‘That’s because I was laughing!’ I’d told her, looking away from Muppet, whose antics had caused the wire monitors to start beeping.

  The same thing happened two hours later when I was working on a particularly sad scene when Mr Tibbles had to say goodbye to his Aunt Flossy, the wise mouse of the forest, who died to save the Red Fairy and keep her promise to fairyland.

  ‘Keep calm!’ she barked. In what I imagined the tone Miss Trunchbull would have used while catapulting children out of the window, in Roald Dahl’s Matilda.

  The irony of having her shout the instruction at me seemed lost on her though, so early the next morning, I decided to follow her ‘orders’ by sneaking out, so that I could actually keep calm.

  When I’d come home that evening though, I found Genevieve sitting in my living room, white-knuckled with fury, her jaw clenched as she hissed, ‘Odessa is one of the city’s most experienced nursing sisters, I cannot believe that you just left her here without telling her where you were going.’

  Odessa? Somehow in all her barking she’d never imparted her name.

  ‘Oh! You’re a nurse?’ I’d said, in mock surprise, my own annoyance clearly displayed. Who did she think she was to employ someone in our home without consulting us, and then come here to reprimand me as if I were a child? I cursed Stuart for being away on a business trip to Berlin. Though, in retrospect, that was no doubt the very reason she had acted when she did, by employing the nurse and installing her in our home, with the spare key we had given her for emergencies. I made a mental note to have the locks changed as my own emergency action that night.

  ‘Odessa said you hadn’t even had breakfast when you left.’

  I was fairly certain that what I had for breakfast was my concern but in the interest of not appearing defensive I’d said wearily, ‘I did.’

  ‘Toast is not breakfast,’ contradicted Odessa, who resembled a female SS officer.

  ‘And you never said when you’d be back,’ Genevieve continued. ‘Odessa has been worried sick,’ she accused, folding her thin, silk-clad arms.

  ‘Right,’ I’d said, setting down my bag. That was quite enough of that. ‘I’m afraid, Odessa, no one consulted me on your appointment... because if they had, they would have known that it was entirely out of the question. I do not want, nor require the need of a... nurse, as you term yourself, so we will not be needing your services any longer. Please see yourself out.’

  When she failed to leave, my voice lowered. ‘Now.’

  While Odessa had mumbled incoherently, and Genevieve had stood up to lecture me, I’d escorted Odessa out, and suggested that Genevieve, likewise, follow suit.

  To her credit, she did actually leave. Her parting shot had been cutting though, a curse disguised as a warning. ‘Well, don’t blame me if this pregnancy goes as well as your last.’

  I’d slammed the door so hard that the glass cracked in two, like our lives two weeks later when things did, in fact, go as badly as the last.

  She never did say ‘I told you so’ when she heard about the miscarriage, but her words haunted me for months afterwards, despite my obstetrician, Dr Josef Tam, assuring me that I had done nothing wrong, that my blood pressure, diet, and health were all fine, that it was simply a cruel act of fate.

  Genevieve’s words had coloured an already strained relationship, and it had taken me months to speak to her again. Now I only do it for Stuart, though if it were up to him I wouldn’t need to bother – sometimes I was sorely tempted not to.

  ‘That’s really interesting,’ I said now, remarking on her news about the fertility specialist in London with his novel approach and encouraging results.

  And it was interesting, and a few weeks ago there was no doubt I would have been pushing her for more information. But now that we were finally pregnant and my new obstetrician, Dr Gia Harris – a referral of Dr Tam’s based in Falmouth – assured us that we were likely to stay that way, provided I stayed away from any undue stress, I wasn’t as interested as I would ordinarily have been.

  It didn’t feel like the right time to bring up the baby either. To be honest, I didn’t know when it would be the right time. The trouble was that even though she meant well, and I didn’t doubt that, she had a way of making a stressful situation worse. She had a tendency of not trusting us to make our own decisions, to insist that I visit a battery of professionals that she had sanctioned, as if only via her own investigations they could be degreed to the right level, despite what I, or science may have to say on the subject.

  Three years ago when I’d refused to change my gynaecologist and see her experts instead, she had implied that because we hadn’t seen ‘the best’ professionals, who would have advised against my fondness for long walks (which she believed weren’t good for the baby), there was a chance we wouldn’t have miscarried. Three guesses why we’ve decided to keep the third pregnancy – the one all our doctors were calling the lucky one – secret.

  ‘But Ivy, is that a good idea? These are the last good years, you don’t want to throw them away!’

  Last good years? I gritted my teeth. ‘We’re not throwing them away!’ I gasped. Couldn’t she just understand that we’d been through hell and needed a minute to recover from it all? Even if, yes, right now I was lying and probably going to hell... it was a good lie, for all our good really, even hers, a lie that would reduce the stress all round rather considerably.

  Genevieve pressed on, ‘You’ve got to push through – I know it’s hard, but this could work. It takes around six months to get the body ready apparently, with twice-weekly appointments. You could both come stay here, I could arrange for James to fetch you, and take you back, you wouldn’t have to worry about a thing. Or... you know, I could set up an area for you to live in the manor house, just to make things a little easier... John said the other day that they could install a whole kitchen in the east wing in a week... It’ll be no trouble, I’ll call the builders tomorrow.’

  Come live with her? What? The woman went from zero to a hundred faster than I could blink, and after the day I’d had all I really
wanted to do was go to sleep. I was regretting not handing the phone to Stuart when he offered.

  I took a deep breath. I didn’t need to explain myself to her. Something that I kept forgetting, and something she needed a reminder of as well. ‘I appreciate your help, Genevieve, I do, but please respect our decision.’

  A long silence followed, where I suspected Genevieve, too, was attempting to find her own inner calm. ‘Well, all right, that’s your choice. I’ll respect it. Give my love to Stuart,’ she said, then hung up.

  I closed my eyes.

  ‘Scale?’

  I opened an eye and gave a dry, humourless laugh. ‘About a Five: Third degree burn.’

  ‘Ah, well that’s good then... shows she’s grown,’ he said with a wink.

  I couldn’t summon a laugh; all I wanted to do was sleep.

  He looked so worried that I said, ‘She means well... in her own twisted sort of way.’

  Stuart patted me on the knee. ‘I’m sure I’m the one who is meant to tell you that.’

  I snorted. ‘Maybe we can tell her... when it’s about nine.’

  ‘Nine?’

  ‘Nine years old.’

  He gave me a look. ‘Just say the word.’

  Stuart was sorely tempted, but I couldn’t do that. I might not have wished her to know about the pregnancy just yet... but I couldn’t do that. She might drive me mad, but you couldn’t fault the fact that she cared. Finally, we put out the light, where I tried, and failed, to put aside all the anxiety speaking to her had caused, dredging up more than one old ghost.

  Chapter 3

  Rudolph Has a Shiny Nose

  I dreamt of Mum that night. Perhaps, it wasn’t surprising. After bringing the desk home, a part of me knew I was bringing something else along with it too. Something I’d been trying to bury, along with everything else. A piece of her, I suppose.

  I hated it when I dreamt of her.

  Hated how easy it was to forget. How easy it was to slip back to before.

  I hated it, because I loved it so much. Because when I dreamt of her, it was as if she was still there. My traitorous mind was always so quick to peel away the years, to erase all the pain and heartache, and put me once again back in my childhood home, without a moment’s hesitation.

  Except that night, I wasn’t a child. It was now, just after the phone call with Genevieve, except now I was calm. What had I to fear? There she was, just when I needed her. Soon she’d tell me not to worry...

  In my dream, she sat at her writing desk, penning a letter. I smiled, at how often I’d found her sitting there, doing that. Her hair was once again long and dark blonde, a loose tangle of curls that flickered in the soft firelight. When I entered the room, she smiled, patted the seat next to her, making Fat Arnold, our squashed-face Persian, glare as he was made to relocate. She laughed, and then took a sip of tea, out of that old pink and gold teacup that she loved so much, and in the pause, I glanced over and saw that she wasn’t writing a letter at all.

  It was a postcard. A familiar one, with a pretty French cover. As I peered I saw her wink, as she picked up her pen, and addressed the card to Darling Ivy.

  I smiled in return, and watched as she began to write.

  I opened my mouth to ask her why she was writing me a postcard but found that no words came out. I tried again. But my voice was gone. My heart started to beat faster. What was happening? I tried to touch her arm, get her attention, but my hand felt like it was coming from very far away. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t touch her. I couldn’t reach her.

  ‘Mum?’ I cried, until I was hoarse. My throat sore. The words ricocheting in my head like a machine gun. But no sound came out of my mouth at all.

  I stood up fast, and all at once I was peering at her from the end of a long tunnel. A tunnel that was getting fainter and fainter, as I called her name over and over again, till I could taste the blood in my mouth. But she never looked up. She never heard my cries. She just sat there, with that soft smile on her face as she wrote and wrote the words I would never, ever read.

  I awoke to painful, gasping tears. The kind where your lungs forget to breathe. Somehow in my fog-covered gaze, I saw Stuart’s gentle eyes, and felt his arms hold me tight. ‘It’s okay, love,’ he said while stroking my hair. ‘Just a dream, just a dream,’ he added, trying to soothe me.

  But I could find no solace. She’d been there. Her face so vivid. The room so real... and that bloody postcard. That postcard with its cruel emptiness filled with nothing but silence, a silence that seemed to both haunt and taunt me. All I could do was sob for it. For the sheer waste and cruelty of it.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Stuart, his eyes tired, worried.

  I tried to squeeze the words out past my grief, past everything that had been left unsaid, but I couldn’t. Somehow, though he must have guessed.

  He held me closer. Finally when the words came, they were a jagged rock-heap of things, from missing Mum, to the ever-present fear that when our dream of finally having a baby was so close to being realised it would be taken away. Like it had so many times before.

  ‘We’ve just got to trust, my love. That’s all we’ve got to do. I’m sorry that I kept encouraging you to get your mum’s desk. I thought it would be good for you, I should have known...’ he said, his brow furrowed.

  I shook my head. ‘Don’t, it was... it is good. It’s so hard to explain... but as hard as it is, and it’s well, brutal in a way, it’s the closest I’ve felt to her in years.’ I took a shuddering breath. ‘It’s just... no one tells you about this, that it can come back and hit you again when you least expect it to. When finally everything seems to be going all right.’

  Stuart sighed, then said wisely, ‘But that’s the way of it, isn’t it? We’re so wired to expect the worst that when something good happens, it’s like our subconscious minds need to find something to torture us with, because if we dared to trust, well then there’s a chance we’d be disappointed.’

  I nodded. ‘Though in my dream... it was only realising she was gone again that was the torturous bit.’

  Stuart gave me a sympathetic squeeze.

  I always appreciated that about him, he didn’t tell me I was silly, or try to sweep away my emotions. Or worse, try to cover them up. He just let me feel them.

  Finally, I drifted off again, this time into a dreamless sleep.

  * * *

  It was the first thing I noticed as I entered my studio in the early chill of the morning, despite my tired, swollen eyes. I pulled my cardigan close and stood just inside the doorway and swallowed in sudden trepidation. Like a sentinel guiding me in, burning so brightly, it appeared to have an almost otherworldly glow, the little card with my mother’s reindeer and his missing guiding light: Rudolph had a very shiny nose.

  A perfect little nose in a shade I’d never seen; like crimson mixed with stardust, seemingly lit from within. I blinked, unable to move; it took a while before my legs obeyed my command.

  It was all some mad joke of Stuart’s, surely? A strange pre-Christmas trick? I rushed forward to the desk and picked up the card. Up close, the little nose seemed even more delicate, like red spun fairy dust. If he had done it, I couldn’t even be upset. It was exquisite. Except, when could he have done it?

  Perhaps last night as I slept, maybe he had tiptoed out... Maybe that would explain the missing paint, even though he said he hadn’t taken it.

  I frowned, remembering Stuart hadn’t even been home when I’d brought the desk, he hadn’t seen the card until later... and wouldn’t have had the incentive to steal the paint... unless he found some and thought it would be a way of making me feel better, after last night?

  I set the card down, a sudden thought occurring to me as I crossed the room to look again through the boxes, only to pause in bewilderment. They were all still missing.

  Perhaps Stuart had found a bit of paint somewhere and had done it as a surprise, though I wondered why. It was sweet, a beautiful gesture in a way, but still
unlike him; he would have usually left well alone; left me to sort out how I felt about it; or so I had thought.

  I placed it next to the postcard, noting how, in the early morning, the postcard seemed to glow. Then I turned away from it, last night’s dream still fresh in my mind. A part of me wanted to simply shut it in the drawer and out of sight. A bigger part knew I never would.

  I rubbed my eyes, thinking ‘coffee’, and retreated downstairs to put on a pot. Muppet heard the sound of my footfall and roused herself to follow. I stepped over Pepper and Pots, lounging by the Aga in the kitchen, and gave them both a morning rub. ‘Hello boys, where’ve you been?’

  They circled me, while Muppet looked on disdainfully. They had a mutual understanding, which I understood as follows: when the curly-haired human, ‘The One Who Feeds’, is in the holy place with the most saintliest of deities, whom the humans call ‘Fridge’, which opens with a great holy light to reveal ‘Food’, we are all on our best behaviour.

  When my back was turned, of course, all bets were off.

  I fed the livestock, popped some homemade bread (Stuart’s) in the toaster and made some filter coffee, sighing as I examined our impressive collection of preserves, which included squash, cucumber, and even beetroot. Wishing that, just once, Stuart would think ‘strawberry’...

  ‘Beetroot it is,’ I said to Muppet and Pots, who’d lingered by the Aga, while Pepper slouched off in search of a vacant bed.

  I unhooked my navy parka from behind the back door and slipped on my wellies, fetching a tray that I filled with two cups, toast, jam and the coffee pot. If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad, Muppet and I would meet him in his polytunnel.