A Cornish Christmas

by Lily Graham

  ‘Yes, er... thank you for your call, she did tell me but I’m afraid that at this point, we’re really just not interested—’

  ‘I understand, that’s, er, really great that you’ve managed to squeeze us onto a two-year waiting list but—’

  ‘Yes... I understand she was royalty and she was moved off the list for us—’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Yes, that’s, er, very—’

  ‘As I was SAYING, it is unnecessary as we won’t be needing your—’

  ‘Yes, I do understand that it’s a really impressive tech—’

  ‘Yes, a sixty-eight percent success rate is unheard of, BUT—’

  ‘Yes, that’s really—’

  ‘Look, please, I’m not trying to be rude but I have to—’

  ‘Oh? Well, yes, I walk every day, but what has that got to do with—’

  ‘Yes, I understand that physical health on the outside doesn’t necessarily reflect on the inside, but—’

  ‘No, I won’t tell you my age!’

  ‘How did you get all that information? How dare she send it to you!’

  ‘Oh... yes, well, I am relieved you told her that I wasn’t near the end of my fertility cycle, thank you for that... but please—’

  ‘No, I can’t come this Tuesday, as I’ve already said—’

  ‘Look, please, I have to go—’

  ‘I’m sorry to be rude but—’

  ‘I hardly see how that’s any of your business!’

  ‘He’s very... er, virile, ugh, now please—’

  ‘Excuse me, I have a job to do so if you don’t mind...’

  ‘I’m hanging up now.’

  Which was what I should have done from the beginning.

  Then a few days after that, I was sent the brochure for the Collingswood House, our dream home in Knightsbridge, which Stuart and I had always loved, and said we would love to buy if ever we won the lottery and it came on sale. Well, it turned out it was finally for sale. I suspected Genevieve had placed her rather heavy hand in this as well, however. I couldn’t even imagine what she must have told the Pattersons to make them finally put their house up for sale.

  And now that it was finally for sale, Genevieve wrote to us and kindly ‘offered’ to make us a present of it so that we could have our own London base while I did the treatments she had booked with the insufferable Dr Marcus Labuscagne, the fertility specialist, the first of which she said would occur the following Tuesday.

  She was good, I’d give her that.

  She’d give Genghis Khan a run for his money. The Collingswood House was a low blow.

  I scribbled a note of polite thanks and apology. One that was firm and to the point, saying we were not now or ever going to be seeing that specialist and while we did once love the Collingswood House, we loved Sea Cottage much more.

  Now, a few days later, I’d gotten another phone call.

  This time from a number I didn’t recognise. A posh-sounding male voice asked me to hold for a Genevieve Everton and, before I knew it, I was once again ambushed. I’d been so careful to ignore her subsequent calls, to let Stuart deal with her instead of me... Perhaps that was the problem: the more I avoided her, the worse the ensuing well of emotion that came out of her eventually was, including the sheer vitriol that spouted from her mouth when we finally spoke. After a second’s rather impolite introduction, she informed me, rather insultingly, ‘While the success of your “picture books”,’ as she referred to The Fudge Files, ‘is, I am sure, fulfilling to some extent, spending all day imagining cute adventures about your dog is sweet in a very child-like sort of way. Thankfully, you’ve had some success with this, but it shouldn’t get in the way of having a family, or be at the expense of Stuart’s hopes and dreams of becoming a father. I’m sure your child-like pursuits can help foster your creativity, but really, Ivy, you need to put on your adult cap now, and push through. I know you’ve had heavy, painful setbacks, but if you’re ever to succeed, you need to keep going. Trust me on this – your body won’t wait for ever.’

  Shock made me speechless. Had she honestly just termed my entire career a ‘child-like pursuit’? And my wanting to have a break from the pain and heartache of failing to conceive was ‘childish’?

  While my brain whirred at the avalanche of insults, Genevieve continued, perhaps to offer some measure of an explanation for her unwarranted cruelty. ‘Look, I’m a straight-shooter, Ivy, I just tell it like it is, and I’m just going to say it, I know I shouldn’t, I know he won’t thank me for it, but I’m his mother and if I can’t stick up for him, well then... I’m not a very good one, am I? My fear is that my son loves you, Ivy, so much so that he’ll do whatever he can to make you happy. He’ll mortgage his house twice, rather than accept our help to pay for all those IVF treatments because you didn’t want to be in our debt—’

  ‘That was a joint decision!’ I interjected. It was Stuart who said that if he accepted her financial aid, as she put it, we’d never be able to get rid of her. She’d see it as an investment, one that we had to pay off. Perhaps not financially, but one that may have even included visitation rights to her unborn grandchild until well into adulthood... or perhaps an insistence that it went to Eton if it was a boy or joined some godawful finishing school if it was a girl. I mean, who knows what she’d have asked... Her children didn’t call her ‘The Terrorist’ in a hyperbolic way, they meant it. And Stuart was adamant that the one thing you didn’t do was negotiate with her. Because you’d lose. Every. Single. Time. Which is why the Everton children’s family motto was very similar to that of the United States: ‘We do not negotiate with terrorists’.

  Genevieve sighed impatiently. ‘I know he said that but he only said it because it would upset you if you thought you owed us something. That’s the trouble. He would rather put himself into serious debt and give up the career he’d been working towards just when it had finally paid off than dare to upset you. Then when your royalties paid out enough to buy a house, instead of buying his dream home in Collingswood here in Knightsbridge, which is finally for sale by the way, he agreed to move down to Cornwall with you, so that you could be closer to your dad. Meanwhile he had to give up his whole family... I mean, do you even know how much Victoria needs her brother right now? And your best friend, Catherine. I mean, you just left her in Chelsea.’

  I spluttered in rage – how dare she bring up my friend in all of this? The woman was relentless. ‘What real prospects are there for my son down there? It’s a holiday place. Unless, like you, you’re lucky enough to be independently financed, there aren’t that many jobs. I mean, this little business venture of his... it’s ludicrous. For God’s sake, the man has a PhD in marketing and advertising! This isn’t what he worked so hard for. To be what? A glorified farmer?’

  ‘It’s what he wanted!’ I protested. ‘It was his suggestion – and so what? What’s wrong with being a farmer? Anyway he’s a smallholder, with a small business, and he loves it! And yes, we both loved the Collingswood House, but that was only because Cornwall wasn’t an option. Once we had enough money that we didn’t need a mortgage any more we were able to choose what we really wanted – and we chose this!’

  Genevieve harrumphed. ‘I know my son. He agreed because he thought that down there away from the stress and bustle from London you’d be focused on getting pregnant. Except you’re not. You’d rather just give up. He’s given up everything that he ever wanted and now that you’ve achieved a degree of celebrity, you’ve decided it’s too hard to try again.’

  My mouth fell open and closed at her harsh, cruel words. Words that I attempted to deny.

  ‘It’s not true, Stuart wanted Cornwall, we both did... he wanted a change,’ I said, dashing away a tear, my throat constricting. ‘It might have been my suggestion but he wanted it... he was tired of the long nights and how awful the corporate politics were...’

  I heard a snort of derision. ‘Really, Ivy? So that’s why before you and Catherine were given that big p
rint deal, he phoned me, more excited than I’d ever heard him, to tell me that he’d just been offered the position of vice president at the Red Agency – you know, the company that he always wanted to work for, the one that does the marketing for some of the biggest brands in the world, that one?’ she said sarcastically, as if I didn’t know which one she meant. ‘He was going to surprise you by putting in an offer on the Collingswood House to celebrate...’

  ‘Vice president?’ I repeated numbly. Why hadn’t Stuart said anything?

  Genevieve answered my unspoken question. ‘He came home to find you and Catherine bouncing off the walls as you’d just signed the biggest deal of your careers to date... the one that would make your books not just a national, but an international success, and pay off all your debts. You were so happy. He didn’t want to risk that. I never said anything, he told me not to, but now, well, someone should. Especially now that you’ve just given up on trying for a baby.’

  The phone clicked off. She hadn’t even given me the courtesy of a chance to respond.

  I sat down hard on the bench in the hallway. Muppet scratched my shins, eyeing me with that soulful look of hers. I placed my hand on her silky fur. It couldn’t be true, could it?

  Stuart hadn’t given up his dream just so that I could live mine, had he? We weren’t like Smudge and Mark, with one half of a couple feeling like their lights were dimmed by the brightness of the other, were we? He’d always said that we were on the same team. When had he decided that my needs were more important than his own?

  I closed my eyes. He’d loved the Red Agency. For years he’d done consultancy work for them and always said that if an opening came up anywhere in the marketing department, he’d jump at it, even if it was a demotion, as it would be incredible to work for them. But it had never happened.

  What happened was the economic downturn. Several failed pregnancies. And two mortgages. So he took a marketing director position for a major pharmaceutical organisation while we tried to pay it all off.

  The added insult to injury came when he began to realise how much their marketing efforts covered up the multitude of unethical practices the company turned a blind eye to. It had slowly started to eat him alive, especially when on more than one occasion he was tasked with cleaning up the bad publicity and fallout. While he went about it as ethically as possible, threatening to leave if they didn’t at least try to admit some of the blame, he still felt sullied by the experience. And yet when finally his success at the pharmaceutical company meant that he was offered a job at his dream firm, working on cutting-edge campaigns, he had turned it down. Why? Why hadn’t he said anything to me?

  I felt a rush of nausea, and barely made it to the downstairs toilet. As I dry-heaved into the porcelain bowl, tears streamed down my face. I’d been so sure that Stuart and I were on the same page – he was the one who insisted on Cornwall, hadn’t he? I thought he had, but maybe, maybe in my excitement, I’d made the suggestion and he’d been so considerate that he’d swept his own wishes aside for the sake of mine.

  I’d never considered that Stuart hadn’t wanted what I did. He’d been so enthusiastic about our move down here, talking about a change of pace and his idea of becoming a self-sustaining smallholder that it had never occurred to me that there was a possibility that he’d just been putting on a sporting face.

  I set off for the village, trying to walk away my queasiness, while sorting out what Genevieve had told me. I should have been furious with her. And a part of me was. What she’d done was cruel. I’d been completely blindsided. But then how could he have just left me in the dark like that?

  How could he just roll over and let me get what I wanted without even mentioning his own wishes?

  I wasn’t this person; I would have been blissfully happy to have lived in the Collingswood House and for him to take his dream job. Sure I loved it down here but not at the expense of my husband’s dreams. How could he have made this call? How could he not have spoken to me about any of this?

  I popped into the post office, barely listening to the octogenarian post-mistress Mrs Aheary while she told me about the plight of the Royal Mail office in the village, and how pretty soon robotic drones would be delivering the mail. ‘Drones! What is this, Star Wars?’ she said in disgust, looking at me with beetle-black eyes in a face that resembled a sunken mattress. ‘’Tisn’t right, Ivy-Rose... ’tisn’t right at all. Mark me words, we’ll be closed down soon enough if these emmets get their way...’

  Mrs Aheary’s definition of emmets weren’t just people across the river, the Tamar, that divided Cornwall from the rest of the world (aka foreigners), but anyone who wanted to change the way things worked, young people, the wrong sorts of old people – ‘them with modern ideas’ – and pretty much anyone who disagreed with her, really.

  I ignored her speech. Mrs Aheary had been telling me a similar tale since I was twelve years old, just with different bad guys threatening the Royal Mail. Faxes... faxes were replacing letters. Then ‘The Email’, then courier companies, Eastern Europeans... I’m not sure what they had to do with it, but she blamed them too, despite having a young Polish girl named Paulina working for the office in earshot. (Paulina, we all knew, ended up doing most of Mrs Aheary’s work while the latter worked her motor mouth.) Now it was an article about mail-delivering drones that were going to finally close down her post office, the one that had been going for more than two hundred years. Sort of around when she was born, I often imagined.

  I must have grunted a response of some kind, because soon enough she brought over the package from my publisher, which was a box of marketing paraphernalia for the latest edition of The Fudge Files – The Case of the Missing Brolly.

  Even that failed to give me the usual jolt of happiness. All I could think of were Genevieve’s words and Stuart.

  Mrs Aheary mentioned something about a storm warning over the next week or two, but I didn’t pay it any heed. Living this close to the sea, I knew that daily weather reports weren’t just the aperitif at the end of most conversation but often the main course. The subject of the weather came up all the time in Cornwall, even more so than in ordinary British conversation.

  A typical exchange in the village often went something like this:

  ‘How’s your knee doing now, Mrs Blume?’ April Blume ran the local pub in the village, The Cloud Arms, and complained of her knees any time you dared ask for a refill. Though, once pressed, the enquiry was likely to be followed with, ‘Much better now them squalls down in Penwith have finally calmed down.’

  ‘Your new arthritis medication starting to kick in, Mrs Glass?’ someone would ask Robyn, the village baker from my mum’s Thursday Club, where a lifetime of kneading dough and supplying all of Cloudsea and the neighbouring town with their daily bread had taken its toll on her elbows and wrists, and she’d say, ‘Oh yes, thanks, but should take a turn now with the first frosts arriving... Have half a mind to take up sticks upcountry to me Aunty Sheryl, where the weather is better to ride it out, but it wouldn’t be right, would it?’ she’d ask with a look of worry.

  The sad part was that most of the villagers were likely to shake their heads that yes, it wouldn’t be right. A Cornishman or -woman, as it were, stuck it out. Even if the weather in Northamptonshire would be better right now for arthritic elbows.

  So, of course, I didn’t really hear the storm warming.

  All I heard, on repeat, were Genevieve’s words, like an overplayed Christmas song on a repetitive loop in a shopping mall.

  I left the post office and took my package up under my arm, trying to keep my face as close to my jumper as possible and away from the icy chill on the long walk back home. The more I walked though, the angrier I got. When I got to Sea Cottage and saw that Stuart’s car was now there, I thought, right, that’s it.

  When I got into the garden I heard the sound of the radio and followed it to the little shed, where Stuart kept his gardening equipment, along with an old, worn leather sofa and his Xbox,
which since we moved down here seemed to have grown a layer of dust as, even in near winter, a smallholder’s job was never done. I found him with his feet beside a heater, a scarf wrapped around his head, humming along to the sounds of the Rolling Stones.

  His brown eyes were barely conspicuous above the thick wool of his brown and green tweed scarf, while he sat with a protractor and a pencil, and pored over what looked like self-made blueprints.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, rather brusquely. Generally the sight of him here would have melted my heart, but today I was immune.

  ‘A sun dial,’ he said in return. ‘See here...’ he added, pointing to a really old book from the library with ancient-looking French-styled gardens. ‘This is how the old masters laid out their gardens to get in more light... They used nature as borders to shelter out the worst of the battling winds, including the mistral, that really vicious wind that sweeps down southern France, which is no joke apparently. I was chatting to Tomas, and it got me thinking that I could apply some of these measures here, give or take a few modifications for sea and our weather...’

  ‘That’s great...’ I said with little enthusiasm.

  He looked up at my short tone. ‘You okay, love?’ he asked.

  ‘No. No, I... I don’t think I am, actually.’

  He looked suddenly worried. ‘Is it... the baby?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, the baby is fine. Were you offered vice presidency of the Red Agency? And did you decide never to tell me?’

  He turned pale.

  ‘Ivy... what?’

  ‘Is it true?’

  He blinked once, twice. ‘Ivy, where has this come from?’

  ‘Just tell me,’ I said, my jaw clenched.

  His face grew tight. ‘The Terrorist,’ he said, not a question, just a statement of undeniable fact. Like the sun rising in the west, and the tides going in and out, his mother could always be relied upon to not leave anything well alone.