Christmas at Strand House

by Linda Mitchelmore

  Chapter 22

  Bobbie

  ‘Happy Christmas, you two,’ Bobbie said.

  She and Janey had been peering out from time to time to see if Lissy and Xander were coming back yet. She’d expected to see the bobbing torchlight lighting their way as they came back down the path they’d gone up but they were coming from another direction. Then she noticed their faces. Serious would sum it up. What the heck had happened there? A solemn service or something else? The matchmaker in her had imagined them coming back hand in hand, rosy and glowing from a few kisses under the moonlight but that had so obviously not happened. It was one of the reasons she’d declined the offer to go to the candlelit service with them – to give them time alone, so they could hold hands and kiss without her and Janey cramping their style. Not that Bobbie was overly religious, but this was Christmas for goodness’ sake – even the most hardened heathens entered into the spirit of the festivities, didn’t they?

  ‘Did you enjoy the service?’ Janey asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Lissy and Xander said together, looking towards one another as if joined by some sort of invisible thread. ‘The Christmas Eve candlelit service is always special,’ Lissy finished.

  There was a flatness in Lissy’s voice and Bobbie picked up on it.

  ‘But?’ she said. ‘There’s always a “but”, isn’t there?’

  ‘Two,’ Xander said. ‘Claire’s parents were there and they made it rather obvious they wished Lissy and I hadn’t been.’

  ‘Ah,’ Bobbie said. ‘I’m tempted to tell them to “get over it”.’Oh God, me and my loose lips again,’ Bobbie said.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Xander told her. ‘I was thinking much the same. They were quite rude actually. I’m not sure all of it was grief over Claire.’

  ‘But let’s not let it spoil Lissy’s Christmas, eh?’ Bobbie said, rather desperate now to lighten the mood for Lissy who had worked so damned hard for them all. ‘I don’t know about you lot but I might die if I don’t get my sausage roll and a mince pie and a glass of sherry to go with them. Brings back memories of my old gran, that – a bottle of Emva Cream sherry from the off licence and mince pies. She only ever had that one bottle at Christmas.’

  She was desperate now to make things better for Lissy and there was a crumb of comfort when Lissy laughed at what she’d said.

  ‘Nothing but the best here,’ Lissy said. ‘Choices, too. Dry, sweet, or medium sweet. Follow me. The kitchen all right for you guys?’

  No answer was needed really so Bobbie didn’t give one.

  ‘Lead on,’ Bobbie said.

  The last thing she wanted or needed was a sausage roll or a mince pie. She’d got on the scales in her en suite that morning and had already put on half a kilo. But just mentioning her old gran a moment ago had made her realise how much she’d enjoyed her Christmases with her late grandmother. Family. And she had so little of that now.

  There was a stupid lump in her throat threatening to choke her. Christmas was about families and it seemed more than sad that the four of them in Lissy’s kitchen – about to tuck into sausage rolls and mince pies and drink sherry late at night which was probably bad for them all, if traditional – were a makeshift family here in Devon, not a proper one, none of them related. The wind seemed to have got up and Bobbie could hear the crash of waves and the clack, clack, clack of whatever it was on top of yacht masts that spun in the wind. It seemed to echo in the nighttime.

  ‘Name your poison,’ Lissy said, waving a hand towards the selection of sherries on the dresser.

  ‘Dry for me, please,’ Xander said.

  ‘And me.’ Bobbie had always thought there were fewer calories in dry drinks than sweet and she wasn’t likely to change her opinion any time soon at her stage of life.

  ‘Sweet for me,’ Janey said. ‘A little one. Please. I want to get up early tomorrow and draw the sunrise.’

  ‘Not too early making a racket sharpening pencils though,’ Bobbie joked.

  ‘You’re safe there,’ Janey told her. ‘You use soft pencils to draw.’

  ‘That’s me told, then,’ Bobbie said. ‘Shall I make myself useful and pour the sherries?’

  ‘Please.’ Lissy fetched the sausage rolls and then took a glass dish of mince pies from the far end of the counter top and put them in the microwave to warm a little. ‘Cream, anyone?’

  ‘Devonshire clotted, I hope,’ Xander said. He tilted his head to one side looking at Lissy as he spoke and pulled a mock-sad face that there might not be.

  ‘Good God, man,’ Bobbie laughed. ‘Where do you stash it all? There’s not a spare ounce of flesh on you? Not that I’m showering you with compliments or anything.’

  ‘The builder’s metabolism,’ Xander told her. ‘If you can lay a thousand bricks in an hour you can eat all the fat you want.’

  ‘That’s so not going to happen for me, then,’ Bobbie told him.

  A makeshift family they might be, but they were bickering good-naturedly as many proper families do, knowing when it’s a joke and when there’s, perhaps, a deeper and nastier side to a comment. And goodness, how wonderful it felt at that moment to be part of it.

  Bobbie finished pouring the sherries and handed them around just as Lissy brought out the warmed mince pies, and then fetched the cream for Xander who was the only one who wanted any.

  ‘I’ll get this down me and then it’s bed for me,’ Xander said. ‘This little boy has hung up his stocking and if he’s not asleep when Santa calls then he won’t be getting anything.’

  What, Bobbie wondered, was it like to watch a little boy hang up a stocking in anticipation and then to see the delight on his face when he woke to find it filled with all sorts of things he’d play with on Christmas morning and then discard? Well, that was how it had always been for Bobbie, the not knowing, the wondering.

  ‘Shall I tuck you in?’ Bobbie asked, quite literally tongue in cheek.

  ‘Is that an offer I can’t refuse?’ Xander spluttered into his sherry.

  ‘Not at all,’ Bobbie said, hands on hips in mock-outrage. ‘It’s just that it seems to me I’m turning into a mother hen around here and I thought I might fulfil that role as well.’

  ‘I think I can manage, thanks,’ Xander said, taking a paper napkin from the holder on the kitchen island and wiping a crumb from the corner of his mouth. ‘I’ll say goodnight everyone.’

  Then, to Bobbie’s surprise, Xander kissed them all good night in turn, leaving Lissy to last.

  ‘I’m glad I went to the church,’ Bobbie heard him whisper against Lissy’s hair as he added a small hug to the kiss he planted on her cheek.

  And then he was gone, and within seconds Janey followed.

  Bobbie got up and closed the kitchen door behind them.

  ‘In my role as mother hen, is there anything you’d like to talk about? Anything that would make you sleep a bit easier if you spoke about it? Only it seems to be that there might.’

  ‘Probably,’ Lissy said. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t think you have to be Einstein to work out I really like Xander, do you?’

  ‘Nor he, you. But what started out as possibly the beginning of something lovely for you both under the moon and the stars, went a bit pear-shaped when you found Claire’s parents were at the service?’

  ‘That!’ Lissy said. ‘We were getting on so well, cheekily flirting with all the banter, but in the doing laying our feelings out, sort of on a plate, for the other to choose if we wanted. And then it all went pff, frozen in the chill of seeing Claire’s parents. It was as though Xander felt guilty being with me.’

  ‘Well, sweetheart,’ Bobbie told her, ‘there’s never ever going to be another first time for that horrid scenario, is there? You’ve already done it. They’ve seen you as a couple and they’re jolly well going to have to get used to it, aren’t they?’

  ‘A couple?’ Lissy said.

  ‘You’ve just more or less admitted as much, or the hopes that you will be. And from where I’ve been standing I’d
say that was happening by the minute. A woman could get fried in the crossfire of looks and feelings between you, you know.’

  ‘That vivid imagination of yours running wild again, Bobbie. But …’

  And then Bobbie saw huge pools of unshed tears in Lissy’s eyes. It didn’t seem appropriate to ask why.

  ‘Come here,’ Bobbie said, holding her arms out wide.

  Lissy walked into them, her tears running now so that they dampened the silk of Bobbie’s lounge-wear kaftan.

  Bobbie let Lissy run her tears until they dried up and she pulled away, wiping her face with a towel hanging from a drawer rail.

  ‘The kiss you seem so keen for Xander and me to share? It wouldn’t be the first time our feelings almost got the better of us,’ Lissy said.

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘That was at his and Claire’s wedding. I was, I admit, a bit tipsy. We had a dance – Xander danced with just about every woman in the room the same way Claire danced with all the men. But when Xander and I danced it just felt so right, more right than it should have been given the occasion. Our bodies sort of gravitated close than they should have done, an almost magnetic connection. And then Xander pulled back.’

  ‘But you didn’t?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And did anything develop from there?’

  ‘No! That’s the ultimate betrayal, isn’t it? Nicking your best friend’s husband.’

  ‘But you could have?’

  ‘Yes. I’m not sure Xander would have though.’

  ‘I’d say you’re probably right there. He seems a very moral sort of bloke. Not that I don’t think he hasn’t come down off his shelf a time or two since Claire died.’

  Lissy made a sort of snorting laugh sound and put a hand to her mouth.

  ‘You say the most outrageous things, Bobbie,’ she laughed.

  ‘Maybe. But do you think I’m right? About the coming down off his shelf bit?’

  ‘Did he tell you that? You know, when you were in the sitting room yesterday?’

  ‘Of course he didn’t. There’s only so many things a forty-something man will tell a much older woman, and that’s not one of them. But would you mind if he has?’

  ‘No. After Cooper left I had inappropriate sex a couple of times, just to prove to myself someone would find me attractive, and that I hadn’t forgotten how to do it.’

  ‘So, there you are then. Level playing field again, I’d say, for the two of you.’

  ‘It’s still feeling a bit like the ultimate betrayal even though Claire’s not here.’

  ‘Stop that,’ Bobbie said, wagging a finger at her in what she hoped was a playful and not a full-on bossy fashion. ‘It’s no such thing and I think you know it.’

  Lissy shrugged. Yawned.

  ‘And we’ve discovered that neither of us has forgotten that almost-kiss moment,’ Lissy said. ‘And …’ Lissy’s eyes met and held Bobbie’s and she smiled a sad sort of smile.

  ‘And you don’t know why you’re telling me all this stuff because we hardly know one another really. Is that what you’re thinking? Am I right.’

  Lissy nodded.

  ‘But maybe that’s why?’

  ‘The comfort of not quite strangers, eh?’ Bobbie said. ‘Okay, so things didn’t go as you’d hoped they’d go tonight and I’d bet my Jimmy Choo collection – which is not inconsiderable by the way – that Xander feels the same. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ Lissy said. She yawned again.

  ‘So, how about you sleep on things,’ Bobbie said.

  ‘Good idea,’ Lissy said. ‘Thanks, you know, for listening.’

  Lissy checked all the knobs on all the appliances were off and then opened the kitchen door, and turned off the lights.

  ‘Thanks for talking,’ Bobbie said, linking her arm through Lissy’s as they walked across the hall. ‘Sometimes a girl likes to be needed. Come on, up the wooden hill we go. As Scarlett O’Hara was wont to say, tomorrow is another day.’

  ‘So it is,’ Lissy said. ‘So it is.’

  CHRISTMAS DAY

  Chapter 23

  Janey

  Janey wrote a note for Lissy and the others. ‘Popped out to draw. You’ll probably be able to see me if you look out of one of the bedroom windows. I’ll be back for breakfast. Happy Christmas’

  It was six-thirty when she reached the top of the steps that led down to the beach. The tide was way out. Lots of rocks had been exposed during the rough seas of the previous tide because Janey remembered it being a flat expanse of sand when Sam had driven her up the road in the taxi and now it wasn’t. Now it looked, Janey thought, like Badlands in the US – sandstone pillars of rock of varying heights, some straight and some leaning. Only not as big of course. She just had to draw that. The beach in winter, after a rough sea.

  Janey had taken the liberty of borrowing the hat and scarf Lissy had loaned her when Xander took her up to Berry Pomeroy to see the castle. That seemed so long ago now but it had been like a light switching on for Janey – Xander had given her permission to follow her art. Not that she needed his permission but the knowledge that he approved of what she did, admired her for it, had shifted something in her.

  Janey took the notepad and a pencil she’d brought with her from a plastic bag she’d taken from Lissy’s kitchen. She didn’t think Lissy would mind her taking that either. She would take copious photographs in a minute but first she wanted to feel the energy of the rocks and the sea being absorbed into her work tools – eye to mind, mind to hand, hand to pencil, pencil to paper. If she could have drawn the smell of the sea as well then she would have done. She inhaled deeply, that iodine seaweedy smell. There was a ribbon of dark green, almost black, seaweed on the tideline, encrusted with shells and stones. Janey walked on down the steps to get a closer look. Sitting down on the bottom step she began to sketch. Strong strokes, almost cartoonish in their execution. The scene in front of her seemed to want that style even though Janey had never drawn like that before.

  ‘Less is more here, I think,’ she said as the sky lightened.

  Not quite dawn, but nearly, and there was more than enough light for her to see by already. A few gulls were already pecking about in the seaweed, some of them scrabbling over some tasty morsel or other. She heard a dog bark over the other end of the beach although she couldn’t see one. Or it’s owner.

  She was not afraid. She, Janey, who’d been afraid throughout her marriage – if you ignored the honeymoon period when Stuart had been doing his best to impress her – was not afraid now, sitting on a beach where no one could see her at that moment. She felt safer than she had for years. A Christmas gift in itself and what a gift!

  ‘It’s going to be a beautiful day,’ Janey said. She could feel that. There was no wind.

  And then the sun suddenly popped up on the horizon, a small arc of light to begin with and then rather more quickly than Janey had thought it would. Well, she’d never sat on a beach and watched the sun rise before so how would she know? And then there it was, a perfect orb resting on the horizon like a tightrope walker.

  Putting down her pad and pencil, Janey took her phone from her pocket and began taking pictures. The scene in front of her seemed to be changing by the second – the colour shifts from palest, pearl grey to a sort of muted saffron was, she thought, like a kaleidoscope. If you took your eyes off it for a second you’d miss something. So she didn’t.

  And then she changed from photograph to text.

  Stuart, it’s me. Janey. I will be filing for divorce. I’ve probably got grounds for that but I’ll settle for irreconcilable differences. As soon as Christmas is over I’ll be contacting a solicitor. Do not try to make me change my mind.

  She pressed ‘send’. She’d told Stuart she wanted a divorce before. Many times actually. But always he’d begged her to stay. Promised he’d change his ways, but he never had, not for longer than a fortnight anyway.

  ‘Men like that never do,’ Janey said into the new day. Christmas Day.

&nbs
p; Suzy had been quite wrong the day before when she’d questioned how well Janey had known Stuart, because she had known, she’d just been in denial for far too long, that was all.

  ‘Suzy next,’ Janey said, scrolling down for her sister’s number. She knew Suzy would be up – would probably have been up for a good hour or more.

  She pressed ‘call’.

  ‘Janey!’ Suzy said, almost instantly. ‘Thank God.’

  The relief in her sister’s voice that she’d called her was almost tangible and Janey was glad she had now.

  ‘Happy Christmas,’ Janey said. ‘And sorry, you know, for not keeping you in the picture about my plans. I didn’t really have one apart from always having a small case packed so I could escape, and then I did, and I thought if I stopped to tell you then you might have tried to persuade me to change my mind …’

  ‘I might,’ Suzy interrupted. ‘But I’d have been wrong to do it.’

  ‘And I’m sorry if I was a bit on edge yesterday.’

  ‘Me too,’ Suzy said. ‘Are you okay to talk?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘No eavesdroppers?’

  ‘Only a gull or two?’

  ‘Oh my God! You’re never living rough?’

  ‘Far from it!’ Janey laughed. She wouldn’t tell Suzy about Strand House just yet, but she would eventually.

  ‘Good,’ Suzy said. ‘I’m glad you’ve rung, really glad. I’ve got a second in the madness that’s the usual family Christmas Day, to say I’m sorry I didn’t offer more support yesterday. Stress probably. I never think I’ve bought enough presents for the kids – well not as many as others do. And I worry that I’ll run out of food or I’ll poison us all with the turkey not being cooked properly. I was running around chasing my tail with it all and I wasn’t thinking straight. Like I said, Stuart had been ringing and my mind was going through all sorts of worst-case scenarios about what might have happened to you and where you’ve been. It’s like when one of the children runs out into the road and I just manage to grab him or her and then I yell at them like a banshee when really I’m just so relieved they weren’t run over, and I should be hugging them close, comforting them. My friend, Sarah, calls it the shock-adrenalin cocktail. So, I’m sorry … I didn’t mean to add to your troubles.’