A Christmas Cracker

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘This is my cat, Pye,’ I explained. ‘I didn’t think he’d follow us all the way down here. Still, it looks as if the cats are all getting on together, doesn’t it?’ I added hopefully.

  ‘Mrrow!’ growled Pye in agreement, while poor Bing and Ginger pulled desperate, silent faces behind him.

  Then he climbed onto Silas’s lap and remained there, while Job pushed the chair all the way back up the hill.

  Chapter 15: Ghost Mice

  Q:What song do snowmen like to sing?

  A:There’s no business like snowbusiness!

  Pye and I settled in as if we’d always lived at Mote Farm and I spent most of the next two days at the mill, getting to know everyone better and some idea of how things worked.

  First off, I learned the two most important skills: how to make large pots of darkly stewed tea and Christmas crackers. Bradley set up one of the unused workstations for me, with some old stock paper and contents, and Lillian gave me a lesson in the basics.

  They said it could take weeks of practice before I turned them out to saleable quality, which I thought was absurd: how hard could it be? But after only one session with a glue gun and some crinkled crepe, I looked more like a Christmas cracker than the misshapen objects I was creating.

  It gave me a greater respect for the professional way the others could just sit there and neatly produce identical ones, at least twenty or thirty in an hour, depending on which they were making. And it started to spark ideas for the type we should be producing …

  Arlene researched on the internet what crackers were currently bestsellers and we compared notes and ideas, not only for the designs but for the novelties they would contain. I’d noticed from the expensive crackers that Jeremy had always insisted on (colour coded to match the Christmas decorations) that it was only the exteriors that ever differed: the basic range of items inside remained much the same.

  Arlene showed me some of the sites in China from where they usually ordered paper, card, ribbon, embellishments and novelties and I was astonished at the range … and even more inspired.

  Meanwhile Mercy, with her usual energy, threw herself into the whole business and the three of us had lots of exciting discussions.

  ‘I thought, if you agreed, I’d start cleaning and stocktaking in the back rooms on Monday, and I’m sure I’ll find an early design we can reproduce for our retro Victoriana range,’ I said.

  ‘Will that be popular, dear?’ asked Mercy doubtfully.

  ‘Oh, yes, everyone loves retro stuff these days,’ Arlene assured her. ‘So we’re thinking about a much more luxurious version of the traditional family crackers we make now, an updated version of Marwood’s Magical Crackers …’

  ‘More magical tricks, less plastic joke items,’ I said.

  ‘And small tree crackers in modern colourways, like black and silver, or purple, as well as pastel shades, with just a motto, snap and tiny charm of some kind in them,’ Arlene continued. ‘And the Victoriana one.’

  ‘That’s enough to think about to start with,’ Mercy agreed.

  Mercy got the man who had drawn up the original mill redevelopment plans for Randal to come out, and she showed him how she would like them altered.

  From bits I overheard as she took him around the mill, explaining the new layout, he initially tried to fight Randal’s corner (they seemed to have been at school together), before totally capitulating.

  ‘There we are, Josh’s promised to work right over the weekend, if need be, to alter the plans so we can have them back next week, before Randal gets here,’ she said, coming back from waving the dazed designer away. ‘Then he’s going to submit them for planning permission, so we can get them approved very quickly and start the work. Though actually, since the building isn’t listed, we can make a start on altering the mill interior right away.’

  ‘I’ve no idea how long planning permission for this kind of thing usually takes,’ I said.

  ‘I haven’t either. Perhaps two or three months at the most?’ she suggested, though I thought that might be optimistic. ‘I expect the café will take longer, because there are bound to be many food, hygiene and health and safety criteria it will have to meet, but I hope Randal will take all that on.’

  If he approved of the idea, I thought, but refrained from saying. The unknown nephew could well throw both a hissy fit and a spanner in the works!

  On Friday afternoon, encouraged by Mercy and watched gloomily by Job, who was lovingly polishing the chrome on the estate car, I drove the small hatchback down the drive to the main road and back several times until my confidence returned.

  Then I did a few three-point turns in the mill car park, and by the time I returned, Mercy was talking to a sturdy, elderly lady on a brown cob.

  I managed to insert the car back into its narrow garage, watched critically by Job, and when I came out Mercy introduced her friend as Becca Martland.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said, transferring the reins to one hand and reaching down to shake mine. ‘But I won’t keep Nutkin standing any longer in this cold wind – you should get in out of it too, Mercy; you’ll catch your death.’

  ‘Oh, not me,’ Mercy declared. ‘This old duffel coat’s as warm as toast.’

  When her friend had ridden off, she explained that the Marwoods from Godsend and Martlands from Little Mumming had always been friends.

  ‘Liz calls us the M&Ms,’ she added, ‘after some kind of sweets, apparently.’

  ‘Are they Quakers, too?’

  ‘No, dear, but good friends for all that, especially Noël and his wife, Tilda, who live at the lodge and Becca, who has her own house, New Place, in Little Mumming. Jude Martland, Noël and Becca’s nephew, was at the same school as Randal.’

  ‘Not another one,’ I said, and she looked puzzled.

  ‘He wasn’t in the same year, because he is a little older. He inherited the family home, Old Place, a couple of years ago and then married the sweetest girl, called Holly. Now, Becca tells me, they have a little baby boy, just when they’d given up all hope of a family – I’m so delighted.’

  ‘Will that be all, madam?’ intoned Job gloomily, appearing at her elbow like the Ghost of Christmas Past. ‘Mr Silas said earlier that he wouldn’t need me any more today and I have a barber’s appointment.’

  ‘Of course! I thought you were just watching Tabby drive out of interest, to see how she got on,’ Mercy told him.

  I thought it was probably more out of fear that I would be an appalling driver and she’d let me loose on his beloved estate car!

  ‘Funny old thing,’ she said affectionately as he walked off, tall, stiff-backed and melancholy. ‘I’m forever telling him to call me and Silas by our first names, but he never will. But he’s very good with Silas, which is the important thing.’

  The next day, being Saturday, was theoretically my first day off, but Mercy suggested I drive her to Neatslake, a village over towards Ormskirk, for the practice.

  She was hot in pursuit of a sewing machine that was being given away, which she had heard about through the Friends, and on our arrival we found that a neighbour had donated another, so Mercy was highly delighted. They both looked in need of a little TLC to me, but Mercy assured me that Phil was a dab hand at renovating them before they were shipped out.

  I drove back, too, and I found I was enjoying it.

  We unloaded the sewing machines by the front door and I carried them through to join half a dozen others in the small parlour.

  ‘There,’ she said, surveying her hoard with satisfaction. ‘Let’s go and have something to eat!’

  I was still stuffed from the coffee, cake and scones the Friend we’d visited had pressed on us. I was starting to equate being a Quaker with generous hospitality, for the woman had seemed genuinely disappointed that we wouldn’t stay for lunch, too, but Mercy had clearly already burned off the calories and was hungry as a hunter.

  We had Welsh rarebit, followed by apple pie and ice cream, and we’d no soo
ner finished than she said she fancied a Lancashire hotpot for her dinner and would cook up a batch of individual ones with shortcrust pastry tops that very afternoon.

  I stayed to learn how to make those and the chocolate sponge cake she whipped up afterwards, before finally going off to my rooms to do a bit of artwork.

  Pye decided to hang out with Mercy, provider of treats and unbounded admiration. I think she might have partly exorcised him, because when he was with her he gave every appearance of being the sweet-natured pussycat she believed him to be …

  And that thought gave me an idea for a papercut … perhaps even a Puss-in-Boots inspired one. I’d already had lots of ideas in prison, once my brain had started functioning properly again, and even more since I’d come to this romantic-looking moated house on the edge of the Lancashire moors.

  But before I could explore any of my weirder flights of fancy, I needed to produce some commercial designs intended for one of the greetings card companies who used to take my work and pay quite well for it.

  I used the house and moat as a backdrop with, in the foreground, two swans (artistic licence, since we only had ducks), their necks entwined into the shape of a loving heart. I believe swans mate for life, which is more than most humans seem to manage these days.

  And then, when I was putting the partly cut design in one of my small portfolios, I spotted a large card envelope – and inside were two designs I’d finished and packed up ready to send before I’d been arrested last year! The shock of it all had sent them right out of my head.

  They needed only a new letter to accompany them and I could pop out and post them on Monday.

  Dinner at Mote Farm seemed to be a flexible feast that took place anywhere from six onwards, but I forgot all about time until Mercy tapped on the door to tell me it would be served in ten minutes.

  Silas was already seated at the kitchen table, with Pye twining affectionately around his ankles, purring throatily, but as soon as he saw me he went and looked pointedly at his dinner bowl.

  ‘You old fraud,’ Mercy told him, laughing. ‘I fed you hours ago, because you pestered me so much!’

  ‘Oh, thank you, I was so lost in work that I lost track of the time,’ I confessed. ‘Mind you, Pye usually comes and tells me in no uncertain terms if I miss putting his food down!’

  ‘He’s still a bit thin, as are you, so a little extra feeding up won’t do either of you any harm,’ she said, putting one of the hotpot pies we’d made earlier onto each dinner plate and then passing round the vegetables. ‘It’s a pity you missed tea, because the most interesting man joined us.’

  ‘Door to door salesman,’ Silas explained. ‘Household goods.’

  ‘They travel about so much and it can be very disheartening when doors are so often closed in their faces,’ Mercy said. ‘He used to be an alcoholic, but saw the light and turned his life around. He was interested to learn we were a temperance household.’

  Now she came to mention it, I realised I hadn’t seen or been offered anything alcoholic to drink since I arrived, apart for a small bottle of brandy in the kitchen cupboard, which presumably didn’t count because it was for cooking purposes. But I’m not really much of a drinker, so I hadn’t missed it.

  ‘I noticed that splendid pottery frog by the sink when I came in – did you buy that from him?’ I asked tactfully, because actually it was a lurid green and hideous, with a wide gaping mouth.

  She nodded. ‘I felt I had to buy something, and the frog holds a wire pan-scrub so it does have a purpose.’

  ‘Rubbishy thing,’ scoffed Silas.

  ‘I think it’s cute and you bought that ingenious stick with a crocodile-shaped head for picking things up from the floor without bending,’ she reminded him.

  ‘That’s practical,’ he said, then asked for another hotpot. For a skinny elderly gentleman, he could certainly put away his food – and faster than even Mercy did.

  ‘Randal emailed to say that he was back again and will come and stay next Thursday night – he has a lot of business to attend to first and then he needs to go away again – to Peru, I think he said.’

  ‘Like Paddington Bear, in reverse?’ I suggested.

  ‘Where did he say he’d been last time?’ asked Silas.

  ‘Greece, I think. He does get about the world on his assignments. And he can be a bit of a bear, Tabby, though of course he isn’t short and fat. Or furry,’ she added, and I nearly choked on my hotpot.

  She patted me on the back.

  ‘As well as wanting to discuss the mill plans with us, he says he has some good news,’ she continued, when I’d stopped coughing.

  ‘Assignments?’ I echoed, taking in the first part of this.

  ‘He works in travel, he’s always going abroad – didn’t I say?’ she said, surprised.

  ‘I don’t think so. I just sort of assumed he was dead rich and took lots of holidays.’

  ‘His parents did leave him well provided for, but of course, he’s always worked,’ she said. ‘I think he proposes to invest some of that inheritance into the mill redevelopment, in return for shares and perhaps being made a director. But of course, that is all to be thrashed out with the company accountant and the solicitor at some future point. I’m so glad he’s taking an interest in the family business, even if it was a little misdirected at first.’

  I thought they might also have to thrash out a compromise plan, unless the unknown Randal was more amenable to keeping the cracker factory going than he’d sounded, but time would tell. And I couldn’t see Mercy relinquishing total control of the mill for a long time to come, either, so there would probably be a few battles …

  ‘I wonder what Randal’s good news is?’ she mused. ‘Perhaps he’s going to get married at last!’

  ‘Does he have a girlfriend?’

  ‘I don’t know, dear. He’s had several lady friends, though he’s brought few of them here. But perhaps he’s ready to marry and settle down and that’s why he showed a sudden interest in running the mill?’

  It sounded quite possible to me and, though I quite dreaded his arrival in case he made difficulties, I was also becoming curious to meet him at last.

  While we were having coffee in the drawing room afterwards, Pye seemed to be tracking something invisible from one side of the room to the other again, which was a little disconcerting. I asked Silas if the house was haunted and he said there were a few stories about a White Lady, but she was supposed to be benign.

  ‘Not that we believe in such things,’ Mercy said. ‘I’m sure Pye is just playing.’

  ‘I expect you’re right,’ I said. ‘He looked as if he was chasing invisible mice yesterday.’

  Pye was now sitting staring fixedly at a section of panelling where there was no door, as if he was expecting someone to pop out and say Boo! I wouldn’t have put it past him to do it on purpose, just to unnerve me.

  Chapter 16: To the Point

  Q:What did the stamp say to the Christmas card?

  A:Stick with me and we’ll go places!

  It was a strange twist of fate that had brought me to Godsend, so near to Mum’s beloved Snowehill and the place where I’d scattered her ashes, but I had to slightly adapt my plan to spend Mothering Sunday making a kind of pilgrimage by taking the track behind the mill and walking all the way up to the summit.

  Some of the cracker factory workers asked me to go to the Auld Christmas in Little Mumming with them for one of Nancy Dagger’s famous Yorkshire pudding lunches and since I’d already had to turn down their invitation to join them there on a Friday or Saturday evening, because of my tag and the curfew, I didn’t want to seem stand-offish.

  And after all, I could start my hike from the village afterwards and then make my own way home by the track.

  Mercy drove Silas off to Great Mumming in the hatchback for the Quaker meeting, which she’d told me was today going to be followed by a Thrift Lunch, when everyone ate soup and bread and donated the money they would have spent on their norm
al lunch to a good cause.

  Mercy seemed to be looking forward to it and had made a giant pot of soup, which she decanted into two large lidded plastic boxes. I’d carried them out to the garage for her and wedged them in the boot, so they wouldn’t slide about.

  ‘Load of nonsense – could have opened a couple of tins!’ grumbled Silas in his usual way as he manoeuvred himself, in a crablike, sideways manner, into the passenger seat.

  ‘I expect some of the others will bring tins,’ Mercy said, ‘and bread rolls, too. But I like making lentil soup and I had all the ingredients I needed, including some nice chicken stock from the freezer. But you don’t have to eat any of it, if you don’t want to, Silas.’

  ‘Now you want me to starve to death?’ he complained grumpily, fastening his seatbelt, not without some difficulty. I refrained from offering to do it for him; I didn’t think he’d take it well in his current mood.

  I waved them off and then set out for the mill, carrying my small flowered canvas rucksack, containing a flask, sketchbook and pencils for later. Everyone but Dorrie, who always spent Sundays at Arlene’s house, would be going to the pub and I was to be given a lift in Bradley the-wife-murderer’s car.

  Job was already sitting in the front passenger seat when I got there, so I was crammed into the back with Freda and Joy. It being a clement spring day, apparently Lillian had already set out pillion on the back of Phil’s motorbike.

  On the way up to Little Mumming, Joy and Freda pointed out the gates to New Place, Becca Martland’s house, and told me about some of the other local characters and also the annual Twelfth Night Revels.

  ‘The villagers like to keep the Revels to themselves,’ Joy explained. ‘I think Godsend folk are welcome, but of course we’re always in Blackpool when it’s going on, so we haven’t seen it.’

  ‘We’ve heard about it, though,’ Freda said. ‘There’s play-acting, morris dancing and a special free hot toddy called wassail. I’d quite like to go, but I prefer the entertainments they lay on in the hotel in Blackpool.’

  The Auld Christmas was an ancient and cosy pub, with an open fire scenting the room with wood smoke and fir cones. Lillian was loudly flirting with an elderly gentleman who was seated in a chair pulled up close to the hearth.