A Christmas Cracker

by Trisha Ashley

  Phil, his burly form tightly encased in scuffed, studded and zippered leather, was at the bar lining up the drinks – they seemed to have a system of taking it in turns to buy a round. When he asked me what my poison was, I asked for a half-pint of Guinness, because I thought I might need something sustaining to get me up that hill – and said I’d get the next round in. I hoped my purse could stand it, after that taxi out to Godsend the other night, but luckily I’d found a ten-pound note tucked into the inner pocket of my rucksack from the last time I’d used it.

  Phil had reserved a table and benches for us by laying his and Lillian’s helmets and gauntlets along them, which was just as well, because the pub was filling up fast.

  ‘That’s old Nick Dagger Lillian’s flirting with,’ Joy told me primly. ‘She’ll flirt with anything male, that one. Nick’s son runs the pub now with his wife, Nancy.’

  I only caught a brief glimpse of Nancy, because she was in the kitchen producing wonderful plate-sized Yorkshire puddings, filled with vegetables, roast beef and gravy. No wonder the place was popular!

  Job, in his plummy, sepulchral voice, told me that most of the customers were locals. ‘That’s why there are so many oldies, like us: they live a long time up here, what with the clean air and Nancy’s cooking.’

  When we’d demolished the food (my appetite had returned with a vengeance) and I’d ordered another round of drinks, Bradley got out a battered wooden box of dominoes and we settled down to a game, though I told them I hadn’t played it since I was a little girl and matched ladybirds and butterflies on giant cards, rather than spots on wood.

  They obviously took the game seriously, because there was much concentrated slapping down of tiles and bickering. After the first game, Bradley went to buy in another round (I was on to lemonade by now, not wanting to stagger up Snowehill) and as he was at the bar, a slight, dark, handsome man of around my own age came in. He was carrying two bottles of sherry. It seemed an unlikely choice.

  ‘That’s Guy Martland. He must have been buying sherry in the snug to take up to Old Place,’ Lillian told me, following the direction of my gaze. ‘He’s the younger brother of Jude, who’s the head of the family now. They had a bit of a falling-out a couple of years ago but they seem to have made it up and he sometimes comes back from London for weekends.’

  ‘He’s got one of those huge Chelsea tractors,’ Freda put in. ‘I don’t know why townies think they need to clog the streets up with those.’

  Guy, catching my eye, smiled at me and I blushed at having been caught staring. He said something to Bradley then, leaving his sherry on the bar, helped him carry some of the freshly refilled glasses over.

  ‘Hi, everyone – but especially the luscious Lillian,’ he said, with a wink at her. ‘And here’s another lovely face that I don’t know.’

  ‘This is Mrs Marwood’s new personal assistant,’ Job said. ‘Tabitha Coombs – Guy Martland.’

  ‘Delighted to meet you,’ he said with a winning smile. ‘I wish I could stay and get to know you better, but I’ve been dispatched on an emergency mission to get sherry for the Ancient Ones up at Old Place. Apparently, the food will turn to dust and ashes in their mouths without it. Still, I’ll hope to see more of you in future,’ he added, and sauntered off to collect his sherry.

  I seemed to have a thing about handsome, slightly built men not much taller than me, so he was very much my type, and I have to say I was a bit flattered by his evident interest. But even if I’d been in the market for a new love interest, which I most definitely wasn’t, there had been just a hint of the slick and untrustworthy about him …

  Lillian, who appeared to be much more experienced in such matters, confirmed my opinion. ‘He’s a smooth operator, that one,’ she murmured admiringly.

  ‘So are snakes,’ I said, and she laughed.

  Time flew by and I set out for Snowehill very much later than I’d intended, though the sun seemed amazingly bright after the gloomy pub.

  I walked across the green and past the village shop with its attached, closed Merry Kettle tearoom, which Freda had told me opened from Easter to late autumn. I remembered once stopping the car so we could admire the small, ancient church and the quaint row of almshouses …

  But standing dreaming of the past wouldn’t get me up the hill, so I crossed the hump-backed bridge and followed the familiar, narrow, single-track lane signposted to Snowehill and Great Mumming.

  It was a steep, but pleasant, walk and I didn’t see another soul, unless you counted the birds and occasional small, brown rabbit. I passed the gate to Old Place and remembered Mercy telling me her old friends Noël and Tilda Martland lived in the lodge just inside it. There was no sign of life: I expect they were part of the lunch party up at the big house.

  Further along the road was a parking area near the track that led up to the beacon and there were one or two cars there.

  I leaned on the stile and took a picture on my phone of the distant small tower, with its pointy roof like a witch’s hat. There was movement in the gorse below it, but more sheep than people – in fact, I think the only visitors to the place were the ones that passed me heading down as I was climbing up.

  You could climb steps up onto a square stone viewing platform where, on a clear day, you could see the next beacon hills in the distance.

  The last time I’d brought Mum here she’d been in her wheelchair and we hadn’t expected to be able to get further than the car park. But a local farmer was offering rides to the summit in a tractor-drawn trailer and he’d picked her up and put her in without a moment’s hesitation, while I folded the chair and followed. He made her laugh, too, by saying she was a bonny lass, and left us up at the top with a promise to take us back down again in an hour, which he had.

  It was a happy memory, so I don’t know why it made me cry …

  After a little while I got my act together and sat on the steps to drink my flask of not terribly hot coffee. Then I did some sketches before packing everything up and wandering down to the red horse that was carved from the sandstone below. It was a bit untidy and in need of an edge cut, which I expect they did a couple of times a year, or it would lose its shape. I wondered, as I had before, if it was really ancient or relatively new.

  As I stood in the horse’s ear looking down towards Little Mumming, I could see a large house, which I now knew to be Old Place, with the white shape of a real pony in the paddock.

  I was just thinking it looked a bit like a toy farm play-set when my phone burst into noisy life, startling me.

  ‘When you said in yesterday’s email that you were going to walk up a hill, I thought I’d just try your phone and see if it worked,’ Emma explained. ‘I got distracted, though, so it’s later than I intended and I thought you might have gone home.’

  ‘No, I’m still at the top of the hill, because I went to the pub first with some of the cracker factory workers and it made me late setting out …’

  Suddenly I noticed the long shadows and checked my watch. ‘Look at the time! It’s just as well you did ring me, because it’s nearly six – I must have been up here for hours!’

  ‘It’s easy to lose track of the time and I expect you were thinking of your mum,’ she said sympathetically, since she’d known why I was there today.

  ‘I was, but in a good way,’ I said. Still talking, I began to take a shortcut from the horse across the rough ground towards the track. ‘Mercy will have been wondering where I’ve got to, because dinner’s usually about seven – and so is my curfew!’

  ‘Oh God, I’d forgotten about that!’ she exclaimed. ‘Can you get back in time?’

  ‘I think so, because it’s all downhill. If I walk quickly I should make it easily,’ I began – and then the phone flew from my grasp as my right foot was swallowed by a hidden rabbit hole, wrenching my ankle.

  ‘Yow!’ I exclaimed, subsiding onto the grass, while the mobile quacked urgently next to me.

  When I finally picked it up Emma was shouting
, ‘Tabby? Are you there? What’s happened? Speak to me!’

  ‘I fell down a huge rabbit hole, like Alice, but not quite as far,’ I said. ‘My ankle feels a bit painful, so I think I’ve wrenched it slightly.’ I tried standing up and putting some weight on it. ‘Oof! Sore, but nothing broken.’

  ‘Is there anyone about? How remote are you?’ she demanded. ‘Shall I get help?’

  ‘It’s not that remote – I’m nearly back on the road already – and I can see a farm and a house from here,’ I assured her. ‘Anyway, I can already hobble and I’m sure my ankle will ease up as I go. I’d better get on with it, or I’ll be late back and get banged up in prison again.’

  I assured her I’d let her know when I was back at Mote Farm, then switched off the phone and stowed it in my pocket, before making my painful progress back over the stile and down the narrow lane.

  Luckily, after a bit, I found a sturdy branch to use as a walking stick, but it was still slow work and time was ticking inexorably on. When I stopped for a rest just past the drive to Old Place, wondering if I should call Mercy while my mobile still had a signal and beg her to come in the car and rescue me, I heard the welcome sound of an engine behind me.

  I turned round waving my arms and a monstrous four-wheel-drive truck stopped right beside me, with a squeal of brakes.

  ‘I thought it was you,’ said Guy Martland, winding his window down and smiling dazzlingly at me. His teeth had been polished so white, they looked radioactive. ‘Going my way?’

  ‘… So then Guy helped me into his car and brought me all the way home. He was on his way back to London, so that was lucky,’ I told Emma, when I called later to tell her I was safe. ‘Though when I first got in, he kept insisting we call back at the pub on the way so I could have a stiff drink for the shock. I had to explain about the tag and curfew before he got the message it was urgent I was back before seven.’

  ‘Was he surprised?’

  ‘Not really – in fact, he seemed to think it was funny! But he was very kind really,’ I added. ‘He helped me into the house when we got back and then Mercy invited him to stay for dinner.’

  ‘So you had a chance to get to know your rescuing hero better?’

  ‘No, because although I think he wanted to stay, his aunt Becca was already there and she told him he’d do much better to get off to London. She’s going to bring me some horse liniment tomorrow, for my fetlock,’ I added.

  ‘Neigh, never!’ whinnied Emma, and I groaned. ‘How is your ankle feeling now?’

  ‘OK. As soon as Guy had gone, Mercy put an elastic bandage on it and it barely twinges,’ I assured her. ‘It was only a little sprain. I’d have phoned you earlier, but by the time Guy had gone and Mercy had done her first-aid bit, dinner was ready. The others are all drinking tea in the drawing room and I’ll have to go back in a minute, because they’re going to teach me how to play mah-jong. There seems to be a local passion for it.’

  ‘It sounds as if you might be developing a local passion of your own,’ Emma suggested.

  ‘Not if you mean Guy Martland. Lillian and even his aunt Becca have warned me that he’s the black sheep of the family, and I can take a hint.’

  ‘Now he sounds even more exciting,’ she said, laughing.

  ‘I think learning to play mah-jong is all the excitement I can cope with these days,’ I said, and went off to sedately sip tea and have the game’s arcane mysteries explained.

  Chapter 17: Reanimated

  Randal

  Lacey knew I was in line to inherit the family home and business eventually, but I hadn’t wanted to tell her about my future plans for the mill until I’d had some feedback from Mercy.

  But now that Mercy had emailed, sounding really eager to discuss it all with me when I made my flying visit the following week, this seemed to be the right moment.

  We were heading for her favourite nightclub. I wasn’t a great one for clubs, but she was younger than me and liked the lively atmosphere, so I went along with it.

  ‘I’ve hardly seen anything of you since we got engaged,’ she complained, ‘and you’re off again at the end of next week! I could have come to Greece with you – I’ve never been there; it might have been fun.’

  ‘I was there for work, not a holiday,’ I pointed out. ‘You wouldn’t have liked to stay in any of the places I did, either. But never mind, we can go somewhere exotic together after I’ve stopped working for Hellish Holidays – maybe for our honeymoon?’

  I put my arm around her and she turned a startled, beautiful face up to me.

  ‘You’re going to leave your job?’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I hope so, because these last few months I’ve literally had a bellyful of it and it’s definitely time to settle down and do something different.’

  ‘Like what?’ she demanded. ‘Unless you’ve had another TV offer – perhaps presenting your own programme?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. I mean, I’m not really a TV front man, as you know, just an undercover researcher. The most you ever see of me is when I’m talking to my own camera in a gloomy hotel room.’

  She looked disappointed. ‘People still recognise you from the programme anyway, and I don’t think you should give your job up. You just need a break. You never really had time to recover from that terrible bug you picked up on the cruise before they sent you off again.’

  ‘True, and that was the last straw. It used to be fun when I was younger, travelling about the world looking into death-trap nightclubs, dodgy tourist trips and unsanitary hotels, but the novelty has definitely worn off. And anyway, now we’re getting married I want to settle down and do something else – maybe something we could both get involved in.’

  ‘Like what?’ she demanded. ‘I mean, I’ve already got my own business and it’s going from strength to strength. I’ve just added “Fifty Shades of Bondage” to my Instant Orgy range and it’s very popular.’

  ‘I know you’re making a big success of it,’ I said, thinking how beautiful she was – and how matter-of-fact and businesslike about what she did for a living. Come to that, she was matter-of-fact and businesslike about me, too …

  I’d understood when Lacey had played hard to get at first, because so many men had seen her as the embodiment of the sex fantasies her parents peddled in their All Thrills shops, as if she’d been a doll created for their amusement. But even after we were engaged, she still seemed to tolerate my gestures of affection rather than welcome them, so I was starting to think either she was uninterested in sex from anything but a business point of view … or that I was a really unexciting lover.

  In fact, now I came to think of it, the only time she’d spontaneously embraced me with enthusiasm was after I let her choose her own huge, flashy, engagement ring …

  She shrugged off my arm, but instead took my hand and looked up at me with her delightful, transforming smile. ‘So, what is this new job you’ve been offered? Is it exciting?’

  ‘It’s more a case of creating my own job,’ I explained. ‘You know that one day I’ll inherit the family home and business in Lancashire?’

  She nodded. ‘Your aunt lives there now, but when she’s dead, you get it.’

  ‘Succinctly put,’ I said. ‘I’ll take you to meet Aunt Mercy after the next assignment, because next week I’m going to dash up there for one night, to discuss the plans and get the ball rolling.’

  ‘Plans? I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You remember I explained that Mote Farm wasn’t entailed and though my uncle told Mercy that he’d like it to come to me eventually, he left her everything outright?’

  ‘Yes, but you said she encouraged you to see the place as your home and you were sure she’d do what your uncle wanted.’

  ‘Yes, but while she’s alive, she still has control of everything, including the old mill, where they make Christmas crackers – unless I can persuade her otherwise. I’d like to redevelop the site as a tourist venue, with attractions like craft wo
rkers, shops and a café. I’d put some of my own money into it and become manager.’

  ‘If you invest your own money in the place, then you ought to be a director of the company,’ she said shrewdly.

  ‘That’s one of the things I need to discuss. I do already have a few non-voting shares in the cracker factory part of it, and get a dividend … or I did when it made a profit, which it hasn’t done for a long time.’

  We’d arrived at the club by now and, since it was still early and quiet, we took our drinks to a table and I expanded on my plans for shutting down the cracker factory and developing the rest of the buildings.

  ‘That could work,’ Lacey conceded, her business head on. ‘Cut your losses with the crackers, retire the old employees, and replace the unit with something more profitable.’

  ‘If Mercy goes for the idea, and she sounds keen to discuss it. If she does, then I’ll hand in my resignation as soon as I’ve finished the current series and the one-off Gap Year Hells programme, so I can oversee the project full time.’

  She frowned. ‘You mean … you’d be living up there?’

  ‘Of course – after we’re married we both would be. Mote Farm isn’t a huge stately home, but it’s certainly big enough for all of us to share – and our children, when they come along. I probably wouldn’t be able to take a salary from it till next year, but—’

  ‘Live in Lancashire?’ she said, as though I’d invited her to share a yurt in Outer Mongolia. ‘I mean, I thought we’d spend weekends there but not move there permanently!’

  I smiled. ‘Don’t sound so horrified: I don’t think you’ve ever been further north than the Cotswolds, but there’s some lovely countryside up there and if you missed the bright lights, we’d still be near big cities, like Liverpool and Manchester.’

  Lacey’s huge blue eyes gazed at me blankly. ‘Country houses are all right for weekends and holidays,’ she said finally, ‘but I’m a London girl at heart and my business is based here.’