‘Tell me you got rid of him,’ said Luke.
‘Oh yes, he was first to go.’
‘Let me guess that there weren’t any women in senior positions.’
‘No.’
Jack thought it best not to elaborate on his father’s attitude to women, it felt disloyal to his memory. He remembered then his father describing Mary as being ‘surprisingly good at her job for a silly young thing’. Just because she was a woman under thirty, she was automatically dizzy. And just because people like the company chauffeur Fred were men, they were robotically to be respected. Mary was the best at what she did and Fred was a lazy old goat, but his father would have refused to see that.
‘Men were good, women were bad. That was the prism through which my dad saw the world.’ Jack hadn’t realised he’d spoken that aloud until Luke answered him.
‘That’s not how you think about them though, surely?’
‘Dad had a bad divorce. He used to call women “bullets in make-up”.’
‘Ooh, that’s bitter.’
‘And no, to answer your question. That’s not how I think about all men and all women.’
Luke grinned at him. ‘You must be the most eligible bachelor in town. I bet women are all over you like a heat rash.’
‘Do you know what, Luke? I think I’m…’ Jack waved the rest of the sentence away.
‘What?’ prompted Luke. ‘You can’t stop there, I’m intrigued.’
‘What I was going to say is pathetic.’ Jack sliced down hard on the cucumber.
‘Let me be the judge of that.’
Jack blew the air out of his cheeks. ‘Okay’ – here goes – ‘I think I’m slightly scared of women. There.’ It was too easy to talk to this man while they were making vegetarian stuffed pitta breads. He hadn’t even discussed this with his old friends.
Luke hooted. ‘Join the club, mate.’ Then he curbed his laughter, respecting Jack’s confession. ‘Okay, I’ll kill the flippancy. Why?’
Jack hunted around in his brain for a starting point. ‘Dad was very much a man’s man, didn’t want his wife going out to work, wanted his tea on the table when he got in, shirts ironed, that sort of thing. He couldn’t understand how my mother could be completely bored of being trapped in a six-bedroomed domestic box with a swimming pool, even less that she saw fit to disobey him, got a part-time job… and then ended up leaving him for someone she met there. Dad was justifiably upset, in fact I’d go so far as to say that it warped him. It didn’t help that Mum never fought for me, that played right into his hands. It was too easy to believe Dad’s diatribes that women were terrible creatures.’
‘Right.’ Luke mused. ‘So… you pick women who don’t last long, women you can’t fall in love with. Women who don’t possess the power to hurt you, how am I doing so far?’
Jack’s jaw fell open. It was as if this man grilling pitta breads had seen into his soul. Luke seemed amused by his expression.
‘Thought so. Jack, mate, piece of advice: you’re doomed if you don’t break your pattern of picking women you don’t really fancy that much but think you should. What’s the point in having all the trappings of success if you have no one to share them with?’
‘I know,’ said Jack. ‘I hate going home to a big echoey house every night. I see my friends and what they have: wives, children, laid-back houses, sensible cars and smiles on their faces and I want it so much but… there’s a barbed wire fence between their world and mine.’
‘No there isn’t,’ Luke refuted. ‘Your brain has imagined it there to give you the illusion that it can’t be yours, the excuse. But it can, trust me. You just need to do what you’ve done with your business and step out of your comfort zone or you’ll be running around in it in small circles for the rest of your life.’
Jack let Luke’s words sink in. Could it really be that simple?
‘You’re very wise,’ he said.
‘I’ve made a lot of mistakes. People who have and who’ve learned from them usually are quite savvy.’ Luke left it a beat before continuing. ‘Mary’s lovely.’ It was written all over the woman’s face in emotional Sharpie what she thought about her boss. Jack must be blind if he didn’t see it.
‘Yes, she’s…’ Jack was going to say efficient again, ‘…awfully good at her job.’
‘Oh, Jack, get over yourself. She’s also a woman. You should take off your office glasses and see her as a man would.’ Luke put the second batch of pitta breads under the grill.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. As I told you before, she sees me as her boss. I’ve never given her the slightest bit of encouragement to think otherwise either,’ said Jack, dismissing the notion outright.
‘I can well believe that,’ said Luke, turning his attention back to making lunch.
* * *
Everyone was ready for something to eat by the time they brought it through. The six of them sat at the long table, passing around dishes of the various ingredients and, simple fare as it was, it felt like the best kind of banquet. The lounge had been fully warmed up by the fire, which cast a cosy orange glow into the room in stark contrast to the bluey-white snowy exterior beyond the stone inn walls.
Radio Brian gave out a grim warning of ceaseless snow for the next twenty-four hours at least. No one would be home or in a luxury Scottish hotel for Christmas Day.
‘So looks like we’re all going to be lumped here together tomorrow,’ Charlie said with considerable glee. ‘We should prepare.’
‘Prepare?’ asked Jack. ‘Whatever do you mean, Charlie?’
‘Celebrations,’ explained Charlie. ‘We have to make merry for Christmas Day of course.’ He bobbed his head towards Mary. ‘As the Norwegians would do, by making the best of our situation.’
‘Precisely,’ Mary added to that. Playing draughts with Charlie had salved her injured feelings no end. ‘We should cook a Christmas dinner. There’s plenty of ingredients in the larder for it and they’ll probably be wasted otherwise. We’d be doing the landlord a favour.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Luke, high-fiving Mary for her altruism.
‘I was hoping to have mine cooked for me by a Michelin-starred Scottish chef,’ said Robin in a grumbly voice. ‘But, as the Norwegians would’ – he also gestured towards Mary – ‘I will embrace the alternative with gusto.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ said Charlie.
‘Let’s do a Secret Santa,’ suggested Luke, clapping his hands together with childish glee. ‘We’ll each go on a hunt around the inn and find something to wrap up for someone else. We don’t have to keep it and get arrested for stealing when the owner comes back. It’s all about the opening anyway.’
‘Sounds good,’ said Bridge. She got up from her seat and tore a page from Mary’s notebook on the bar. She ripped it up into six, wrote their names on the pieces, folded them and put them in a dimpled beer glass.
‘Right,’ she said, returning to the table, ‘pick a name out of the hat. If you pick your own, put it back and pick another. We’ll carry on until everyone has someone else’s name. Don’t say who you’ve got, it’s secret.’
It took three attempts but eventually they all had a piece of paper that didn’t bear their own name.
‘We should each put one of our socks in front of the fireplace to fill,’ said Mary, as the idea came to her.
‘Ooh, I like that,’ said Robin, standing to collect the plates. Bridge started to help him.
‘Who’s for a coffee and a mince pie?’ asked Robin.
‘Oh, why not,’ said Charlie. ‘And see if you can find some brandy butter while you’re in there.’
‘Cholesterol!’ barked Robin, and Charlie chuckled.
‘I’m going to decorate the tree this afternoon,’ said Mary. ‘And make some paper chains, that’ll pass some time.’
‘I’ll do the chains while you do the tree,’ Bridge threw over her shoulder as she headed to the kitchen to help Robin.
‘Jack and I will get some more logs after we’ve finish
ed eating,’ said Luke. A mini video hijacked his brain: he and Bridge with two carrier bags going into the park to collect snapped-off branches for kindling and any stray logs. The park keeper was a bit keen so they had to hide behind trees when he was patrolling, trying not to giggle. They’d been so very much in love, he couldn’t get enough of her. She was mad and exciting and loving and damaged and he wanted to mend her. He wondered if he had now, after damaging her more first.
Bridge brought in a big jug of coffee and Robin a plate of warmed mince pies, a bowl of brandy butter and one of rum cream. Robin opened his mouth to remonstrate as Charlie loaded his pie with a huge blob of the butter, closed it again, let him be.
‘If this is the start of a nuclear winter and we are discovered by scientists years later, they will wonder why our skeletons are so fat,’ said Luke, through buttery crumbs of pastry, which made them all laugh.
‘You can’t have a fat skeleton, idiot,’ said Bridge.
‘I bet you can if you eat like this for a while,’ Luke argued.
‘I can’t see this clearing for days, can you?’ said Robin with a sigh. ‘I do hope the travel insurance company don’t class this as an act of God and refuse to pay up. I shall tell them that I’m an atheist and see how they like them apples.’
‘Are you?’ Bridge asked him. ‘I wouldn’t have had you down as a non-believer.’
‘If it means I’ll get our money back for the hotel in Aviemore, I’ll say I’m a Jedi Knight,’ said Robin. His voice softened then. ‘I’m a good Catholic boy. Well, a bad one actually. Lapsed – very lapsed in fact. But I do know going to church is no guarantee of being a good person. I think it’s far too late for me to go back to it properly. If I went into a confessional booth to catch up with all my undisclosed sins, I’d not come out for a year.’
‘I don’t believe that for a second,’ said Bridge.
‘What about you, Charlie?’ asked Luke. ‘You a believer?’
‘I am,’ said Charlie, already on his second mince pie. ‘Plus I want to believe in a heaven after all this. It would be a shame for the things we have learned and the connections we have made to be for nothing in the end. I just hope I’m following the right god, that’s all. The one with the kind face and nice beard. What do the Norwegians say about the afterlife, Mary?’
‘Oh, they’re big believers in the afterlife,’ she answered.
‘I’m a dyed-in-the-wool atheist myself,’ said Luke. ‘I think afterwards is the same as what we had before – the wheel turns and we come back to nothing, oblivion. In saying that, it would be good to be proved wrong. I think as humans, we’ve over-evolved, made it too complicated for ourselves by not accepting we simply stop and that’s it. All we can be sure of is the here and now.’
‘How cheerful,’ said Bridge, deadpan.
Charlie was drinking every word in though. ‘That’s… insightful, Luke.’
‘If I’m wrong, then I have no fear of a god on judgement day,’ said Luke. ‘Just because I don’t believe, that doesn’t mean I don’t have a pronounced sense of right and wrong. You don’t need a god to tell you that you should look out for your fellow man.’
He expected Bridge to chirp up again, but she didn’t.
‘Not sure what I believe either,’ put in Jack. ‘If I could have a sign, that might help any faith issues.’
‘Faith is having a belief without the need for proof, though,’ said Mary.
‘You have such a wise head on your young shoulders,’ said Charlie. ‘I wish I was part-Norwegian.’
‘I believe in God too. I don’t go to church or push my faith down any unwilling throats, but I say my prayers at night before I go to sleep,’ said Mary.
‘Are they ever answered?’ asked Bridge.
‘Some,’ she replied, and the way in which she said the word told that she had no plans to elaborate.
Mary had prayed very hard for God not to let her dad suffer at the end of his life and he hadn’t. She’d asked God to please make the six wives of Henry VIII turn up on her A-level history exam paper because she knew everything about them, and it had. She’d asked God to please let Jack Butterly somehow find out that she fancied him, no more, because she wanted him to do all the work if he fancied her back. That prayer remained unmet. She’d also prayed for guidance before she set off on this trip with him and – oh boy – he’d really answered that one.
Chapter 14
Wearing Charlie and Robin’s wellingtons, padded gloves and snow coats, Jack and Luke ventured outside to bring in some logs. The wind was howling, tossing the snowflakes up in the air as if juggling with them. At this rate the inn would be buried in days.
Across from them, the unoccupied buildings of Figgy Hollow looked chocolate-box pretty under a felting of snow. In summer, this must be such a picturesque and tranquil place to stay, thought Luke. He’d like to bring Carmen here one day, maybe even hire one of the cottages for the weekend.
The wood store was packed solid with logs, chopped up in readiness, bigger ones on the left, thinner ones for kindling on the right. There were some hessian sacks and a bank of newspapers tucked in the driest corner, dated from years ago, the headlines seeming to be from another age: Tony Blair Wins Labour Leadership Bid. Mandela Becomes First Black President of South Africa. Madonna Tells Letterman to ‘Smell my Pants’.
‘Well, that’s a mix of news,’ said Jack. He flicked through one, for amusement purposes and read aloud: ‘Why the New American Series Friends is Doomed to Fail, by TV Tim.’
‘Wonder why I haven’t heard of TV Tim,’ said Luke. ‘It’s a shame to burn these papers, it’ll be like burning history books. Look: Channel Tunnel Finally Opens.’
‘Stolen Masterpiece The Scream Recovered.’
‘Britain’s First National Lottery Rollover Winner Nets £17.9 Million.’
‘The World Welcomes Genetically Engineered Tomatoes.’
The raging gale rattled at the shed walls as if to remind them why they were there. They stopped reading and filled up four enormous sacks with wood and papers. As they dragged them from the log store, the wind pushed at them from behind as if hurrying them back to the sanctuary that the inn afforded.
* * *
Charlie passed a crystal angel up to Mary who was standing on a stool to reach the higher branches of the tree. He didn’t ask but he wondered what had happened in the cellar between them when she and Jack were looking for games, for it was a different Mary who had returned to the one who went down the steps. She had been almost fully restored after their cheerful game of draughts and a nice lunch. Almost but not quite.
Charlie was very intuitive and he was rarely wrong in his summings-up. If ever there was a woman more like a real-life Anne Elliot than young Mary, he was yet to meet her. So proper and capable and far too lovely to sit on a shelf waiting for her Captain Wentworth while her bloom faded. He fancied her heart had already been set on someone, a heart that would not settle for second best, so it waited for love to be requited, love she had for Jack, her boss, because there was a light that turned on in her eyes when he was in her physical orbit.
He liked these people in his present world far more than the short time they had been together should have allowed. Bridge: he wasn’t sure about her at first, but yes – she was a soft kernel fiercely protected by her case of hard nut. Luke: a darling fizz of a man who had completed a long journey. But it was Jack who intrigued him most. He seemed off-kilter with the world, as if he didn’t quite understand it, but wanted to. Maybe that’s why he was such a good businessman, because he devoted his time to where he was best placed. But that didn’t necessarily make him a happy man, or one that could see the fruits for the taking in front of his eyes, because those eyes were too focused on attaining the illusion of the horizon. A fruit in the guise of the so proper and so very capable Mary.
‘There’s an empty branch for the angel, my dear,’ Charlie pointed out.
‘Yes, Charlie, but we have one nearby. I need a robin there, I think.
’
‘Someone call?’ said Robin, scooping out some ash from under the fire and putting it in a metal bucket to cool.
‘Get back to the housework,’ said Charlie.
‘Are you intending to sit on top of the tree yourself or is there a prettier big fairy in the box?’
Charlie gestured towards him while addressing Mary.
‘Do you see what I have to put up with?’
Mary chuckled. She was well on the way to adoring Robin and Charlie. That they cared for each other deeply was clear as the crystal angel she was about to add to the tree.
All eyes then turned to the opening door. Jack walked in dragging sacks like a bright orange Father Christmas, Luke in his wake.
‘Good God,’ said Bridge, feeling the blast of cold air from outside as she sat at a table constructing a paper chain.
‘Oh, Bridge, we’re old friends, just call me Luke,’ he said, which Bridge ignored.
Jack’s eyes fell on Mary standing on the stool, decorating the Christmas tree, taking care to do it properly, he had no doubt. But then that was Mary all over. Whatever she did was right, even down to the coffees she brought him in. Never a spill in the saucer. She made a capable job of everything. No one so proper, so capable… so Charlie had said about that woman in the Jane Austen book.
‘Good to be home, it’s bad out there,’ said Luke. And a part of him genuinely did feel that relieved to be back in the inn. He only hoped that Carmen was okay in the bosom of her family and that there was nothing for him to worry about. He hadn’t been away from her for as long as this before and he was feeling their separation keenly. Especially now.
I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day Page 11