A Winterfold Christmas

by Harriet Evans

  “He does love beef, it’s true. As long as it doesn’t have a jus. Jim finds it extremely funny that he always has a jus with everything. ‘All I want’s a bloody shepherd’s pie,’ he said to me last time. And that’s Jim. He never complains.”

  “Oh, the jus—the juices. Tell me about it, I’m sick of them,” said Lucy, entering into this with gusto. “Gosh, we are awful.”

  “We are. Just one more thing and then I’ll stop,” said Florence guiltily. “I wish he wouldn’t overload the circuits. The electrics are terrible there, but he never uses the Aga, always wants everything done in a flash. He’s always boiling the kettle, and you know how much electricity that uses. When we were down the other weekend there were sparks flashing out of the socket.” She blinked. “But anyway, I’m sure it’ll be lovely.”

  “Oh, me too.”

  They smiled at each other.

  “I hope Orlando’ll be okay on his own,” said Lucy after a while.

  “He will,” said Florence. “But we won’t, if you’re not there. You’re the one who loves Christmas more than anyone else in this family. It’ll be awful without you, Lucy darling. We won’t have your dad this year. Bill said they’ll be here next year, so for the moment you have to represent your side of the family. Listen, I have a very important question. Have you wrapped your presents yet?”

  Lucy smiled, and Florence thought she was trying not to cry. She reached across and squeezed her aunt’s hand. “No, not yet.”

  “But it’s December! I thought you were Little Miss Christmas.”

  “I don’t do them till the Sunday before Christmas,” said Lucy, suddenly serious. “It’s part of my Christmas routine.”

  “How could I forget this?” said Florence as the waiter brought some little shot glasses and put them down on the table with a grim flourish.

  “On the house,” he said. “Rum.”

  “When in Rome, drink rum,” said Lucy, clinking her glass against Florence’s. “Oh, I love rum. Thank you, Flo. A family Christmas, and you with your Christmas lecture. It’s lovely to see you.”

  “Here’s to you, darling Luce. And your wrapping, and Orlando, and everything.”

  “No, no,” said Lucy, and she smiled. “Here’s to you, more like.”

  “No, no. Not to either of us. Here’s to Joe,” said Florence. “Good luck, Joe.”

  “To Joe,” they chorused together, smiling at each other in the gloom of the restaurant.

  Florence’s Favorite Christmas Reading

  The best sitting-room at Manor Farm was a good, long, dark-panelled room with a high chimney-piece, and a capacious chimney, up which you could have driven one of the new patent cabs, wheels and all. At the upper end of the room, seated in a shady bower of holly and evergreens, were the two best fiddlers, and the only harp, in all Muggleton. In all sorts of recesses, and on all kinds of brackets, stood massive old silver candlesticks with four branches each. The carpet was up, the candles burnt bright, the fire blazed and crackled on the hearth, and merry voices and light-hearted laughter rang through the room. If any of the old English yeomen had turned into fairies when they died, it was just the place in which they would have held their revels.

  If anything could have added to the interest of this agreeable scene, it would have been the remarkable fact of Mr. Pickwick’s appearing without his gaiters, for the first time within the memory of his oldest friends.

  “You mean to dance?” said Wardle.

  “Of course I do,” replied Mr. Pickwick. “Don’t you see I am dressed for the purpose?” Mr. Pickwick called attention to his speckled silk stockings, and smartly tied pumps.

  “You in silk stockings!” exclaimed Mr. Tupman jocosely.

  “And why not, sir—why not?” said Mr. Pickwick, turning warmly upon him.

  “Oh, of course there is no reason why you shouldn’t wear them,” responded Mr. Tupman.

  “I imagine not, sir—I imagine not,” said Mr. Pickwick in a very peremptory tone.

  Mr. Tupman had contemplated a laugh, but he found it was a serious matter; so he looked grave, and said they were a pretty pattern.

  “I hope they are,” said Mr. Pickwick, fixing his eyes upon his friend. “You see nothing extraordinary in the stockings, as stockings, I trust, sir?”

  “Certainly not. Oh, certainly not,” replied Mr. Tupman. He walked away; and Mr. Pickwick’s countenance resumed its customary benign expression.

  —From Chapter XXVIII, “A Good-Humoured Christmas Chapter,” from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens.

  Martha

  December 20

  Martha flung down her book and stared wrathfully at nothing. From the kitchen—her kitchen—came the sound of Joe, cursing loudly about something.

  She had been sitting inside all day, in the sitting room, too hot with the fire burning constantly, fidgeting because she had nothing to do. And Martha wasn’t good at being idle, listening to someone else busy in her kitchen, with Cat hurrying around him, occasionally popping her head in on her grandmother to ask, “You all right, Gran? Another cup of tea?”

  It should have been her feeding the pudding, rolling out the pastry for the mince pies, humming carols. It should have been her slicing the limes for the evening gin and tonic and opening the larder door, musing over the treasures contained therein like a dormouse, preparing for harvest. She loved the cool of the larder, stuffed full of vegetables like Harvest Festival, loved calling out for willing hands to chop and peel.

  Martha chastised herself, and shifted on the hard sofa. Why did she mind so much? Joe did most of the cooking these days. Or they hodgepodged for themselves. She was up earlier and went to bed later than ever, Cat was in and out of the house all day with the wildflower business she was setting up, Joe’s shifts were variable, and they took it in turns to feed Luke and Jamie—when he was here. It was rare that they sat down all together. But when they did, mostly she and Joe shared the cooking, and it was absolutely fine. Why now, why this? Why was she so angry about being stuck here, sweltering and idle, with a stupid book about some old biddy who’d moved to the Cornish coast for her retirement and set to solving crimes. They kept offering her cups of stupid tea. She didn’t want tea, she wanted . . . Martha bit her lip.

  No. You said he could do it. They aren’t to know, are they?

  A timid knock came at the door.

  “Gran . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you want another cup of tea?”

  “No thanks, Cat.”

  “Joe says the preserving pan isn’t big enough for the potatoes.”

  “I’ve always found it big enough.”

  Cat edged inside. “Oh, it’s so cozy in here. You look very comfortable.” She glanced awkwardly at her grandmother. “Do you have something larger?”

  “No. As I say, I usually cooked for eight to ten and it was absolutely fine.”

  “But Joe says—”

  It was the final straw. “I’m off to the village,” said Martha, standing up and kicking the book under an armchair. “I’m going to buy some limes.”

  “Limes?” said Cat, bewildered. “But, Gran, it’s really cold outside. What do you need limes for?”

  “Gin and tonic,” said Martha. “I want a bloody drink, not these tepid cups of dishwater.” The thrill of her own fury made her somehow even angrier. “And I hope it is cold. I hope it’s bloody freezing. Anything’s better than sitting here in this . . . in this . . . in this stupid waiting room, hanging around to die!”

  She picked up her coat from the cloakroom and slammed the front door behind her.

  Cat opened it, calling out to her grandmother. “Gran! What’s wrong?”

  “Leave me alone!”

  Martha stumbled out of the driveway, down the lane. The very last of the autumn leaves clung to the trees above her: the first time she had met
David, they had arched overhead, a green and gold bower. Now the black branches clattered and shook in the agitated breeze like skeletal fingers as she walked fast, tears blinding her. She was nearly knocked down by a car on the tight bend in the road; in any event, when she reached the little bridge and the meadows below the house that led toward the village, she was crying so hard that she knew she was in no fit state to buy limes, to run the gauntlet of stares in Susan’s shop. That was the trouble with village life: everyone knowing your damn business. And what a business the Winters were for them. What a business they all were.

  Stopping by the bridge and watching the swollen stream as it thundered underneath the road, Martha wiped her nose with a handkerchief, slightly calmer now. She even felt a bit silly. It was stupid, this overreaction, but she knew she was right. They had to listen to her, to understand that this was hard for her! How dare they march in and start behaving as if she were a stupid old lady who knew nothing about catering for the most important family holiday of the year. She was Martha Winter, for God’s sake. She was used to providing for hordes of people: in the old days, before David died, they’d regularly have well over a hundred guests at their Christmas drinks party. Always the same date: the last Sunday before Christmas, after the Nine Lessons and Carols service at the church.

  She allowed herself to think of it, just once. The house ablaze with twinkling lights, bottles of wine and champagne thrust at odd angles outside to chill in the log pile by the front door. The two-foot-high metal pot filled with mulled wine on the Aga, and the kitchen table cleared for once, covered with little squares of smoked salmon canapés. Doors to the dining room wide open, the great mahogany dining table pushed to the side, and in the sitting room a Christmas tree as high as the ceiling next to the French windows, decorated that evening, before the carol service, by Martha and whoever else was around. No damned fire in the huge inglenook fireplace—Martha preferred cool to warmth, and besides, she’d learned long before this afternoon that roaring log fires looked nice, but in a room crammed with people who’d dressed for warmth in an underheated church, they were unnecessary. In years gone by—when Bill, her dear pyromaniac, had been younger and more foolhardy—often there’d be a bonfire, and the younger ones would toast marshmallows and drink covert mulled wine. The grown-ups would see them through the windows, standing outside in the chill, gold-red sparks shooting up from the blaze, silver-white pinpricks of stars studding the midnight-blue sky.

  She’d never really enjoyed those parties that much, that was the funny thing. Always work, work, work and often you were so busy you didn’t get the chance to finish one drink, let alone have a proper chat with anyone. But there’d always be this moment, when she’d look around the packed, overflowing house, hear the raucous laughter, see all these people she loved so happy to be there, and Martha would feel that feeling, the one that drove her on, had driven her since the day she’d met David: This is what I have given up my career and my own dreams for. To bring people together and make them happy. To have a house full of laughter. To have a home.

  And now that was all over. He was gone, and tomorrow was the last Sunday before Christmas—it was tomorrow, and there was no one who knew, no one who understood.

  Most of the time she told herself she was doing rather well. That the hole left by David’s absence was a visible thing. That’s how she saw it, anyway: a great big black hole, waiting to swallow her up if she let it. But she’d learned to spot it when it loomed in front of her, stop and step over it, instead of falling right into it.

  But lately, she couldn’t stop thinking about him. This time of year he’d be singing Dean Martin and Christmas with the Rat Pack, practically on a loop. She sang, she knew it, all the time, but he was a beautiful singer, his light, honeyed voice crooning the old tunes to which they’d dance together in the kitchen when the children were asleep.

  Martha walked on, not quite sure where to go now, sure of only one thing: she couldn’t go back home just yet.

  Grief was like an ocean with unpredictable tides; it came up and hit you without warning. One moment you’d be quite fine, pottering around with Cat in the garden and fussing about the sweet peas, and the next sobbing your heart out in the greenhouse with the door shut, because of the sight of the new trowel he’d bought a week before he died, and how he’d said the handle was tomato red, not any red, tomato red.

  She might have walked past the church, but the memories of the Christmas party had reminded her of the Nine Lessons and Carols service. As she looked up, Martha saw someone hurrying toward St. Francis’s, their arms full of greenery, and she remembered with a start that the service was that evening. How could she have forgotten? She shook her head miserably. She hated this—this—what was it? A mislaying of the old customs and routines that had formerly shaped her year. Things to set your watch to.

  Her left knee twinged with sharp pain as she clambered off the graveled path onto the uneven grass around the church where the headstones were, some of them centuries old, bent backward or listing and covered with lichen. Leaning on one, she caught her breath, and looked down at David’s grave. It was stark, unadorned by curlicues and quotes.

  DAVID WINTER 1930–2012

  “I didn’t bring you anything,” Martha said conversationally. “I should have brought some flowers. No, some holly. Or hellebores—but there aren’t any yet. Michaelmas daisies—the same. I’ll bring you some snowdrops next month. When Christmas is over . . . I’ll be back after Christmas.” She moved closer to David’s grave. “I miss you, darling,” she said softly. “It’s soon. Do you remember it’s just a few days away?”

  She looked around, scratching her nose. What a stupid question to be asking. He’d been dead for two years; what did it matter who remembered what?

  “Do you remember you were so late . . . and the snowdrops? Do you remember the vicar, who asked you if you were sure you wanted to go through with it? He was gay, wasn’t he? He must have been.”

  They’d both known he was, since he’d gone off with David’s friend Ambrose after the small wedding party, held later that evening in a pub on Exmouth Market. It was just her way of comforting herself, repeating stories oft told to each other.

  “Cat’s driving me up the wall,” she said after a pause. “She’s so bossy. And Joe is useless, he’s panicking. I know what he’s doing wrong, and the lights buzzed this afternoon, I’m sure he’s overloading the circuit. I need to sort it out in the New Year—get on with things. . . .” She stared wretchedly at the muddy, blackened winter crabgrass under her feet, and said in a near-whisper, “I don’t want to be here anymore without you, David. I’m sick of it, of all of this. Of feeling like this, of being so angry and mean all the time. It’s not me.” She smiled, as though he’d replied. “Well, it’s not usually this bad. Oh, David. I wish I was—”

  She broke off. There were more footsteps behind her, crunching on the gravel. She shook her head, ashamed of herself for her melodramatics, and her eye caught the porch of the church, newly decorated with winter greenery for the service. Ivy, holly, swaths of gray-green pine, thickly set around the pointed arch of the porch. And then she heard the music—the most gentle, pulsating creak of the organ, the opening chords, the shuffle of movement.

  “I’ll bring you mistletoe, my darling,” she said, and she touched the gravestone gently and backed away, staring at it for a moment. And then, as if in a dream, she walked slowly toward the door of the church and pushed it open as the music swelled. Martha had never admitted it before, but she wasn’t particularly religious. But there in the church, weary, bruised, sad beyond all help, she stood at the back and the music seemed to enter into her, like liquid gold. The hairs on the nape of her neck stood up. She clutched the back of a pew for support.

  In the bleak midwinter,

  Frosty wind made moan.

  Earth stood hard as iron,

  Water like a stone;

  S
now had fallen, snow on snow,

  Snow on snow,

  In the bleak midwinter,

  Long ago.

  At the front stood Colin, the choirmaster, and in a semicircle, the church choir. Only the children were singing, just five of them: Kathy the vicar’s children and three others. At first their voices were soft, childish; and as she stood there watching them, she realized they were beautiful.

  What can I give him,

  Poor as I am?

  If I were a shepherd,

  I would bring a lamb;

  If I were a wise man,

  I would do my part.

  Yet what can I give him,

  Give my heart.

  Give my heart. Martha wiped a tear, arms folded, swaying slightly at the sensation of the sweet, simple music. She hadn’t heard music for so long. The church smelled of old mildew, wax polish, the chalky spiciness of pine. She closed her eyes for a moment, and the tears fell, coursing freely down her cheeks. One of the children—it was Sheila from the pub’s grandson, she thought—looked at her curiously. Martha hurried into a pew and sat down, so that she might carry on just listening, thinking—and crying. The choirmaster tapped his baton and made a few corrections, and they rustled their Carols for Choirs books, turning to the next page.

  “Go and sit down,” Colin told the children. “John will sing next.”

  Up came John—a big, burly man with a beard—and he opened a copy of the Messiah, and the organ struck up again.

  “ ‘Comfort ye . . .’ ” he sang, and Martha found herself shuddering with the effort of not sobbing out loud, for David used to sing this. The Messiah was what they’d listened to every Christmas for years, and this was one of her favorite pieces of music. “ ‘Comfort ye my people.’ ”

  Comfort ye. But I don’t know how to, she wanted to say. I don’t know how to be comforted, or to comfort.

  A soft tap on her shoulder made her turn to her right, and she saw Kathy, the vicar, standing next to her.