Christmas at the Vicarage

by Rebecca Boxall

  The lights were just as captivating as Rosamunde had hoped they’d be, and as they moved slowly along the high street she rubbernecked, taking in all the magical illuminations and pausing now and then to point out a particularly imaginative arrangement.

  ‘You’re so cute,’ Benedict told her. ‘Just like a big kid.’

  ‘Don’t forget, I’ve not had a Christmas at home for fifteen years. I’d forgotten how utterly thrilling the whole lead-up is. Come on, let’s head to the square and see if the carol singers have started.’

  They had indeed, and they were delightful. Benedict bought himself and Rosamunde each a small beaker of mulled wine. They cradled their drinks as they watched the singers, joining in with the well-known carols until Benedict’s off-key voice seemed to perturb Humphrey and he began to howl, making the whole square turn to them and chuckle.

  ‘I’ve told you before about your voice,’ Rosamunde teased as they scurried off with Humphrey, who was now in danger of upstaging the carol singers.

  Next they hit the shops, which were crammed with stressed-looking shoppers who were red-faced from the contrast between the icy afternoon outside and the excessive heating of the stores’ interiors. With Benedict’s help Rosamunde quickly bought the remaining presents she needed and it was just as they were heading back to the car that she had a thought.

  ‘You know what? There’s one person I’ve forgotten to put on my list,’ she told Benedict.

  ‘Who?’ he asked.

  ‘You,’ Rosamunde said. ‘I think you’ve earned your stripes. Is there anything particular you’d like?’

  ‘Gosh, I’m honoured,’ Benedict replied with a wry smile. ‘Probably some ski socks,’ he told her. ‘Very useful.’ Rosamunde laughed.

  ‘It may be cold at the moment, but ski socks?’

  ‘Not for here,’ he explained. ‘A friend of mine owns a ski chalet in Chamonix and it’s free for the whole of January, so he’s letting it to me for a month at a knockdown price. I leave on Boxing Day.’

  ‘You do?’ Rosamunde felt unaccountably disappointed. ‘What about Humphrey?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s coming with me in the Land Rover – I’m getting the ferry and driving down. You look as though your fiancé just told you he was leaving you for another woman,’ he smiled. ‘I’m flattered!’

  Rosamunde dug him in the ribs. ‘I’m just surprised,’ she told him. ‘You haven’t mentioned it before. And I admit, I’ll miss you. Maybe I need to make some more friends. It’ll be a long month without you,’ she admitted grudgingly.

  ‘Well, I’m here for now,’ he told her. ‘So let’s have some fun. How about I come round to yours tonight for a game of Scrabble?’

  ‘Such a fabulous sense of fun!’ Rosamunde laughed.

  But in the event it was a wonderfully festive evening. When they arrived back at the Vicarage they encountered the delicious scent of roasting chicken coming from the Aga. They deposited Humphrey in the sitting room; he was exhausted from their excursion and immediately hogged the hearth rug, much to Gladys’s disgust. They went in search of Bernie and (presumably) Mrs Garfield and tracked them down in the attic.

  ‘We’re back!’ Rosamunde shouted up from the base of the ladder into the dark hole above. ‘What are you doing?’

  Immediately Mrs Garfield’s face appeared through the hole. ‘Oh, hello, dears. Bernie’s searching for the Christmas decorations. We thought it was about time we put them up.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ Rosamunde bounced up and down with excitement. ‘Can I put the angel on the top of the tree?’

  Benedict raised his dark eyebrows at her and shook his head in despair, but later, after a merry supper, he happily joined in with the decorating. The Christmas tree (which was far too large for the sitting room) was decked with a mishmash of decorations, most of them bought with love by Marguerite when the children were small. She was responsible for the girls’ continuing excitement about the festive season, so enthusiastic was she every year as Christmas approached.

  Benedict carefully arranged the nativity scene on the mantelpiece and when he discovered the Baby Jesus’s head was missing he found some glue and patiently set about fixing the figure at the kitchen table while Mrs Garfield made hot chocolate. When they re-joined the others in the sitting room, Bernie and Mrs Garfield were tasked with disentangling and arranging the fairy lights on the tree and, as she had requested, Rosamunde was granted the honour of placing the charmingly tatty angel on top of the tree with Benedict’s assistance.

  They were too exhausted for Scrabble but it had been a day and evening of fun and wonder, made all the more magical for it being Rosamunde’s first English Christmas in years. Yet at the outskirts of her mind she could feel the tug of little threads of disturbance. As she lay in the old-fashioned bathtub before bed she tried to place these strands of concern. What could she possibly feel troubled about after such a perfect day? Before she could analyse the latent problem further, Rosamunde pulled herself out of the steaming water and wrapped herself in a soft towel. Tomorrow, she told herself. I’ll think about it tomorrow.

  26.

  JULY 1999

  Rosamunde was stone cold with shock. She was sitting on the sofa in Rachel’s flat on Adam Street with a blanket wrapped round her as Stephen crouched on the floor in front of her, his turquoise eyes full of concern.

  ‘Here, drink this,’ he ordered, handing her a brandy. Rachel had gone to bed, unusually tactful in the midst of this spectacular event.

  ‘You’re married,’ she said, immediately spotting the wedding ring on Stephen’s left hand. He shrugged apologetically.

  ‘You’d better tell me what happened,’ Rosamunde told him, as her heart raced. It was amazing, she thought, how her heart’s memory was so sharp. At the very sight of Stephen it had reverted to its unsteady pound when for twelve years it had rarely skipped a beat.

  ‘I need you to know, there was no deceit on my part,’ Stephen told her earnestly. ‘God knows I’d throttle my grandmother if she were still alive.’

  ‘Your grandmother?’ Rosamunde asked, confused. And so the story unfolded. It transpired that, while Stephen’s parents had drowned in the Zeebrugge disaster, Stephen had been rescued. After a spell in hospital recovering from a head injury, he was returned to his grandmother in Reading, but as soon as he stepped into the safety of her arms his whole mind and body had shut down in shock and grief. He was suffering with post-traumatic stress disorder (a fairly new diagnosis at the time) and while his body soon recovered, his memory was left impaired for years to come. He suffered amnesia and doctors couldn’t be certain to what degree it had been caused by the head injury or the stress. He remembered nothing of his life before it had been changed forever by the tragedy on the MS Herald of Free Enterprise. As a result, he’d been unable to remember Rosamunde.

  ‘But your gran knew about me.’ Rosamunde’s head was a whirl of confusion. ‘Why didn’t she tell you?’

  ‘I’ve asked myself the same question for the last three years, since memories have started to come back to me. Gran died about five years ago so I was never able to ask her. I think the bottom line was my gran was devastated by the loss of her son piled on top of losing my sister all those years ago and so she hung on to me for dear life. I guess she knew how serious we were about each other back then and thought that if she told me about you I’d be bound to pick up with you where we left off. I think she was worried I’d leave home to be with you. Which, in all fairness, I probably would have done.’ He smiled, his dimples as prominent as they’d always been. Rosamunde drank him in: that smile, the eyes, both features so unchanged, and yet his blond hair had receded slightly and his body, while not fat, had bulked out.

  ‘But other people – your friends – you must have told them about me,’ Rosamunde pointed out.

  ‘I think my grandmother must have called around and told everyone not to talk about anything that had happened before the disaster. I remember feeling incredibly isolated in the months that
followed – it was horrendous knowing I was supposedly friends with these people. But we shared no history, and whenever I asked them to remind me about things they were wary. They certainly never mentioned you.’

  ‘But what about when the memories started to come back? What happened then?’ asked Rosamunde, visibly distressed. Stephen sighed.

  ‘There’s a lot to explain,’ he said. ‘Look, it’s late and there’s so much to discuss. I’m going to head home. How about we meet up tomorrow? I could pick you up at noon and take you somewhere for lunch?’ he asked. Rosamunde, still in a daze of shock, agreed, though really she wanted him to stay all night. Not just to explain everything to her, but to kiss her, to take her to bed, to devour her. Then she stopped herself. Stephen was married. Even if he wanted to devour her – which clearly he didn’t – she could never bring herself to be the other woman. It wasn’t the sort of person she was. And then, of course, there was Giles.

  The next day, after a fitful sleep, Rosamunde took great care getting ready for their lunch appointment. She may have decided to put her head very firmly in charge of her heart but she still wanted to look good for the occasion, not least to feel she had some sort of control when in fact she felt as though she were unravelling like a snagged garment. She was supposed to be returning to Harbourton this morning but she rang Giles and briefly told him she’d decided to spend an extra night with her sister. Poor Giles was of course obliging about the change of plans.

  ‘You haven’t changed at all,’ Stephen told Rosamunde as she opened the door to him. Again, her treacherous heart began to hammer. Deep breaths, she told herself. Deep breaths.

  Rosamunde had expected lunch in a nearby wine bar but Stephen had his car parked outside and it soon became clear he was driving them out of London. They drove in silence, in tacit agreement they both needed a drink to help them through this. Finally they arrived at a beautiful thatched pub in a remote country village where they found themselves an outdoor table in the corner of the beer garden, far away from the cheerful weekend drinkers. Rosamunde sat nervously at the picnic bench and Stephen ordered them beers and brought them out, his hands remarkably steady as he wove his way to Rosamunde.

  ‘How are you, babe?’ Stephen asked as he sat down and Rosamunde, noting Stephen’s old term of endearment for her, thought it was a question she wouldn’t know where to begin to answer.

  ‘Is life good?’ he continued. Rosamunde hesitated.

  ‘It is. It was. I’m getting married in two weeks’ time.’

  ‘Congratulations!’ Stephen exclaimed, though his jaw looked tense.

  ‘Cut to the chase, Stephen, please,’ begged Rosamunde. She needed this over with. She needed to know and then she needed to move on with her life.

  ‘Of course,’ he answered, his voice soft and understanding.

  So Stephen explained. He and Jodie – his wife of five years (five years!) – were holidaying in the West Country three years ago when he’d started to get weird flashbacks during a day trip to Thatchley. By the end of the holiday he’d remembered everything and found himself sending his bewildered wife back to London while he remained in Devon for another week, working through the memories and deciding what to do next.

  He had stayed in Thatchley at The Three Bells and every day he’d almost made the short trip to Potter’s Cove to see if Bernie and Rosamunde were still living at the Vicarage. But he never did. After agonising about it every day for a week he had returned to London. He had made a life for himself and he imagined Rosamunde had too. He’d determined to leave the past behind him. He was happy with the life he had in London. He liked his job. He loved his wife. Their marriage wasn’t perfect – it had its ups and downs – but he knew if he’d returned to Potter’s Cove he would have unpeeled a layer of himself with potentially disastrous consequences for everyone.

  Rosamunde thought back to what she had been doing three years ago. She’d been living in Harbourton, working where she worked now and without a fiancé or even a boyfriend. She wondered if her father would have told her if Stephen had paid him a visit. Of course he would have. And it was true: it would have shocked her then as it had shaken her to the core right now. But Rosamunde felt cheated. She was angry that Stephen had allowed her to continue thinking he was dead when he was very much alive.

  ‘I grieved for you, Stephen. I grieved for you so badly.’

  Stephen looked suitably apologetic. ‘I’m so sorry, babe, but I truly didn’t remember a thing until that holiday in the West Country and I assumed you would have been well and truly over me by then.’

  It occurred to Rosamunde, then, that of course he knew nothing about the aftermath of his supposed death.

  ‘I was pregnant, you know,’ she told him, and watched as Stephen’s tanned face immediately paled.

  ‘No way! I never thought. How stupid – it never even occurred to me. I’m a father!’ he exclaimed. ‘A boy or a girl?’ he asked. ‘They must be, what, twelve by now?’ Stephen had gone from shocked to excited in a moment. Rosamunde shook her head.

  ‘I lost the baby,’ she told him, and even now the memories squeezed her heart uncomfortably.

  ‘Shit,’ Stephen replied, evidently crushed. ‘Wow, I really thought I might be a father for a moment there. There’s nothing I’d have loved more.’

  ‘You don’t have kids with Jodie then?’ Rosamunde asked, the name sticking in her throat. Stephen shook his head.

  ‘We’ve been trying for years – we’re both desperate for them – but we’re not having much luck. Jodie’s keen for us to try IVF but I don’t know . . .’ He tailed off, as though he couldn’t begin to deal with his current troubles when the past had now reared its ugly head in such an astonishing fashion.

  ‘I wish I could have been there for you when you lost the baby,’ Stephen said as he reached over to stroke Rosamunde’s hand. A moment later, without a word, they both stood up. As they walked towards the car Rosamunde’s arm brushed against Stephen’s and in an instant he grabbed hold of her. There wasn’t a moment of hesitation before the two were entwined in an embrace the likes of which Rosamunde had forgotten existed. She hated herself for it but her heart had stealthily crept up on her head, knocked it out and taken over.

  27.

  SUNDAY 14TH DECEMBER 2014

  It was the day of the annual Christingle service, an event that marked the real countdown to Christmas as far as the village was concerned. It took place at four o’clock in the afternoon when darkness had descended, and the churchwardens painstakingly lit all the candles around the church so the service could take place in candlelight alone.

  It was a heart-warming service, if a little nerve-wracking, as all the small children of the village processed around the church holding oranges bearing lit votives. The possibility of the children setting each other on fire seemed rather high, even with the vigilance of anxious parents, but each year the service had gone remarkably without incident. This one was no exception, and Bernie breathed an audible sigh of relief as each child was asked to blow out their candle at the end of the service.

  Rosamunde was sitting with Kizzie, Gerard and the five girls, and it was only when she turned around towards the end of the service that she saw that Benedict was behind her with another man. Immediately she assumed he had a new boyfriend, although she was surprised he hadn’t mentioned this piece of news to her.

  ‘Who’s the guy with Benedict?’ she whispered to Kizzie.

  ‘Gorgeous, isn’t he?’ she replied. ‘An old friend of his. Divorced and, as far as I’m aware, not gay. I think he likes the look of you,’ she nudged. It was true that he seemed to be looking enquiringly in their direction before whispering to Benedict. Rosamunde turned quickly around.

  As they trooped slowly out of the church Benedict and his friend caught up with her.

  ‘Rosamunde, allow me to introduce you to my old mate Ed,’ Benedict announced. ‘Ed, this is Rosamunde. Rosamunde, this is Ed Baker. He’s staying with me for Christmas.’

/>   She looked up at the very distinguished-looking man who had friendly, crinkly eyes with a gleam in them and a firm handshake. Rosamunde placed him as a little older than her and wondered how Benedict knew him.

  ‘Good to meet you,’ he said. ‘Are you coming back to Benedict’s for supper?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, well, I . . .’ Rosamunde faltered.

  ‘You are invited.’ Benedict grinned. ‘I meant to ask you yesterday but I forgot. Thought it was about time I returned some of your hospitality. Can you remember how to get there?’

  It had been many years since Rosamunde had visited Farm Cottage, a small house on the farmland owned by Kizzie and Benedict’s parents. An old farm worker had lived there with his wife when Rosamunde was a child, but now it had been taken over by Benedict and turned into a veritable bachelor pad. As she knocked on the door she heard Humphrey attempting his impression of a guard dog (rather half-heartedly, she thought) before Ed welcomed her in. The smell of garlic and chilli assaulted her as she walked through the door and immediately her mouth watered.

  ‘You can cook?’ she asked Benedict, astonished, remembering the half-cooked buns at the Tiny Tots’ Christmas party.

  ‘Certainly not,’ Ed told her. ‘But I’m not bad at rustling up the odd dish. Could be a bit spicy. Hope you’re okay with that?’

  ‘I love a bit of spice,’ Rosamunde told him, giggling. Was she flirting? Benedict looked at them and she couldn’t tell if he was annoyed or pleased.

  ‘Well, come on in, then,’ he told her. ‘Let’s get you a drink.’