The Present

by Charlotte Phillips

  ‘That’s awful.’

  She took a deep decisive breath.

  ‘The house sale is the right thing. My stupid sentimentality about some bloody doorframe does not affect that decision. She’s going to need someone on hand 24-7. Plus there’s the massive garden, and the house needs tons of upkeep.’

  ‘What I’m here for,’ he remarked. Admittedly he had to factor his other life into that statement, but with pretty regular trips away he was careful to schedule his work around his travels, and he had a local kid who covered basic garden upkeep if he was away for longer than a few days at a time. ‘And I’ve been keeping tabs on Olive over the last few months. My place is only five minutes away, and I programmed my number into her speed dial.’

  She laughed.

  ‘I’m not sure Gran knows what speed dial even is.’

  He grinned at her over the rim of his coffee cup. In that moment of laughter, the stress had disappeared from her face. She was very pretty, he decided, in an unkempt kind of a way, with her messy waves of dark blonde hair, and wide brown eyes. A thin film of grey plaster dust clung to her skin, and, as he watched, she unknowingly rubbed her forehead and smudged it.

  ‘She does now,’ he said. ‘I put your number in too. And her hairdresser, she asked specifically for that one.’

  She was staring at him as if he was some new and interesting life form.

  ‘Seriously?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Of course, she’s only ever used it to ring me up when I’m feet away in the garden to tell me to come in and eat my bodyweight in cake. She falls in the hallway and I don’t hear a bloody thing from her.’

  ‘That’s because I was here, thank goodness. It was pure luck; I’d only happened to call in because I had an interview just down the road. Otherwise she could have been there for hours.’ She ran a hand distractedly through her dusty hair. ‘I can’t even go there in my head. What could have happened.’ She smiled at him gratefully. ‘That’s a really kind thing to have done though. Thank you.’

  He raised his coffee cup in acknowledgment, feeling mildly awkward.

  ‘You’re welcome. Anything else I can do, just shout. Only like, maybe not loud enough to wake the dead next time.’

  She smiled.

  ‘You’re a writer, aren’t you? On a newspaper. Olive told me.’

  ‘Local press,’ she said, in between fast sips of tea. Everything she did had an urgency about it, as if she didn’t have a moment to waste.

  ‘What’s the rush?’ he said. ‘The place isn’t even on the market yet. I mean, I might be missing the point, but if she’s moving in with you when she comes out of hospital, does it really matter if it takes a few months to sort this place out?

  ‘Rod wants to get it on the market as soon as possible,’ she said. ‘Once Gran comes out of hospital, which I really hope is in time for Christmas, she’s going to need me a lot, and I won’t have time to sort through all this stuff. There are people you can pay to come in and do it all for you, house clearance, it’s called. Rod suggested it, but I don’t want just anyone going through her things. I mean, don’t get me wrong, probably 90 per cent of the stuff up in that attic is just fit for the tip, but there might be things that are important to her, that she will want to keep.’ She paused. ‘That I will want to keep.’

  That one sentence made it clear that sorting through this place was as much about her coming to terms with letting Gran go as it was about the house, and he could understand that need well enough. Before he knew what he was doing he was offering.

  ‘I can help you with anything you want over the next day or so. I know I’ve got this to-do list anyway, but that’s mainly painting, sorting out any wood that’s rotten or needs replacing, that kind of thing. I’m going to be around. I can help you bring stuff down from the loft if you like, help sort through the shed—’

  ‘Oh, bloody hell, I’d forgotten the shed!’ she said, clapping a hand against her forehead. ‘I bet that’s full of stuff too. Grandad’s been gone ten years, and it was his hangout. I don’t think I’ve ever known Gran go in there since.’

  ‘It’s not too bad,’ he lied, knowing perfectly well it was stacked with boxes of tools, gardening rubbish, and old golf clubs that dated back years, but not wanting to add to the stress. He brought his own tools and equipment on the van, so rarely needed to venture in there.

  To distract her, he picked the wooden box up from the corner of the worktop where he’d dumped it on the way into the room. It was covered in dust, rectangular, and fairly shallow, with a curved wooden lid that hinged at the back. It looked like the kind of wooden box that might contain an engraved plate, or perhaps a set of cutlery, or crystal glasses.

  ‘Want to check this out then, before you rush off and crash back through the attic?’ he said, setting it down in front of her. ‘Since it nearly cost you your leg.’

  The box! She had almost forgotten it. She sat up. A chat to Jack, and now the stress of the clear-out felt vaguely more manageable. At least she knew she had some muscle she could call on if push came to shove and she ran out of time hefting stuff down from the attic. She blew the dust off the lid in a sneeze-worthy cloud, then followed it with a swipe of her hand, revealing highly polished wood, the colour and mellow glow of a conker. A carved border of holly sprigs edged the lid. Her stomach gave a tiny twist of excitement, and she automatically took a deep breath as she opened it, not having the faintest idea what might be inside. This must be a taste (though on a much more minor scale, obviously) of how it felt when someone gave you a box that could only contain a ring. She could only guess at that feeling, not having received a proposal from Rod yet. That particular event was earmarked in their general life plan to take place after and not before he achieved partnership at his accountancy firm. Partnership itself was targeted at thirty-five, so she probably had a couple more years to wait, although there was always the possibility of it being moved forward if events happened earlier than expected. The wait didn’t matter. The certainty was enough.

  The inside of the box was divided up into twelve squares, and in each square nestled a paper- wrapped package. All except for one square in the middle, that one was empty. Tucked inside the lid was a blank envelope, cream coloured, the edges dog-eared and creased as if it had been opened many times. She carefully extracted a thin sheet of paper, smoothed it out.

  ‘It’s a letter,’ she said, frowning. It was handwritten in faded black ink, a sloping script. She read aloud:

  On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me …

  That’s how the song goes, and you, Olive, are my true love. Words can’t describe how much it pains me to be called away now, when all I want is to spend every minute of every day with you, my darling.

  I am not leaving you though, not really, and to prove to you that even though the world we are in today is full of uncertainties and horrors, I am yours.

  For every day of these twelve days of Christmas, I am sending you a present, a part of me, to keep with you for ever, whatever may happen. Look out for their arrival, and know how loved you are. How I am thinking of you this Christmas and for all the days of my life.

  J

  Curiosity flying now, she scooped one of the packages out with her fingertips. The paper wrapping was tissue thin, perhaps ivory at one point, but now a little yellowed with age. She unpeeled the layers carefully and stared. Lying in her palm was a tiny, elaborately decorated pale green glass ball with two tiny painted birds perched on the top. She could tell just from the smoky opaqueness of the glass and the muted tones of the paint that it was old. A loop of thin, faded gold ribbon was attached to the top. The holly inlay on the lid made sudden sense.

  ‘It’s a Christmas decoration,’ she said, glancing up at Jack. ‘For the tree. At least I think that’s what it is. I’ve never seen this box before. I mean, I’ve spent probably twenty out of thirty Christmases in this house, and I’ve never once seen it. It’s beautiful. Why on earth was it shoved away u
p in the attic?’

  She turned the box around to show him.

  ‘What’s this?’ He pulled a slip of paper from the pile of tissue wrapping. It had the same faded black slanted handwriting. He gave it to her.

  ‘It’s a note,’ she said, putting the glass ball down very carefully on the table and smoothing the piece of paper out flat. ‘“Olive. Remember that sunrise when the new day was ours, how we listened to the birdsong. We are stronger than any time or distance.” That’s gorgeous. What do you think it means?’

  ‘There’s a date there,’ he said, pointing to the corner of the paper.

  She followed his gaze. ‘Twenty-fourth December 1944,’ she read, and looked up at Jack, her mind working. ‘During the war.’ She flapped a hand at him and kicked the chair out opposite her. ‘Come and help me. Unwrap another.’ House clearance and cut leg were completely forgotten in her curiosity. That all-encompassing determination to investigate the living daylights out of this that she rarely felt these days, because working on a local paper meant she didn’t often get to cover anything more interesting than duck races and local fetes.

  She lifted another package from the box, and peeled back the paper layers. Jack sat down at the table and did the same. This time a tiny wooden drum sat in the palm of her hand, its faded paint red, gold, and green.

  ‘This one’s from December the thirteenth, 1944,’ she said, checking the date. She could hear the excitement in her voice. ‘Listen to this, “On this first day of Christmas, do not settle for what is within reach, my Olive. I carry you with me in my heart on this day and every day, no matter how far away I am. I will return. Believe in me.”’

  Her heart twisted in her chest. Oh, the bloody delicious romance of it.

  ‘Look at this one.’

  Jack held up a delicate green glass pear, perfect in every way, right down to the tiny painted leaf and stalk on the top. She took it from him and held it up to the light. It twisted this way and that, suspended from the ribbon. The glass was thin and flawless.

  He picked up the drum and turned it in his fingers.

  ‘The carving on this is really perfect,’ he said, frowning. ‘“This first day of Christmas”. These are based on the song, aren’t they? That’s what the letter is talking about. That song where you count down to the pear tree at the end. That must be the pear. And there was some line or other about drummers drumming, right?’

  She searched her mind and realised she could only remember bits and pieces of the song, although she definitely had memories of Gran playing it on the piano. The rickety old piano at the side of the sitting room just down the hall. She was all thumbs in her eagerness to unwrap the rest. There was a gold painted glass egg, an ornate swan. A black-and-white painted cow, perfect in every detail right down to its tiny horns. Each decoration came with its own love note, each one more heart-melting than the last.

  ‘I need to do a web search on the song,’ she said, picking up her smartphone. ‘Maybe the egg is for the geese-a-laying, and I definitely remember there being swans in there somewhere. Not sure about the cow, to be perfectly honest …’ She waved the phone high above her head. ‘No bloody Wi-Fi, is there,’ she said, to his questioning expression. ‘And the signal’s really patchy around here … right, here we go. Twelve drummers drumming, eleven pipers piping …’ He held up tiny carved panpipes. ‘Maids a-milking!’ she exclaimed. ‘That’s the cow. Thank goodness, it was going to drive me mad.’

  ‘So some of them are a bit cryptic …’ He held up four entwined carved feathers ‘… I mean, I’m guessing this is four calling birds, right? But it definitely fits. It’s a set of Christmas decorations, based on the song. The twelve days of Christmas. They must be very old, and I’d say pre-1939, because it would have been impossible to pick up something like this during the war.’

  ‘Then there should be twelve, shouldn’t there?’ she said, looking at the empty slot in the middle of the box. There’s one missing.’ She ran her gaze quickly over the collection, holding her phone screen next to her, ticking lines from the song off in her head. ‘Five gold rings. That’s the missing one. What a shame. I wonder if it’s up in the attic somewhere in that mess of stuff. I’ll have to keep looking.’

  ‘Not right now you won’t, not until I’ve made sure the floor is safe,’ he said immediately.

  ‘And I’ll have to try and ask Gran about them when I visit,’ she said. ‘If she’s awake this time, that is.’ She hadn’t been conscious much at all yet. In many ways it had been the hardest thing to cope with, seeing Gran robbed of all her vivacity, so impossibly frail and unresponsive. ‘They’re obviously hers, her name is Olive. But she’s never mentioned them to me. I’ve definitely never seen them before: I would have remembered. And you saw them, they were just shoved in a corner up in the attic, covered in dust. No one’s opened this box in years. They were obviously just forgotten about.’

  She looked down at the collection of beautiful love notes. How could anyone forget them?

  Jack shrugged.

  ‘It’s been over seventy years, to be fair,’ he said. ‘Do you think they are from your grandad? Maybe they were a present from him to your gran.’

  She looked down at the collection on the table and frowned. She simply could not imagine the openness of feeling in those notes coming from her stoic and straight-down-the-line grandfather.

  ‘I do know Gran and Grandad met before the war, even though they didn’t marry until much later. Gran was quite old by the standards of the time when she had my mum. But even so, I’m just not sure he was that kind of man,’ she said. ‘He didn’t do romantic gestures, not that I know of. He was a very ordered kind of person, very straightforward, play by the rules. Never late, always thought decisions through before making them, not impulsive. It’s one of things I liked best about him. You always know where you are with someone like that.’

  He might not have been given to shows of affection, but if you wanted steadiness and absolute reliability, he was your man. He had been the perfect foil for a child whose mother was given to disappearing at the drop of a hat.

  ‘I want to ask Gran about them,’ she said, ‘but she’s only awake for moments at a time. She’s really not well. I don’t want to push a shedload of questions on her.’

  ‘It’s okay, you can ask her when she’s better,’ Jack said. ‘I’m sure she’ll pull round, just give it a bit of time.’

  She toyed with the tiny drum decoration. It was perfectly detailed, beautiful. This set must have cost a fortune, and where could anyone buy things like this with a war on? Questions upon questions. She made herself wrap the drum back up, being careful to add the correct note before she placed it gently back in its place in the box. It seemed important to keep the set intact, the sentiments in the right order.

  ‘You have a point,’ she said reluctantly. ‘It’s been over seventy years, right? What’s the rush?’

  Except there was a rush. Deep inside her. The urge to get to the bottom of the mystery nagged at her mind, and she had to force herself back to thinking about her present-day situation, which featured a Christmas to-do list that would require a team of full-time elves to pull off. The best she could hope for was flying through the holiday by the seat of her Christmas pants without any major disasters.

  ‘I really ought to get on,’ Jack said. He stood up, and she suddenly remembered that he was paid to do a job, and she was commandeering his time to piss about with antiques and family history from half a century ago. He was probably bored as hell and too polite to say so.

  She shook her head, vaguely exasperated with herself. She stood up too. Her leg throbbed, but she ignored it.

  ‘Of course. I’m really sorry, I’ve probably cost you loads of time. The last thing you need is a shedload of someone else’s sentimental family history.’

  ‘Yeah, because fixing that window frame’s got a real pull that’s hard to resist,’ he said.

  He smiled at her. Despite the fact it was the middle of winte
r, he had the kind of tan that spoke of an outdoor lifestyle, and his dark grey eyes creased a little at the corners. As if his strong physique wasn’t enough, he had the aftershave model looks to back it up. In that moment she could completely see where Gran’s gossip about his turbulent new-girl-every-five-minutes love life was rooted.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘Really. Like I said, I’m around for a day or two if you need any help, or if you get trapped under something heavy.’

  She told herself firmly that the appeal of having him on hand to help was entirely to do with his ability to heave a box into a skip, and definitely not how he might look while he did it.

  Chapter 2

  ‘What the hell happened to you?’

  Rod walked into the kitchen on the dot of seven, put his keys in the dish on the dresser, and stopped in the act of kissing Lucy’s cheek when he caught sight of her leg. She glanced down at the supersized sticking plaster she’d used to re-dress the graze on her shin. She’d changed into shorts and a T-shirt after a monumental shower to get rid of all the plaster dust.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ she said. ‘I just scraped it getting some stuff out of Gran’s loft. No biggie.’

  Probably best not to mention the gaping hole in Gran’s bedroom ceiling; she’d had quite enough of making a knob of herself in front of people today. Jack had assured her he would fix it in the next couple of days, and Rod could stay none the wiser.

  She gave the schedule attached by a magnet to the fridge door an unnecessary check as she opened it, because knowing it was Wednesday was enough to know it was stir-fry night. In the same way that Monday was meat-free, and Friday was a takeaway.

  Life ran better when it was organised. If Rod had a personal credo, this would be it. And it was one she wholeheartedly agreed with. There was something extremely reassuring, she had found, about knowing what was happening day to day, and especially longer term. She had known when she met Rod that they were on the same page in that respect. She’d contacted him to see if he would give an interview following the Budget five years ago: his accountancy firm’s take on the effects for local people, that kind of thing. He’d provided her with a projected schedule of costings, a comprehensive overview, and a list of tips for savers that would have got the nod from Martin Lewis. And an offer of dinner that turned into a series of dates that turned into a relationship. His private life was as ordered and planned as his work had been. And she always knew where she was with him. With Rod she had a future that she could count on. He would never disappear on impulse because he fancied a change of scenery.