She smiled, though the hint of anxiety didn’t completely leave her big Betty Boop eyes. ‘I am working at home, so I could, I suppose. We could take my car. It would be more comfortable for Gabe than your truck.’
‘Great. I’ll ring you when he lets me know what time he’s being discharged.’
He drove around to Gabe’s track, wishing he hadn’t suffered the moment of weakness and need that had prompted him to confide in Alexia. A few hours ago he’d been valuing the fact that she was uncomplicated and then he’d gone and complicated things.
He unpacked the shopping then pulled on his thick fleece and took himself off to continue his task of coppicing the willow copse. He’d arranged that his time off wouldn’t commence until he got the call to free his uncle from the embrace of the hospital.
Cutting everything down to ground level was pleasant enough work on a brisk morning. His task would bring in money to the estate in one years’ time when the new growth could be cut for basketry. He knew Christopher Carlysle was disappointed that this cut was only fit for fencing but neglecting the coppice for ten years wasn’t the best way to make it generate money.
He worked energetically. Ted, the estate worker who was tying the brown willow rods into bundles for him and stacking them on the trailer, complained he could scarcely keep up. But his face took on a broad grin when Ben got the phone call he was waiting for. ‘Tell the old git hello from me,’ he said, gathering up the last rods.
‘I’m ready for collection,’ Gabe said over the phone, sounding as if he were a parcel. He also sounded thready and frail. Ben sent Ted off to deposit the willow rods in a shed and loped back to his truck, ringing Alexia as he went.
He was glad to find that she was her usual self as they drove to Peterborough. A frown only began to form on her forehead when they had collected Gabe and his bag and were walking with him through the corridors to the lift.
‘You’re shuffling,’ she said to him accusingly.
‘I’m knackered,’ he protested. ‘I’ve been ill.’
Her frowns persisted. ‘If you brave the car park like that the wind will blow you over. I think you better sit in the foyer with Ben while I fetch the car.’
Gabe tutted, but he flopped down into one of the foyer chairs when they got there and they watched Alexia flying out of the door, the wind waiting to pounce on her and scramble through her hair as she jogged out of sight. Then he turned to Ben. ‘I feel like I’ve been hit by your truck.’
Ben felt a wave of anxiety. ‘Give yourself a chance. You’ve only this minute got up out of bed.’
‘And I wouldn’t mind going back there.’
Ben waited, but Gabe didn’t laugh or even smile. ‘Presumably the doctors feel you’re well enough to leave, though?’
‘Evidently.’ Gabe sounded unconvinced.
‘Well, we’ll soon have you in your rocking chair by the range.’
‘I’d rather go to bed.’
Heart heavy at this post-pneumonia wussy Gabe, Ben tried to be reassuring. ‘Do that, then. But maybe you’ll feel up to some soup for lunch first?’
Gabe shrugged.
On the way home, Ben sat in the back seat and watched his uncle in the front. Gabe looked at least two stone lighter than at the beginning of his illness and his ponytail hung like wool. Gabe might have embraced an individual sartorial style and personal appearance since he stopped being a bank manager but his hair was always brushed. He never looked like this.
Alexia chatted as she drove. ‘Gabe, would you consider Carola to run the community café?’
He shrugged a shoulder. ‘Sounds fine. She’ll organise the hell out of the place.’
‘I’ve already talked it over with Ben and I think it’s a brilliant solution.’ She went on to detail Carola’s qualifications for the job but Gabe didn’t even answer. Presently, he closed his eyes and appeared to sleep. Alexia glanced over at him and her flow of chatter ceased.
Gabe only showed any real animation when they turned up his track and Alexia drew her car to a halt by the paddock gate. Snobby stood in the middle of his field with the wind behind him, his tail blowing along his flanks and his mane streaming into his eyes.
Alexia gave Gabe’s arm a pat. ‘The old boy’s been missing you, I think. He’s not eating.’
Gabe actually looked interested. ‘No!’
‘Do you want to—?’
But Gabe was already struggling to open the car door, huddling into a coat that looked too big for him as he picked his way over the ruts to the gate. Alexia and Ben jumped out of the car and followed.
Snobby’s head swung in their direction. Then lifted. His ears flicked forward. Then he whickered, wheeling his tubby body round and heading towards them at a trot.
Ben quickly unlatched the gate and pushed it wide enough to let Gabe through, standing back with Alexia to watch as Snobby slowed, still whickering.
Gabe held out his hands. ‘Forgot the carrots.’
Snobby apparently forgave the omission as he pressed his face against Gabe’s chest. And stood perfectly still.
Gabe crooned as he scratched the pony’s neck. ‘Look how much condition you’ve lost. Stupid animal. You need to start eating, idiot horse.’ Ben felt his eyes pricking and when he looked at Alexia he saw her wiping her cheeks with the backs of her hands, quickly, as if hoping nobody would see. Then Gabe gave Snobby a last pat and said, ‘See you tomorrow, Snobs.’
Snobby tossed his head as if he wasn’t bothered either way and shambled off up the paddock to the field shelter. By the time Ben had seen Gabe out and closed the gate he could see Snobby pulling hay from his net.
Alexia drove Gabe the last stretch of the track and Ben followed on foot. He arrived in time to see Gabe shuffle into the house, reach his rocking chair and plop down with a great sigh of relief.
Luke the cat appeared and jumped lightly onto Gabe’s lap, purring as he rubbed the top of his head on Gabe’s jaw. ‘Hello, you,’ Gabe murmured. Then he shut his eyes and went to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-five
The next few days just seemed to evaporate. Alexia spent her days on the final part of Quinn and Ruby’s job. Quinn hadn’t, as Alexia had half-feared, kicked her off the job and turned difficult about payment. In fact, she seemed genuinely impressed that Alexia was going on actual television and was inclined to pretend the sharp interchange on the YouTube footage had never happened, which suited Alexia fine. Now she was concentrating her energies on making them a wooden chest with strap hinges out of two old doors from a reclamation yard. It was a while since she’d done anything quite so scavenger-ish, apart from rubbing down and painting endless tables and chairs for The Angel, and she loved using Grandpop’s old treadle saw and brace-and-bit. She knew there were quick, efficient modern versions but there was something that felt right about old tools on old wood.
Carola pitched in eagerly, apparently not even bored by the tiresome job of stripping the old paint with a combination of paint stripper, scraper and elbow grease. As a reward, Alexia showed her Grandpop’s old garden incinerator in the tiny yard behind the workshop and introduced her to his pet method of parting layers of paint from metal by getting a fire going then dropping the ironmongery into the flames.
Carola’s eyes almost popped. ‘What are you doing?’
‘You’ll see.’ When the fire had burned down, Alexia fished the ironmongery out of the ashes and gave it a brisk once-over with a wire brush. ‘There. Ready to be primed, painted and reused.’
Carola inspected the dirty metal. ‘Awesome.’
Now, ironmongery painted dark grey and stripped wood finished with wax and wire wool, the chest had pride of place in Quinn’s hall. Alexia had been slightly disappointed to learn that Quinn and Ruby were to keep their wellies in there but mentally catalogued it as not her business and just made a healthy addition to their bill.
The YouTube video went live and Alexia couldn’t watch it. Ben could, and laughed at how she got Quinn on the run. ‘You were amazing!’
Gabe did little more strenuous than stroke Luke’s glossy fur, saying his legs felt like water and he didn’t fancy anything to eat. Ben’s gaze was anxious whenever it rested on him. He, too, called at Gabe’s place every day, if not twice or three times.
At the weekend, it took the combined efforts of Alexia, Carola and Ben to apply the mist coat to the ground floor of The Angel. ‘High ceilings mean big walls and painting raw plaster’s never a fun job. It sucks up the paint like a towel,’ Alexia warned them. And before long the smell of fresh emulsion filled the air and they were all wearing speckles of it, but the walls were, finally, wearing something too, even if it was just a blotchy mist coat.
Alexia enjoyed working alongside Ben. He wasn’t Mr Chatty when concentrating on a task but she was conscious of a hum of heightened awareness when he was near.
Carola was ultra-industrious and quieter than usual too, because Charlotte and Emily had finally gone to stay with their dad and meet his new girlfriend and she was trying not to think about it.
They all ate their lunch together, munching sandwiches while they tried to imagine the glass globe light fittings Alexia had bought in a sale and the floor tiles, once they were in situ.
Monday and Tuesday Alexia drove to Bettsbrough to oversee the cleaning up of the basement conversion and then apply finishing touches, which, even those as small as directing the spotlights to maximum visual effect, were her favourite part of a job. A very satisfactory debrief revealed that the clients were thrilled with the end result – and even more thrilled to be able to move back in. Alexia was equally thrilled to be able to send in her final invoice.
By early afternoon on Wednesday, while Carola was beginning the second coat of emulsion at The Angel, Alexia was on pins about the filming of Lemonade from Lemons, waiting for the car to pick her up and take her down to east London for her six o’clock call. She’d half expected the casting producer’s assistant to get in touch and say she should get the train to King’s Cross and they’d send a car to meet her there, but it seemed that emergency guests received special treatment. The car duly turned up – an ordinary minicab rather than the stretch limousine her overexcited imagination kept conjuring up – and all Alexia had to do was sit in the back and relax as the day darkened and the driver eased the car down to join the motorway, passing through Bettsbrough where illuminations in the shape of snowflakes had been hung over the main street like a demented blizzard.
For the first time since the job she’d so yearned for had slipped through her fingers, Alexia thought pleasurably of London. She was only being ferried to the studio in Greater London like a delivery but, nevertheless, excitement stirred as her taxi’s headlights followed a thousand others towards the general area in which just a short time ago she’d expected to start a new life and the Christmas illuminations she’d become familiar with would have been the sumptuous ones London was famed for suspended over Oxford Street and Piccadilly Circus.
Glad the taxi driver wasn’t the talkative kind, she let her mind play back over those heady expectations of exciting projects with real money behind them. Of always aiming to attain the ceiling price for the locality and carefully selecting exactly the right materials to attain that with no waste. Opening up small rooms to go open plan, dividing large spaces to make additional rooms. Being part of a team that made money for the investor. And for themselves. She’d expected to emulate Elton’s designer clothes and upmarket lifestyle within a few years.
Instead, she was living in the village where she’d grown up, with all the same people – plus Ben – and doing exactly the same job – plus The Angel (unpaid). Like poking a cracked tooth with her tongue she tried to imagine what sort of place she might have been able to buy for herself and whether she’d have gone minimalist or traditional on the refurb. She imagined quartz worktops and porcelain tiled floors, a chrome and glass staircase up to a master suite in the attic, a glass wall and a terrace on a flat-roof extension.
It could all have been so fabulous.
But it wasn’t. And it was the fault of Shane and Tim.
Bastards.
Eventually the taxi driver said, ‘Should be here somewhere,’ and turned into an industrial estate-like complex that reminded her of an airport drop off point. They pulled up outside a white building.
After thanking the driver she was collared by a black-clad young guy with a clipboard, who introduced himself as part of the studio crew and passed her on to a likewise black-clad girl deeper into the studios to give her a wristband and show her where to lock away her handbag. The girl shepherded Alexia along a corridor. ‘Here’s the cloakroom. You can wait in the staff café, OK? Get yourself something to eat and drink while you’re waiting. The producer will take you through at seven twenty-five.’ Then she grabbed Alexia’s arm to detain her, although Alexia hadn’t so much as moved a muscle, frowning fiercely at a piece of paper in her hand. ‘Oh-kay! Hang on! The producer will come for you at seven because you’ve got a story to tell, haven’t you? So you need a bit more of a brief, OK? We go live at eight.’
‘OK,’ agreed Alexia. Once freed, she went to the café as directed, so cheap it must be subsidised, and read on her Kindle app while she consumed a cup of tea and a scone.
A few minutes after seven, yet another black-clad man – she was beginning to get the idea that the black was a requirement for the crew – arrived to call her, along with two other women and a man. ‘Hello, hello.’ He flashed them all a smile that exhibited an array of snaggly teeth. ‘I’m Warren and I’m the producer today. Thank you all for coming. Could you follow me, please, and I’ll tell you what’s what.’ He trotted down a corridor into a studio that looked like a warehouse hung with black curtains. Its black walls were slightly squishy to the touch – Alexia couldn’t resist giving one a prod.
From up on high a grid of lights shone down, and uplighters created pale blue columns of light at intervals around the edge of the room. In the centre of the studio, a single chair and a curved bench were upholstered in a deeper blue than the columns. A few people were perched there uncomfortably or standing about looking bored, uncertain or both.
Warren launched into a practised spiel. ‘Thanks for coming today to share your stories. The lady in the red dress is Kelli, our presenter. The people with her are our “experts” –’ he made inverted commas in the air with his fingers ‘– and they’ll be on the guest seating. As today’s programme is Crooks and Conmen the “experts” are …’ He consulted his notes. ‘A police officer, a lawyer, and a representative from Citizen’s Advice. Kelli will begin with a general discussion on the theme and the “experts” will define their roles.’
He flashed his smile again. ‘When the rest of the audience arrives I’ll run through where to stand, when to move and where to move to. I’ll position each of you in the audience and make sure Kelli knows where you are. When it’s time for you to tell your story, a runner will bring you a roving mic. Kelli will ask you questions, set the pace and gently steer you. I know you all have fascinating stories but it would be great if you’d let her dictate when your spot ends. Right!’ Big smile. ‘Come over and meet everyone.’
While they were being introduced to Kelli and the experts – Alexia forgot their names as soon as she heard them – the audience area behind and to the sides of the central stage began to fill. Kelli was a striking black woman with sympathetic eyes. She shook all of their hands and repeated their names, then Warren spaced them regularly around the audience where they stuck their arms in the air so Kelli could memorise their locations. Alexia was positioned just left of centre, front row. She was to be the last guest to speak, which gave her a whole hell of a lot of time to do battle with her butterflies. She swallowed down an impu
lse to beg, ‘Can’t I go first and get it over with?’
It was only by reminding herself of the outside chance of the programme leading to information about Shane and Tim that Alexia was able to nod and agree.
Warren began running through audience information using phrases such as ‘in shot’ and ‘back of head shots’, explaining what the floor crew did and who the floor manager was, that everyone was dressed in ‘studio black’ to be as unobtrusive as possible, even though the crew were often deliberately in shot. ‘And there’s the director and other people out of sight in a place called the gallery. The floor manager can hear the director through his headphones but you don’t need to worry about them.’
‘Most importantly …’ Warren beamed around at everyone. ‘We’re going to tell you when to clap.’
The cameras were larger, more obtrusive and scarier than the ones used for the YouTube video, with crew seemingly attached to each by invisible umbilical chords.
Floor manager, presenter and experts conferred. Smiling and nodding. Smiling and nodding back. Cameras shifted and shunted. Alexia’s butterflies shook out their wings ready to go wild.
Eventually, Warren held up his hands for absolute hush. Then he gave a signal, the floor crew who didn’t have their hands otherwise occupied burst into applause and the audience joined in. Although audience eyes were supposed to be trained on Kelli, as she clapped Alexia could see a monitor with credits scrolling over a long panning shot of presenter, panel and applauding audience. She didn’t try to pick herself out. That would give her butterflies heart attacks.
But once they were underway properly, it wasn’t too bad. After introductions, Kelli and the panel of experts held an interesting discussion on what constituted deception and that everyone and anyone could become victims. Then the audience clapped and they went to a break. It didn’t seem as if the audience was allowed to leave the studio unless in an ambulance so they stood still while nothing much seemed to happen apart from more conferring and a make-up artist powdering the noses of Kelli and two of the experts.
The Little Village Christmas Page 26