‘Oh yes, I’m sure she will.’
‘Then shall I come down in the car in a couple of hours and collect you, when you’ve packed a few things?’
‘No, that’s all right, George will call in later with the newspaper, if it has got through to Little Mumming, and I’m sure he won’t mind bringing us up in his Land Rover.’
‘He seems very obliging and he certainly keeps the drive free of snow!’
‘He’s a very nice chap, is George. He and his son Liam do a good job of keeping the lane clear, and then the folks at Weasel Pot Farm below the village keep the lane on that side ploughed too, though sometimes they have to give up on the last steep bit down to the main road if the snow is too heavy.’ He glanced through the window. ‘If this keeps up, we might well be snowed in for a couple of days.’
‘Then up at the house will be the best place for you — there’s lots of food, it’s warm and if the electricity fails, there’s the generator.’
‘Very true!’ Noël was cheering up by the minute, as was Jess. ‘Well, this will be fun, won’t it? A proper family Christmas at the old home after all!’
‘Yes, won’t that be great?’ I said slightly hollowly.
‘Oh, but I was forgetting — you don’t celebrate it, m’dear?’
‘Not at all, I’m sure it’s going to make a lovely change,’ I said valiantly, and left them to their sandwiches, soup and packing.
As soon as I got home, I started to prepare for my visitors and then George drove them up when it was practically dark in a long-wheelbase Land Rover, together with all their baggage, a carton of perishable foodstuffs, and a huge plastic Santa sack full of wrapped presents.
George Froggat was a tall, well-built, middle-aged man with a mop of pale flaxen hair, a healthily pink face, sky-blue eyes, and an engaging grin. It was just as well that he was built on sturdy lines, because he had to lift Noël down and then he simply scooped Tilda up, carried her in and deposited her on the sofa by the fire in the sitting room.
He came back and shook hands and said he was very pleased to meet me, then helped carry everything else in. He wouldn’t stay for a hot drink, but just as he was going, he said, ‘Nearly forgot, here’s something from me and my family.’ Then he hauled out a Christmas tree bound with sacking from the back of the Land Rover and propped it in the porch.
‘Gosh, that’s almost as tall as I am!’ I exclaimed.
‘Aye, you’re a grand, strapping lass,’ he said approvingly, looking me up and down, then got back into the driving seat. ‘I’ll call in to see how things are going in the morning, or my boy Liam will, when we clear the drive.’
Tilda and Noël were still in the sitting room in front of the fire while Jess, looking martyred, was ferrying luggage upstairs in relays. I could hear the whine of the stairlift, so she wasn’t carrying all of it herself.
‘Would you like tea?’ I asked. ‘Or — maybe something stronger?’
‘Good idea! There’s whisky, gin and brandy in that little cabinet in the dining room, and glasses,’ Noël said.
‘I’m afraid I’ve finished off the brandy,’ I confessed, ‘and the cellar’s locked.’
‘Not surprised you needed it in this weather,’ Noël said. ‘And I’ve got the keys, all right. Jude leaves them with me when he’s away and there’s plenty more down there.’
‘Actually, the brandy was for the Christmas cake, I didn’t drink it.’
‘That should have been made months ago, I told you,’ Tilda piped up disapprovingly in her cut-crystal accent, from the depths of a sofa. Shaken up and bruised or not, she was wearing stiletto-heeled shoes and full makeup, despite being dressed only in a warm coat over her nightdress. I expect they made her feel more herself.
‘It smelled delicious when Holly took it out of the oven,’ Jess said. ‘And we hadn’t got one at all!’
‘I kept thinking Jude wouldn’t be away for Christmas, after all,’ Tilda said, ‘so I put off buying one. But there’s the Dundee cake in a tin that Old Nan always gives us at Christmas, I’ve brought that. Where did you put it, Jess darling?’
‘In the kitchen, with the other food and stuff.’
‘Really, this quick Christmas cake recipe comes out surprisingly well and I thought Jess might help me ice it later,’ I said.
‘Wonderful,’ Noël said, rubbing his hands together. ‘And we can go up into the attic and look out the decorations tomorrow.’ Then his face fell. ‘But I have forgotten, there is no tree. We put up a little artificial one for Jess, but we didn’t think to bring it.’
‘It’s all right, George left one as a gift in the porch,’ I said. ‘I thought it would be better left out there for the moment.’
‘Oh, jolly good! Is it a big one? That always goes in the corner over there by the stairs.’
‘It’s huge,’ I said with resignation. It looked as if I was in for a traditional Christmas whether I wanted one or not, so I might as well just give in right now and go with the flow!
* * *
After tea and mince pies — or whisky and mince pies in Noël’s case — Tilda went upstairs to lie down, using the stairlift under protest, though she was obviously still shaky. When I took her a hot water bottle presently, I found her half-asleep already under the flowered satin eiderdown, though that was probably the exhaustion of directing Jess with the unpacking of the suitcases.
Noël stretched out on the sofa for a nap while Jess and I went into the kitchen and had a fun, if messy, time marzipanning and icing the cake and sticking a lot of old decorations on it that we found in a Bluebird Toffee tin in one of the cupboards. There was a complete set of little plaster Eskimos, sledging, skiing or throwing snowballs, and an igloo.
‘Didn’t you even have a Christmas cake when you were little?’ asked Jess, positioning a polar bear menacingly near one of the Eskimos.
‘No. My gran often made lovely fruit cakes, but she didn’t set out to make a Christmas cake as such.’
‘I think it’s really sad that you never had a tree, or presents or crackers or anything, until you were grown up.’
‘I thought so too, when I was at school,’ I said ruefully. ‘I so envied all my friends! I expect that’s why I went overboard with the whole seasonal gifts, food and decorations thing when I got married. But that isn’t really what Christmas should be about, is it?’
‘But it’s fun!’ she protested. ‘I love everything about Christmas — but not as much as Grandpa. He’s an expert, you know, he’s written a book about it.’
‘Oh yes, I think he mentioned that.’
‘It’s called Auld Christmas, like the pub name, and it’s about ancient traditions being absorbed into new ones and stuff like that, and how the Twelfth Night Revels celebrate the rebirth of the new year and goes back way before Christianity.’
‘Does it? It sounds like you’re an expert too,’ I said, impressed.
‘Oh, Grandpa’s forever going on about it, and my parents have always brought me to Old Place for Christmas, so it’s just sort of seeped in.’ She looked a bit forlorn suddenly. ‘I wish they could be here this time, too, but I do understand. They could hardly fly back from Antarctica just for the Christmas holidays, could they?’
‘No, but they must be missing you an awful lot.’
‘Oh, they’ll be so into what they’re doing they won’t even remember I exist until they get back!’ She sounded tolerant rather than aggrieved by this. ‘But they did record a DVD wishing me Happy Christmas before they went, a bit like the Queen’s message, though Granny says I can’t have it until Christmas Day.’
‘That’s something to look forward to.’
‘Yes, and I don’t mind them not being here so much now we’re staying with you. Christmas is going to be much more fun! You don’t really mind if we have a proper one, do you?’
‘I suppose not, and it’s starting to sound as if I’ll have enough of Christmas this year to make up for all the ones I’ve missed.’
‘And presents, to
o. I make all mine and I’ve got a wonky one I practised on you can have,’ she said generously.
I couldn’t imagine what she’d made, but I thanked her anyway. ‘I wasn’t expecting anything — I wasn’t even expecting Christmas, come to that! Mind you, I do have one present already, from my best friend.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘She’s my husband’s younger sister and my opposite in every way: tiny, fair and blue-eyed like he was. . but she doesn’t look like him otherwise.’
‘Was your husband short, then? Uncle Jude is a giant.’
‘He was exactly the same height as me — six foot.’
‘That’s tall enough to be a model, except they’re all skinny.’
‘Well, you know what they say: never trust a skinny cook.’
‘Do they?’ She frowned. ‘Oh, I see: it means you don’t love food.’
‘And won’t eat your own cooking!’
When we’d finished and I’d fixed a paper frill (also from the toffee tin) around the cake, I covered it with a large glass dome I’d spotted in one of the old glazed-fronted cupboards that lined one wall of the huge kitchen, then put it in the larder.
‘Now, perhaps we’d better make some more tea and you could take it through while I start dinner. Could you pop up and see if your Granny’s awake and would like some?’
I’d taken some beef mince out of the freezer as soon as I’d got back earlier and now quickly made a large cottage pie and put it in the oven, then cored baking apples to stuff with dried fruit, brown sugar and cinnamon. There was long-life cream, ice cream and a half-used aerosol can of squirty cream that had come from the lodge with the other perishable food. . and when I counted, there were a total of four and a half aerosol tins of sweetened cream, so it must play a large part in their diet!
Tilda had a tray in bed and the rest of us ate around the big pine table in the kitchen. By the time I’d cleared this away and then gone out for one last check on Lady and to give Merlin a run, I was exhausted.
But I still felt on edge, as if waiting for something — and I realised it was Jude’s daily call! In a peculiar way, I sort of missed the adrenaline rush of crossing swords with him, even if he had managed to provoke me into losing my temper on more than one occasion.
Noël had gone to bed and Jess was in the morning room watching something fuzzy and probably highly unsuitable on the TV, half-glazed with sleep. I sent her upstairs, but she made me promise to come and put her light out on my way up in a few minutes. The child in her was only just beneath the surface: I ended up reading her a bit of The Water Babies from a book we found on one of the shelves, before tucking her up with her teddy bear and saying good night.
* * *
Tonight I could only focus on the journal entries for long enough to discover that Gran’s first meeting outside the hospital with N seemed set to become the first of many.
Then my eyes started to close as if weighted with lead and I switched out the light and sank back on the pillows — only to start awake again a moment later, my heart racing, filled with shocked guilt because for the first time in eight years, I had forgotten the anniversary of Alan’s death!
I climbed out of bed and fetched his photograph in its travelling frame from the top of the washstand: and that’s how I fell asleep, holding onto my lost love, my face wet with tears.
Chapter 14
Toast and Treacle
I met N again and this time he had borrowed his brother’s car, though I am sure he should not yet be using his injured leg so much. When I told him so he laughed and said that he was fine, and would soon be getting his motorbike out of storage, though he needn’t think I will get on it!
February, 1945
I was up much earlier than everyone else, seeing to Merlin and double-rugging Lady, as Becca had suggested doing if it got really cold, before letting her and Billy out into the snowy paddock.
It was bitterly icy out there and the wind felt as if it was coming straight off the tundra so, after hanging the haynet on the fence and breaking the ice in the water trough, I was glad to go back in and thaw out. Mucking out would have to wait for later.
By now I’d found a note about the care of Billy, which had come adrift from its place in the file and been pushed into the pocket at the back. However, apart from feeding him some of the goat biscuit things every day, which I had been doing anyway, he seemed to eat much the same as Lady. At the bottom of the typed page, Jude had written: If Billy gets ill and goes off his food, tempt him with toast and treacle.
Was he serious?
I got the defrosted ham out of the larder and boiled it, pouring away the water. Then I smeared it with honey and mustard, stuck it with cloves, and put it in to bake.
By the time I’d followed this up by making a blancmange and a quick chocolate cake from a favourite recipe, Noël and Jess had appeared. Tilda was, as I expected, still shaken, bruised and stiff, though she’d apparently announced her intention of coming down later.
When I asked them what they would like for breakfast, Jess said, ‘A bacon and egg McMuffin, if you really want to know.’
‘There are muffins in the freezer, you could have a Holly Muffin instead, if that would do?’
In fact, we all had bacon and egg-filled muffins, including Tilda, though Jess took hers up on a tray along with toast, marmalade, butter and a little fat pot of tea.
Apparently she usually eats a hearty breakfast, though if she got through that lot, then she must eat her own body weight every day, since she’s the size of a sparrow!
Fortified by that, Noël and Jess were all set for an expedition to the attic to fetch down the Christmas decorations.
‘There are only two days to go before Christmas, so there’s no time to waste,’ Noël said. They wanted me to go with them, which in my new spirit of drifting with the seasonal flow I agreed to do, just as soon as I’d cleared the breakfast things.
Jess was dispatched to collect her granny’s breakfast tray and tell her where we were going to be, in case she thought we’d deserted her. I was just checking the ham when there was a hammering at the back door.
George must have snowploughed up the drive again, for the tractor with the heavy blade on the front was on the other side of the gate and, to judge from the footsteps across the snowy cobbles, he’d already made a couple of trips to and fro. There was a large holdall and a suitcase at his feet, and he was holding an assortment of other stuff, including a lot of greenery.
He gave me his attractive grin over the top of it, his healthy pink face glowing under its shock of white-gold hair and his sky-blue eyes bright.
‘Morning! Met the postie in the village and thought I’d save him the trouble of bringing your mail up, seeing I was coming anyway. I’ve brought the old folks’, too, though theirs mostly looks like Christmas cards.’
‘That’s kind of you.’
‘If you take that?’ he suggested and I relieved him of a large bundle held together with red elastic bands, two parcels, a hyacinth in a pot and the bunch of holly and mistletoe.
‘Henry sent you the hyacinth, and the holly and bit of mistletoe are from me. I’ll cut some more and drop it off in the porch later.’
‘Oh — how kind of you both,’ I said, gingerly holding the prickly bouquet and trying not to drop anything. ‘And the bags. .?’
He picked them up and heaved them over the threshold.
‘Becca’s. I cleared as far as New Place and she called to me and asked if I’d drop them off.’
‘She did?’
I supposed it made sense, when I came to think about it, since if it carried on snowing she might have to walk up through the snow on Christmas Day. She did seem to need an awful lot of stuff for one night, though!
‘We’ve just finished breakfast — why don’t you come in and have a cup of tea?’
‘Nay, I haven’t time, but I’ll carry Becca’s bags through for you if you like, one of them’s heavy.’ He stamped the snow off his boot
s and came in, shutting the door behind him.
‘Is that George?’ called Noël from the kitchen. ‘Tell him to come through!’
‘I can’t stop,’ George called back, but walked up the passage anyway, while I lingered to put the holly and mistletoe in the utility room together with the hyacinth, until I could find it a saucer to stand on.
Despite what he’d said, he was sitting at the kitchen table when I went in and Noël was pouring him a mug of slightly stewed tea.
I put a plate of mince pies in front of him and, sniffing the air as appreciatively as a truffle hound, he said, ‘Something smells good in here!’
‘That’s the ham cooking. . and maybe the cake I made earlier.’
While he consumed a succession of mince pies he told us what the lane down to the main road was like, which was pretty bad for anything except four-wheel-drive vehicles, especially the last steep, bendy stretch from Weasel Pot Farm.
‘Their lad Ben’s doing a roaring trade, pulling the SatNav people out of the ditch on the first corner. They get partway up it, then slide down again.’
‘You’d think they would take one look and realise the SatNav was wrong,’ Noël said.
‘More money than sense, buying those things in the first place,’ George said.
‘But the postman got up it all right?’ I asked.
‘He’s got a Post Office Land Rover and he’s used to it,’ he explained. ‘Did you make these mince pies yourself, flower?’
They were quite small, but even so, I’d never seen anyone put a whole one in their mouth before. I nodded, fascinated.
‘They’re champion — you’re a grand cook as well as a strapping lass,’ he said with approval.
Jess giggled and he grinned at her. ‘And you’ll be another strapping lass too, when you’ve finished growing.’
Jess blushed, but actually I think she was quite pleased.
‘The forecast says more snow is likely on higher ground,’ Noël said, ‘so I suppose we might get cut off.’
‘Maybe, though we usually manage to keep the lane to the village open, don’t we? But you couldn’t get even the tractor over the Snowehill road to Great Mumming, now.’ George consumed the last mince pie on the plate as though he was popping Smarties, then got up. ‘Well, I’ll be going: the dog’s on the tractor and it’s bitter out there. I’ll drop you more greenery off later, Holly, you’ll want it for the decorations — this first lot’s more of a token gesture. And maybe you’ll have hung the mistletoe up in the porch when I come back,’ he added with unmistakable intent, and it was my turn to blush.
Twelve Days of Christmas Page 13