The Magic of Christmas

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘You did?’

  ‘That’s a lie!’ Polly yelled furiously, but Jasper just glanced coolly at her, one eyebrow raised, as though she were a failed soufflé. He looked terribly like Nick. I don’t think Polly is any kind of soufflé, though, more of a synthetic Black Forest gateau with poisonous cherries.

  ‘So you were not on good terms with your husband,’ the policewoman suggested to me, ‘although he’d had affairs in the past to which you hadn’t objected?’

  ‘Of course I objected!’ I exclaimed. ‘What do you take me for? And they were usually more in the nature of one-night stands than anything serious. For a long time I used to believe him when he said he loved me and they meant nothing.’

  ‘Yes, but that was the old Dad, not the nastier model we’ve had to live with lately,’ Jasper pointed out. ‘Even I’ve overheard him, taunting you about some woman he’s been seeing — and he’s not coming across as a very admirable-sounding character, is he?’

  The police officer said patiently, ‘So this time he was having a serious affair, Mrs Pharamond? He would have left you?’

  ‘No, it had to be the other way round, because this cottage belongs to his great-uncle by marriage, Roly Pharamond. So I intended leaving, once Jasper was at university and I’d found new homes for the livestock and sorted out somewhere to go, some sort of job …’ I trailed off.

  ‘That’s so not true! I heard you arguing in his workshop that very morning and when I questioned him about it later, he told me he’d asked you to leave and you’d refused!’ Polly cried. ‘He was afraid Roly Pharamond would take your side and he’d lose the cottage and everything he’d worked for.’

  ‘Obviously you didn’t hear much, Polly!’ I said, surprised. ‘What I actually told him was that I’d had enough and was going to leave him as soon as I could. And if anyone worked around here and stood to lose everything, it was me!’ I added incautiously, and the policewoman’s pen skidded quickly across the page.

  ‘Well, at least you don’t have to do that now, Mum,’ Jasper remarked, and a small silence ensued.

  I sighed. ‘We might still have to move, Jasper. It depends on Uncle Roly.’

  ‘Unks won’t put you out, Ma. He’s really fond of you.’

  ‘So,’ said the officer to Polly, ‘you overheard an argument, and what then?’

  ‘She came out,’ Polly said, with a venomous look at me. ‘So I said I’d brought her some field mushrooms to exchange for eggs, and she said, “Help yourself, I’m going for a walk.” She was really odd — she looked furious. When she’d gone I spoke to Tom briefly and he said he’d come over later, after he’d finished the board he was painting — which he did. And that’s the last time I saw him, because when I woke up early next morning he’d gone. He parks around the back of the house, out of sight, so I’d no idea he hadn’t come in his own van,’ she added. ‘I just assumed he had.’

  ‘No, it was still at the garage,’ I told her. ‘But if he hadn’t taken my car, when he knew very well I wanted it later, it might have been me and Jasper who had the accident.’

  ‘It should have been you!’ she said venomously. Her reddened eyes and sharp nose made her look like a particularly unsavoury rodent.

  Jasper stood up slowly and said in a tone of menace I’d never heard from him before, ‘I think you’ve said — and done — quite enough. Why don’t you clear off?’

  She floundered hastily and inelegantly out of the chair and backed towards the door. PC Perkins jumped up and stood between them.

  ‘If I could have your name and address, Ms Darke? I’ll follow you over and ask you a few more questions in your own home, if I may?’ She turned to me with a thin smile: ‘Thank you for your assistance, Mrs Pharamond.’

  I had a horrible feeling she suspected me of loosening the wheelnuts on purpose, then leaving the keys out where Tom was sure to find them. And goodness knew what Polly would tell her!

  ‘Jasper,’ I said when they’d gone, ‘you were wonderful!’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mum, that cop may have a suspicious mind, but we know there’s nothing to find, so they can’t pin anything on you.’

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ I said weakly, then had a thought. ‘I wonder if Tom had anything to eat at Polly’s? Only if he had an attack of food poisoning, that might account for why he lost control of the car when the wheel came off.’

  ‘I don’t think he went there to eat, Mum,’ Jasper said, before vanishing back up to his Batcave.

  In the kitchen I discovered that half the candied peel had vanished, presumably eaten by Jasper while waiting for the kettle to boil, but then, it’s very moreish. But it didn’t matter, I was only going to dip it in dark chocolate as a treat for later.

  Meanwhile, there was a whole row of bolting lettuces (I’d planted too many, as usual) to toss to the hens, and fruit to pick: a fresh strawberry Pavlova would be wonderfully comforting.

  Chapter 8: Well Braced

  Once our bulk order for dried fruit, peel and all the other ingredients has arrived and been divided up among the five members of the Christmas Pudding Circle, you can tell where we all live by the rich aroma of cooking mincemeat wafting from the doors and windows. We tend to make it early and of course it’s useful all year round, for making mincemeat brownies, stuffing baked apples and a host of other things — not least the famous Middlemoss Marchpane tart.

  I’m going to make a bumper quantity this time, before I really get going on all the bottling, preserving and freezing of garden fruits and vegetables that starts to build up momentum at this time of year: the making of chutneys, jams, curds and relishes …

  The Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes

  On the Monday Jasper returned to his dig (by bike) and I went to the Christmas Pudding Circle meeting. I was glad of any distraction from the turmoil of mixed emotions caused by Tom’s death and Polly’s revelations, though it would have been impossible to describe what I felt. It wasn’t even as if Tom had played a major part of our lives for the last few years, except in a negative, passing storm-cloud sort of way, but still, grief of some kind was an element and Jasper, I was sure, felt much the same. And also, I was increasingly uneasy at the direction the police enquiries seemed to be taking …

  Marian’s carefully drawn-up CPC meetings rota had already gone to pot. This one was held at Faye’s farm instead of Annie’s cottage, because our ingredients had arrived and she had more room in her kitchen than anyone else for dividing everything up.

  Annie picked me up and ran me there and was concerned to know how Jasper was doing.

  ‘Still confused, poor boy,’ I said. ‘Tom had been so horrible to him lately — but he was still his dad, after all.’

  ‘I expect he feels all angry and sad and muddled up,’ she agreed. ‘And you, too!’

  When we got to Faye’s, the others were already there and expressed their condolences, before we got down to the business of the meeting: dividing up our purchases of flour, dried fruit and peel, flaked almonds and all the rest of it. Faye’s cavernous farmhouse kitchen slowly became redolent with the spicy fruity smell of Christmas and I found that strangely comforting.

  So too was the tea Faye laid on afterwards, with strawberry jam and clotted cream to spread on the freshly baked scones. It was no wonder her little tearoom was perpetually packed out, so that she had to take on extra staff!

  I felt so much better after spending an hour or two in the undemanding company of my friends. And then the making and bottling of my mincemeat over the following days, along with producing some jam and chutney from a basket of ripe apricots given to me by Marian, proved a pretty good distraction.

  Due to Unks ringing an old number instead of that of Nick’s BlackBerry, it was Wednesday before he tracked him down to give him the bad tidings, and by then I’d already received a postcard of Morecambe Bay he’d posted a couple of days ago. It bore a scribbled recipe for spiced potted shrimps, which I found immensely comforting.

  Unks said Nick sen
t his love and would call me when he got back, because, of course, being a true professional, he will complete his assignment and send in his copy first. This was more than I seemed able to manage, for the end of August deadline for sending in my newest Perseverance Chronicle was fast approaching.

  I rarely mentioned Tom in the books — though when I did I referred to him only as ‘the Inconstant Gardener’ — but I couldn’t entirely ignore what had happened to him, so bringing the latest one to a close on any kind of upbeat note would be impossible. Unless, that was, I ended it just before Tom’s demise. Then I could include it in a foreword at the start of the book after that, which would come out when a decent interval had passed, the misery blunted by time.

  I could even end my current Chronicle with an apocryphal near-death by mushrooms instead. It’s the sort of thing my readers seemed to enjoy and I often embroidered the truth to make a good story. Saved by Caz Naylor in the nick of time … assuming he had found the poisonous fungi in the basket of mushrooms Polly left me, which I don’t think was ever clearly established. He could have been giving me a hint about Polly and Tom. I’m sure Caz must often have been flitting about the place in the evenings like a shade, so may well have seen and heard some of what had been going on.

  But I should have known better than to accept anything edible from Polly’s hands, even if the mushrooms had looked suspiciously like supermarket ones, brought as an excuse to snoop around Perseverance Cottage — or maybe, now I know about her affair with Tom, in order to see him without my suspecting anything.

  I had a sudden horrible thought. If I’d cooked the mushrooms without spotting the poisonous one, Jasper might have been made ill too! (But not Tom, who didn’t like them.) That put me right off mushrooms, whereas before I loved them.

  A lovely letter of condolence came from the Vanes this morning. They must have posted it practically the minute Annie told them about Tom. Of course, they only really knew the old, charming Tom and not the monster I’d been living with lately, but it was very kind and comforting all the same.

  The latest issue of the Mosses Messenger was in the letter box too, and carried a Mystery Play notice, which I found a bit poignant.

  IMPORTANT NOTICE!

  Everyone wanting to take part in the next Mystery Play should put their name forward immediately to Clive and Marian Potter at the Middlemoss Post Office, including any of last year’s performers intending to reprise their roles. (Applicants must be residents of Middlemoss, Mossedge or Mossrow and able to devote one night a week to rehearsals.) Sadly, due to bereavement, the important roles of Moses and Lazarus need to be recast and, as always, we need a new baby Jesus. Rehearsals will start in mid-September.

  I’m sure I will never be able to watch the Raising of Lazarus scene again without thinking of Tom, though actually when Lazarus’s mother says to Jesus, ‘Our Lazarus hath popped his clogs, and he were my only child,’ my eyes tend to well up anyway.

  Of course, Jesus immediately tells Lazarus to stop larking about, because his mother is in a proper state about him, and up he jumps with a cheery, ‘Hello, our ma. Is summat up?’

  But there will be no miracle this time for Tom, who hath well and truly popped his clogs.

  ‘Hi, Lizzy, I hear fate caught up with Tom before I did,’ was Nick’s bluntly uncompromising opening gambit later that day when he did finally phone. ‘Roly told me what happened.’

  I gripped the receiver tightly. ‘Oh, Nick! Did Unks tell you it was my car? The wheel came off, and it was the one I’d just changed the tyre on, so I’m sure the police think I did it on purpose!’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody stupid, of course they don’t think that! Why would you tamper with the wheel on your own frigging car?’ he snapped, and I stopped wilting over the receiver and glared at it, as though Nick could see me.

  ‘That’s true, I wouldn’t — but his van was at the garage and for once I’d left my keys out somewhere where he could find them. And we’d just had an argument, which Polly Darke overheard — she told the police. Nick, she was the one Tom was having the affair with, but I don’t think anyone except the police and Jasper know about that yet.’

  ‘Well, I certainly didn’t, but it doesn’t surprise me, because apart from you, he always did have crap taste in women.’

  That was as close to a compliment as I’d ever got from Nick — and he can’t include his own wife in that statement either, can he? So he mustn’t really think Tom and Leila were having an affair, after all. The idea of Leila as Tom’s lover is even more ludicrous than Polly, so I expect Tom was simply after free bed and board in London and lied to me to spur me into finally leaving him.

  ‘I had to go and identify Tom,’ I said abruptly, my thoughts taking a sudden, darker turn. ‘It was all right until we actually went in, because I thought it was a nightmare, so it didn’t matter. But then there he was and … I kept expecting his eyes to open. I couldn’t believe he was really dead, even though they said his neck was broken. Now I keep thinking about him, so white and … gone.’

  ‘Don’t think about it, then,’ he said sensibly. ‘It’s a pity I wasn’t home to identify him for you. Anyway, it wasn’t your fault and I think he’s given you a rough time the last year or two. I’ve kept my nose out, but I’ve heard things.’

  Tears pricked behind my eyes. ‘Well, it’s over now and they’re releasing the body. They’ve done the post-mortem and adjourned the inquest,’ I said, shivering. ‘The inquest will reopen again later, but not for ages probably, so the funeral can go ahead on Tuesday.’

  ‘Then they don’t suspect you of anything, you stupid bat,’ he said, with what sounded suspiciously like relief. Surely Nick didn’t secretly think I’d bumped Tom off, too? ‘I’m heading down to London tomorrow,’ he added, ‘but I’ll be back in a couple of days, if you need any help with the arrangements.’

  ‘Thanks, but I’ve got Annie — and the rest of my friends in the CPC have volunteered to help. The new vicar seems very pleasant and helpful too. In fact, everyone has been so kind. Roly offered to have the bunfight after the funeral up at the Hall, but I wanted it here. I’m going to do everything just the way the Tom I married would have wanted it — the fun one with a sense of humour.’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s a nice day then, because you won’t get more than six people standing up in your sitting room.’

  ‘I’m going to use the old greenhouse: that’s certainly big enough. I was going to get rid of it, so it’s fortunate I haven’t got round to it yet.’

  ‘It’ll still have to be a fine day, because it leaks like a sieve,’ he objected.

  ‘Caz Naylor asked me if he could do anything, and he’s out there now mending the cracked panes with gaffer tape.’

  Saying Caz had volunteered to help was a slight exaggeration, since his precise words had been a questioning, ‘Do owt, our Lizzy?’

  ‘You’re honoured,’ Nick said drily. ‘Whenever Roly or I ask him to do anything, he vanishes. How’s Jasper taking all this?’

  ‘Stoical and quiet, but much the same as me: in some ways it’s a relief to know Tom’s not coming back, but then we feel guilty for even thinking that, and sad at the same time and …’ I broke off, my voice wobbling.

  ‘Do you want me to come straight back now?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘No, of course not! What could you do?’ I said, braced by his tone.

  ‘Nothing, I suppose. Where’s Jasper now?’

  ‘He’s been back at the dig since Monday. He thought he might as well, rather than mope around the house.’

  ‘Very sensible. Has he sorted out his university accommodation yet? Or is he going to live at home?’

  ‘I wanted him to live in the hall of residence for the first year at least, because that’s what university is all about, isn’t it — getting away from your parents and making your own life? Only now he says he might share a house with one of his friends and some other students instead.’

  ‘He’s very level-headed for his age
. I’d let him do whatever he wants.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so, and at least Liverpool is close enough for him to come home for the weekend, or for me to drive over, if he gets homesick or anything.’

  ‘I expect he’ll quickly have other distractions.’

  ‘I should think the course will be distraction enough. I’m so proud of him, getting onto it. And he should get the full student loan now too, I think, because it’ll be based on my income and I’ve hardly got any, because I don’t suppose barter counts. Unks told Jasper yesterday that he was going to make him an allowance. He’s so kind, and really, we have no claim on him.’

  ‘Roly thinks of you as family. And speaking of family, have you heard from Tom’s mother and stepfather? You’d think they would offer to help!’

  ‘Oh, they have, and it was dreadful! He phoned and said Tom’s mother was too upset to speak to me and probably wouldn’t be well enough to travel all this way for the funeral, but he would pay for it all! I told him I didn’t want his money and I haven’t heard anything since.’

  ‘Well, burn all your boats at once, why don’t you?’ he said sarkily.

  ‘You’re such a comfort to me!’ I snapped, but beginning to feel much more like the real Lizzy Pharamond under all this bracing common sense.

  ‘Fellow feeling, darling. Leila and I are going to split, though I hope not in quite so final a manner as you and Tom.’

  ‘You are? I’m so sorry!’

  ‘Are you? Then don’t be! Things haven’t been good between us for a long time, though she’s always refused to discuss divorce.’

  ‘Well, she’s Catholic,’ I pointed out. ‘That’s probably it.’

  ‘Only nominally, and she’s going to have to get used to the idea, so the sooner the better. That’s why I’m going straight down there now, to tell her.’

  ‘You mean she doesn’t know yet?’

  ‘She knows how I feel: our marriage is dead in the water, and it’s time to call it quits. And I want to spend much more time in Middlemoss: I feel more creative there.’