She wandered back to the church door and stood waiting for her parents. ‘Ah, there you are Lucy,’ said her mother and Lucy said, ‘Nice to meet you,’ as if she was saying, What an awful smell in here. Her mouth pretended to smile. I thought of the dribbling teapot. No, no, no, surely that could not be right. I’ve met someone, she’s in the debating team, her name’s Lucy. Lucy lives in London. Shut up, Dave. Shut up. There were thousands of girls called Lucy. Millions. This could not be her. Not her. Cigarette-smoking blonde-haired snobby little cow. I refused to believe what my brain insisted on telling me.
I would have to find out for myself and stay calm. Stay calm. NOT HER! It could not it must not be her.
Christmas
December 1973. I accepted the end of my first term at Hartley College, the Virgin Birth, the Three Wise Men and the star of Bethlehem. I rejected chilblains and Dave. He rejected me, I rejected him. I accepted tangerines wrapped in silver foil in my Christmas stocking, and two brazil nuts and a walnut in their shells. We received one hundred bottles of wine and port, and one bottle of stout that I gave to Flora Shillingham.
‘Happy Christmas, Flora.’
‘Cheers, dear, my favourite drink. Clever of you to know.’
‘You were drinking it at the pub.’
‘Of course, dear, I knew that.’
She was again unloading her spectacular basket in our kitchen. One hundred mince pies, half a dozen duck eggs.
‘Don’t ask where I got these from, but they are wonderful for cakes, dear, absolutely wonderful.’ There was a container covered in silver foil full of brandy butter.
‘My own recipe. You’ve got to have the pudding to go with it, of course, although I do like just a spoonful on its own sometimes.’
Dad said it could knock your head off when he tried it. People full of cheer and goodwill kept bringing us things. They came trooping up the gravel driveway. It was relentless. A part of me had to join in.
‘It’s like we’re the baby Jesus,’ said Emily. ‘Everyone’s coming to see us.’
‘We’re the three wise women. Emily, you’re a horse or a donkey. People bring us gifts because they think we are newly arrived prophets—which we are.’
‘Are we?’
The nativity scene nestled on a table under the Christmas tree in church. There was the baby Jesus, lying on real straw in a little wooden manger surrounded by Mary and Joseph, one painted china cow, two brown donkeys (Sheila and Bruce), two lambs, two shepherds and three wise men.
We also were given a turkey bigger than any bird we’d ever seen before. This was a Christmas gift from the farmer down the road. He gave the vicar one each year and he would be delighted if we’d accept the poor old gobbler on his behalf. My father wanted his first Christmas in his new parish to be a good one. He had taken to village life like a duck to water, a dog to a freshly shot pheasant, a fox to a chicken. His shoulders widened, his beard grew bushier, his voice deepened, his eyebrows curled, and his Roman nose seemed more stately, a little longer perhaps, a little more Roman.
Emily poked at the turkey with its goose-pimpled flesh and called it Fred.
‘Why is it called gooseflesh when it’s a turkey?’ she wanted to know.
My mother needed help in lifting Fred, the great stuffed bird, in and out of the oven. She estimated that it would take at least seven hours of cooking time, so long as one of us helped her, and that would have to be me because Emily couldn’t hold the baking tray and Maggie was still in bed avoiding all this. Sleeping off the London air, as Mother put it.
Our other grandmother, the one who was alive and breathing, Granny Budde, our sweet and determined grandmother, wasn’t coming for Christmas this year. She was sick. She’d let us settle in, she didn’t want to interfere with our first Christmas, and she had a difficult cough and we could all visit her in the New Year instead. ‘It will take us even longer to get through Fred,’ sighed Mum. Not that my grandmother ate copious amounts of turkey, quite the opposite in fact, but Christmas wouldn’t be the same without Granny Budde.
Roll up! Roll up! Vicar’s family drown under weight of gifts. See them stagger in real life from the pantry to the table. Watch their knees buckle as they force down another mince pie!! Watch Fred get stuffed with sausage meat and chestnuts! Watch the Budde girls annoy their mother by constantly eating between meals! Glad Tidings of Comfort and Joy.
Christmas stockings were opened in the morning. Good Old Father Christmas brought me fruit wrapped in foil, God bless him! and a couple of new uncrushed Walnut Whips. Parents gave us books if we were lucky and we always were lucky. We waited until after lunch, when my father woke from a small but necessary postprandial nap, to open our other presents.
‘Why can’t we be like everyone else and have presents in the morning?’ grumbled Emily.
‘Because your father has to take midnight mass and then be up for the eight o’clock and after that the half past ten family service. It’s not too hard to wait a little longer is it, Emily?’
She pouted. ‘I suppose not,’ she said.
‘Emily, grow up,’ said Maggie, who was by now so grown up we barely recognised her.
‘What makes you think you’re so special?’ said Emily. ‘You’ve only had one term at university.’
‘Yes, and I have met some of the most brilliant minds in the world,’ said Maggie.
‘Like who?’
‘Plato. Socrates. Aristotle, Shakespeare, Darwin, Newton, Ghandi and Ezra Braithwaite.’
‘I’ve heard of them.’
‘All of them?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ezra Braithwaite wrote The Braithwaite Chronicles and that happens to be my favourite book.’ Emily slowly peeled her tangerine. Then shoved in some chocolate money and sat on the bed with her Christmas stocking in her lap.
‘You sure about that, Emily?’
She nodded vigorously.
‘Because Ezra Braithwaite doesn’t exist.’
By Christmas afternoon, stomachs full of turkey and stuffing and Mum’s divine Christmas pudding and Flora’s wicked brandy butter, Emily had to admit it had all been worth waiting for. She was engrossed in the pages of The Partridge Family Annual, which she’d been on about since October. Dad had also bought her something proper to read, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner. ‘One of my favourite authors,’ said Dad. ‘Cracking story, beautifully told. Think you’ll like it.’
Emily wasn’t so sure. ‘Thanks, Dad.’
Dad opened a yellow lamb’s-wool scarf and a new pair of sheepskin gloves. Mum was happy with a copy of Trees of Britain—almost, but not quite, as large as the cypress tree itself—and two volumes of War and Peace. ‘For when you’re done with Anna,’ said Dad. The cover of the first volume showed Russian soldiers with a pair of dead legs poking through a snow-covered battlefield. I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to read it.
Maggie received The Great Gatsby (I love Scott Fitzgerald, so flipping modern), and a glossy book of the best photos ever taken in Vogue.
‘It’s all self-promotion, that book,’ said Dad.
‘I love it, Dad,’ said Maggie, already absorbed between the covers.
Ma gave her a sky-blue dressing gown which she immediately put on and said she wouldn’t take it off until New Year’s Day.
My present from my parents? A dark green old-fashioned kind of hardcover book, Poems of Lord Byron. Plus—yes!—The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, which I had been wanting to read for ages.
‘You’ll enjoy that, Rebecca, and we thought the Byron might help.’
Wait till you see this Algernon.
I also received a leather-bound writing journal full of creamy blank paper and a ribbon to mark the page. One very flash silver fountain pen also came my way, with a spare pack of black ink cartridges. The pen fitted snugly into my hand.
‘Don’t let anyone else use it because the nib shapes itself to your writing,’ said Dad.
‘Did you hear that?’ I waved my pen around.
‘No one touches this.’
Except Algernon.
In the dark of my room I wished him Happy Christmas and showed him how the pen worked, how to insert the cartridges.
‘How very different this is,’ he said, and asked could he please write in my journal and I said yes, but neatly, and save some pages for me.
‘Where is the blotter? For the ink?’
‘I don’t have one.’
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I have finished my poem.’
‘Do you have any idea how much food I have eaten today, Algernon?’
‘I have no understanding of gluttony. Please listen. Do not sleep, Miss Budde? Miss Budde?’
‘What?’
Tap tap tap.
‘I am afraid we have a visitor.’
Tap tap tap.
‘I thought that was you.’
‘No. This is me. That is someone else.’
Algernon whirled around with a great blast of freezing air and stood at the window with his arms folded.
‘No,’ he said. He waved at whoever it was to go away. ‘This room is taken.’
The combination of food and presents and Christmas was weighing me down. I really didn’t want to look. But whoever it was kept on tapping at the window. Oh no. I could see long strands of hair curling across the window. His sister? She was on the balcony, staring through the window, her long black dress barely visible in the night. This time I was not so scared. There was a wall and a window between us.
‘What does she want, Algie? Maybe she’d like some cake? There’s loads of it in the kitchen.’
But I was pretty sure cake was the last thing on this creature’s mind. She put her hands against the windowpane and breathed on the glass. She was fogging up the place, there was the smell of damp cold earth.
Algernon grabbed my arm. I could feel his light bones under his skin. ‘She came with me, I said she could, but in truth I could not prevent her.’
‘Rebecca?’ My father’s disembodied head poked around my bedroom door. ‘Everything all right? Thought I heard a noise. It’s cold in here. Keep that window shut, won’t you? Thanks for a happy day. Sleep well.’
‘Night, Dad, thanks for my presents.’
My father stared at the curtains twitching by the window. ‘Terrible draught in here. You sure the window is shut?’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘We’ll have to do something about that then.’
Could he sense them in the shadows? Darkness of the woods and trees.
My father placed his hand on my head in that loving, kind way of his. ‘Goodnight then.’ He sniffed the air again, and closed the door gently behind him.
Dad, wait, there’s a ghost in my room and another one trying to get in.
I was out of bed again in a second.
Algie stepped from the shadows. ‘If you let her in she will never leave.’
‘I thought one of you was enough, but it’s beginning to look as if every single ghost in England wants to live in my bedroom.’
‘Your room is inadequately sized for that.’
He put his hands on the glass and she placed hers against his. A strange acceptance passed between them. I could see it swirling around them like fog.
‘She can’t just stay here.’
‘We cannot prevent her.’
‘Well, so long as she doesn’t try to strangle me with her hair every time I look out the window. I can’t do anything about you lot anyway, can I?’
‘Ah, Miss Budde, that is the whole point of us being here. Precisely because you can.’
‘But she stays outside because you say so?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She respects my wishes. Mostly.’
‘What does she want, Algie?’
‘She wants love. That was all she ever wanted.’
I had the feeling Algernon knew a lot more than he was saying and tonight he wasn’t saying much. He stood at the window until his sister disappeared and sleep fell upon me once more.
I kept the window closed. I accepted ice on the inside and ice on the outside of the windows. I accepted the stark beauty of winter fields. I accepted the Boxing Day walk around the village with Maggie and my father. I accepted my balcony ghost and my wardrobe ghost. I accepted turkey sandwiches, turkey curry and rejected more turkey sandwiches. Two weeks after Christmas, Maggie returned to London, and following my sister’s advice, I went to the pub and found myself a job.
A Tray in Both Hands
‘Right, remember, Rebecca, keep it hot—no one likes food that’s gone cold. And don’t spill anything, he hates it all sloppy.’ Amanda handed me a plate of food; she was always doing ten things at once and today was no different. On the plate was one of the Dog’s homemade pies, with thick crusty pastry and a pastry leaf on top.
‘I’ll show you how to do that one day if you like, once you’ve got the hang of it.’
‘Sure.’ I was dressed in my pub uniform, black skirt, black tights, white shirt (all Maggie’s clothes apart from the shoes, and I hadn’t asked her because she wasn’t here to ask), pub apron over the top. For once I blessed my bouncy shoes as they were proving to be very comfortable to wear. I could bounce along in them for hours.
There was a jug of gravy sitting on the side of the plate and a huge pile of beans and carrots next to the mashed potato. Onto the tray went a white linen serviette folded in a napkin holder.
‘Now this is Alex’s own, silver and bone it is.’
I couldn’t bring myself to be quite as excited as Amanda was over a serviette holder, but give me a few days, Amanda, and I’ll try. If only you knew Amanda, how he had kissed me by the back door.
‘Only a gentleman has his own serviette holder, Rebecca, it’s a traditional thing. Don’t you have serviettes in your house when you all sit down to dinner?’
‘No, I don’t think we do.’ I didn’t think Alex March was a gentleman though, did I?
‘Maybe your mother keeps them for Sunday best.’
Maybe, maybe not, I think the latter is true.
She plonked a bottle of red wine on the tray then thrust the tray into my waiting hands.
‘Power’s been off since nine o’clock this morning, so he says. Poor thing. Wonder why he’s affected and not us? Now, no matter what he says, don’t be long. ’
Amanda straightened up, smoothed her hands on the front of her white apron, and pretty well shoved me through the swing doors at the front of the pub. ‘Don’t bother knocking, just go straight through. Jojo’s all right, just call out so he hears you.’
‘He won’t bite me if I just turn up will he?’
‘Jojo? ’Course not. Go on then, off you go.’
When I reached the front door of the manor house I opened it and yelled out, ‘Lunch is here!’
From somewhere inside the house a voice replied, ‘Left after the kitchen.’
Everything looked so different to the night of the party. No tables, no glasses, no champagne, just a long dark corridor leading somewhere. I was being watched by all the people in the paintings. Hello again, hello, hello, now I am a servant not a guest, nice to see you.
The kitchen was full of dirty wine glasses. The long table was covered in newspapers, half-eaten pieces of toast and empty wine bottles. On the other side of the room was a door and, obediently turning left through it, I walked into a large familiar room where only a few weeks earlier we had all been eating and drinking. Alexander March stood facing a large canvas resting on an easel, his back to me, as I walked in.
Straggly pieces of hair curled about his shoulders. His trousers were spattered with paint and his shirt was half undone and hanging over his trousers. Compared with the last time I had seen him he looked wild, dishevelled. An animal dressed as a human.
He spoke over his shoulder. ‘Did you know there’s not enough electricity in the whole of bloody England for my lunch? Unbelievable.’
‘Where d’you want this?’
‘Rebeccah Budde, we meet again. How are you?’<
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He picked the knife up from the tray and pointed to a small round table then glanced back at the canvas. I put the tray on the table and stood looking at the painting. ‘What do you think?’ He pointed with the tip of the knife.
‘What’s it meant to be?’
‘It’s not meant to be anything, it is already something.’
The canvas had a dark painted background of trees and leaves, and in the foreground there was an unfinished table with a dead rabbit hanging from it.
‘It’s very dark.’
He stared at the canvas for a while. ‘Maybe not dark enough. I’m not sure about this one yet. Now where’s my lunch? I’m bloody starving.’
He nodded to a dilapidated chair where his brown dog was curled up snoozing. ‘Turf him off.’
‘Come on, Jojo.’ I patted him.
Jojo lifted his large intelligent head and sniffed the air.
‘Not for you I’m afraid,’ and I pulled his ears and stroked his neck.
Alex pulled up an old leather chair which had clearly seen better days, sat himself down and started to eat. ‘He likes you,’ he said, taking a mouthful of pie.
‘I like him. What type of dog is he?’
‘Weimaraner,’ he said with his mouth full. ‘German hunting dog; a friend gave him to me. Good-looking, isn’t he?’
Jojo had pale blue eyes with a large head and sleek light brown fur. He was lovely to behold.
The dog looked up at him eagerly.
‘I can’t be long, it’s lunchtime.’
‘Amanda can do without you for five minutes.’
There were all sorts of animal smells and paint smells waltzing around the room.
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