The West Country Winery

by Lizzie Lovell

  ‘Marvellous,’ Des says.

  ‘Good for Dad,’ Scarlet chips in. ‘He didn’t tell us that.’

  ‘He phones me every week for an update.’

  ‘Every week?’

  ‘Without fail,’ Ingrid says smugly. ‘He’s a very dutiful son.’

  Not such a dutiful father or husband is what I want to say, but I keep these thoughts to myself as I don’t want to upset Scarlet. ‘Please may I have the chutney?’ I ask Eve, so that I can do something with my hands other than strangulation.

  Eve smiles, sympathetic, and passes me the jar of home-made piccalilli, giving my arm a gentle pat as she does so. I feel unusually warm and fuzzy towards my mother, who is like the Madonna in comparison to the battleaxe at her table.

  ‘Piccalilli?’ Ingrid looks appalled.

  ‘Home-made,’ Eve confirms. ‘My mother’s recipe.’

  ‘How quaint.’ Ingrid smiles. At least, I think it’s a smile, but you can never quite tell as her lips are so thrifty.

  Declan tops up my glass with cava. ‘Chin-chinbottoms-up-cheers-m’dear,’ he whispers into my ear.

  I’m very aware of Ingrid staring at us, disapproving of such shared intimacy. Surely she realizes Dec is gay and not cosying up to me? Maybe she is homophobic? I certainly wouldn’t put it past her. She comes from a traditional family who believe in clearly defined gender roles, a marriage between a man and a woman that should last a lifetime, however much misery that entails for either one or both of the spouses.

  Declan nudges me. ‘You’ll shatter that glass if you squeeze it any harder,’ he whispers again.

  THE REST OF the day drags. I assign Scarlet the task of discovering just how long Ingrid plans to stay, and when she reports back that it could be until the new year, another pebble plops into my stomach.

  Horror of horrors.

  Must make sure the telephone cupboard is restocked with wine.

  I’ve hardly had a chance to think about the wine lately. It’ll be ready to try next month – our first opportunity to see if a new press has made all the difference. Then we need to think about buying our own. Converting the dairy parlour. Doing up the barn. Getting licences! I haven’t even started the paperwork for those. I feel a panic coming on. There’s such a lot to do to make this into a real business but each day is taking my energies in other directions. And now Ingrid. Thank God for Declan acting as a human shield.

  AS I GET ready for bed, pillowcases filled and left outside the girls’ bedrooms, I feel a shiver. It must be the cold. Though the fire has been going all day, the heating working to the max, and it’s quite mild as Christmas Eves go.

  My grandmother would have said someone was walking over my grave. I think of Rob. He messaged yesterday to say they’d crossed the Zambezi into Zambia and are now cycling through what westerners imagine is the real Africa. The roads are poor, mainly dirt tracks, but the people are the friendliest he has met. They’re living off maize flour dumplings and filtering water, as there’s nowhere to buy bottled. He’s praying the bike will hold out through this country. It’s already been repaired a few times but they’ve been warned there’s nowhere in Zambia to do this. And there are long distances to travel between pit stops. ‘It’s a simple life on the road,’ he says. ‘We just make sure we have enough food and water for a couple of days and find somewhere to pitch the tent before it gets dark.’

  I think of him lying in his tent in the dark. Lying near Jumbo from Doncaster. Does Jumbo snore? Does it keep Rob awake? Or is he more concerned with the prospect of lions and elephants? I hope his cycling chum will come to his rescue and not leave him for dead.

  Whatever the obstacles, finding some Internet is the least of their troubles. It looks like we might not get a Christmas phone call after all.

  DAWN IS DARK and gloomy. It’s hard to know if the sun has actually risen, but my phone tells me it’s eight o’clock. And we have a turkey the weight of a toddler to go in the Aga. I venture downstairs to check Eve has done this. She was setting her alarm for four.

  It’s freezing this morning. I don’t know how Ingrid will survive. There’s no meat on her bones and she feels the cold like no other person in the whole world or in the history of humankind. I can’t believe she’s actually here. I haven’t even got her a present – other than the dratted amaryllis – as she was the last person I was expecting to appear yesterday. I was so ecstatic to see Declan and so shocked to see her standing next to him in the yard.

  Swings and roundabouts.

  You win some, you lose some.

  I shiver and tiptoe into the kitchen, where I find Eve sitting at the table in the dim morning light, nursing a china cup of what smells like witch’s brew. Oh, if only she could whip up a magic potion to pull me through today.

  ‘Come and join me, Christabel,’ she says, patting the chair beside her. She pours me my own cup of tea or whatever it is she has in that pot. ‘Don’t worry about the present for Ingrid; I’ve wrapped up a blanket for her, one of the ones I’ve just finished making for the homeless shelter in town.’

  ‘Aren’t they more deserving and in need than my mother-in-law?’ I ask.

  ‘Charity begins at home, Christabel,’ she replies, tutting.

  I’ve never agreed with this philosophy and am surprised that Eve would spout such nonsense, but it saves some embarrassment, so I try to sound gracious.

  ‘Well, thanks very much,’ I say.

  My hot drink smells distinctly of booze.

  ‘The alcohol preserves the tincture,’ Eve says, all innocent.

  ‘Tincture? You’re sure that’s all it is? Tincture? It has the same kick as Tomasz’s wódka.’

  ‘Just a little cup of Christmas cheer. I’ll slip a wee dram into Ingrid’s morning coffee and that should help ease things.’ She winks and I realize that Ingrid is as much a pain to my mother as she is to me. ‘Happy Christmas, Christabel,’ she says.

  ‘Happy Christmas, Eve.’

  AN HOUR LATER and Des has the log fire going in the living room. The girls and I sit amongst randomly strewn wrapping paper and ribbon – Ruby’s, obviously, folded up neatly. Ingrid is having her morning constitutional around the village. She offered to take Luther, halfheartedly, and Luther feigned exhaustion, so she has gone alone. Eve and Des are having Buck’s Fizz while cooking up a breakfast that will allow us to keep going until a late lunch at three. Ingrid thinks this highly bohemian as she is used to lunch at one, every day of the year, no let-up even for the celebration of the birth of Christ. But today she will have to keep step with everyone else. Which means Buck’s Fizz for breakfast, party hats by midday, and a Christmas luncheon that will go on until teatime, when everything becomes a little hazy. Suddenly, I can’t wait.

  I’m just reaching my bedroom to get showered when my phone beeps in my dressing-gown pocket. I feel a tug in my stomach in the brief moment before checking who it is calling me on Christmas morning, when all my family are here except for one person. My husband. So when I see Rob’s face on the screen that I’m gripping in my hand, I feel a moment of profound relief – a highly underrated emotion. Rob hasn’t forgotten us. He’s found some Wi-Fi. He’s gone out of his way to contact us.

  I must have screamed, because the girls have thundered up the stairs to see what’s the matter. When I show them the phone with Rob smiling at us, tinsel wrapped around his helmet, they both laugh out loud and their own relief is clear on their faces too.

  IT TURNS OUT that Rob and Jumbo have reached Lusaka and are now having a few days’ R & R on the island of Zanzibar, which sounds incredibly exotic.

  Eve is impressed. ‘Freddie Mercury was from Zanzibar,’ she says, a big fan of Queen if ever there was one – pretty much the soundtrack to my days growing up at Home Farm. Fat-bottomed girls, bicycles and Flash Gordon.

  Rob and I manage a minute or so of private conversation before the connection fractures. I catch the words Happy Christmas... I miss you, but before I get the chance to reply, the line goes dead.
/>
  LUNCHTIME. A PACKED table: Eve, Des, Scarlet, Ruby, Declan, Ingrid, Malcolm, me. Also... Nathan. Yes, Nathan. Des bumped into him as he was giving Luther a quick walk down the lane to lure him away from the overwhelmingly tempting smell of giblets. Nathan was walking his springers and Des discovered he was home alone.

  ‘No one should be alone at Christmas,’ Des says.

  And I don’t know if Nathan put up a fight, but he did at least have the decency to return his spaniels and swap them for several bottles of fizz and claret from his cellar.

  I’ve been dreading this lunch, but even more so now that Ingrid is sitting next to my ex-husband.

  ‘Happy Christmas, Ingrid. It’s nice to meet you,’ Nathan says graciously when I introduce them, beaming my mother-in-law one of his winning smiles.

  ‘And the same to you,’ she says stiffly in response, giving me a look that suggests I am a wayward woman.

  She’s always disliked me for marrying her son: the divorcée, who came with a daughter in tow and a failed marriage behind her. It didn’t matter that Rob had a child too – he was a widower. And now he’s miles away in Africa and she’s here at my mother’s table being charmed by my ex.

  Des, ever my saviour, brings the table to order by proposing a toast with the champagne Nathan has brought.

  ‘Here’s to absent intrepid travellers and present new adventurers,’ he says, raising his glass. Candlelight gleams through it, turning the blush a deeper shade of perfect pink, the bubbles shooting like little stars. ‘To family and friends. Merry Christmas.’

  We all join in the toast and pull crackers. Hats are put on and jokes read. Food is piled onto plates. Glasses are filled. All is going well. Declan is entertaining Ruby and Scarlet with slightly edgy tales of the city. Nathan continues to charm Ingrid. Eve, meanwhile, is in clover, listening to her family around her while Des and Malcolm revisit the old days. I try to be the same; happy to be here, now, alive and well. And spare a thought for Rob, so far away. Has he even managed a Christmas dinner of any sort?

  AS PLATES ARE cleared from the table by two unusually helpful teens, talk turns towards the vineyard. We bring Ingrid up to speed on what has happened in previous years, and on Melina’s breakthrough with the wine press. Des talks about his paintings. His artistic reputation’s rise and fall and possible resurrection. I squirm when I hear Ingrid’s praise. I know exactly what she thinks of Des’s paintings, but now that they are increasing in popularity and value she seems less disapproving. I steer him towards the plans for the barn and dairy parlour. I want my mother-in-law to know that I am fully committed to this project and that my parents are not quite the feckless bohemians she believes them to be. If nothing else, she knows I am good at my job, having been to events I have organized. And I know that Declan will have been bigging me up to her because he has my back.

  ‘And also, Ingrid, in the new year I shall be applying for a licence to sell alcohol. And further down the track, once we’ve renovated the barn, a licence for weddings, too,’ I tell her proudly.

  ‘Weddings?’ she asks, as if I am living in cloud cuckoo land. ‘In a barn?’

  ‘Yes. People can have the ceremony in St Mary Magdalene if they like and then have their reception here. Or if they don’t want a church wedding, they can do the ceremony here, too. Laws are much more lenient these days.’

  ‘And society is going to hell in a handcart!’ Ingrid blurts out.

  ‘Oh no, Ingrid, that’s not true. But Christabel is right: couples really do have so many more choices these days. Register offices, churches, hotels. Barns. Blessings, handfasting, tree-planting ceremonies. Barn dances.’

  Thank God for my mother, yet again coming to my aid in a moment of crisis.

  Ingrid sits still, listening but not hearing, blatantly dismissing my mother’s ideas.

  I want to tell her I’m losing the will to live and no longer care what Ingrid thinks of us. She made up her mind about us a very long time ago. It isn’t going to change. She clearly believes me to be the spawn of Satan and en route to opening a den of debauchery to rival Caligula’s palace.

  But I don’t have to say anything, because Eve puts Ingrid in her place with some words of scripture that I didn’t know she had in her repertoire.

  ‘“Honour the Lord with your wealth”,’ she says. ‘“Then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine”.’

  Ingrid squints at her, suspicious.

  ‘Proverbs 3, verses 9 to 10,’ Eve continues. Then she empties her glass and lifts it aloft for someone to refill.

  Declan comes to her aid, opening another bottle of pink fizz, one he brought with him from London. The pop of the mushroom cork, that explosion of joy, is one of the most glorious sounds you can hear, at once reassuring and full of promise. I could kiss each and every one of us at the table. Except for a red-faced Ingrid. And Nathan, of course.

  Nathan, who has gone very quiet as he looks askance at the screen of his flashing phone. I can’t make out the name of the caller from here but he answers abruptly, almost snappily, before disappearing into the other room without so much as an apology.

  Rude.

  Meanwhile, I notice, Ingrid doesn’t put out her hand to stop Des refilling her flute. In fact, she makes a point of saying how champagne is the best drink in the world and that no English wine could ever compete.

  Then she pulls her own quote out of the hat. ‘In the words of Napoleon Bonaparte,’ she says, ‘“in victory, you deserve champagne. In defeat you need it.”’

  Which is passive-aggressive, to say the least.

  But Des trumps her Bonaparte with his Churchill. ‘Champagne is the wine of civilization,’ he quotes. ‘And the oil of government.’

  I’m not entirely sure this works as an argument but the sentiment is clear. We underdogs will fight with all our heart and bodies to make a decent sparkling wine.

  ‘Chin-chin-bottoms-up-cheers-m’dears,’ Declan says in his campest voice. Just to annoy Ingrid, I’m sure, as she fumes silently into her cups.

  PEACE RETURNS ONCE the Christmas pudding is set alight and dished out with a choice of brandy butter, clotted cream or custard as accompaniment. Everyone eats in silence; this is perfect comfort food and there’s nothing to say.

  By the time I’ve served teas and coffees, with mince pies for those who still have space, Nathan is back. He’s been gone a good forty minutes – not that I’m timing him or anything.

  ‘Important call?’ I ask him, wondering who it was. His parents are no longer alive – not that they gave two hoots about him when they were – and he’s an only child. No other relatives I know of. So it was either something to do with the estate. Or a woman.

  He doesn’t answer my question but nods in thanks at the cup of tea and mince pie I hand him.

  And now another interruption. A furious knock at the door which sets Luther off in a frenzy, teeth bared and hackles rising, terrifying Ingrid. I have an image of Miss Gulch in The Wizard of Oz, demanding Luther’s execution, and I have always wondered what happened to Toto at the end when Dorothy wakes up from her dream.

  But that’s fantasy and this is real. There is a strange woman standing in my mother’s kitchen. She is tall, thin and pale with long dark hair and those slug-like eyebrows. And yes, it’s fair to say she is quite beautiful. Nathan stands a few feet away from her, looking as though he’s unsure what to do.

  ‘Well,’ Des says. ‘Aren’t you going to introduce us, Nathan?’

  He coughs an embarrassed cough. ‘This is... er, this is...’

  But he can’t do it. He can’t say her name.

  ‘Go on, Nathan. Introduce me,’ the woman says, hands on hips.

  ‘This is Charlotte,’ Nathan mumbles.

  ‘Charlotte?!’ I exclaim. ‘As in Charlotte Charlotte?’

  ‘Yes,’ he confirms.

  I’ve only ever known her as a name. A figure I could jab pins into. But here she is, in the flesh, standing in my parents’ ki
tchen on Christmas Day, my family gathered around the table, all watching the tableau unfold. The woman who stole my husband.

  ‘I’ve come to see Nathan,’ she says. ‘He put the phone down on me,’ she adds, addressing the rest of us.

  ‘I didn’t realize you were outside,’ he says, annoyed, embarrassed, awkward. ‘If you were outside why didn’t you just come in?’

  ‘I didn’t want to impose.’

  ‘You’re imposing now.’

  ‘I didn’t want to spoil this family’s Christmas with what I’ve got to say.’

  She’s certainly not going to spoil this family’s Christmas if I have anything to do with it, even though we’d probably all like to hear what she’s got to say.

  I stand up, scraping my chair rather loudly across the flags to add fanfare to my forthcoming command: ‘Nathan, I think you’d better take this outside.’

  Charlotte looks at me with those bright-blue eyes of hers. A quick scan of me, up and down. A brief nod of the head and a half-smile. Nathan steers her out of the kitchen before any more can be said.

  Happy Christmas to the pair of them.

  WE DON’T SEE Nathan for the rest of the day. Stepping into his shoes, Malcolm man-marks Ingrid, which is beyond kind seeing as he could be enjoying his own best company in his own boozy home instead of pandering to this battleaxe’s every whim. Though I do soften a little – just a little – when I catch her later checking her phone, hopeful for a message from the dutiful yet very absent son. I realize that she is lonely. And, though she has no one but herself to blame, it’s still sad that a life should come to this, its emptiness all the more hollow on this sacred day that should be stuffed full of love. Though love is an emotion I’m battling with right now. Why would Charlotte come into my home, even if she had just had a tiff with her boyfriend? What sort of woman is she?

  EVENING COMES AND I get a phone call from Melina wishing us all Wesołych Świąt. ‘Unfortunately is not really happy Christmas for me or my family. Babcia is gone.’