The Christmas Invitation

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, peering out. ‘The two stones on top of the hill do look like just one from this angle, don’t they?’

  ‘I suppose they do. I hadn’t really noticed before,’ she agreed. ‘Luckily, Underhill was high enough to escape being drowned, though it lost most of the grounds at the front, which used to run right down to the edge of the village. That and Starstone Edge are all that are left.’

  ‘I can see quite a few roofs,’ I said.

  ‘It’s more of a hamlet than a village, though, and strung out along the road. Perhaps we’ll have a little excursion up there later.’

  ‘That would be lovely,’ I said politely, though it looked a bit cold and bleak for hiking.

  ‘Not that there’s much to see at this time of year,’ Clara continued. ‘Most of the cottages are holiday homes now, only used in the summer, and it’s a different place then. The Sailing Club opens up for the water sports enthusiasts, and the seasonal wooden café in the pinewoods by the water’s edge for visitors: walkers, birdwatchers and the like.’

  It was hard to imagine such a transformation, though I’d seen the pictures on the internet myself when I’d looked the place up.

  It was a bit brighter out now and there were hurrying white and dove-grey clouds reflected on the water’s surface, like a speeded-up film of the ever-changing sky.

  Clara turned away and resumed her tour guide mode.

  ‘Tottie’s papa disliked Victorian Gothic, so he had most of the furniture put in the attics and replaced it with something that, if less in keeping, was more comfortable and functional. It’s a strange mishmash, and of course Henry and I have added our mite to the mix. We seemed to have accumulated a lot of stuff over the years and much of it was in storage. We did have a flat in London at one time, but it was tiny.’

  On the other side of the hall was a matching large room, which contained a TV with easy chairs drawn up around it, but otherwise had been given over to Teddy, for matting covered the rugs and his easel, paints, train set, farm, stuffed animals, bicycle with trainer wheels, sit-on tractor and myriad other toys occupied the space.

  ‘Good heavens!’ I said.

  ‘Like an explosion in Hamleys toyshop, isn’t it?’ Clara said. ‘Henry’s a glutton for buying toys. You can’t let Henry and Teddy near a shop unless you confiscate Henry’s wallet first.’

  ‘Fun, though,’ I said. ‘I don’t think Teddy’s going to run out of things to do on rainy days.’

  ‘Oh, he’s always busy. Henry and I are teaching him Italian and Greek, and he’s already picked up the rudiments of hieroglyphs.’

  As we passed through the hall, Henry opened his door and said, ‘I thought I heard voices. Would you like to come in and see my little kingdom, Meg?’

  ‘Henry chose this room because he’s always liked writing in cramped spaces, like boot cupboards,’ Clara said. ‘This was the nearest he could get at the Red House.’

  ‘Slight exaggeration, my dear, but it’s true that I wrote some of my best poems in the hall of our flat in London. But here, you must admit, I have a real room, albeit not very large.’

  It was very light and attractive, though, with most of the walls lined with light green painted bookshelves, well-filled. A desk with a laptop on it stood against one wall, next to a cushioned wicker basket in which Lass obliviously snored. Before the window was a battered pine kitchen table, on which reposed the kind of old-fashioned typewriter I’d only seen in pictures. It was black and gold, with ivory-coloured keys.

  There was a sheet of paper sticking out of the top, with a thin column of words down the middle.

  ‘I like to think straight on to the typewriter,’ he said, following the direction of my gaze. ‘I taught myself to touch type as a boy and old habits remain. I have to hear and feel the heavy clunk of the keys in order to create.’

  ‘He does put his poems on his laptop afterwards, though,’ Clara said. ‘He’s not a total technological heathen.’

  ‘Far from it, as you well know, Clara! In fact,’ he added turning to me, ‘I’m constantly looking at auction sites on the internet, searching for ornaments and leaving bids.’

  ‘Ornaments?’ I said, surprised, because I couldn’t really see him as a collector of porcelain animals or Cranberry glass.

  ‘Baubles, bangles, bright shiny things, tra-la-la-la-la!’ warbled Clara. ‘But Henry doesn’t collect jewellery; his passion runs instead to old glass Christmas tree decorations.’

  ‘I’ve always loved them,’ said Henry, drawing me over to what looked like one of those Victorian cabinets with drawers for the storing of ghastly things like birds’ eggs, or butterflies and beetles impaled on pins. Above it was a glazed cabinet that lit up at the press of a switch, revealing sparkling rows of glass Christmas baubles in weird and wonderful shapes and colours. They all looked very old, fragile and strangely exciting.

  ‘I keep most of them stored away and rotate the ones on display,’ he said, opening the top drawer to reveal the usual divisions into little compartments, each filled not with an impaled insect, but a glass ornament in a nest of cotton wool. There were Santas, elves, pixies, fruit, flowers, clocks, angels, snowmen, musical instruments and birds with long tails of white spun glass, one of which looked remarkably like an ostrich.

  ‘I’m constantly finding new shapes and designs,’ Henry said. ‘They started producing them in a German village called Lauscha in the nineteenth century and they were endlessly inventive. They still make them there.’

  A larger drawer further down held bigger ornaments, and blown and silvered glass tree toppers – and one duller object that he lifted out and displayed proudly.

  ‘This moulded papier mâché Father Christmas tree topper is over a hundred years old.’

  I could well believe it, because it was a soupy brown colour, except for one or two clearly misguided attempts to tart him up a bit with glitter and cotton wool.

  ‘He belonged to Tottie’s family and originally his jacket was bright green. Red only became the dominant colour much later.’

  ‘Henry’s always bidding for ornaments online, when he can find them,’ Clara said indulgently. ‘I murder people as my hobby, but Henry collects shiny things like a magpie.’

  ‘They don’t all shine,’ he said mildly. ‘And we use some of them every Christmas to decorate one of the trees. They were made to be used and give pleasure, even if some of these are the sole survivors out of hundreds.’

  ‘Trees?’ I said, surprised. ‘You have more than one?’

  ‘Yes, we have a large real pine tree in the hall and a smaller artificial one in the drawing-room bay window.’

  ‘We hang the antique decorations on the artificial one, because it’s out of the way and the carpet is so thick underneath it that the ornaments bounce if they fall off anyway,’ explained Clara.

  ‘We often buy new ornaments for the big fir tree in the hall. There’s an all-year-round Christmas shop in an old mill over near Little Mumming and Teddy loves going there to choose them,’ said Henry. ‘He adores Christmas as much as I do – and I hope you’ll love your first Christmas here if you stay on with us, too, Meg.’

  I opened my mouth to say that I was afraid I was definitely leaving the day after the Solstice, but Clara got in first.

  ‘Meg’s going to paint me sitting at my big desk, Henry.’

  She turned to me. ‘But what about Henry? In here, or the studio?’

  ‘Oh, the studio,’ I said without thinking. ‘On the dais, with some good lighting …’

  ‘I’ll be happy to sit whenever and wherever you please, so long as I can read at the same time,’ Henry said.

  Lass suddenly awoke with a galvanic snort, looked vaguely at us and then hauled herself out of the basket and went to look pointedly at the door.

  ‘It must be lunchtime,’ Henry said. ‘Lass is partial to a bit of bread dipped in soup.’

  ‘Lass is partial to anything edible,’ Clara said drily. ‘It’s a help-yourself meal again, Me
g, usually at about one, but the pot of soup is always ready on the back of the stove by then, for when we feel like it.’

  ‘Did Clara tell you that Den and I make the bread?’ Henry asked. ‘There’s none of that mixing and kneading, you just pop the ingredients in the machine and turn it on.’

  ‘Technology does have many advantages,’ Clara said, leading the way out. ‘Hmm, mulligatawny soup, I think – my favourite.’

  10

  Grimlike

  There was no sign of Den or Tottie in the kitchen, other than a note explaining that they’d dropped off the shopping and gone out again.

  ‘Probably a pub lunch, over at the Pike with Two Heads,’ Clara said, after reading it aloud. ‘Still, at least Den put the soup on the stove before they went off again.’

  ‘We should take Meg over to the pub for lunch one day,’ Henry suggested.

  ‘Friday – they do a good fish pie then, though there’s always a tasty vegetarian dish on the menu too, if you don’t fancy that.’

  ‘It sounds lovely,’ I said.

  Henry, now lavishly buttering a thick slice of wholemeal bread, said, ‘I rang Lex up earlier because he dashed off yesterday before I could ask him about the tree and we’re already a week into December!’

  ‘Lex takes us to fetch the real Christmas tree in his pick-up every year, so we can bring it back with us. It’s bound to be a whopper – it invariably is,’ Clara explained to me. ‘Henry always wants to put the tree up too early and then it sheds its needles long before the day!’

  ‘Depends which kind you get,’ Henry said. ‘Some hold the needles longer than others and anyway, the scent lingers on, even if the tree is going bald. But in any case, I need Lex to bring down the artificial tree from the attic and the boxes of decorations.’

  ‘I could take you to get the tree in my camper van,’ I offered quickly, hoping to avert a possible meeting with Lex.

  ‘Thank you, my dear, that’s very kind of you, but you don’t want a big tree in your lovely van.’

  Clearly he hadn’t seen the shabby interior, which already smelled of wet earth and exotic herbs, with a slight overlay of linseed oil and turpentine.

  ‘Besides, it’s become another annual Red House Christmas tradition, ever since Lex came home from his travels abroad and settled down to run the pottery. We all go to choose the tree, and this time you must come with us, Meg.’

  I returned his kind smile with an effort. I thought perhaps this might be the moment to confess that I used to know Lex when we were at art college, but then, to my surprise, Henry pre-empted me.

  ‘While I was talking to Lex on the phone, he said that he recognized you yesterday when he was driving off, Meg. Apparently you used to know each other slightly? Of course,’ he added, ‘Clara had told him she’d persuaded a portrait painter to come and spend a few weeks with us, but not who you were.’

  ‘I … yes, I recognized him, too – I kept forgetting to mention it. He was at the same art college but he was a year ahead of me and studying ceramics, while I was doing Fine Art, so we moved in different circles.’

  I didn’t mention that the circles occasionally overlapped, once with catastrophic results …

  ‘It’s a small world,’ said Clara. ‘The older you get, the more evident that becomes.’

  ‘Of course, he dropped out when I was about to start the first year of my MA and he the second of his and—’ I stopped dead, realizing where this was taking me.

  ‘Yes, poor boy, so tragic for him, but after Lisa’s diagnosis I can see that he felt it was the only thing to do. I suppose you know they married and he devoted himself to looking after her until she died?’ Clara asked me.

  I nodded, dumbly as a tide of old guilt seeped in, making me feel less than a worm.

  ‘Afterwards … well, he simply couldn’t face going back to complete his postgraduate course,’ she finished.

  ‘We all knew about Lisa, of course, but … I’d no idea what happened to him afterwards.’

  ‘He went abroad: just roamed around the world for a couple of years,’ Henry said. ‘I did much the same myself in my twenties and early thirties, though of course I kept getting drawn back to wherever Clara was, like a moth to a flame.’

  They exchanged fond smiles. ‘That was usually on some dig or other, for the first few years after I left Oxford,’ Clara said. ‘But we were like twins anyway: united even when apart.’

  ‘Lex did any kind of casual jobs he could get while he was globetrotting,’ Henry continued, ‘but eventually he settled down in a Greek village, where they still made those giant terracotta pots in the traditional way – hand-thrown, you know.’

  I didn’t. I’d never really thought about it before.

  ‘When he did finally come home for good, he stayed with us,’ Clara said. ‘Then he had the idea of setting up a business making his own version of the huge terracotta pots, for the garden.’

  ‘And Terrapotter came into existence?’ I finished for her.

  ‘His old college friend, Alan, had been out to Greece to stay with him for a few weeks and learned the basics, and they decided to go into business together.’

  My mouth opened and shut silently a couple of times like a dying fish, before I managed to utter, ‘Alan Lamb, would that be?’

  ‘That’s right. I expect you knew him slightly, too, Meg?’

  I nodded, speechlessly.

  ‘Luckily, the Old Forge in Great Mumming came up for sale just then,’ Henry said. ‘It was a run-down cottage with a yard and a group of buildings behind it, including the smithy and what had been a brick kiln. Perfect, really. We staked him to buy it and then he and Alan became business partners. They’re making a big success of it.’

  ‘We’ll have to take you over,’ Clara suggested. ‘Alan and his wife, Tara, live in a nearby cottage and have two delightful children, just a little younger than Teddy. Tara is Lex’s late wife’s sister. It’s odd how things work out sometimes, isn’t it?’

  It certainly was. Horror piled on horror, so that my blood was now running cold. I’d be avoiding Terrapotter and Great Mumming as if the Black Death had broken out there and buboes were rife. In fact, I was now desperate to leave … which was warring with my equal desperation to paint Clara and Henry. I had to paint them but I was definitely leaving, never to return, at the very first opportunity afterwards.

  Lunch over, Henry, as was apparently his habit whatever the weather, set out with Lass for a walk.

  ‘I’m going to do a little work now,’ Clara said, ‘but if you want to pop in and draw a few sketches, or whatever preparatory work you do, I don’t mind in the least. I probably won’t even notice you’re there.’

  ‘That would be wonderful, thank you,’ I said, because the sooner I got to work on the portraits, the easier it would be to escape at the same time as River.

  ‘A little later we could drive up the Starstone Edge road, so you can get your bearings,’ she suggested.

  ‘Lovely,’ I agreed, because at least it was in the opposite direction to Great Mumming and Lex.

  But then she said, ‘Just a quick spin as far as Underhill, though we won’t visit Sybil, so we’ll have plenty of time to pop down and collect Teddy from school and save Lex another trip up here. Luckily the weather is very mild for December, so we can use the scenic route down the Grimlike Pass.’

  ‘Grimlike? That’s a very odd name.’

  ‘The story goes that whenever visitors asked about the road down the pass, the locals would tell them it was ‘grim-like’ and eventually the name stuck,’ she said.

  I could hardly wait.

  Later that afternoon Den brought round an aged and battered white Range Rover and would have driven us, had Clara not insisted that she do so herself.

  ‘I love to drive and, after all those digs in the Far East, no vehicle or road state is too much for me,’ she declared, setting off with brio. ‘At least here one isn’t likely to round a hairpin bend and come face to face with a herd of camels
.’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ I murmured faintly, as we hurtled down the drive and then, with the briefest of pauses, shot out and turned right on to the narrow, but mercifully empty, road.

  ‘Not much traffic about at this time of year, though it’s different in summer, when all the holiday home people, the sailing and water sports enthusiasts, campers and the like infest the place,’ she said cheerfully. ‘The moment townies buy a four-wheel-drive vehicle, they assume all country roads are one way: the way they’re heading.’

  ‘The Red House is quite isolated really, isn’t it?’ I said, because it was about half a mile until the first cottages of Starstone Edge appeared.

  ‘Isaiah Gillyflower built the Red House when Victorian Gothic was all the rage. He was a wealthy brewer who liked the imposing position of the plot, looking down on the village. I expect, like most of the second-homers, he only saw it in summer before he moved in. Lots of people buy the cottages here when the weather’s lovely and then realize how awful it can be from autumn to early spring … and sometimes late spring. Then they either shut them up or sell them again.’

  ‘It must be an entirely different place in summer.’

  ‘Yes, a bit of sunshine and it’s like Blackpool on a Bank Holiday.’

  ‘I’ve never been to Blackpool,’ I confessed.

  ‘Really?’ She turned her head to stare at me in astonishment, which seeing the speed she was driving at, I’d much rather she hadn’t. ‘You’ve never lived till you’ve eaten a stick of rock while walking along the Golden Mile, seen the Illuminations, or heard the mighty Wurlitzer in the Tower Ballroom. Henry and I used to take the nieces and nephews there sometimes when they were little and stayed with us during the school holidays. Their parents are my younger sister, Bridget, and her husband. They were in the diplomatic service, so often abroad. Now they’ve retired to New Zealand, where Lex’s elder brother, Chris, lives.’

  I devoutly wished that Lex had gone with them.

  ‘You’ll see the dam and the pumping house, or whatever you call it, when we go down the Pass,’ she said. ‘But in this direction the road is almost a dead end after Underhill. There’s just a thin strip of track over the moors, which has endless cattle grids and gates to open, so no one much bothers with it except the farmers. If you keep going along it, though, you end up in Yorkshire. It’s an old drovers’ road.’