The Christmas Invitation

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘Doubly lucky, because it’s got a tiled floor so you can clean it easily,’ pointed out Clara.

  ‘Yer mean I could clean it easily,’ said Den. He still had his blue and white striped pinny on, though he’d joined us for dinner. The rolled-up sleeves of his denim chambray shirt showed more tattoos on his wiry arms: one the dangling tail of what I thought must be a mermaid, because otherwise it would have to be a fish, and why would anyone have a fish tattooed on their arm?

  ‘You know I’d have cleaned it up if you hadn’t found it first,’ protested Tottie.

  ‘Any of us would; we’re not squeamish,’ agreed Clara. ‘You soon get over that kind of thing when you’ve worked on digs in remote parts of the Far East, with no mod cons except hot and cold running fleas, don’t you, Henry?’

  ‘Very true, though at least here at dinner nobody offers you a plate with a delicious sheep’s eyeball on it.’

  ‘’Ere’s looking at you, kid,’ drawled Den in a passable Bogart voice, and we all laughed, including Teddy, who can’t have had any idea whose voice it was.

  I helped clear the plates and carry in the dessert, starting to feel as if I’d lived there for months, rather than a matter of a few days.

  ‘How is the autobiography coming along, my dear?’ asked Henry, after chasing the last delicious bit of apple strudel round his plate and then laying down the spoon with a satisfied sigh. ‘Did you catch up a little while we were out walking this morning?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I managed to skim through the boring years at boarding school and the holidays in Devon, and I’ve just got to the bit where I’ve been accepted by Lady Margaret Hall a year early.’

  ‘Only to find I’d been accepted by my college almost two years early, so we were starting there together,’ said Henry.

  ‘Well, we always were both smarter than most of our peers,’ said Clara without false modesty. ‘That’s probably what drew us together when we were growing up in Starstone.’

  ‘Clara and I just literally bumped into each other in our first week at Oxford and it was as though we’d never been apart,’ Henry said reminiscently.

  They beamed lovingly at each other and I envied their long and happy marriage, which wasn’t something that seemed on the cards for me.

  ‘You may have to jog my memory for the Oxford years, Henry. Most of it’s a bit of a blur: classes and picnics, lectures, talks, tennis, cycling round the countryside … swimming in the river …’

  ‘Wasn’t Oxford still trying to segregate women from the men back then?’ I asked.

  ‘There were still a few archaic rules and regulations, but it was 1959 when I went up and they’d never quite managed to put women back in what they thought was their place after the war. We just quietly did what we wanted to do, without making a song and dance about it.’

  I could certainly imagine Clara doing whatever she wanted to do!

  She explained to me that she and Henry had been so bright as small children that her father, a great scholar, had given them extra lessons in Latin, Greek, Ancient History and Egyptology, while her mother, a gifted linguist, had taught them French, Italian and German.

  ‘Of course, we didn’t realize then that we were quite bright. We just thought the other children we knew – especially my brother, George – were a bit dim,’ said Henry.

  ‘George was dim,’ said Clara. ‘Big, bluff, self-centred, handsome and entirely stupid.’

  ‘Not entirely, Clara!’ Henry said mildly, then turned to me and explained: ‘George followed family tradition and went to Sandhurst for army officer training. He sold out not long after he married.’

  ‘He liked the idea of being an officer in uniform, but he really fancied himself as some kind of playboy,’ said Clara critically. ‘Whenever he could get leave he usually went up to London, but during our first term at Oxford he came to visit Henry.’

  Something about that particular memory made her shake her head and sigh. ‘It would have been better if he hadn’t.’

  Henry said, ‘He was always trouble, because women fell for him like ninepins and he never treated them well.’

  ‘Only the idiotic ones,’ said Clara crisply. ‘Hmm, it’s amazing what you push to the back of your memory over the years, isn’t it? The next part of my memoirs will certainly have to be edited out if I ever decide to publish it.’

  She and Henry exchanged glances that I couldn’t quite fathom, a shared moment from the past, I assumed.

  ‘Shining a light into dark corners of your life is all part of writing a good memoir,’ he told her.

  ‘That’s poetic, that is,’ said Den.

  Teddy seemed to be fighting sleep, his eyes closing and then jerking open again. Any minute now Tottie would notice and whisk him off to bed.

  ‘You know, I always felt a little guilty that I inherited the part of my mother’s money that was secured to her when she married,’ said Henry. ‘I know she did that because George, as the elder son, would have Underhill, and she thought it would make it all fair. But my investments all flourished and I ended up a lot better off than he did.’

  ‘He’d have been fine if he’d lived within his means, but once you start spending your capital it’s a slippery slope,’ Clara said. ‘And that dreadful old crony of his, Piers Marten, just encouraged him. They were always off to Monte Carlo or the Riviera, and even when they were home they spent most of their time at racecourses.’

  ‘You’re right, my dear,’ Henry agreed.

  ‘I had a rich and generous aunt,’ Clara told me. ‘She left all her money divided between myself and my sister, Bridget. That’s how we managed to buy the Red House and come back to Starstone Edge.’

  ‘And it’s all worked out wonderfully well,’ said Tottie. ‘Happily ever after!’ She rose. ‘Come on, Teddy, before you fall asleep in your chair. Time to go to bed.’

  His protests were half-hearted and he was borne away with the promise that Henry would come up and read to him when he was in bed.

  Henry and Clara were still reminiscing about their Oxford student days when we went through to the drawing room and I became increasingly aware that there was some event, or mystery, in their shared past that they were not talking about, an elephant tiptoeing round the room.

  Or maybe even round the house? Perhaps that was what had jarred open the studio door and set the old clock ticking?

  I told Henry that I’d like to make a start on his portrait as soon as possible, or some initial sketches, at least.

  ‘I’d like you to pose in the studio – if you don’t mind – on the dais and with Lass sitting at your feet.’

  ‘Or, more likely, on my feet. She does have a way of pinning one down.’

  ‘My portrait seems to have taken shape so rapidly,’ said Clara, when Henry had gone up to read another instalment of The Water Babies to Teddy, and Tottie had brought in fresh coffee. Den was right: she did make it very badly.

  ‘Your face only needs one more session at most and then a little more work on the hands,’ I agreed. ‘It’s just background and final touches after that.’

  ‘Well, you did tell me you were a quick worker. I just hadn’t realized it was this fast!’

  ‘It’s all a matter of style. If I was painting a traditional oil portrait, I’d be building it up slowly in layers over time, but my technique is more impressionistic. That’s why I told you I could probably complete both portraits by the time of the Solstice.’

  ‘I expect you could, but you might as well take your time over the finishing process and then I hope you’ll relax and enjoy Christmas with us. There’s no real need for you to rush off, is there?’

  Little did she know!

  Then she startled me by saying thoughtfully, ‘I thought you and Lex were old friends, but you don’t seem to have much to say to each other – though, of course, he is very quiet and intense.’

  The last part was probably due to his being eaten up by guilt, but it was just as well she hadn’t heard what we were talking about am
ong the Norwegian pines!

  ‘Since he was in the year above me in college, we didn’t know each other very well,’ I told her, which certainly seemed to have been true. ‘I did sit for Lisa for a clay portrait head, though – she was good at those. And so kind and sweet and funny, as well as being beautiful.’

  She’d seemed to have it all. What happened had been so cruel.

  I’d sat for her in my first term, when I was still at the stage of infatuation where I blushed every time I saw Lex. I’m sure she noticed; it just didn’t bother her, and why should it? He wasn’t likely to look at anyone else when he had Lisa, and anyway, mine was a humble first love, adoring from afar. I’d got over it long before I met Rollo.

  ‘Yes, Lisa was a lovely and very talented young woman,’ agreed Clara. ‘It was a complete tragedy for both of them, though since they were only in their early twenties when they married, I do sometimes wonder how things would have worked out in the long term.’

  ‘I think my sudden arrival brought all the memories back again,’ I said. ‘I do feel a bit guilty about that.’

  ‘But you couldn’t help that, my dear. Don’t forget, he sees Alan and Lisa’s sister, Tara, almost every day, so it’s not as if there isn’t a constant reminder already.’

  No, I thought, but I’d dredged up a different bit of memory and a muddy extra layer of guilt.

  Since I couldn’t keep my eyelids open any longer I went off early to bed, feeling that climbing the stairs was a bit like scaling the Matterhorn and wishing I could climb on the back of the big wooden eagle and be carried up there in a swish of wings.

  18

  Raking the Embers

  I was still furious with Rollo, so on Monday morning I rang him up from the studio.

  ‘It’s me,’ I said abruptly when he answered.

  ‘Darling!’ he began fulsomely in his most mellifluous voice.

  ‘Don’t you darling me after ringing here and trying to give Clara the idea that we’re in a relationship, just so you could wangle your way in and interview Henry!’ I snapped. ‘And you interrupted Clara when she was working.’

  ‘But I had to do something, because you didn’t seem to want to prepare the ground for me at all.’

  ‘No, I bloody well didn’t want to prepare the ground! And how the hell did you get the phone number for this house?’

  ‘You can get any phone number these days,’ he said ambiguously. ‘You never replied to any of my messages, so there was nothing else for it. I mean, this interview with Henry Doome is important, Meg.’

  ‘Only to you – and in your dreams! There’s no way I’m letting you use me to get your foot through the door.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Meg,’ he wheedled. ‘A real friend would already have smoothed the way, ready for when I turned up.’

  ‘A real friend wouldn’t have suggested it in the first place. You use people, Rollo, and I’ve had enough.’

  The message didn’t seem to get through, because he said, ‘Did you tell this Clara that we weren’t in a relationship?’

  ‘Clara Mayhem Doome, Henry’s wife. And yes, I did, but she’d guessed what you were after, anyway.’

  ‘I expect I can still work that angle; she’ll just think we’ve had a lovers’ tiff,’ he suggested.

  I was about to put him right about that in no uncertain terms when he added, curiously, ‘What’s Henry Doome like? He’s supposed to be a total recluse.’

  Something came over me.

  ‘He shuts himself in his study from morning till night and rarely speaks to anyone except family.’

  ‘I thought you were going to paint his portrait?’

  ‘I am, but I’ve had to take a vow of silence while I’m working, never turn my back on him and only wear the colour green.’

  There was a pause. Then he said uncertainly, ‘Are you making that up?’

  ‘Of course not. He’s a little eccentric. I mean, he won’t talk to anyone unless they’re wearing green, so it was a wonderful stroke of luck that I’d dyed my hair dark emerald before I came here.’

  ‘Why green?’

  ‘Oh, I was bored with it and wanted a change.’

  ‘No, I meant why is Henry Doome so fixated on that colour?’

  ‘I think it must be because of the Green Man,’ I improvised quickly.

  ‘Which green man?’

  ‘You know, the Green Man, the ones from old folklore that you see on cathedral doorknockers with leaves sprouting out of their mouths. Symbolic of growth and rebirth and spring and stuff, I expect.’

  Rollo abandoned the topic and said confidingly, ‘The thing is, Meg, I mentioned to my American publisher that I might be able to get a brief foreword from Henry Doome for my new anthology and they’re very keen on the idea.’

  ‘More fool you, then, for counting your chickens before they’re hatched.’

  He ignored that. ‘And if we could get Henry to give me a brief interview for the magazine as well, it would hugely boost our subscriptions.’

  ‘What, into triple figures?’

  ‘Ha, ha,’ he laughed coldly. ‘You’ve never really appreciated the importance of Strimp! in showcasing rising young poets, have you?’

  ‘It mostly seems to showcase you and Nigel, and you’re both the wrong side of forty.’

  Risen and then sunk, like a pair of sad sponge cakes.

  ‘I’m not forty!’ he declared indignantly. ‘We’re the same age, Meg.’

  ‘Rollo, you’re a good four years older than me. Don’t forget I met you in my second year of my Fine Art degree and you’d already finished your MA in creative writing by then.’

  He didn’t dignify this with a reply, but instead tried the honeyed voice again. ‘Pleeease, Meggie, try and persuade Henry to see me.’

  I held the phone away for a moment and stared at it as if it had verbally assaulted me. Then I put it back to my ear and snapped, ‘No! And nobody ever calls me Meggie.’

  ‘You’re being very selfish and unreasonable about all this. I’m surprised at you and deeply hurt.’

  ‘Me? I’m being selfish and unreasonable?’

  ‘Look, darling, I’ll be up in York in a few days, taking part in a big poetry-reading event, so I can easily drive over to see you after that, on my way back.’

  ‘You can easily get stuffed, Rollo! And Starstone Edge is a remote moorland village, so no one’s going to believe you were just passing by, unless you’re wearing a drover’s coat and driving a flock of sheep.’

  ‘I’m sure they’d believe I’d detour just to see you, Meg. I’ll take you out for lunch and then, when we go back, they’re bound to invite me in and then I can—’

  ‘I think you’ve missed your true métier and should be writing fairy stories instead of poetry, Rollo,’ I interrupted. ‘I’m here on a professional engagement, not to be your Trojan Horse.’

  ‘Mare,’ he said. Or maybe that was ‘meh’, as in an expression of disgust at my lack of cooperation.

  ‘Well, Rollo, fascinating as it’s been chasing our tails round in a small conversational circle, I’ll have to go.’

  ‘But, Meg, I really would like—’

  ‘It’s more than time you grasped that I don’t care what you would really like any more, Rollo. That all ended six years ago, remember? I should have insisted on a clean break then.’

  ‘I suppose you still blame me for the accident and losing the baby and now you’ve found the perfect way to pay me back,’ he said, with a vicious spitefulness I hadn’t thought him capable of.

  ‘If you think that, then you never really knew me at all. I always blamed myself more than you. I shouldn’t have told you the news while you were driving, though I didn’t expect it to be such a shock you’d go right off the road. And I saw the horror on your face and realized later in hospital that you’d only thought you wanted to settle down and start a family, but when it came to the reality, you’d run a mile. Right back to Mummy, in fact.’

  He began to bluster, but I cut him sho
rt. ‘There’s no point in going over it all again, or looking back – and there’s certainly no place for you in my future. I’d already decided when I left London that we needed to make a clean break and I didn’t want to see or hear from you again. So this it: the parting of the ways. Have a good Christmas with Mummy, Rollo. In fact, have a good life. Only don’t bother telling me about it.’

  I switched off the phone while it was still making bleating noises. I felt a sense of catharsis and of having cut something toxic out of my life, but my hands were trembling slightly. I’d known all his faults: vanity, selfishness, infidelity, yet I’d thought he’d been as fond of me as he could be of anyone. Now, though, I could see he was just like one of those wonderfully beautiful (if slightly overblown) parasitic orchids. I hoped I’d snipped his aerial roots and he’d wither off out of my life.

  It was only then that I realized the door was wide open. It must have been off the latch and Lass had nudged her way in, because she was sitting looking pointedly at the drawer where the biscuits had come from.

  ‘No luck, Lass – they’re all gone,’ I told her. She sighed heavily and followed me out of the room, but turned off towards the likelier pickings of the kitchen, rather than to Clara’s study.

  Clara was leaning back in her chair, long legs crossed and eyes shut in deep thought, tossing the stone paperweight from one hand to the other, but she opened her eyes when she heard me close the door.

  ‘Was that you shouting a few moments ago, dear?’

  ‘I suppose it must have been, though I hadn’t realized I was doing it. I rang Rollo, to tell him exactly what I thought about his attempt to use me to get to Henry.’

  ‘I expect you feel a lot better for it. There’s nothing like clearing the air.’

  ‘You’re right, I do! And I hope he’s finally got the message that I never want to hear from him again.’

  ‘You sounded pretty definite from here,’ she assured me, with a Cheshire Cat grin that exposed all her teeth.

  I’d brought the canvas with me and now I set the portrait on my easel and she got up and came to look at it.