The Christmas Invitation

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘It’s taken so short a time – and yet, there it is, the distilled essence of Clara Mayhem Doome!’

  ‘I’m glad you like it. I just want to do a little more work on your hands, if you wouldn’t mind keeping them still, while holding the stone paperweight?’

  I went to get my paints and when I returned she obligingly did so. While I worked, I found myself telling her a bit more about Rollo and how we’d met at a student party. ‘He was very handsome … like a cross between Byron and Dylan Thomas.’

  ‘Difficult to imagine,’ Clara said. ‘I can see Byron was handsome, and must have been magnetically attractive to a certain kind of woman, but I’ve always thought he was a complete tosser.’

  I had to agree with her on that one.

  ‘When I first knew him, Rollo could be quite sweet and very charming … and also unfaithful, as it turned out. I gave him a second chance, and then a third, after he’d had a health scare and it had made him want to settle down and start a family.’

  I sighed. ‘He even talked his mother round. He’d always been afraid of crossing her because she was very well off and paid for his flat and car, but she’d never liked me.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe.’ Clara sounded genuinely and flatteringly astonished.

  ‘Oh, she wouldn’t have found any girl good enough for her darling boy, but my strange upbringing and my mother having been adopted were major flaws. She seemed to think not knowing who your real grandparents were was a big deal when it came to having children. All those unknown genes waiting to pop up.’

  ‘An odd way of looking at it,’ Clara said, turning her bright gaze on me. ‘So your mother was adopted?’

  ‘Yes, as a newborn baby. But it didn’t work out well and she ran off when she was a teenager – then ended up at River’s Farm.’

  ‘Interesting,’ she murmured, and then fell silent while I added a few final touches to the background and fell back to take a searching look at the portrait.

  ‘I think it’s time to stop. It’s finished.’

  ‘Then let’s call everyone in to see it!’ she said, jumping up and clapping her hands. ‘How exciting! And I can hardly wait to see what you’ll do with Henry!’

  I was looking forward to that, too, but before then I’d have to find an art shop: I’d come away from home in such a rush that I’d left behind my big spare tube of flake white. And my putty rubber, which should have had a slightly stretchy and squidgy consistency, had gone hard and crumbly.

  Where Rollo was concerned, the new me was also hard, but definitely not crumbly.

  Over lunch it transpired that there was a good art and craft shop in Great Mumming, and when Henry heard that I intended driving there that afternoon he offered to take me himself.

  ‘I’ll go to the wine merchants and get a couple of spare bottles of whisky and sherry.’

  ‘If you’re going into Great Mumming, then you can bring Teddy up from school afterwards,’ Clara suggested.

  ‘But I could easily go in the camper van myself, and I can pick up Teddy too, if you like?’ I offered.

  ‘It’s no bother at all; the Jag needs a run out,’ said Henry. ‘I’ll just take Lass for her walk and then we’ll set off.’

  Den, who had been standing at the work surface water-icing some kind of sponge cake while whistling quietly between his teeth, now turned and said he’d go with us and do the driving.

  ‘Tottie’s got a feeling we’ll be snowed in fer Christmas, so she wants to cram the freezer and larder full to bursting, like a bleeding squirrel.’

  ‘Who’s a bleeding squirrel?’ asked Tottie, coming in at that moment with a long string of onions in one slightly grime-encrusted hand.

  ‘You are,’ said Den. ‘Gimme a list of what yer want from Great Mumming, and I’ll see what I can do.’

  Henry and Den bickered about who was to drive the car, but Den won and, having finished his icing, put a huge glass dome over his cake and took it out to the larder.

  ‘Den does so love driving the Jag and I don’t get it out of the garage so much in winter,’ Henry whispered to me.

  Tottie had hung the onions up from a hook on a metal rack high over the table, from which already depended a smaller string of garlic and bunches of dried herbs.

  ‘That looked like one of Den’s marmalade cakes with lemon icing,’ she said, appreciatively. ‘Did you lot leave me any soup?’

  Clara vanished back into her study after lunch and Henry went off with Lass. Tottie offered to show me the conservatory and I fetched my iPad and sketchbook from the studio and met her there.

  A warm, damp and deliciously earthy smell enveloped me as I followed Tottie along the paths that led through the rampant foliage, though after meandering to and fro for a while, I realized that they all met in the middle, under a sort of cupola, where there was a paved area with wicker basket chairs and a low table.

  ‘Henry and Clara like to sit in here occasionally. They love the heat, though of course I keep the air moist, too, because most of my plants are from the tropics.’

  She’d proudly displayed her exotic, carefully nurtured charges: pineapples, bananas, lichees, kumquats, lemons and small oranges, among other things, and a coconut palm in the biggest pot I’d ever seen. The only thing I felt it lacked was a couple of chattering monkeys and some gaudy parrots.

  ‘Please don’t show this to River when he visits, because it’ll give him ideas!’ I begged her. ‘I don’t think the solar power is enough to heat something this size as well as everything else.’

  ‘It does cost a lot to heat, Henry says,’ she admitted. ‘I couldn’t afford it when I was here on my own, but Clara and Henry wanted to restore the whole house to its former glory and we had lots of fun planning what we’d have in here.’

  ‘I can imagine – like making your own little corner of Paradise! River would so love it. He does manage to grow peaches and nectarines under glass, and keeps trying grapevines, though Oshan thinks we’re too high up for it to be worth it.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, he might manage it with the right vine. Come and look at mine.’

  She set off down a small path I didn’t think we’d taken before and stopped under a leafy canopy.

  ‘Table grapes – we get loads of the black ones, but the green are less prolific in the fruiting. They can also sometimes be a little sharp and acidic.’

  I felt an immediate affinity with the sharp and acidic green grapes: my sweetness had all been crushed out by recent events.

  I’d taken lots of photos as we went round and now I asked Tottie if she wouldn’t mind posing for one, and perhaps I could do a quick sketch?

  ‘It’ll only take ten minutes max,’ I said persuasively, but she was looking flattered and agreed instantly. I pulled up a wicker chair and had her stand in front of one of the pineapples that grew in a raised bed, reaching up as if to pick an almost-ripe fruit, though from the angle I was at, the pineapple appeared to be resting on her head, with the curved, serrated spikes of the foliage forming a green crown around it.

  When I showed her the iPad, she said she looked like Carmen Miranda and I should go for it, so I drew her like that … and perhaps, if I had time, I’d ask her if I could paint her too …

  19

  Snakes and Ladders

  I googled Carmen Miranda when I was back in the studio and found lots of pictures and old film clips of an exotic-looking lady, sometimes wearing nothing much except a lot of fruit on her head. I was tempted to add a pair of cherry earrings and a banana or two to Tottie’s ensemble. And it would be lovely if she was holding something like a basket … or a cornucopia overflowing with produce.

  Rollo had left a couple of messages on my phone, which I deleted unread: I’d just keep deleting him out of my life until he gave up.

  I’d missed a call from Oshan, though, so I rang him back.

  ‘Pop’s wondering what to bring his hosts as a thank you, for inviting him to stay for the Solstice,’ he said.

 
Oshan was the only person who didn’t call River by his name, but by the irreverent Pop, which he’d done since he was a small boy and a visiting American had asked him where his pop was. We’d both thought this was hilariously funny at the time.

  I thought about what River might bring. ‘Not anything fruit or vegetable, because Tottie – one of the household – is an ace gardener and she’s got all that sewn up. In fact, she’s just been showing me round the conservatory, which is huge and heated and full of things like bananas and pineapples!’

  ‘I hope to God it doesn’t give Pop ideas!’ he said. ‘The solar power isn’t going to stretch to it.’

  ‘That’s exactly what I thought. We’ll just have to hope for the best.’

  ‘Back to the question of the gift: he wondered about some of his medicinal mead.’

  ‘Tottie also keeps bees and makes mead too. Don’t tell River, but I think hers is much more delicious, like golden nectar.’

  ‘Maybe I’d better head him off the mead idea too, then.’

  I ran my mind over the various things the craftworkers made in the barn, or sold in the shop.

  ‘One of those big Cellophane bags of crisp gingerbread stars, pierced for hanging on the Christmas tree, that Maj sells in the café would go down well,’ I suggested. ‘They’re big on Christmas here and there’s the most enormous tree in the hall.’

  ‘OK, and she’s selling a sort of super Dundee-style cake this year, too, with tons of glazed fruit all over the top.’

  ‘Perfect. They seem to eat a lot of cake.’

  ‘I’ll tell Pop and then he can sort it out with Maj,’ said Oshan. ‘I think there might be one or two Yule gifts coming up with Pop, too, just in case you decide not to come back for the Feast.’

  ‘I’d made my mind up I was definitely coming back but now, suddenly, I’m not so sure,’ I said slowly, speaking more to myself than him as I realized my feelings had undergone a change. ‘It’s starting to feel as if I’d be running away … And besides, not only am I painting really well here, but I think I’ve been struck by Christmas madness and I want to experience the whole thing.’

  He didn’t ask me what I’d be running away from: but that’s Oshan. If I wanted to tell him, then I would.

  ‘You can make up your mind when Pop gets there, can’t you?’ he suggested easily.

  ‘True, and since Starstone Edge is often cut off by snow at this time of year, it may not be in my hands whether I leave or not. Or in River’s, come to that, if he makes it in the first place!’

  ‘Oh, I expect he will. I mean, we’re used to bad weather up here, so he’ll have the snow chains with him and a shovel and everything.’

  ‘He might well need them, because he’ll have to take a single-track road over the moors from the next valley to get here.’

  ‘It sounds like you’ve strayed into The Land That Time Forgot,’ Oshan said, amused. ‘Are there any dinosaurs?’

  ‘I have to admit, the valley does feel a bit like that.’ I paused, then added, ‘There’s someone here who was at art college with me, though he was a year ahead so I didn’t know him that well.’

  ‘If you’re snowed up together, you’ll probably get to know him a lot better,’ Oshan suggested.

  ‘Or it might turn into one of those old cosy crime novels, where the characters are snowed up in an old house and there’s a murder,’ I said tartly. ‘But there’s someone else living in the village that we both know. Do you remember Moonflower?’

  ‘What, that drippy girl with long brown hair who was here for a couple of years? Her parents lived in a converted horsebox?’

  ‘Yes, that’s her. She still looks much the same, but now she’s married to a man who has a shop in the village and they have a baby. Round here they just call her Flower, though.’

  ‘It really is a small world,’ he commented, and then added, ‘Here’s Pop. I’ll just tell him what you suggested as a present.’

  I could hear a conversation in the background and then Oshan came back on. ‘He says that sounds fine about the biscuits and the cake and he’s gone to talk to Maj. He’s bringing goat’s cheese, too.’

  To be honest, I’ve never been that keen on goat’s milk, cheese or yoghurt, which always tastes to me profoundly of goat, though I do like the goats themselves.

  ‘My robes for the Solstice ceremony are finished and Pop’s bringing his with him to wear for the ceremony up there, even though he’s only a spectator.’

  ‘Good idea,’ I approved. I didn’t see why he should be done out of dressing up this year, when he enjoys it so much. Getting enrobed … which reminded me of being taken to a posh restaurant in London once, where the menu described the pudding as being ‘enrobed in a rich chocolate ganache’ and I was quite disappointed that it didn’t arrive with an ermine train and a tiara, too.

  Henry and Den bickered about which way to drive into town, before deciding to go down the pass and back the other way.

  The vintage Jaguar was a gleaming dark red thing of polished beauty and descended the pass in a stately manner. Halfway down, an ancient Land Rover with three sheepdogs in the back squeezed past us with a roar. The driver even took one hand off the steering wheel to wave.

  ‘Local farmer,’ explained Henry. ‘But even they don’t go up and down here when it’s really bad.’

  ‘Told yer it would be OK today,’ Den said, taking the last bend and emerging on to the wider, flatter road at the bottom.

  We passed Gobelins and then were into the edge of the small market town where Den slowed, so I could take a look at the old smithy, now reborn as Terrapotter. There was a large green sign across one side of the long, low, ancient-looking brick building, though I didn’t have time to register more than that there was a central arch in the building with windows over it. I suppose if it was an old smithy originally, they’d have had to have driven carts and carriages through into some kind of courtyard.

  ‘We can stop on the way back, if we have time,’ Henry suggested, though I sincerely hoped we wouldn’t.

  There was a small car park in the centre of the town near the slender engraved granite obelisk of a war memorial and a stone horse trough. The art shop was on the far side of the square, so we arranged to meet back at the car when we’d all done our shopping.

  The art shop was surprisingly large, well-stocked, and had the good quality oil paints I preferred. Then I found a box of ready-cut mounts for pictures or photographs and thought I’d get several small ones. I could sketch the various inhabitants of the Red House – human or otherwise – and then they’d make nice presents to leave … or give, if I was still there. The jury was still out on that one, but the balance was teetering towards the Stay side.

  Then I spotted a complete artist’s box, the kind with pullout winged trays, full of tubes of paint, oil pastels, pencils … everything a budding artist could possibly want. At a price, of course, but oh, how much Teddy would love it! I couldn’t resist. They had rolls of gaily coloured Christmas wrapping paper at the till, too.

  I’d spent a small fortune and I must have been in there ages, but I couldn’t see any sign of the others having returned to the car, so I went into a nearby hairdresser that looked trendy and asked them about the hair colouring I fancied, a shade of pale ashy old-rose pink that I’d seen one or two women sporting lately. They actually had it in stock. It was a new line and, they assured me, entirely free of harmful chemicals, so though it probably wasn’t as ecologically friendly as the green dye, at least it might last a little longer. They offered to remove the now pale snotty green tint from my hair and then dye it for me then and there, since they were not busy, but I told them I didn’t have time.

  And then, since it seemed to be render-yourself-penniless day, I wandered into the shop next door and tried on a long dress in squares of fine corduroy in muted jewel colours. It had a low-ish scoop neck that made the most of my fast-returning curves and it was cut like an old-fashioned riding dress: it fitted to below the waist, where there
was a peplum frill, then fell, long and drapey, to my ankles. It was like a new take on the kind of old-hippy garments that Maj and some of the other Farm residents favoured. They’d probably mug me for it when they saw it.

  The clothes on that rack were made locally in a nearby village, the shop assistant told me while folding the dress into tissue paper before inserting it into a bag with the name of the shop on it: East Island.

  I was still pondering that one, when she added that the village was called Halfhidden and was the most haunted in Lancashire.

  That sounded fun and I’d have been tempted to visit it, except that this was hardly the time of the year for sightseeing.

  Heavily laden, happy but broke, I staggered out with my purchases and headed for the car before I found anything else to buy.

  Den and Henry were loading shopping into the boot of the Jaguar.

  ‘There you are, my dear – perfect timing,’ Henry said. ‘And I see you’ve had a successful shopping expedition!’

  He and Den managed to wedge everything in, though a couple of bags had to go behind one of the seats. Not the one with the art box in, though, because I told them what that was and they hid it in the boot in case Teddy got curious on the way home and poked about among the bags.

  ‘How kind of you!’ Henry said. ‘I think paints are on his Christmas list, too. He’ll be so delighted.’

  ‘We’ve just fetched the castle ’e wanted from the toyshop, ’aven’t we?’ Den said.

  ‘I ordered it and Den’s bought a family of plastic dragons to go with it.’

  ‘Going to paint them up first,’ Den said. ‘Bit of silver on the scales.’

  Henry pushed up his sleeve and consulted a battered old wristwatch. ‘Oh good, we have time to call in at Terrapotter on the way to collect Teddy from school. Lex’s bound to give us coffee and you’ll be interested to see the pottery, I’m sure, Meg.’

  I’d forgotten he’d mentioned that idea earlier, and I was so thrown that I almost said I was allergic to clay, but luckily remembered in time that this gambit hadn’t worked with the Christmas trees.