The Christmas Invitation

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘Oh, I’m definitely staying now, if Clara and Henry will still have me,’ I said breezily, with a look that cast the gauntlet at Lex’s feet.

  ‘Hurray!’ cried Teddy. ‘Meg’s a favourite people.’

  ‘Person,’ corrected Tottie.

  ‘Thank you, Teddy. I’m very honoured to be a favourite people.’

  ‘I think you could become one of my favourite people too,’ Mark said, and I realized he thought I’d changed my plans to leave because of him, which was a bit unfortunate.

  Perhaps Lex thought so too, for he was giving us another of his sardonic looks, but Pansy didn’t like the way Mark was leaning closer again, and decided to resume her pushing and kicking.

  Mark put her on the floor. ‘She can be a bit of a nuisance sometimes.’

  ‘Oh, no, I just think she’s funny,’ I said, and then got up, took a teacup and a slice of the delicious-looking cake, and sat down next to Clara instead.

  She smiled widely at me. ‘I’m so glad you’ve made up your mind to stay, though I was sure you would. We’re going to have a lovely family party, with lots of fun!’

  Lex didn’t look as if he remembered what fun was …

  A faint cloud crossed Sybil’s face. ‘I must remember to phone Piers when I get back. He hasn’t replied to my letter telling him I’m away this Christmas and I’m afraid he might not have got it.’

  ‘I expect he has and he’s just sulking,’ Mark suggested. ‘But you’d better make sure.’

  ‘Don’t worry about Piers, Syb,’ Tottie said. ‘If ever there was a man who could look out for himself, it’s him. He’s got family, so there’s no reason why you should feel responsible for him.’

  ‘No …’ said Sybil, but she still looked troubled.

  ‘Auntie Sybil, do you want to see my portrait of Meg with green hair?’ asked Teddy.

  ‘Of course, I’d love to,’ she said promptly, and he went to fetch it.

  ‘He’s already very good for his age,’ I said. ‘He’s got a real feeling for colour and form.’

  ‘There’s only the very faintest tinge of green in your hair now, Meg,’ said Tottie. ‘It must be naturally very light in colour?’

  ‘Yes, so fair it’s almost white,’ I agreed. ‘My mother’s is the same.’

  ‘Will you dye your hair green again, my dear?’ enquired Henry. ‘The dark emerald was quite wood nymph, in a way, and suited you.’

  I wasn’t too sure about that, but I thanked him anyway. ‘No, I’m going to go for an entirely different colour next time.’

  ‘Your hair was like white gold the first time I saw you – platinum blond, I think they call it,’ Lex said, unexpectedly, then elaborated for the others: ‘She materialized out of the shadows in a dark corridor in the art college – white hair, pale face, dark clothes. I thought she was a ghost and it was quite scary for a minute.’

  ‘Well, you scared me, too, with that long black coat flapping out like the wings of some huge, dark bird swooping down on me,’ I retorted, and our eyes met and held for a long moment. I think we were both seeing each other as we were on that day: young and with the world before us.

  I shampooed my hair twice that evening and when I’d finished I was back to Silver Phantom mode again.

  But not for long: soon I’d be a vision in rose.

  Clara

  As the new term wore on towards early spring, I settled ever more deeply into both my studies and my social life, which of course revolved around Henry.

  I had neither the time nor inclination to pay a good deal of attention to Nessa, or I think I would have noticed what was amiss much earlier. However, the moment she came into my room one day, closed the door behind her and burst into a flood of tears, I immediately – and rightly – guessed she was pregnant.

  She had been denying it to herself until now, but could do so no longer. I don’t know why she chose me as her confidante, unless perhaps it was that the father of her child – George, of course – was Henry’s brother.

  Out came the whole sorry tale of that fateful London trip she had made in the autumn: George had indeed driven her down and they had planned to spend some hours together before she went to Lady Leamington’s house. He’d borrowed a friend’s flat, where they went first to drop her suitcase … or so she thought. She certainly hadn’t expected him to behave the way he had.

  ‘Like a wild animal!’ she sobbed. ‘And afterwards he said he didn’t know why I was so upset, because he wanted to marry me! And once the knot was tied and I had control of my money, we could go anywhere, and do anything, we wanted …’

  ‘So then I expect you told him you couldn’t touch the capital till you were thirty?’ I suggested.

  She shuddered again. ‘He changed in a flash when he knew! I thought he loved me, but he didn’t, it was just the money he loved.’ She sat up straighter, a hint of backbone returning. ‘But after the way he’d taken advantage of me, I wouldn’t have married him if he was the last man in the world!’

  Then she dissolved into tears again and wailed, ‘I don’t know what to do!’

  ‘Does George know?’

  She looked at me aghast. ‘No! I never want to see or hear from him again!’

  ‘Perhaps not, but under the circumstances—’ I began, then stopped dead, as a complication presented itself to me. ‘Nessa, I need to tell you something. Henry’s gone home this weekend, because George is getting married. In fact, by now he will be.’

  I kept our suspicions about the hastiness of the wedding to myself.

  Nessa stared at me and then began laughing in a way that was working up to hysteria, until I dashed a glass of cold water in her face. Then she just huddled there, looking white and more than a little damp.

  I’d been counting months. ‘The baby must be due in the summer vacation, so if there was a way of keeping it secret till then …’ I mused aloud. ‘But I don’t suppose there is.’

  Nessa gathered herself. ‘I can see now that the only person who can help me is Godmama. She’ll know what I should do.’

  She seemed very certain that Lady Leamington would be shocked, but worldly-wise enough to advise her, and on reflection I thought she was probably right.

  She made me swear secrecy, which I did, apart from Henry: we were too close to keep things from each other and anyway, since it was to do with his family, he ought to know.

  Henry was as shocked, angry and disgusted by George’s behaviour as I was, but there was nothing to be done, for his brother and his new bride were by then on honeymoon and, besides, we were bound by my promise of secrecy.

  At the end of the Hilary term Nessa went straight to London to confess all to Lady Leamington, who came up with a novel solution to the problem.

  ‘She said I should be able to hide the pregnancy to the end of the Trinity term if I pad out my top half as my stomach gets bigger. People will simply think I’ve got very fat – and I have been putting weight on.’

  ‘Will that really work? I asked sceptically.

  ‘It did for one of her friends, so I don’t see why not. That way, I can complete my first year and then I’ll go into a private maternity clinic to have the baby.’ She shuddered. ‘It will be adopted immediately, of course.’

  ‘You might feel differently when you see it,’ I suggested.

  ‘I don’t want to see it, just get rid of it. And as soon as I’ve recovered, I’m going back to America to finish my degree there.’

  I didn’t say any more, because she seemed to have it all planned: cut and dried. There was a new, harder edge to Nessa, and she was still adamant that George should never know.

  ‘I’ll make a fresh start in America and all this will be like a bad dream,’ she said, then added, fiercely, ‘But I’m finished with men and motherhood!’

  Really, for someone usually resembling sugar-dusted pink and white Turkish delight, she’d looked amazingly resolute when she said that!

  22

  The Image

  I had another good
painting session with Henry next morning, exciting and intense. The dabs and scrapes and blobs of paint placed themselves by some alchemy of the mind, and I knew that when I finally stepped back from the canvas they would all come together into a whole.

  The sum was definitely more than the parts, for Henry’s pared-down, handsome face began to take shape: the Grecian nose and high cheekbones, so like Mark’s, his bony forehead and fine silver hair … the bright blue of his eyes in their nest of laughter and sun lines and those straight lips, with curved, humorous corners.

  He’d brought his novel, but today his mind seemed firmly set on his work, the epic novel-length poem cycle about the drowning of the valley. While I painted, he told me a little about it.

  ‘The strong sense of place still remained long after the village vanished under the water. In fact, it still does,’ he said. ‘My golden childhood with Clara wasn’t washed away. It still exists and always drew me back over the ensuing years. Clara felt the same way.’

  ‘I can understand that, because the moment I saw the valley, even I felt a connection with it. River would say that it was old magic and the ley lines drawing me in.’

  Henry looked at me curiously. ‘You felt that too? Interesting,’ he murmured, then added, ‘I wanted to show the effect of the drowning of the valley, not only on the human inhabitants, but from the viewpoint of the creatures displaced or drowned. The trees, the plants, the fish and insects – even the birds. The thrush that nested every year in an old watering can hung on the barn wall at the inn, the fox that used to hide in the vicarage greenhouse when the hunt came by, and the badgers in the copse over the humpbacked bridge, who led their own lives at dusk when we slept.’

  His voice, low but wonderfully resonant, swept on. ‘The silenced bells, removed to the big, ugly church at Thorstane, and the ancient inscribed pre-Christian stone that stood in the churchyard, which inspired Clara to take up epigraphy, now relocated to the Underhill estate. Much was moved, but you can’t take the dead, or the weight of time that holds down a place, with you.’

  He paused and seemed to come back from somewhere a long way away.

  ‘It sounds wonderful and I can’t wait to read it,’ I said truthfully.

  ‘It’s nearly completed … and Clara, too, has almost finished her latest crime novel, though not her memoirs. I suspect,’ he added, looking at me with a smile, ‘that this one will end on revelations. Just as well she isn’t intending it for publication.’

  ‘Do you think Clara’s memoirs could end up running to several volumes, like Dodie Smith’s?’

  ‘Probably only two. I think she’s about to reach a moment of resolution, which would be a good place to end the first one.’

  Some major discovery, perhaps, which would crown Clara’s work in the world of epigraphy with added glory?

  ‘If you could just stop speaking now for a few minutes while I paint your lips,’ I suggested, ‘then I think we’ll be done for the day.’

  And the face, at least, was almost at the stage where someone should take my palette knife away.

  At lunch, Henry told me that Lex and Al were coming up at about two that afternoon to deliver the huge garden pot that was Lex’s annual Christmas gift.

  ‘Though of course Tottie decides where it should go and what should be planted in it, so really it’s a gift for the three of us. This time we know it will be identical to the one in the middle of the right-hand knot garden in front of the terrace, so they match.’

  ‘I’d noticed only one had a central pot,’ I said, while silently blessing him for the warning, for the moment I’d had a cup of coffee, I took my novel (the second in Clara’s series) and went upstairs to my turret room.

  If there’d been a hatch, I’d have drawn it up behind me.

  I heard Lex and Al arrive and peered out of my little slit window, just in time to see the pick-up, with an enormous terracotta shape roped in the back, vanish round the side of the house.

  I didn’t go downstairs till they’d driven off. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize it was just Al leaving until I’d emerged from the garden door on to the terrace and saw Lex there with Tottie.

  ‘I thought you’d gone!’ I blurted.

  ‘No, sorry to disappoint you.’ His dark eyes were unreadable.

  ‘I’m not disappointed, just surprised,’ I said with dignity.

  ‘I’m going to bring round the bags of compost for Tottie and help her plant up the tree in the new pot,’ he said.

  ‘What sort of tree will it be?’

  ‘It’s a box spiral like the other,’ said Tottie. ‘Henry wanted them to match, but he hates angles so we ended up with spirals.’

  They went off round the side of the garage to where there was an old greenhouse and returned a few minutes later with Lex trundling a large wooden wheelbarrow piled with bags of compost.

  Tottie followed, carrying a sizeable tree in a plastic pot. ‘Take for ever to grow, box, so you might as well buy the biggest you can get for the effect,’ she said.

  The pot took two barrow loads of compost before it was full and firmly pressed down around the tree’s roots.

  Tottie wheeled the empty barrow away and Lex and I retired to the terrace to admire the effect.

  Lex surprised me by suddenly apologizing for the way Al and Tara had behaved at the pottery.

  ‘I haven’t had the chance before, but Al shouldn’t have spoken to you like that – and he certainly shouldn’t have said anything to Tara about what had happened.’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t really care what they think, and when I leave after Christmas I’ll never have to see either of them again.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. You looked very friendly with Mark yesterday,’ he said pointedly.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I barely know the man and he’s years younger than I am,’ I said crisply. ‘What he wants is free advice and unpaid labour, if he can get it.’

  Lex grinned quite unexpectedly, with devastating effect. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t underestimate your charms,’ he said.

  I was just staring at him in astonishment, wondering if he was being sarcastic, when Tottie rejoined us, brushing earth from her hands.

  ‘Looks good, doesn’t it?’ she asked, gazing critically down at the knot garden.

  ‘Lovely,’ I said. The intricacy of the twin knot gardens placed on either side of the long gravelled path did indeed look picture-book pretty.

  ‘Al seemed a bit tight-lipped today, and he refused to stay for tea,’ Clara said when we went in. ‘You haven’t fallen out, have you, Lex?’

  ‘A slight difference of opinion, but he’ll get over it,’ he said shortly.

  ‘Henry should be back with Teddy any minute.’

  ‘Is it that late?’ I exclaimed. We must have been out in the garden for ages. No wonder I felt frozen!

  Teddy was excited to see Lex there again – but then, with every day that brought us closer to Christmas, he was excited, full stop.

  ‘It’s the last day of the school term tomorrow,’ he told me. ‘Father Christmas is coming and then we’re having the school play. You’re coming to that, Uncle Lex, aren’t you? Meg is, and everyone else.’

  It was the first I’d heard of my being expected to go, though of course, I knew all about the Nativity play, which Miss Aurora had apparently rewritten in more feminist terms.

  ‘I’m sure they must limit the audience numbers,’ I said quickly.

  ‘Actually, there’s lots of space, because the assembly room was originally the old ballroom at the side of the house. It has a wonderful parquet floor,’ Henry said, as if that might be a major incentive.

  ‘The chairs are the hideously uncomfortable plastic stacking kind, but the plays are always short, and then the refreshments are good. But don’t let Teddy pester you into going if you don’t want to, either of you,’ said Clara.

  ‘Of course Meg and Uncle Lex want to come!’ Teddy said, looking deeply hurt, so we immediately had to assure him we did.

 
‘We’re taking Meg to the Pike with Two Heads for lunch tomorrow, Lex,’ Henry informed him, which was also news to me, though I remembered that they’d said it would be nice to do that one Friday. ‘Why don’t you come, if you don’t have too much to wrap up before the Solstice?’

  ‘I think you’re mean, going when I’m at school,’ Teddy protested.

  ‘But you’ll be seeing Santa instead, and we can all go again another time,’ said Clara.

  Lex said he would join us at the pub. ‘I have to eat, after all, and if I’m going to the Nativity play, there won’t be time to do any work that afternoon, will there?’

  Lass’s nose was slowly inching towards the plate of Gentleman’s Relish sandwiches and I pushed it further away. She gave me a look of deep reproach.

  ‘It’s nearly your dinnertime,’ I told her.

  ‘What’s Den doing?’ Henry asked.

  ‘Making more mince pies, as if the freezer wasn’t already crammed with them,’ replied Clara, ‘but he’s made Eccles cakes, too.’

  ‘Yum,’ said Henry. ‘You can’t have too many mince pies.’

  When we came in, Tottie had vanished to scrub the earth off her hands, but now she reappeared, though still attired in slightly grimy corduroy trousers and grey ribbed socks.

  ‘I’m starving,’ she said, loading a plate with sandwiches.

  Clara poured her tea. ‘We’re all going to the pub for lunch tomorrow, Tottie.’

  ‘Super!’ she said, and I could see the young raw-boned and jolly version of her, who must have played tennis at Underhill and probably hockey at school, and now her enthusiasms had turned to horses, bees and gardening.

  Den drove Lex home later, and Teddy and Henry went off into his study to unpack a box of baubles. The mixed auction lot of Christmas decorations had finally arrived.

  Clara had retired to her own room to work, but Tottie remained sitting by the fire, reading a gardening magazine, and I curled up in a comfortable armchair with Clara’s second novel. But by the time Teddy had run in half a dozen times to exhibit some fresh treasure from the box, we both gave up and went and watched the fun too.