‘Don’t worry, we all pad up before the ceremony,’ Henry assured me. ‘I’ve had a thought, too: would you like to take part in the ceremony itself, River? Only, we lost our Old Winter and my nephew, Lex, had to take the part last year. He’s too tall for the costume really and I know he’d rather watch than be in it.’
Clara suggested that if River took the part, he should wear his own robes, but with Old Winter’s mistletoe crown.
River was, of course, delighted by the idea and Henry promised to explain the proceedings and the part he’d play in them later.
I showed River to his room and on the way up he admired the tree and all the baubles. ‘The smell of pine is very invigorating,’ he said, inhaling deeply through his small, patrician nose.
River’s room looked out on to the back garden and I thought that once Lex and Sybil arrived, the house would be quite full up. No other visitors were expected so we could draw up a virtual drawbridge and let the revels commence.
While I unpacked and stowed away River’s various strange garments and footwear, packets of twiggy stuff, sachets of herbal powders, crystals and other vital travelling accessories, he sat on the bed, cross-legged, and listened as I told him the whole sorry tale about the night Lex came back to my flat and what happened – or didn’t happen – after that. And then the scene later, when his friend Al had cornered me in college and flung vile accusations at me, without giving me a chance to defend myself.
It was easier to tell him while I was moving around the room with my back to him, engaged in putting things away, but finally I turned and looked into his calm, deep celestial-blue and strangely innocent eyes.
‘I see,’ he said. ‘They assumed the worst, even though you acted for the best, and then gave you no chance to explain.’
‘I think I probably looked a bit guilty when Al cornered me, because there had been a moment that night when I’d been tempted …’ I confessed, going for broke. ‘I thought Lex was totally out of it, but he surfaced long enough to kiss me. It was only a split second before I realized what I was doing and pulled away, and by then he was out for the count again.’
‘I think you can wipe that off your conscience entirely, Meg,’ he said, as if it was a dirty mark on a plate. ‘As to the rest, if he didn’t fully recollect what happened that night, then he should have talked to you about it, rather than his friend.’
‘Yes, that’s what I thought. Instead, he’s let all this unnecessary guilt fester away over the years.’
‘So of course, he wouldn’t be pleased when you suddenly turned up at the Red House.’
That was the understatement of the year.
‘He looked angry and horrified! Over the years he must have built up a picture of me in his mind that really isn’t like me at all. Now he’s faced with the reality, I can see he’s finding it increasingly difficult to square the two.’
‘I should think he would!’ River said. ‘Since you say you knew him before the events of that night, he should have realized you wouldn’t have acted in the manner he accused you of.’
‘I think I just added another layer to his whole guilt trip over Lisa,’ I said. ‘I mean, that night in the wine bar he told me he and Lisa had married so he’d have the right to insist she didn’t have chemotherapy, which she didn’t want, but her parents were insisting on. There wouldn’t have been much chance of it working in her case anyway, but when she deteriorated so quickly and had to go into the hospice, he was convinced that she’d probably have survived if she’d had it. Another guilt trip.’
‘That was a heavy load to bear,’ River said sympathetically. ‘But he did the right thing in letting her choose.’
‘Her parents didn’t see it like that, and they were with her at the hospice that night when Lex came back to my flat. Then they couldn’t contact him when Lisa took a sudden turn for the worse … It took Al to track him down, sober him up and take him there.’
River thought it all over. ‘So Lex would feel guilt at not being there when he was needed, as well as guilt over what he thinks you did together?’
‘But I didn’t realize any of that, the day he came into college after it was all over. When he turned and walked away the moment he saw me, I thought perhaps it was because he’d poured his heart out to me in the wine bar and felt embarrassed about it. People do often avoid you, after doing that.’
‘That’s very true,’ he agreed.
‘It was only what Al said later that made me realize Lex had got totally the wrong idea about what we’d done in my flat. It was horrible.’
‘I wish I’d known all this at the time, because I could have gone to London, sought out these young men, and put them right.’
I was very sure he would have done, too, but would they have believed him?
‘The only person who’s known about it all along is Fliss. She was the one who insisted I told you now.’
‘Very sensible,’ he approved. ‘She’s been a good friend to you.’
‘She said you’d know what to do … Oh, and there’s something else I didn’t tell you,’ I added, remembering. ‘Al is now Lex’s business partner in a pottery near here, and he’s married to Lisa’s younger sister! Henry took me to the pottery a few days ago and it was obvious Al had told her – Tara – all about it.’
River shook his head. ‘Al sounds a rash and thoughtless person, lacking in empathy for others.’
‘Yes, though I suppose in his way he’s just being a good friend to Lex, and Lex did apologize later for the way Al and Tara spoke to me.’
‘What is Lex’s attitude to the news that you are now a member of the family?’
‘He went very quiet, so I’m not sure. But soon after I arrived here he told me he’d forgiven me for the past, which was kind of him, considering I didn’t do anything.’
‘That was at least well-meaning,’ River said.
‘I did try to tell him the truth, but he said he didn’t want to go over the past and walked off. That made me angry and determined to stay at the Red House over Christmas and not let him drive me away.’
‘Very natural, Meg, but now the time has come for this misunderstanding to be cleared up so that old wounds can finally heal and you can both embrace a happier future.’
‘You mean I have to tell him everything, whether he wants to hear it or not?’
‘Yes, and I feel that if you do that before midnight on the evening of the Winter Solstice, it would be particularly fortuitous.’
‘But that’s tomorrow! It doesn’t give me a lot of time to get him on his own for long enough.’
‘A way will appear,’ he said with certainty.
‘He’ll actually be staying here from tomorrow till New Year.’ I gave a sigh. ‘I knew you’d tell me to have the whole thing out with him, really, so the sooner the better, I suppose.’
River nodded. ‘I don’t feel your aura will recover until you have.’
‘But what if he won’t listen, or doesn’t believe me?’
‘He must believe the truth. And if necessary, I will also speak to the young man.’
I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that one.
I left him arranging his various crystals and stuff on the top of a chest of drawers and went to my room, where I opened Mum’s tin trunk.
Immediately, I was enveloped in a wave of patchouli and sandalwood, and memories flooded in of my plump, pretty, feckless little butterfly mother, flitting in and out of my life …
Where was she now?
Clara
The ensuing years at Oxford were happy ones and though Henry went off on his globetrotting travels after he had completed his degree, while I continued with my studies, we would come together again whenever we could.
His poetry increasingly found its way into print, while I had already begun to make a name for myself as a ‘joiner’ of fragmentary pieces of epigraphy. You either have an eye for these things, or you don’t, and I had it, along with a near-photographic memory of where I had seen othe
r pieces of what might be the same inscription.
My doctoral dissertation eventually turned into my first non-fiction book … but I am running ahead again and must backtrack a little.
Even when pursuing our careers in different parts of the world, communications flew between us so that when we met, there was never any catching-up to do.
Henry would quite often just turn up while I was attached to a dig, so it was no surprise when I looked up one day from the trench in which I was sitting – Turkey again, as it happened – and saw him standing on the edge.
He was dressed in crumpled white linen and wore a broad-brimmed straw hat, somewhat frayed around the edges, to shade his familiar and very dear face from the hot sun.
‘Hello, Henry,’ I said, getting up as if only four minutes instead of four months had passed since we had last met.
I was holding a piece of clay tablet incised with cuneiform writing … though with some interesting variations. I suspected it was an early form.
‘This fragment is fascinating. I was hoping to find a few more pieces, but no luck.’
He gave me his hand to climb out and then kissed me warmly, under the interested gaze of the workmen and my colleagues.
‘I wasn’t expecting you, was I?’ I said.
‘No, I just suddenly felt I’d had enough of travelling to last me a lifetime and wanted to go home – somewhere damp, and cool and probably grey. I thought I’d call in and propose on the way.’
‘Propose what?’ I asked absently, placing the piece of clay tablet in a tray and then brushing dust from my cotton trousers.
‘Marriage. If I’m not going to be constantly travelling any more, I can be your base camp in London.’
His diffident, very sweet smile appeared and I exclaimed, ‘I don’t know why we didn’t think of that before, Henry! I mean, not only do we love each other but it would certainly make life easier.’
‘I’m so glad,’ he said, then kissed me again, which I returned with enthusiasm, audience or no audience.
When we finally parted he dug a tissue-wrapped ring out of his pocket and offered it to me. ‘Do you care for this carnelian seal I picked out, or would you rather choose something else?’
But the antique and very beautiful carved carnelian ring did indeed seal our union because we were married at the very first opportunity.
I ran our surnames together and became Clara Mayhem Doome, a conjunction that seems to have provided amusement for many.
27
Everyman
The birth certificate, in an old brown envelope, had been replaced right at the top. Apart from the mother’s name, it gave little information.
Underneath it was an old, cancelled passport, in which Mum looked unbelievably young … and a lot thinner than the last time I’d seen her, when she’d been on the plump side of curvy.
Other than those, the trunk contained only a rainbow of discarded clothes in flimsy Indian silks and cottons … and all the gifts I’d made for her as a child, when she was paying one of her fleeting visits to the Farm.
She’d always expressed great delight in these offerings – and at least she’d kept them – but at some point in our relationship I’d begun to feel that I was the mother and she the feckless and irresponsible offspring.
While I was upstairs, the cleaners from Mary’s Pop-ins had arrived to give the house a quick spruce up. Clara told me they were fortnightly, so this must be in lieu of the day they’d miss over Christmas.
They passed me on the stairs as I came down, kitted up like the Ghostbusters and ready, as Clara put it, to go through the whole house like a dose of salts.
‘But not the studio,’ I said anxiously. ‘Could they leave that out this time? There’s so much wet or tacky paint about!’
‘Of course, dear, I’ll let them know when they come down. We’ll all have to shift then, so they can clean the rest of the house, but since Den always does the kitchen himself, we can hide out in there if necessary.’
Henry and River seemed to be getting on brilliantly, and took Lass out for a walk, even though she did her best to tell them that she was quite happy to skip it today and stay in the warm.
I’d taken the birth certificate down with me and Clara scanned it for the family records, so that I could replace the original in the trunk. River would return it to the Farm, ready for when Mum turned up again.
The sound of vacuum cleaners and voices upstairs continued, so I went to the studio and looked through my gallery of photographs, thinking how much I’d love to paint Tottie in her Carmen Miranda mode, and Den with his sleeves rolled up to show a bright assortment of tattoos as he chopped vegetables at the kitchen table. If Tottie would give me some sittings, I could make a start before Christmas.
I’d told Henry that I still wasn’t quite happy about the way the shadows merged around him in the portrait and it would help if he sat in the pose for a little while when they got back. When they did, River came in with him in order, it seemed, to carry on a discussion about some aspect of poetic construction that would have been far above my head even if I hadn’t been concentrating on what I was doing.
Their voices rose and fell, as did Lass’s snoring.
‘That’s it, it’s right now,’ I said eventually, and they both came to look at the portrait.
‘Truly, you have captured Henry’s essence – it’s a kind of magic,’ said River.
‘She did the same with Clara.’ Henry indicated her portrait, which I’d propped up on the mantelpiece high above dog hair range. The surface was fairly hard to the touch now, though, so I brought it over and put it on the other easel.
I was amused when they both then fell back a few paces, hands clasped behind their backs and heads tilted consideringly on one side, like a parody of two art critics.
‘Eventually we mean them to hang in the drawing room, one on either side of the fireplace,’ said Henry.
‘I hope you and Clara will let me show them in my small one-woman exhibition in London in February, first,’ I said.
‘We’d be delighted, and although I rarely go to London these days, I’ll make an exception in your case.’
‘Thank you, it would be so lovely if you could come, and River will be there, too, won’t you?’
‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I might hire a minibus and bring a few of the Family with me.’
‘That should liven things up a bit,’ I said. ‘Just don’t stop at a pub on the way down for lunch.’
We opened the door to check the progress of Mary’s Pop-ins and found they’d finished Henry and Clara’s studies and Tottie’s hide-out in the library, and were now in the drawing room, so Henry took River off to show him his Christmas ornament collection.
They roped in Teddy to assist and I went to look for Tottie, who was in the kitchen. When I explained that I wanted to paint her portrait – and in the conservatory, where I’d drawn her – she stared at me for a long moment.
‘I suppose I could,’ she said at length, with seeming reluctance, though I could tell she was secretly dying to be painted!
‘I’ve promised to show River the hens, hives and garden after breakfast tomorrow – not that there’s a lot to see at this time of year – and then the conservatory. Perhaps you could start it after that, before lunch?’
‘Perfect! I’ll set everything up in there ready,’ I agreed. ‘I’d like you to be holding some kind of basket of fruit and vegetables too, if you have anything that would do? In my head, I see it as a cornucopia, though you’re not likely to have one of those!’
‘I’ve got a big wicker cone-shaped container that might do. It’s left over from when I made dried flower arrangements.’
‘That sounds perfect!’
‘I’ll dig it out for you. It’s in the library somewhere.’
The cleaners departed, leaving the scent of furniture spray to fight it out with the fir tree. The house settled down to await Christmas, now only a few days away.
During the
course of that afternoon and evening, River seemed to engage with every member of the household, from Clara, who took him off to her study after tea to show him some interesting bit of inscription, to Den, with whom he discussed cars and cooking in the kitchen. I even found him laughing uproariously at something on children’s TV with Teddy later.
Seamlessly transitioning from visitor to family member is his secret power …
After dinner, the drawing-room curtains were all drawn and a crackling log fire made it look cosy. The fairy lights on the tree in the bay window twinkled on and off, like little glow-worms catching the strange shapes of the antique baubles and making them sparkle.
Henry drew back one of the curtains and looked out.
‘I noticed the barometer in the hall was dropping rapidly as we came through, so the roads will freeze again overnight. I hope we don’t have more snow on top of it, or driving conditions will be bad tomorrow.’
‘Perhaps it will thaw out again during the day,’ suggested Clara. ‘But I’ll be happier when Lex arrives safely tomorrow.’
Then she explained to River, ‘My nephew, Lex, always stays here for Christmas. He’s a very talented potter.’
‘Yes, Meg has told me a lot about him,’ he said. ‘I look forward to meeting him.’
‘Let’s hope the conditions aren’t too bad tomorrow for the Solstice ceremony,’ Henry said. ‘We’ve held them despite the snow before now, but I’m not so young as I was for ploughing about in drifts.’
‘None of us is,’ said Tottie. ‘But if it’s like today the farmers will be able to grit the road all the way from here to Underhill.’
‘It’s not so bad once we’ve climbed the hill,’ said Clara. ‘The bonfire keeps the audience warm and the ceremony itself is brief, so the performers soon come down again.’
‘I’m afraid Old Winter goes up with whoever is lighting the fire and torches, so he can get into the cave before the audience arrive,’ Henry told River. ‘Though if the track up the hill is clear enough, they can drive almost to the top on the quad bike.’
The Christmas Invitation Page 27
