The Christmas Invitation

by Trisha Ashley

  Then when she’d finished exclaiming over that, I said that I’d finished Tottie’s portrait and was going to paint Lex next.

  ‘So … you’re friends now?’

  ‘I suppose we are. He’s being … very kind.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said noncommittally. ‘If your other possible romantic lead has gone off with Lex’s sister, then that leaves only him for the part, doesn’t it? And there you both are, snowed in at a remote house for Christmas – so romantic!’

  ‘It might have been, if we didn’t have a shared painful past to come to terms with and a whole house party looking on! I think you’ll have to abandon this whole rom-com idea of yours, Fliss.’

  When I’d rung off, I lay back on the bed with Pansy curled up close and just closed my eyes for a moment … The next thing I knew was when I was woken by the sound of the dinner gong.

  It was just as well I was not high maintenance, because I’d changed, brushed my hair, applied lip gloss and was downstairs so quickly that I’m sure the air was still reverberating in the hall from the gong.

  It was a strange evening. Sybil came down, but was very quiet at dinner, while Zelda was dreamy and preoccupied. Mark had dropped her off while I was sleeping, but not stayed, because the roads were freezing over again already.

  Back in the drawing room we all gathered round the fire while Henry read us the opening chapters of A Christmas Carol, apparently another family tradition. He read so beautifully and Teddy, who had been allowed to stay up for it for the first time, was enthralled.

  ‘I only hope it doesn’t give him nightmares,’ Henry said, when Teddy had gone up to bed with Zelda and Tottie. Tonight River had been commanded by Teddy to go up later and read the bedtime story.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Lex. ‘He’s got the Muppets version of it on DVD, hasn’t he? So he’s used to the idea of the ghosts and the chains and all that.’

  ‘They’re exposed to a lot worse than that these days,’ said Clara. ‘We can only protect him to a certain extent.’

  ‘He’ll find his own way through life, as we did,’ Henry said. ‘He’s a clever, sensible child.’

  Since Sybil had gone to bed early, Lex and I let the dogs out last thing.

  It was bitterly cold and all was silent, except for the sound of the snow crisply scrunching under the dogs’ feet.

  The sky was a clear, translucent ultramarine, scattered with sequin stars, one of them very bright.

  ‘That’s a wishing star,’ Lex said, when I pointed it out. ‘What will you wish for, Meg?’

  I wish I could stay here for ever, with you, a traitorous voice in my head whispered.

  ‘If I told you, it wouldn’t happen,’ I said quickly. ‘What about your wish?’

  ‘Ditto,’ he said, and smiled.

  I thought it would be difficult to put the whole Sybil thing right out of my head over Christmas, but actually, at breakfast she was again so very ordinary that I found myself questioning my own sanity. Surely we were all mad to suspect quiet, plaintive Sybil, with her faded prettiness, of doing something like that? But then, of course, she was a horsy person too, out in all weathers and hefting bales of hay about, not some fragile hothouse flower.

  Tottie said that, Christmas Eve or not, Clara had been up and working long before I came down, while Henry and River had just gone into his study together, where River was going to read through the manuscript of Henry’s book as a final check.

  There hadn’t been any further snowfall overnight and the farmers would have already been out gritting the road, so Zelda said she intended spending the day at Underhill again, which was no surprise. Sybil and Tottie decided to go down with her and hack around the estate, to give the horses a bit of exercise.

  ‘Would you like to go to Underhill with me today, Teddy?’ asked Zelda, but he looked dubious.

  ‘Aunt Clara said she’d teach me to read more hieroglyphs this morning,’ he said. ‘And Den’s got lots of cooking to do, so I need to help him. I think I’ll stay here, Mummy.’

  ‘Then I’ll see you at dinner, darling, and you can tell me all about it,’ she said, smiling at him.

  ‘Where’s Lex?’ I asked.

  ‘He and Den went out to start your van’s engine – you’d left the keys in the studio. They thought it might be an idea to run it for ten minutes, because it’s been standing there in the cold for a few days.’

  ‘I hadn’t given it a thought!’ I said, and thanked them when they came back in, before taking Lex off to the studio to give me the first portrait sitting.

  He removed his warm fleece without my asking him and resumed the pose in his shirtsleeves and black jeans.

  I checked the iPad photo, then took up my soft black pencil and began to sketch directly on to the canvas.

  My concentration was intense and soon that hawk profile, half-turned away (the hardest of portrait poses to paint), took shape, the faint scaffolding of bones and tendons, the strong line of the neck rising up from the open V of his shirt …

  Finally, I stepped back and stared intently from outline to sitter: this way of drawing straight on to the canvas without preliminary sketches was new but it seemed to be working well.

  I’d been looking at him impersonally as a series of lines and shapes, but now, suddenly, I was aware of him as a man – the one he was now, damaged and haunted by his past, perhaps, but still sweet-natured, kind and with courage. There was humour in that arrowhead smile, too.

  All that I knew of him, past and present, must somehow be distilled into paint. The mysterious alchemy between eyes, mind and hand had never failed me yet and I prayed (to the Goddess? Gaia? Whatever divine being happened to be listening?) that it would not fail me now.

  Den broke the spell by coming in just then with coffee and a few of the cheese straws he’d been making for Boxing Day. Pansy was hard on his heels, though I didn’t know if that was from greed or whether she was in search of me.

  ‘That’s definitely ’is ’ead,’ Den said, pausing behind the easel.

  Lex stood up and stretched slowly. ‘I don’t think I want to look yet, because you’ve been staring at me so intently that I’m afraid of what I’d see.’

  ‘It’s just the pencil sketch, anyway,’ I said. ‘I’d like to start putting paint on, but you might have had enough of sitting for one day?’

  ‘I don’t mind, so long as I can have a little break now and walk about first,’ he said obligingly. ‘I’ll probably need to go and do something physical afterwards, like chop logs, though.’

  ‘I’ll take this ’ound with me, shall I?’ Den said.

  ‘No, don’t bother, just leave the door slightly ajar, so she can get out if she wants to.’

  I set out my palette while Lex was having his break and then he took up his pose again.

  My hand, holding the small trowel-shaped palette knife, with which I could produce a line, a scraping, a smooth sweep, or a thick curl of paint, trembled slightly with excitement … and then that inner force took me over and the shadows, planes and angles of his face began to emerge.

  Apart from the curve of his nose, it was mostly angles. His skin tone was a warm, pale olive, a family colouring he shared with Clara, Zelda and Teddy, along with the black curls. His dark eyes should have been brown, not that agate-dark green …

  Lex’s voice, slightly plaintive, finally woke me to the present.

  ‘Meg?’

  I blinked at him and then looked at the canvas before me, on which his face seemed to have materialized. How long had I been painting?

  ‘I think all of me has gone numb and Pansy’s been staring at you for the past half-hour,’ he said. ‘I think she wants her lunch – and so do I. And someone to make soothing noises at me, because I feel like a scoured-out shell of my former self.’

  ‘I expect you’re just exhausted,’ I said contritely. ‘And I know having someone staring at you for hours on end can feel weird.’

  ‘I think I’d like to get my own back and make a clay po
rtrait bust of you, one of these days.’

  ‘Really? But there might not be time after Christmas, because now I’ve finished the commissioned portraits, there won’t be any real reason for me to stay on.’

  ‘But you’re working so well that maybe you should stay on and paint some of the others, too?’

  Clara pushed the door wide and wandered in. ‘Yes, why not make it a full set? Den, Teddy and Zelda, for a start.’

  ‘I could paint Zelda and Mark as their wedding present,’ I suggested, half-joking.

  ‘Now, there’s an idea,’ she said. ‘I don’t expect to see Zelda again till tonight, but Tottie and Sybil came back over an hour ago and they’re helping Den in the kitchen.’

  ‘So Sybil hasn’t been summoned again by Piers today,’ Lex asked.

  ‘Actually, he did ring first thing, but I answered it in my study and told him she couldn’t go down to see him today. He wasn’t pleased, but then he does seem to want to have his own way in everything, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Did you tell Sybil he rang?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid it entirely slipped my mind. It’ll do her good to have a nice, quiet day doing things she enjoys instead. And I’ve had a lovely morning, too,’ she continued. ‘An old friend sent me photographs of a broken stone marker and we’re agreed it’s written in an early form of Ogham. It was broken into pieces and a digger turned it up, but we seem to have most of it.’

  ‘Ogham?’ I echoed.

  ‘Don’t ask, the explanation would take us to teatime,’ Lex said.

  ‘Just another early written form of language, darling, that developed in Ireland, separately from others in use at the same date,’ said Clara. ‘One written language does not follow the other in a neat fashion, but instead they often overlap in time. Rather like the evolution of the human race as we currently know it,’ she added.

  ‘See what I mean?’ said Lex. ‘Come on, let’s go and have something to eat. I’m famished.’

  ‘Cheese and tomato quiche,’ said Clara. ‘Den’s been baking up a storm in there and Wisty’s covered in so much flour, she looks like a ghost dog.’

  The ghost dog had been dusted off, but Den was still at work, mixing up a savoury nut loaf for Christmas dinner. Bizarrely, this was to be baked in a large early Victorian pottery mould, shaped like a capon.

  ‘That should confuse Piers even more than the rabbit,’ I said.

  ‘Got a few more things to do,’ Den said, ‘then that’s it. Fill the volley-vaunts on Boxing Day morning, won’t I?’

  ‘With condensed mushroom soup?’ I asked, remembering.

  ‘That and Eggwinas.’

  ‘Eggwinas?’

  ‘Curried eggs. It’s an old family joke,’ said Lex.

  ‘It was that Edwina Curry, wasn’t it?’ Den said, bafflingly, though as long as she wasn’t in the vol-au-vents, I was fine with that.

  When I’d eaten I went back to the studio for a brood over the portrait, then I checked my iPad and phone.

  There was a brief email from Fliss, telling me Cal was home and ecstatic at the news, to which I replied suitably.

  And there were several missed calls from Rollo, who I’d thought would have given up by now. Then, disconcertingly, he rang, as if he knew I’d turned on the phone.

  ‘What on earth do you want now, Rollo?’ I said wearily. ‘If you’re still angling for an interview with Henry, it’s not going to happen. I think you’re jolly lucky to be invited to dinner tomorrow and you’d better be on your best behaviour!’

  ‘It’s nothing of the kind,’ he said indignantly. ‘I just thought you might feel some slight concern about my health, seeing you were the cause of my getting such a bad chill.’

  ‘I was?’

  ‘Yes. So I was sure you’d want to know that I feel much better.’

  ‘I already knew, because Flora’s kept us up to date. It was just a chill, anyway, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Just a chill? When you know how weak my lungs are? It could have carried me off.’

  There had never seemed anything wrong with his chest or lungs that I’d ever noticed. I thought the only thing likely to carry him off in the near future was Flora herself.

  ‘You could come and visit me,’ he suggested.

  ‘I’m too busy working and, anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow, won’t I?’

  ‘But I’m feeling cooped up and bored, because that dreadful old man is always in the guest sitting room, drinking and complaining.’

  ‘He’s another uninvited visitor, but never mind, at least Flora seems to like you.’

  His voice stopped being die-away and warmed to enthusiasm. ‘She’s been quite wonderful! Mother is very grateful to her for looking after me so well. They talk on the phone every day.’

  ‘How nice,’ I said, thinking that perhaps a nanny was really what he’d needed all along.

  ‘Well, see you tomorrow,’ I said briskly, preparing to ring off, but I wasn’t to get away quite that easily.

  ‘That’s another thing,’ he said. ‘You told me a whole lot of lies about Henry. All that guff about only wearing green and his being a recluse.’

  ‘Just joking. And he loves being surrounded with people – he just likes to choose them himself.’

  I hoped Rollo would behave himself tomorrow at dinner. But Flora would have her eye on him, and also I didn’t think he was so stupid as to forget that Henry still had many influential contacts in the world of literature.

  After this I felt like some fresh air and thought I’d walk down to Preciousss and visit Flower.

  The house was quite quiet, though I thought I could hear Clara’s voice through her study door.

  I got my coat and boots on and, while I was scrunching down the drive and on to the ice-rutted road, I did a mental tally of my Christmas presents. I had made lots of little sketches of everyone, including the dogs, and I already had one or two gifts I’d got at Preciousss, but I could do with a few extras … like something for Den.

  Flower, carrying Grace-Galadriel on her hip, opened the shop door to me and was delighted I’d come to visit – and even more so to hear that I wanted a few small gifts in case I had forgotten anyone.

  ‘I don’t know what, though.’

  ‘Sweets?’ suggested Flower. ‘Everyone likes sweets.’

  ‘I didn’t know you sold them, Flower!’

  ‘I have my own range,’ she said proudly, leading the way over to a dim and distant shelf that had previously escaped my notice. Flower’s range had been created by filling old jam jars of various sizes and shapes with bought sweets and then covering the lids with miniature bath caps in shiny purple. Handwritten paper labels gave a new slant to the contents.

  ‘Wizard’s Wands’ were just liquorice sticks, the soft, twisted sort with one end dipped in little coloured granules. ‘Tasty Spells’ were old-fashioned humbugs and ‘Magical Mints’ were the soft kind covered in chocolate and individually wrapped in foil.

  Den liked liquorice; I remembered Teddy saying he was going to save him some liquorice allsorts the first time we collected him from school.

  I bought several jars and Flower’s eyes shone so much she looked quite beautiful for a moment, in a slightly Drowned Ophelia kind of way.

  ‘As long as my card doesn’t spontaneously combust when you put it in the machine,’ I said glumly. The rent for the flat would have gone out of my account, and now I was paying it all on my own it was quite a burden. I really must start cottage hunting as soon as I got back after Christmas.

  Flower made me coffee in the kitchen and left me minding Grace-Galadriel while she was packing my purchases. I just had time to whip out my sketchpad and do a quick drawing of the baby before she came back. I still had a few mounts left and even if I couldn’t give the drawing to Flower for Christmas, I’d see her on Boxing Day.

  When we’d drunk our coffee and eaten some home-made biscuits that looked like perforated cardboard and tasted much the same, I said I’d better get back.

  ‘I’ve
just remembered there’s a letter for the Red House here,’ she said, getting up and fetching a battered envelope from the dresser. ‘Here we are! It must have been damp in the post bag, because this was stuck to the bottom of a parcel. We had to peel it off.’

  ‘The snow probably got in, while they were dragging it through the drifts,’ I said. ‘But at least you can still read the address label.’

  It was a long brown envelope, with American stamps and interesting stains, addressed to Professor Clara Mayhem Doome.

  ‘I’ll give it to Clara when I get back,’ I said, pushing it down inside my large tapestry shoulder bag.

  I’d only just set off up the road when a dog-walking party consisting of River, Henry and Lex caught me up.

  Lass was proceeding under her own steam, but River was carrying Pansy and Lex the more substantial Wisty.

  ‘They’ve such little legs,’ said River when I commented on this. ‘They were tired and their tummies were cold.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they are the most suitable of country dogs,’ I said.

  ‘They can walk a surprisingly long way, when they don’t have to wade through snow,’ Henry said. ‘Sybil is a good dog breeder. Her puppies are always healthy and win lots of prizes.’

  ‘I don’t think Pansy will,’ Lex said. ‘She looks like a collection of all the things dachshunds shouldn’t be.’

  ‘She’s healthy, though, that’s the main thing. And she is beautiful in her own way,’ Henry said.

  As soon as we got in, the door to Clara’s study opened and her head of grey and silver curls appeared.

  ‘Psst!’ she hissed thrillingly. ‘Come in here, all of you!’

  ‘Me too?’ asked River.

  ‘Why not?’ said Clara. ‘I feel you’re quite one of the family.’

  ‘Just let me put the dogs in the kitchen so they can dry off by the stove,’ Henry said, suiting the action to the words.

  Tottie was already in the study, pacing about restlessly.

  ‘Shut the door, Henry,’ Clara said when he came in.

  ‘Who are we shutting out?’

  ‘Sybil,’ Tottie said. ‘While you were all out, Piers made Flora bring him up here and I was in the drawing room with Sybil when they rang the doorbell. We had the lights on, so of course they could see us through the window and we couldn’t pretend there was nobody home. Piers said he’d just wanted a quick word with Sybil on a private matter.’