Christmas at Strand House

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘Coming where?’ Janey said. She didn’t know she wanted to go anywhere. Not at the moment, without Xander’s protection, she didn’t, although she knew she couldn’t have that for long.

  ‘Town. Lissy’s given me a key so we can let ourselves in and out.’

  Bobbie was pulling her long, silver hair into a ponytail on the back of her head with one hand. Janey watched, mesmerised, as Bobbie took the black cloche hat she had in the other hand and pushed her twisted hair up into it. It was like that thing some actresses do when they go for a part, where they turn up wearing a hat, sit down, then remove the hat and all their fabulous locks come tumbling down. Like that, only in reverse; Bobbie’s hair was like a sheet of molten silver. Or mercury. Janey hoped she might be able to re-create the exact shade in a painting some day.

  ‘There, that’s me done,’ Bobbie said. ‘So are you?’

  ‘I don’t know that’s there anything I need.’

  Bobbie sighed theatrically.

  ‘And I don’t know that that’s a reason for not going into town. Any town. I know this one isn’t exactly London or York or even Paris, but I happened to notice a stationer’s shop when I was in there yesterday. And I happen to know you have been out sussing out views to paint. And Xander informed me while you were upstairs and we were waiting for lunch that you’ve only got a sketchpad and a couple of pencils with you.’

  ‘Not a lot you don’t know about me, then,’ Janey laughed, getting used now to Bobbie’s very forthright manner.

  ‘Quite the opposite, darling,’ Bobbie said. ‘I’m sure there’s loads about you I don’t know and probably never will, just as there’s an awful lot about me you don’t know either.’

  ‘Yet!’ Janey said. She got up off the couch. She did need some art supplies because she badly, badly wanted – and needed? – to start on some new work. And she had a suspicion Bobbie was suggesting they go out so she could get some. The problem was she only had a credit card, very little cash, and her card was getting dangerously close to the max.

  ‘And if,’ Bobbie said, ‘you’re worried about that tedious little facility we call finance, I can stand you the wherewithal. A present.’

  Janey wondered with a slight panic, if she was so transparent? Bobbie was reading her mind.

  ‘Lissy said no presents,’ Janey said firmly. ‘That’s the rules.’

  ‘And rules are there to be broken. Good God, girl, where would we be if we didn’t break rules now and again! Anyway, that aside, you can pay me back when you’re famous if you’re not accepting gifts. So what’s going to be your medium of choice – watercolours, oils, acrylics, pastels, pen and ink? See, I know about this stuff.’

  ‘Blackmailer!’ Janey said.

  First Xander and now Bobbie taking control of her but in a kindly way – wanting the best for her. But she still wasn’t sure she wanted to go into town. She pulled her jumper, which had ridden up while she was sitting down, over her jeans, and tugged on it a little.

  ‘Two options,’ Bobbie said. ‘You come with me and choose or I choose for you and you have to make do. I can see those fingers of yours are itching to get creative the way you’re fiddling with the end of that jumper.’

  Janey wondered for a moment if Bobbie had been on the bottle all morning while she and Xander had been at the castle and had had more than the one glass Lissy had poured for them all at lunchtime. But she didn’t think so. Not really. Bobbie was unwinding now, getting used to the new dynamic of the four of them, relaxing and beginning to be more her true self. As they all were a little.

  ‘They’re not,’ Janey said. ‘It’s just that, well, Totnes is only seven miles away and Stuart could … although it’s hardly likely … have come over this way. If he’s hacked into my email details and found out where I am. I wouldn’t want to put you in any danger if he came flying at me or something.’

  ‘And do you think I’d let him get away with that? See these spikes on the end of my feet?’ Bobbie said, lifting one leg and twisting it round so Janey could see the stiletto heel. ‘He’d have that run right through him if he did. It’s not only big beefy men like Xander who can protect anyone in need of protecting, you know.’

  ‘I know,’ Janey said. ‘Okay, I’ll come.’ How could she not after that little display of solidarity and support? ‘I’ll just get my coat.’

  What a surreal day so far. An interesting one. A day that was making her feel an entirely different Janey somehow.

  Chapter 16

  Bobbie

  ‘I can’t walk across the beach in these boots,’ Bobbie said once they were outside and walking along the promenade towards the town. Janey kept looking down onto the sand as though she was eager to be on it.

  ‘Shame,’ Janey said. ‘The tide’s out. The sand’s firm enough.’

  ‘You can go if you want,’ Bobbie said. ‘I’ll catch up with you again by that café that sticks out over the prom on the other side of the pier.’

  ‘No, it’s okay. I’ll stay with you. I’ve only got this one pair of shoes with me and I wouldn’t want to slip in a puddle or something and get them soaked.’

  Janey only had one of everything as far as Bobbie had been able to tell. Same jeans, same jumper, same shoes for the last twenty-four hours. She wondered if Janey had anything special to wear on Christmas Day, and was beginning to doubt she did. How different their lives were and yet how very fond of the younger woman Bobbie was becoming. She felt protective of her somehow which was a first because Bobbie had had to watch her own back, and only hers, most of her life.

  Bobbie had had to work hard to get Janey to agree to come into town with her but was glad she had. There was a gentle smile playing around Janey’s lips – the first time Bobbie had seen it for any length of time – as they walked along.

  What was the cost of a few art materials to her if Janey would get so much pleasure out of using them? Wasn’t that what Christmas was all about – the giving?

  ‘I think you’ve worked it out, Bobbie,’ Janey said, ‘that I’m more than a bit strapped for cash at the moment. I’ll pay you back whatever you spend on art supplies for me. I won’t want much because I’ve got loads at … well, back in Totnes … when I can get around to fetching them.’

  Janey had been on the verge of saying ‘home’. She’d only just stopped herself and Bobbie was glad she had because it showed she was thinking forward and not back.

  A gaggle of young people came – arm in arm and very noisily – along the prom towards them. They were all wearing Santa hats with bells on and most of them had strings of tinsel around their necks. Bobbie wondered what bar they’d all just tumbled out of – there were enough of them on the ground floor of huge Victorian buildings that had once been select hotels. But times changed, and these kids were probably getting more fun out of them than any Victorian ever had.

  ‘Merry Christmas, ladies!’ one of them shouted.

  ‘Merry Christmas!’ Bobbie and Janey said as one.

  Bobbie put her hands over her ears.

  ‘Hard to hear yourself think, the row that lot were making!’

  ‘Happy though,’ Janey said and the way she said it told Bobbie that while she was definitely moving forward, Janey hadn’t hit the happy note just yet.

  ‘Those drawings you did of me at the Dartington Art workshop,’ she said. ‘I know it was a few years ago now but have you still got them?’

  ‘And the little terracotta sculpture I did although it’s started to crumble a bit because it was only fired. It’s not had any patina put on it. They were in the shed which is where I go to draw or paint but when I was forming the idea in my mind that I would try and leave Stuart somehow I was afraid he’d trash them if I did. Well, have. I have left him now.’

  ‘You have indeed,’ Bobbie said. ‘I also happen to have noticed that there is a little cocktail bar in town – PLAYERS. It looks a tad out of place amongst all the tripper shops and the one-armed bandit machines, but no matter. It does cocktails. And when I pee
ped inside yesterday it had by far the classiest decorations I’ve seen around here. We’ll have one on the way back to celebrate your leaving. But that still leaves the question of where your artwork is now if it’s not in the shed.’

  ‘In another shed. Fred and Annie’s next door. They – and their dog, Guinness – will guard them with their lives until I fetch them. They know what Stuart’s like, they’ve heard …’

  ‘Well, they won’t hear anymore, darling, will they?’ Bobbie said quickly.

  ‘No, no they won’t.’

  Bobbie caught, out of the corner of her eye, Janey balling her hands into fists and stuffing them in the pockets of her coat.

  ‘Thank you, you know, for being so kind to me. It’s not as if we knew one another all that well.’

  ‘But getting to know one another better by the minute, eh?’

  Bobbie reached for Janey’s arm as they neared the pelican crossing. Two cars went past lit up like Christmas trees. One of them even had a fully decorated Christmas tree about a foot high strapped to the radiator grill. The lights changed to red and Bobbie steered Janey across before letting go of her arm again.

  ‘I’m not entirely philanthropic offering to buy you art materials, Janey,’ Bobbie said, brightly. She didn’t want Janey to think she’d brought her out under false pretences or as part of some sort of devious plan.

  ‘Oh,’ Janey said.

  ‘You made by far the best fist of drawing and sculpting me that weekend. I’d like to buy what you did. Or swap for art materials we will soon be purchasing if you wish.’

  The two women turned the corner into Torbay Road and the long walk up to the art supply shop.

  ‘I was going to say before but didn’t like to,’ Janey said. She was grinning broadly now, giggling. ‘Only I almost didn’t recognise you at Claire’s funeral with your clothes on. I’d only ever seen you nude before. Well, that’s what’s always been in my mind whenever I’ve thought of you and seen your Facebook posts. You, nude.’

  ‘I have never been nude in any of my Facebook posts I’ll have you know. Facebook wouldn’t allow it for a start.’

  ‘No,’ Janey giggled, ‘but you know what I mean.’

  ‘And what’s more I had clothes on in the evenings,’ Bobbie said, giving Janey a mock-offended look. ‘Unless, of course, you were so rat-arsed you didn’t notice.’ Oh, God, what a crass comment. She doubted Janey had ever been rat-arsed in her life. Not with a husband like hers she hadn’t because she’d have had to keep her wits about her, always. ‘Sorry. Ought not to have made that glib comment.’

  Janey waved it away.

  ‘No worries. But I’ve often wondered why you did life modelling. I mean, you do the other sort all the time – I’ve seen you in YOU magazine and Good Housekeeping and other places – and it seems such a contrast.’

  ‘It is. That’s what I like. The contrast. When I’m modelling clothes, or bags, or shoes, or being part of a feature of some sort there are always people around talking nineteen to the dozen, poking me here, poking me there, telling me how to stand or sit, how to breathe, how to smile, and I can get more than a bit fed up with it. When I’m life modelling there’s silence in the room as the students concentrate. I know I cease to be me to them and I’m just a body. I like that. It gives me the space to let my mind wander. To remember things. To wish for things.’

  ‘What things?’ Janey said.

  ‘Oh, look, there’s that cocktail bar I was telling you about. PLAYERS. We’ll stop on the way back. And maybe pick up some boxes of fairy lights in that ticky-tacky shop next door. A house as big as Lissy’s could always use another set of lights, I should think. More is more and all that.’

  Bobbie was more than glad of the diversion. There were lots of things Janey need never know about her. Things she didn’t want her – or anyone, for that matter – to know.

  ‘And besides, back to the life modelling topic, it pays well. A mews house in London, just your proverbial stone’s throw from Marble Arch, doesn’t come cheap. I’ve worked my butt off – quite literally sometimes – to get it and I intend to hang onto it.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Janey laughed. ‘I bet you have! Have you paid for it all on your own? Has there never been anyone in your life – a man – to share all that?’

  ‘Nor a woman either,’ Bobbie said. ‘And that’s all I’m saying on the subject. This trip out was supposed to be all about you, not me. Come on. It’s Christmas Eve and we don’t want this art shop to be closed by the time we get there, do we?

  Then, linking her arm through Janey’s, Bobbie quickened their pace.

  And I’m going to have to accept that maybe I’ve got to the age when walking a couple of miles in stiletto boots isn’t the best idea I have when I wake up in the morning. Bobbie’s insteps and her calves were beginning to throb.

  Chapter 17

  Lissy

  ‘Phew! Made it! They’re still open,’ Xander said as he drove his lorry into the Christmas Tree Farm and it bumped and rolled over the tracks, tossing Lissy this way and that, falling into Xander at one stage before she was able to pull herself upright again.

  Lissy hadn’t known there was even one here. ‘Established 1985’, it said on a board by the gate. But then, she’d only ever spent a couple of Christmases with Vonny after her husband, George, had died, and she couldn’t remember there being a Christmas tree in the house then.

  ‘Three, I think,’ Lissy said. ‘One very big one for the hall. One a sort of middling size for the sitting room, and a smaller one on the top landing. Something to greet us when we get out of our beds tomorrow.’

  Xander had fetched a large box of Christmas tree decorations from his house – decorations that had been his and Claire’s. He was happy for her to have them for Strand House he’d said. She could keep them, he’d said, and Lissy wondered if he’d really meant that or was just putting a brave face on things. She, and Janey and Bobbie, were constant reminders of the fourth corner of the friendship that was missing, weren’t they?

  ‘Will you have enough decorations for three?’ Xander asked. ‘This is your typical builder, who knows how many bricks and planks of wood he needs to finish a project, talking of course. I’m not being a bossy bloke, in case that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I’m thinking no such thing,’ Lissy said. And she wasn’t. She was thinking only how nice it was sitting beside Xander, feeling safe and more than a little happy, as they trundled along in their own little world. She had a hunch Xander felt the same because he kept turning his head to look at her and smiled although he hadn’t said much on the drive up from the sea front. ‘But there’ll be plenty. I found two boxfuls that were Vonny’s in a cupboard in the laundry room. We could always buy some more, though, if you think we need them.’

  ‘We?’ Xander said, just a hint of a question in the word, as he turned to grin at her. ‘Here we are.’

  Lissy and Xander were told by the proprietor to walk around and see which trees they liked best. He gave them some bits of yellow ribbon to tie on to whichever ones took their fancy so they could find them again easily, and then the proprietor would come along with his mini tractor and his cutting equipment and take them out for them.

  ‘I had no idea it was so vast up here,’ Lissy said. ‘We could be in Switzerland, couldn’t we?’

  ‘Or Austria,’ Xander said. ‘Parts of the US look like this as well. So I’m told. Not that I’ve ever been. Have you?’

  ‘Austria once, when I was about seven,’ Lissy told him. ‘With my parents. When they were still together.’

  ‘Ooh,’ Xander said, pulling a face as though he’d just sucked on lemons. ‘There was acid in that comment.’

  Lissy chose not to respond. She walked on ahead of Xander instead of beside him as she had been. Yes, it still wrankled that her mother had left her father and all the heartache that had caused, but Xander didn’t need to hear it.

  ‘You can see Haytor very clearly from here,’ she said, pointing. ‘O
h, all the bigger trees are down there. How tall a tree do we want?’ She began hurrying down the slope towards the taller trees, stopping in front of a tree so tall she had to crane her neck to see the top of it.

  ‘Your ceilings are about twelve feet high. So, the builder in me used to measurements and making things dovetail fit tells me you’ll need one about ten feet.’ He took a retractable tape from the pocket of his jacket, extended it, and held the end – in a rather wobbly fashion – as near the top of the tree as he could get it. ‘Never travel without one of these.’ He turned to Lissy, quite serious-faced, she thought, given the quip.

  ‘I’m glad now you don’t,’ she said. She’d quite forgotten to check how high a tree she’d need for the hall.

  ‘This one should do it,’ Xander said, checking his measurements. ‘If you’re going to put a fairy on the top.’

  ‘Definitely a fairy,’ Lissy laughed. ‘I’ll tie a bit of yellow around this one and then look for the smaller two.’

  ‘Not too small,’ Xander said. ‘All your ceilings are the same height so a tiddler would look a bit lost. Oh, God, hark at me telling you what to do. Forget I said that. It’s a bloke thing, thinking we know best always. That’s what my mum and old Eve next door tell me all the time anyway. Sorry.’

  ‘Sorry? What for? For giving me the benefit of your experience?’

  ‘Your house, your trees, Lissy,’ Xander said. ‘But thanks for the compliment. I’ve got duct tape also in my jacket pocket. Perhaps I need to use a bit across my mouth so I don’t come over all bloke-bossy.’

  Lissy couldn’t help a bubble of laughter escaping.

  ‘You took a brave step agreeing to have Christmas with three women you hardly know and …’

  ‘I know you,’ Xander said. He swallowed hard. ‘I know we shared a dance and how it made me feel having you in my arms, and …’

  ‘I remember that too,’ Lissy said. ‘We could have, you know …’