Christmas at Strand House

by Linda Mitchelmore

  ‘No,’ Janey said. ‘I’ll tough it out. He’ll probably be drunk as a skunk as per.’

  ‘Right.’ Xander stifled a yawn. He was bone-tired now but he couldn’t – and wouldn’t – let Janey down. A promise was a promise. He hoped Lissy wouldn’t get too big a shock when she woke up and found him gone. Found his note. He’d made it as funny as he could, given he’d had very little sleep. Something to bring a smile to Lissy’s beautiful face to start her day. ‘One coffee, then, and we’ll go. A bit of caffeine to help us along. Okay?’

  ‘Okay. And thanks, you know, for doing this for me.’

  ‘It’s what friends are for,’ Xander said.

  And they were friends now although just three days ago they’d only been acquaintances; had he seen Janey in the street, he’d never have remembered her from Claire’s funeral.

  He downed his coffee which was a bit hot and it made him cough.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Mustn’t wake the others.’

  And then they were going out the door, Xander closing it as gently as he could.

  ‘In you get.’ He opened the passenger door of his lorry and helped Janey climb up into the seat. ‘Long way from the ground, but there’ll be great views as we bowl along.’

  He went round to the driver’s side and got in, put the key in the ignition.

  ‘I think I’ll let it roll down the hill before starting the engine. We all had a bit of a late night, last night.’

  Well, I did. And Lissy. He couldn’t quite believe what had happened, had happened. After Claire died he’d been propositioned a time or two. Well, five and counting actually. Friends of Claire’s, and the wives of two of his, had all decided he must be missing sex more than he was missing his wife and had come calling, bearing gifts of homemade flapjack or a bottle of wine or something they decided he needed to ‘get over it’. There’d been something brazen and a bit Eastenders in their approach though if he was honest now they’d been no different to how Lissy had been last night – knocking on his door ‘with intention’ was how his father had put it when he’d told him about being propositioned so soon after being widowed. Not long after that his father had had a heart attack from which he didn’t recovered. Xander missed him like hell – thought about him every day. He’d have liked Lissy, Xander knew it.

  But it hadn’t felt like being propositioned with Lissy. It had felt the right thing to do although he’d been as nervous as hell. A born-again virgin.

  ‘Good idea,’ Janey said, making Xander jump.

  ‘Good idea what?’ he said, letting off the handbrake.

  ‘To roll down the hill. You just said. Remember?’ Janey grinned at him.

  ‘Ah yes, that. Of course. I was thinking. Men do sometimes, you know.’

  ‘Ha ha, very funny,’ Janey said. ‘You don’t fool me. My money’s on the fact your mind’s not entirely on the ball here this morning.’

  ‘You’d clean up,’ Xander said. ‘And that’s all I’m saying.’

  This would be a case of too much information – Janey didn’t need to know. And besides, Lissy might not want him to tell. He could have shouted it to the world, of course. He felt like opening the cab window and shouting it to the gulls and the early morning dog walkers and the copper in his patrol car parked at the bottom of Seaway Road hoping to catch a few drivers still over the limit from the night before.

  I have just had sex after a very long time treading water, as it were. I have found someone to love again, someone who has made it very obvious she doesn’t find me too rat ugly either. I am, in therapists’ parlance, ready to move on. My mother, in particular, will be very pleased to hear that news. But not half as pleased as I am.

  ‘We’ll go Berry Pomeroy way,’ Xander said turning into Manor Road. ‘It’ll be quicker. We can skirt the castle.’

  ‘Oh good,’ Janey said. ‘I can take a photo or two.’

  She took her smartphone from her bag and switched it on. There were a few beeps and Xander wondered if they might have been calls from her husband. Best not to ask.

  She ignored the beeps and began scrolling through the photos she’d been taking over the holidays. Hundreds of them from where Xander was sitting.

  ‘I’ve blocked him,’ Janey said. ‘In case you were wondering who those beeps were from.’

  ‘Not Santa, surely?’ Xander quipped, then worried that it might have come across as crass, not appropriate. A bit of a bloke remark.

  ‘Yeah, him as well this year,’ Janey laughed. ‘I meant Stuart.’

  ‘I know you did.’

  They’d reached the ring road now but there was little traffic about. Just an ambulance going towards the hospital but without the blues going. A couple of cyclists were heading in the opposite direction, heads down, bums up.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ Janey said, ‘but it didn’t seem at all strange that the four of us have spent Christmas together and not a single card or present was exchanged between us all.’

  ‘Giving and receiving of another sort, I’d say, if that’s not coming across a bit new age and all that.’

  ‘Well, we are going to Totnes,’ Janey said. ‘Hippy capital of the world.’

  ‘Yeah, weed on every corner,’ Xander laughed. The time he and a couple of friends had cycled on into Totnes after a night spent ghost-watching at the castle, came to mind. They’d been offered weed when they’d stopped for tea and toast in a café on The Plains. Curiosity had got the better of them, but Xander decided, when he was throwing up into the River Dart, that weed wasn’t for him.

  ‘Stuart does that as well. Smokes weed, I mean. God only knows what the headteacher’s going to think about that when he finds out.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘It’ll all come out in the wash, I expect. Stuart’s not going to take me leaving him quietly. I’d bet my last ten-pound note on that. Talking of which …’

  ‘That’s about all you have?’

  ‘At the moment.’

  Well, although he might not be as flush for cash as he wished he was he could still run to a couple of hundred pounds, or however much it was, that Janey would charge for a painting. She’d put one of Totnes Castle up on her Facebook page that he’d been coveting and asking to buy for a while now.

  ‘Here we go. Camera alert.’ He turned off the main road into a lane. It wasn’t the most direct route to be taking but he’d decided Janey needed to divert her thoughts from her problems if only for a few seconds. ‘Castle coming up.’

  And there it was, rising out of the early morning mist. A pheasant fluttered up at the side of the road as they approached, flapping its feathers as it tried to get purchase on the bank.

  ‘Oh!’ Janey said. ‘This is going to make one wonderful painting.’

  ‘With my name on?’ Xander said.

  ‘Could have,’ Janey said.

  He slowed down and stopped. Janey took photo after photo.

  ‘I’ll pay.’

  ‘You won’t. Okay, I think I’ve got enough now. Annie will be up and waiting and the kettle’s probably been on since six o’clock.’

  ‘Mustn’t keep a lady waiting then, must we?’ Xander said and drove on.

  Chapter 35

  Janey

  Janey didn’t need to knock on Annie and Fred’s door because it opened wide the second Xander pulled up outside. She glanced nervously towards her own house – ex-house now – and all the curtains were drawn. There were a couple of bags of rubbish on the front doorstep.

  ‘Here we go, then,’ Xander said, opening the passenger door for her and helping her out. ‘You’ll be fine, trust me. I’d say that lady on the doorstep there might be small but I bet she’s feisty when roused.’

  ‘Oh, she is,’ Janey said. ‘We used to get problems with lads off their heads on cider of a Saturday night and she got fed up with it. Lay in wait. Didn’t exactly tar and feather them but they had a lot of explaining to do to their mothers when they got home. Watered down treacle fired from water pistols topped
off with wood-chippings makes a bit of a mess.’

  ‘That your house?’ he asked pointing next door.

  Janey nodded. She was ashamed of the state it was in now. The garden was a wilderness of browned-off summer growth and things Stuart had thrown into it. She could have cleared it up, she knew that now. It shouldn’t have been all down to Stuart but somehow she hadn’t had the heart for it knowing it would be just as bad again in a few days. She’d had the back garden – more of a yard really – and the shed to retreat to which meant she’d avoided seeing it.

  ‘Oh, my eye!’ Annie said when Janey and Xander reached the front door. Guinness, beside her, barked a greeting and Janey bent to fondle his black and tan bony head.

  ‘Hello, old boy,’ Janey said. Guinness looked up at her with his chocolate eyes and pawed her leg – his version of a handshake perhaps. ‘I’ve missed you.’ And she had. While she knew Guinness was the softest dog on the planet despite his size – a German shepherd crossed with a Border collie – it had comforted her when Guinness barked sometimes when Stuart was in one of his aggressive moods, the noise obviously disturbing the dog somehow.

  ‘Missed him?’ Annie said in a totally disbelieving way. ‘Not much, I’d say. You didn’t tell me about him last night when you rang!’ Annie fluttered her eyelids jokingly at Xander and they all laughed.

  ‘He’s not mine,’ Janey said. ‘I’ve borrowed him. From Lissy. That’s where I’m staying – with my friend Lissy. Oh …’ She looked at Xander and realised what she’d said. No one had said officially that Xander and Lissy were an item but she knew they were. They were now. In her room on Christmas night, getting ready for bed, she’d heard someone tap on a bedroom door, and then she’d heard voices. Xander’s deep one talking for a few seconds and then she’d heard Lissy giggle. And then there’d been silence for a while. She’d lain awake for ages, going over the day, going over what the next day would bring and the one after that, and once or twice she’d heard them – low moans of pleasure … night-loving music she’d heard it termed once.

  ‘Lissy’s a very lucky girl,’ Annie said, offering Xander her hand.

  ‘I’m the lucky one,’ Xander said, taking Annie’s hand but leaning in to kiss her cheek.

  ‘’Ere what’s all this, then?’ Annie’s husband, Fred, came down the hall. ‘Someone making free with the missus?’

  ‘You should be so lucky!’ Annie said. ‘Can’t get rid of me so easy.’

  ‘That’s as maybe,’ Fred laughed. ‘Anyway, ain’t you lot coming in? Never do business on the doorstep, I say.’

  Janey made the introductions and they all stepped inside and Fred shut the door. How small it was in here compared to the vastness of Lissy’s beautiful house. How cluttered. There didn’t seem to be a spare inch of wall that didn’t have a picture on it, or a surface without a knickknack. And so much colour – wallpaper, curtains, cushions on stools, rag rugs. If there was a colour not here then Janey had never seen it. But safe, it felt so very safe.

  ‘Fred’s brought all your stuff in from our shed, Janey,’ Annie said. ‘Timed it good and proper he did. The second that man walked down the path and off to The Lion, he was out the back bringing it all into our back room. Gawd, gal, but you’re a threat to the rainforest all that paper you’ve been using up. But then, I suppose it were a bit of an escape, a release from him.’ Annie jerked her head towards next door.

  Janey was starting to think of it as next door herself now, rather than her house.

  ‘I’ll get it loaded up then,’ Xander said. ‘I assume he’s sleeping it off?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about sleeping,’ Annie said. She was starting to look embarrassed now, all her cheeky chatter evaporating.

  Janey had a feeling she knew what was coming next.

  ‘Go on, Annie,’ she said. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Well, this ain’t pretty but he came rolling up about one o’clock this morning making one helluva din. Scared the cats he did. Set ‘em all off caterwauling like they do. I looked out the window and there under the light of the lamp I saw him. With a woman.’

  ‘Right,’ Janey said. It wasn’t news to her that Stuart went with other women sometimes, especially any woman who was as drunk as he was down The Lion.

  ‘Sorry, lovey,’ Annie said, ‘that I had to be the one to tell.’ She patted Janey on the shoulder. ‘You’re well out of it.’

  ‘I know,’ Janey said. ‘I should have done it ages ago.’

  She should. She knew that. Launching herself, alone, into a different world had been too scary a thought for a long time.

  ‘That’s as maybe, lovey,’ Annie said. ‘But you could look at it another way. Maybe now was exactly the right time if you’re stopping with this Lissy person and she’s got this handsome feller in her life!’

  Janey looked at Xander who had rather a bemused expression on his face. Annie was a one-off and Janey was used to her but she could see Annie was a whole new experience for him, standing there in her pinny and with three rollers in the front of her grey hair like she’d not moved on from the Fifties, which she probably hadn’t.

  ‘Calm down, woman!’ Fred joked. ‘Anyone would think you haven’t seen a handsome man before when you’ve been married to one for nigh on sixty years! Are we going to stand here all day or is someone putting the kettle on? The stuff’s in the back room.’

  ‘I don’t think we’ve got time for tea,’ Janey said. It was lovely seeing Annie and Fred again and feeling the love they had for one another and the banter, but the sooner she and Xander got back now the better. She wasn’t jealous of what Annie and Fred had but it did serve to remind of her what she didn’t have. What she’d never had really.

  ‘But you’ll come again?’ Annie said. ‘There must be stuff inside you want.’

  ‘There is. Not a lot. My computer for a start. To be honest I did wonder if I’d find it all thrown out in the garden smashed to bits.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put that past him,’ Fred said. ‘Look, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You give me your key and then when he and his floozy go out later, I’ll nip in and fetch stuff if you give me a list. Tell me where it all is. A plan?’

  ‘A very good plan,’ Janey said, overwhelmed now at Fred’s kindness and the risk the old man was willing to take on her behalf. ‘But Xander’s said he’ll come with some friends and do it. I don’t want to put you in harm’s way if he came back …’

  ‘He wouldn’t get one over on Fred, lovey,’ Annie said. ‘He’s got a gun.’

  ‘A gun?’ Janey said, startled.

  ‘What sort of gun?’ Xander said.

  ‘You don’t want to know, boy,’ Fred said. ‘And you can pretend you didn’t hear me say it but I wouldn’t be afraid to fire a warning shot or two if I had to. Can’t have men behaving to women like he’s been, can we?’

  ‘No, we can’t,’ Xander said, his expression more bemused than ever now.

  Janey got a frisson of unease shoot up her spine thinking that she’d lived next door to a man with a gun and who wasn’t afraid to use it for so long. But she wanted to giggle too. This was all so surreal and she wondered just what Xander might be thinking.

  ‘So, Janey’s artworks,’ Xander said. ‘Lead me to it.’

  ‘Not before you have one of my mince pies – for which I am legendary even if I say it myself – and a nip of sherry. It’s Boxing Day in case it’s slipped your consciousness. Can’t have a Boxing Day without a mince pie, can we?’

  ‘Seems we can’t,’ Xander said. ‘But a very small nip of the sherry for me. I’m driving.’

  ‘Oh, drivel,’ Fred said. ‘You’re a big bloke. You’d soak up a thimbleful of sherry in no time.’

  Xander and Fred loaded the lorry with Janey’s artwork while Janey set out the sherry glasses and Annie warmed the mince pies for a couple of minutes in the oven.

  ‘Funny old Christmas you’ve had, Janey lovey,’ Annie said setting a mince pie on each plate. ‘But then I suppose bad stuff doesn’t
stop just because it’s Christmas, does it? For every household that’s all festive spirit and presents and tinsel and roast turkey dinners, there’s probably another one with bugger all.’

  ‘No,’ Janey said. ‘You’re right. Bad stuff doesn’t stop.’

  She wasn’t so stupid as to think she was the only one who had to deal with this sort of thing.

  ‘We heard things, Fred and me,’ Annie said. ‘Through the walls and them times he forgot to shut the fanlights when he were, well, doing what he did to you. We saw the bruises sometimes too, no matter how you tried to cover `em up. We should have done something. Said something. We’re sorrier about that now than I can tell you.’

  There were tears in Annie’s eyes and Janey hugged her old friend.

  ‘There, I’ve said it all now,’ Annie said. ‘Got it off me chest. Pass me that sherry. I need one if you don’t.’

  Janey filled a glass to the brim and handed it to Annie.

  ‘Don’t blame yourself for anything. I was the only one who could do anything about me.’

  ‘And now you have. Are you going to be stopping long with this Lissy person?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. I’ve had another offer too. From Bobbie. She lives in London. Just until I sort myself out and find somewhere of my own to live.’

  ‘And where does this Lissy live, then? I’m guessing it ain’t far if you’ve driven here so early in the morning unless you got up at the crack of dawn.’

  ‘I can’t tell you. It wouldn’t be good if Stuart got to find out somehow and went there and made trouble.’

  ‘No. Walls have ears,’ Annie said, flicking her head towards Janey’s old house. ‘All it would take was for me and Fred to be chatting, saying something like ‘I hope Janey’s all right over there in Torquay,’ or wherever it is you are, with the window open and then he’d know. Can’t risk that.’

  ‘Can’t risk what?’ Fred said coming back into the kitchen with Xander looking so tall behind him.

  ‘See!’ Annie said. ‘Just what I was saying! Walls have got ears! Proves I’ve got a brain or two up there still.’ She laughed and tapped her forehead.