Luke and Bridge came in from the kitchen half-walking, half-dancing, singing along to Roy Wood and Wizzard on the radio, carrying plates full of savouries, pickles, sandwiches and mince pies. Mary thought they both looked different somehow, smilier, lighter. They looked like friends.
* * *
They sat contentedly around the fire, tucking in to the last Christmas feast. Then Robin passed his phone around, asked them to tap in their addresses and numbers.
‘Looks like we’ll be going home tomorrow. Radio Brian has declared a thaw,’ Charlie informed Bridge and Luke, just as a large chunk of plaster fell off the wall above the fireplace.
‘I don’t think the inn wants us to leave,’ said Robin. ‘I think it likes us being here.’
‘And we all like the inn,’ said Bridge loudly, as if she was speaking to it directly. ‘It’s been a friend to us these past few days. It’s given us shelter and warmth and fed us and kept us safe.’
She wanted to buy this place. She was going to make a serious effort to do so in the new year.
Charlie cleared his mouth of turkey sandwich to speak.
‘Robin’s psychic, you know. He feels things.’
‘I bet he does,’ said Luke, which made Charlie snort.
‘There’s definitely a presence in this place,’ said Robin with absolute certainty. ‘Benign. It enjoys company. I hope we’ve given it a good Christmas as well, a jolly one.’
‘Will you go on to Scotland in search of more snow?’ Bridge asked Charlie and Robin.
‘No, we’re heading home for a quiet, restful new year,’ said Robin. ‘How could we hope to better what we’ve had here?’
‘What about you, Jack?’ asked Bridge.
‘Back to work for me,’ he said.
‘Minus your right hand,’ said Bridge, giving him the chance to fight for Mary.
‘What’s this?’ asked Robin.
‘Mary’s coming to work for me,’ said Bridge. ‘In sunny Derbyshire.’
‘You’re going to work for Bridge?’ said Jack, sounding as if he’d just been thumped; he hadn’t realised Mary had been poached from right under his nose.
‘Oh, it’s beautiful there,’ said Charlie.
‘You’re welcome any time,’ Bridge returned.
‘Thank you,’ he replied. ‘But why the change, Mary?’ Charlie hadn’t been expecting that at all. What was Jack doing letting her go?
‘New year, new opportunity,’ she said, avoiding Jack’s eyes. ‘It feels like the right thing to do.’
‘Goodness,’ said Robin, as stunned as his partner. It was a good job he’d persuaded Charlie not to say anything. He hadn’t seen that coming. Maybe Mary wasn’t as keen on him as they’d imagined.
‘Many people will be back at work tomorrow,’ said Radio Brian, taking the conversation away from Mary’s new life, ‘so I don’t think I’ll have my listeners during the day any more. But, don’t fret, I’ll be here as usual just in case. I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to me over Christmas and that I’ve brought you some cheer as well as up-to-date weather bulletins. Cath hasn’t been too great recently so we’re hoping to bring in the new year in Whitby. If you can’t listen to me again, well, I hope you all have a happy, healthy, smashing new year and it brings you everything you dreamed of. For now, I’ll say goodnight and leave you with the magic voice of Peggy Lee and “The Christmas Spell”. Goodbye, everybody.’
Bridge thought she was the only one who felt choked up at that, until she heard Robin sniff.
‘Well that wasn’t emotional at all was it?’ he said.
‘Poor old sod,’ said Charlie and blew a kiss at the radio. ‘Thank you Radio Brian, you are truly a master of your craft. We have appreciated your every word and tune.’
‘It wouldn’t have been the same without you, Brian… and Cath… and even Malcolm,’ added Mary, a wobble audible in her voice.
‘God bless him and his gums,’ said Luke, blinking hard.
Jack stood up to clear the plates.
‘I’ll go and make some coffees,’ he said, hoping no one had noticed that his eyes were every bit as glassy as everyone else’s.
* * *
The fresh air, jollity and food had exhausted them. Yawns ripped around the room and not even Jack’s supply of robust coffee could keep their eyelids propped up for much longer. They sat in a companionable near silence in front of the dying fire, enjoying the last of its heat. There were no more logs left in the basket.
‘We’ll all meet for breakfast though, won’t we?’ Bridge asked.
‘Of course,’ said Charlie. ‘There must be something we haven’t yet eaten in the kitchen.’
‘Right, I’ll say goodnight,’ said Bridge. Mary got up from her chair at the same time.
‘Me too,’ said Luke. ‘I want to be fresh for my drive tomorrow. Sleep well, ladies.’
‘And you.’
Bridge and Mary went upstairs, Jack and Luke followed after they’d washed up the mugs. When they had gone, Charlie wrote his number on the pad, left it on the bar counter with a note for the landlord.
‘We’ll clear all the bill, whatever it costs,’ he said.
‘Cheap at half the price,’ said Robin, turning off the radio and the Christmas tree lights. He noticed the branches were almost bare now, the puddle of needles underneath on the carpet.
At the bottom of the stairs, Charlie turned back to the bar lounge. ‘Thank you, Figgy Hollow Inn,’ he whispered into the dark. ‘You’ve given me everything I wanted this Christmas and more.’ He blew a kiss then switched off the light.
27 December
The magic of Christmas never ends
when we are loved by family and friends
Chapter 33
Bridge was woken by the clank-clank of the old radiator alongside her on which her washed pants were warming. She swung her legs out of bed, pulled back the curtain and saw large patches of grass where yesterday, there’d been snow.
She heard muffled voices coming from next door, Jack and Luke talking. She wished some of her soon-to-be ex-husband’s audacity had rubbed off on Jack and that a miracle had occurred and he’d grown a pair overnight. She had considered taking Jack to one side and telling him a few home truths, but no; why should she? If there was one thing she’d come to know over the years it was that life was about learning lessons and the things hardest to get were the most satisfying to own. Mary deserved someone who didn’t disappoint her, a knight on a white steed, not a shite on a seaside donkey. Besides, she was really looking forward to working with Mary. She prided herself on being a good boss, a kind boss. She was grateful, in hindsight, for the school of hard knocks having given her all that she had now. But she felt for Mary and the first chance she got to fix her up with someone who had balls the size of coconuts, she would.
‘Morning,’ said Mary, stretching. ‘My, I’m going to miss this bed.’
She’d slept unexpectedly well, took that as a sign she was now set on a road she should be travelling.
‘Morning,’ said Bridge. ‘Take care before you look out of the window. I think we’ve become snow-blind; the sight of a bit of green sent my brain into a spin.’
Mary crossed to the window. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘Grass and road and car colours.’ She took a deeper meaning from the sight. The end of something monochrome, the beginning of something vivid.
She showered quickly, dressed and stripped her bed as Bridge had, left the sheets folded up on top of the mattress, began to pack.
‘Do you want a diary?’ she asked, holding up the one that Jack had put in her Christmas stocking.
She didn’t want to keep it, didn’t want the reminder.
‘If you’re sure you don’t, I’ll take it off your hands,’ said Bridge.
Mary tossed it over. Bridge flicked through it, admiring the quality, spotted the entry next to the second Saturday in January.
Dinner with Jack. Firenze.
‘Did you write this, Mary?’
‘I haven’
t written anything in it.’
‘Someone has,’ Bridge said. ‘What’s Firenze?’
‘A fabulous Italian restaurant. Why?’
Bridge showed her the page. Jack’s writing. Mary could pick it out of an identity parade of two hundred fonts. She felt a flutter in her heart, for one split second, before an angry boot stamped on it and crushed it. She looked as cross as it was possible for Mary’s delicate features to look.
‘What does that even mean, Bridge? Is that a message for me to discover? And when – as now – I have, what was I supposed to do about it? Go up to him and say, “So, I see we have a date?” and give him the chance to say, “I don’t know what you mean,” because he possibly wrote it when he was pissed and now he’s sobered up? Or was I supposed to turn up at Firenze and wait for him to arrive at some point?’
Mary’s hypothetical questions kept flying out of her and Bridge couldn’t answer any of them. Jack had totally blown it. Faint heart never won fair lady and his was fainter than an exorcised ghost in an invisibility cloak.
‘Are you going to do anything about it?’ asked Bridge, cautiously.
‘No I am bloody not,’ said Mary and zipped up her case in a manner that told Bridge exactly what she thought about that.
* * *
‘I hear stirring from next door. The girls are up,’ said Robin to Charlie, who was lying in bed, face up, eyes closed. He went over to the window. ‘I can see our Range Rover again.’ The brilliance of their car colours, the road, blue sky, the grass all seemed to pop with further brightness after days of seeing only a vista of white. The snow clung on where it could, but it was fighting a losing battle against the warmer currents of air winning the temperature war.
He checked under the bed and in the drawers to make sure he’d packed everything. ‘I expect the landlord will be visiting this morning. I hope he’s not too cross about finding his larder raided and his emaciated alcohol supplies.’
No response from Charlie.
‘Don’t do this again to me, Charlie,’ said Robin, arms akimbo. ‘I nearly had a fit yesterday.’
Charlie looked pale in the harsh morning light, paler than he had yesterday.
‘Charlie?’
Robin nudged him gently. Still nothing. He put his ear to Charlie’s face, listening for his breath. Charlie gave a snore loud enough to wake himself up; Robin jumped a mile.
‘What are you doing?’ asked Charlie. ‘You blocked my bloody airways.’
‘What are you doing just… lying there?’
‘I was sleeping, Robin. That thing people usually do in beds.’
‘Well you’ve no right to sleep so soundly,’ said Robin. ‘I wish I’d checked to see if there was a defibrillator in this place.’
‘Bit of an over-reaction if I may say. I hardly need one of those to—’
‘I meant for me, you old fool. My heart stopped. It’s going like the clappers now mind. And it’s totally out of sync.’
‘I was dreaming about something deep and significant,’ said Charlie, shuffling to a sitting position.
‘What?’ Robin asked.
‘About the meaning of life. About what the point of it is. In my dream I was lecturing to a big group of people.’
‘So, Professor Hawking, what were you telling everyone from your pulpit?’
‘Lectern,’ Charlie corrected him. ‘And I was telling them that there isn’t any point.’
Robin took that in, then gave his head a rattle.
‘Well, I’d wave goodbye to the Nobel prize for philosophy if I were you.’
‘No, Robin, I really think I know what it is,’ said Charlie, excitedly. ‘At this point in time, everyone on the planet is equal. We all have the here and the now, just like Luke said on Christmas Eve, it’s in the bag. The past is gone, the future is always beyond our grasp and heaven is a mere nice bonus if it exists, so I think the point of life is… that there isn’t a point. It just… is. We should accept that and enjoy the moments we’re in. I think we’d all be a lot happier, if we just embraced the here and now a bit more, don’t you?’
Robin absorbed the words before speaking.
‘We’ve always embraced the here and the now, you and I, Charlie.’
‘We got it right, Robin,’ said Charlie.
* * *
‘We have a signal. I’d better ring Ben,’ Bridge announced, as her phone buzzed just as they were about to head downstairs with their cases. An email came through, then another, then another. Lots of them, and texts and notifications from various social media sites. She felt them already start to drain her soul, so made an early new year’s resolution to spend more time with her phone switched off. Mary immediately rang her tearful mother, who was still abroad and beyond relieved to know that her baby was not part of a glacier on the North Yorkshire Moors or buried under an avalanche. Then Mary gave her brothers and sister very quick calls to tell them she was safe and would be home in a couple of hours and she’d ring them again then.
‘They were all a bit sobby,’ said Mary. ‘Nice to be missed.’
‘Yes. They must have been very concerned about you,’ said Bridge.
‘Did you get through to Ben? He must have been out of his head wondering where you were,’ Mary asked her.
‘He worries like a mother hen. Obviously not my mother because she doesn’t give a cat’s fuck.’
‘Must be lovely having a fiancé who cares and worries about you,’ said Mary. ‘I might find out one day.’
Bridge gave a hefty sigh. ‘Mary, I should have told you before, Ben’s not my fiancé. He’s a neighbour. I’ll fill you in with the detail when we’re driving. Stupid to pretend otherwise. Pathetic, I know, before you say anything.’
‘It’s not,’ said Mary. ‘Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do to protect yourself. Have you ever seen the inside of a Dalek, they’re all mush.’
Bridge chuckled. If ever there was a suitable parallel, it was that.
She had some work to do on herself yet, she realised. Luke wouldn’t have lied and invented a partner to save face. She was still a work in progress, but she’d get there.
* * *
Downstairs in the bar, Luke and Jack were having coffee, toast and cheese. There was also a plate of mince pies on the table. The lounge was chilly and the inn looked different somehow, tired and shabby, as if it had aged overnight. The light reflecting in from the snow had been kinder than the watery sun, it seemed. The Christmas tree in the corner was naked of needles underneath the tinsel and adornments, and the branches drooped wearily.
‘Good morning, ladies,’ said Luke, smile bright and pinned on his lips and Bridge thought of how he had always been a morning person – a lark, not an owl as she was.
Jack looked up briefly from his phone to add his good morning before returning to it. Business as usual for him, thought Mary. He must have loads of emails to sort through. Probably hundreds. He had that solemn set to his features again, that downward cast to his mouth; his Jack Butterly, MD of Butterly’s scones face. A Jack who didn’t throw snowballs or sing carols. A Jack with clear demarcation lines around himself that lowly PAs should not cross. But that wasn’t her problem any more.
‘Here, let me pour,’ said Luke, standing to pick up the coffee pot. ‘Want some toast?’ He nudged a platter full of buttered triangles and blocks of cheese over in their direction. ‘The bread hasn’t gone green yet.’
Bridge pretended to gag, but took some anyway. ‘We’re going to get straight off after this,’ she said, referring to the mug. ‘Looks like the roads will be clear enough.’
‘I tried to check the travel news with Radio Brian but there’s just white noise where he once was,’ said Luke with a sigh of regret. ‘I had to consult the “other BBC”. All the major roads and most of the minor ones are passable now.’ He’d call it the ‘other BBC’ for a long time to come.
‘Sorry,’ said Jack, turning his phone to silent as ping after ping came out of it.
‘Mine
was exactly the same,’ said Bridge.
‘And mine,’ said Luke.
‘Did you get through to Carmen?’ asked Bridge. ‘And is she all right?’
‘All well, all good,’ said Luke, and for her ears only, ‘And it appears I’ll be eating another Christmas dinner when I get home. She hasn’t told her family yet, she wanted to wait for me.’
Bridge smiled at him. She was so happy for him. She hoped one day she’d get to meet Carmen, and have a cuddle with their baby.
Jack’s phone might have stopped pinging, but it carried on vibrating.
‘It’s a vicious circle that needs breaking,’ said Luke, leaning back in his chair, hands behind his head, looking every bit the laid-back dude. ‘Work might fill the empty spaces in your life but maybe you need to fill those empty places with other things instead, Jack. Take a leaf out of this happy but still extremely successful man’s book. Streamline, delegate, don’t trot halfway around the globe for meetings you can do on a video call. Find someone to care about.’ His eyes flicked to Mary but her thoughts weren’t at the table with them. There was no customary smile on her face this morning. ‘You need a good woman, Jack,’ he went on. Last ditch attempt to guide him.
‘Or a good man,’ said Charlie, appearing at the bottom of the stairs. Robin followed behind, struggling with a suitcase until Jack and Luke both got up to help him and Mary began to pour out coffees in readiness for the last two members of the Figgy Hollow Six to join them.
‘Well here we all are again,’ said Robin, patting some breath back into his chest, sitting down, reaching for the plate of mince pies to pass to Charlie.
‘Here we all are,’ echoed Luke. Even in jeans and a jumper that needed a wash, and his unruly white-blond hair stuck up at weird angles, he looked every inch a success story, thought Bridge. She wanted that contentment he’d found: having a million in the bank was absolutely no good if you were too busy to spend it. She had turned down one too many invitations from friends in favour of chasing deals. Things were going to change this year.
I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day Page 28
