A Winter’s Tale

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘A private jet?’ I squeaked.

  ‘Of course. How else do you think I could get you on a flight at a moment’s notice?’ he said, glancing at me impatiently. ‘Now, look, Mel—’

  ‘Look nothing! I found out when I ran into Ben in London and he asked me too. He said I could take anyone I wanted with me.’ She looked around and gave a ravishing smile at Seth, who was standing nearby, his clouded jade eyes fixed sombrely on her lovely face. ‘Seth’s coming—so that’s going to be cosy, isn’t it? Love Island!’

  I suddenly felt unbearably sad, which was probably due to having inadvertently drained the whole large glass of punch. I could feel it burning its way down into my innards. Innocuous, my foot!

  ‘Actually, it won’t be that cosy, Mel, because I won’t be going. I’ve got too much to do here,’ I said, ‘but I hope you three have a lovely time.’

  Jack stopped being placatory and shot daggers at Mel. ‘Sophy, darling—’ he began, but I quickly put as many people between us as possible, though I hadn’t realised that Seth had followed me until he said, practically in my ear, ‘I wouldn’t have any more punch, if I were you. I think Jack’s spiked it.’

  ‘I thought as much and there’s practically none left now. But there’s loads of lemonade and other soft drinks, so perhaps they’ll drink that instead and it will dilute it.’ I looked up at him. ‘Shouldn’t you be at home, packing your Bermuda shorts and sun lotion?’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be restringing your bikini?’ he countered.

  ‘I haven’t got a bikini, and you must have heard me say I’m not going. I’d already told Jack when he first invited me, but nothing seems to get through his thick skull once he’s got an idea lodged in there. It didn’t sound like my idea of fun even if I hadn’t got too much to do here already—and I’ve only just got Lucy back again, so I couldn’t possibly go off right now.’

  ‘Neither could I,’ he agreed. ‘It’s not my scene either.’

  ‘Mel seems to think—’

  ‘Mel thinks I’m a dog that can be whistled up any time she likes. She hasn’t even asked me—that was the first I’d heard of it.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, suddenly feeling a bit happier—but that was probably the effect of the glass of punch. Just as well I’d only had the one.

  A strange figure emerged from behind the huge carved screen and did a bit of languid cavorting in a very take-it-or-leave-it way. ‘Is that Derek? Why is he wearing antlers and greenery?’

  ‘Because he’s the Lord of Misrule.’

  ‘The what?’

  He shrugged. ‘Lord of Misrule. There’s always one and nowadays it’s usually Derek.’

  He took the empty punchbowl back to the kitchen, while I sipped cold lemonade and watched Derek’s antics. They consisted mainly of jogging half-heartedly across the room from time to time and holding what looked like a mistletoe-draped bladder on a stick over the heads of some unlikely couple, until they kissed.

  I found this quite amusing until Jack resurfaced, having managed to shed Mel, and Derek shambled across and held his stick over our heads. Jack grabbed me and tried to comply a little too enthusiastically, his aftershave almost entirely extinguished by the smell of brandy—so not all of it had gone in the punch.

  I was just thinking that it didn’t so much feel like being kissed as attacked by a leech, when a grave voice in my ear said, ‘Hello, Sophy.’

  ‘Guy!’ I exclaimed, repulsing Jack with more force than politeness, and hugged Guy warmly. ‘How lovely to see you.’

  It was several months since I’d last set eyes on him and he was even more handsome than before—dark auburn hair and the same dark-ringed grey eyes as Anya.

  He returned the hug. ‘There are six Morris dancers outside, Sophy, and they say you have to go and officially invite them in.’

  ‘Lucy is going to be so pleased to see you! How long is it since you last met—about two years? She had such a bad time in Japan, but now she’s back—’

  ‘The Morris dancers,’ he reminded me patiently. ‘It’s brass monkeys out there. Don’t bother about me, because I’ll sort out who’s who after the party. And there is Lucy…’ He trailed off, staring across the room at her. She was handing round mince pies, wearing a crown of twisted silver tinsel on her head and a pair of white fairy wings.

  Lucy glanced in our direction, caught Guy’s eye, did a double take and stared at him incredulously, though she’d known he was coming. But then, he had changed a bit in the last couple of years…

  Guy was staring back, his face serious, then they began to move slowly towards each other through the throng, like sleepwalkers.

  ‘Funny, I thought they’d be pleased to see each other,’ I muttered.

  Just as Lucy came to a halt a bare couple of inches from Guy, Derek capered up and practically beat them over the head with the mistletoe stick.

  They were still kissing when Seth came to remind me about the group of now shivering Morris men and we had to take the poor things into the kitchen to thaw out. But after a drink or two they warmed up with a brisk measure in the middle of the Great Hall.

  Then the fiddler with the Morris men started playing a catchy tune and suddenly everyone was dancing, including me and Seth, and it didn’t matter that I didn’t know how, because the fiddler called instructions out as he played. We all circled and hopped and swung around until we were hot and breathless.

  I tell you, I’m not used to going it like that in the evening, let alone late morning.

  I didn’t see Mel or Jack dancing, though Santa got up and danced with Mrs Lark, and Anya and Mike, Lucy and Guy and most of the Friends joined in. I saw Ottie sweep past with Bob, and Aunt Hebe tripped a very stately measure with Mr Yatton. In the end there were so many dancing that you could do little more than jig up and down, which I found myself doing, nose to nose with Seth. Or maybe, since he is a lot taller than me, that should be nose to chest.

  When the music stopped he grabbed me and kissed me right on the lips, so Derek must have popped up even though I didn’t see him that time. Then he looked down gravely and said, ‘Happy Christmas, Sophy.’

  I stared up into his green eyes. ‘Happy Christmas, Seth.’

  His arms tightened around me. ‘Sophy—’

  ‘I’d put her down, you don’t know where she’s been,’ Melinda slurred, grabbing his arm—but more to stop herself falling over than possessiveness this time, I think, so maybe Jack had been keeping her quiet with his brandy stash.

  ‘This one’s mine,’ she said to me. ‘You might as well make do with Jack, if you can get him.’

  ‘I think perhaps it’s time you left, Lindy,’ I said coldly.

  ‘In fact, you’ve got a nerve even coming here, after rigging that accident up for me in the summerhouse!’

  Her lovely face went blank, so clearly she’d entirely forgotten about it. ‘That was ages ago…and it was just a joke,’ she muttered, looking away.

  ‘You told me that you had nothing to do with it,’ Seth said, turning to look at her with a frown.

  ‘Well, it’s over, let’s not rake it up,’ she slurred. ‘And I don’t see why I shouldn’t be here, because Jack and I are old friends and anyway, Seth wanted me to come, didn’t you, Seth?’

  ‘No,’ he said uncompromisingly.

  ‘Liar.’ The smile was supposed to captivate him, but was lopsidedly tipsy. She looked back at me and said spitefully, ‘Do you think Jack would want you if you didn’t have Winter’s End? You don’t even know who your father is—but he was probably some gypsy from the look of you.’

  ‘I do know, actually—and you’re quite right, he was a gypsy.’

  ‘No, he wasn’t,’ Ottie said unexpectedly from behind me, where she was standing with Hebe and Mr Yatton. ‘Is that what Susan told you?’

  ‘Well, it was one of the versions,’ I confessed, ‘but it seemed the most likely one. Do you mean it wasn’t true?’

  ‘Certainly not, it was one of the Pharamonds, from over at Midd
lemoss.’

  ‘That’s what William thought,’ Hebe chipped in doubtfully, ‘but apart from the dark colouring, she doesn’t really look like them, does she?’

  ‘No, but I saw them together once and Susan admitted it to me—but I’m not saying which one, because he was married then, and he’s dead now. Sophy, we’ll talk about it later, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ I said a bit numbly, having found and lost my real father inside a couple of minutes. I thought about Nick Pharamond at the Middlemoss bonfire, who presumably was some kind of relation to me…

  ‘It doesn’t really matter who her father was anyway—Sophy’s a Winter, that’s the important thing,’ Aunt Hebe declared.

  Lucy broke through the interested circle that had formed around us and linked her arm in mine. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing, darling—and here comes the coffee, everyone!’ I called, as Mrs Lark and Grace trundled a trolley in.

  Mel looked as if it would take more than a cup of coffee to revive her. She was now in a state of almost total collapse, supported only by Seth, whose face was inscrutable.

  ‘Chloe!’ called Aunt Hebe in her crystal-clear tones, head and shoulders above most of the crowd. ‘Melinda has had too much to drink—you’d better take her home!’

  Between us we loaded Mel into the passenger seat of their car, though we had to pry her fingers off Seth first. Then Chloe drove gingerly off, sitting bolt upright behind the steering wheel.

  ‘Perhaps someone should have taken them home?’ I said doubtfully.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ Seth said. ‘I had some punch too, don’t forget.’

  ‘It’s Chloe’s car, she’ll be all right,’ Aunt Hebe assured me.

  The appearance of the coffee urns had been a signal that the end of the festivities—and the unexpected entertainment—was nigh. Now people began to leave, laden with leftovers because, as Ottie put it, we didn’t want to be faced with party pies and limp crackers at every meal for the entire festive season.

  ‘Or even for dinner tonight,’ she added.

  ‘It’s Lancashire hotpot,’ Mrs Lark said, offended. ‘It’s all ready, it just needs warming up.’

  ‘You must be exhausted, Mrs Lark,’ I said, ‘after all that.’

  ‘Not me—but I’ll put me feet up for a bit after everything’s cleared away.’

  ‘You do that now—we’ll clear up,’ Lucy offered, ‘won’t we, Guy?’

  ‘We’ll all help. It won’t take long that way,’ I suggested, which it didn’t, especially since Mike had stayed to help too. Jack seemed to have vanished totally.

  Mrs Lark must have let the kitten out, for I found it curled up asleep with Charlie on the rag rug by the fire. From the way Charlie’s stomach was distended, he’d been fed at least one mince pie too many by the children when I wasn’t looking.

  Chapter Thirty-two: Touched

  They talk of putting mee to the water next, and the thought of the icy river chills mee to the bone. The gaoler says there is so much evidence against mee now that unless someone in high position speaks for mee, I may yet hang—unless I drown or die of the cold first, I suppose.

  From the journal of Alys Blezzard, 1582

  When everything was cleared away, Lucy said she was going to help Guy take his things up to his room and then show him the rest of the house—and goodness knows what else, because they had been more or less permanently entwined since setting eyes on each other.

  The aunts had gone off on their own affairs and I discovered Jack fast asleep on the drawing-room sofa, with the whisky decanter next to it, snoring with his mouth open. Not a pretty sight.

  So that left just me, Seth, Anya and Mike, and since Mike was on duty that night and had to go home, the rest of us decided to walk into the village with him for some air. I made Charlie come, too—he needed to burn off some of those mince pies and other unsuitable titbits. So did I, come to that, but also I needed to clear my head and think about things. It had been an eventful day. Although the snow of a few days earlier had quickly vanished, it was very, very cold, especially after the warmth of the Great Hall. There was still ice on the puddles in places where the sun couldn’t reach and leaves crunched crisply under our feet.

  At first we weren’t very talkative on the way down and Seth looked rather brooding—as well he might, with his lover trying to play him off against Jack. But he revived slightly when I remarked, on passing through the rusted rear gates of Winter’s End, that rubbing down and repainting those was another important job for the New Year.

  ‘Are you serious? It’s low priority,’ he insisted. ‘The visitors aren’t going to see them, so they can wait. There are other, more urgent things to do first.’

  ‘They may rust away entirely in the meantime, and they’re lovely gates,’ I said, noting that he had lost the brooding, abstracted air and that the glint of battle was back in his eyes.

  We were still bickering about it when we got to Stickle-pond, where Anya elected to stop off at Mike’s house for a bit and then make her own way back up to Winter’s End.

  Seth, Charlie and I carried on through the village and up the lane past the Winter’s End car park.

  ‘See how nice the front gates look now they’re repainted and gilded,’ I pointed out as we came within sight of them. ‘And the rear gates are smaller and less fiddly, so it wouldn’t take Bob so long to do…’

  I tailed off as we spotted the familiar shape of Mel’s large grey horse tied up behind the lodge house.

  Could she possibly have sobered up that quickly? It was only a couple of hours since we’d poured her into the car and seen her off with feelings of profound relief! Pity we hadn’t come across her earlier, so Mike could have arrested her for being drunk in charge of a horse.

  Seth’s face had gone all tight-lipped and brooding again.

  ‘I see you’ve got company,’ I said coolly. ‘See you later. Come on, Charlie, nearly home.’

  Seth grabbed my arm. ‘Sophy, I—’

  The lodge door began to open. ‘Oh, damn!’ he said, letting go of me suddenly and striding off.

  I left him to it. I had a call I wanted to make anyway. I needed to ask Ottie one or two questions about what she’d said about my father. I found her in the studio as usual, though she wasn’t wearing her working overall of plaid shirt and streaks of clay, but slim black jeans and a cream silk shirt.

  ‘Hi, Sophy. I was expecting you to drop in. Have a glass of champagne?’

  ‘Are you celebrating something?’

  ‘Yes, finishing the sculpture—and one or two other things,’ she said, handing me a glass, and though after the glass of punch earlier I’d rather gone off the idea of alcohol, I took it.

  ‘Ottie, was that true what you said earlier—my father was one of the Pharamond family?’

  ‘Yes. I assumed Susan had told you.’

  ‘She told me so many different versions, but never the real one. Are you sure?’

  ‘Quite sure. His name was Leo Pharamond and he was married at the time—and he is dead now. He was charming, but he certainly put it about a bit—like Jack, come to think of it.’

  ‘Oh? Well, it’s good to know, even though I can’t very well make myself known to the family, can I? But I have a family of my own now, so it doesn’t really matter any more.’

  ‘Yes, and it is remarkable how like that portrait of Alys you are. It’s much more evident now you’ve had it cleaned.’

  ‘There are one or two dark-haired Winters among the portraits, though perhaps not quite as dark as me, so my colouring isn’t entirely due to the Pharamond genes.’

  ‘Mmm…’ Ottie, the subject explored, seemed to be losing interest and, glass in one hand and cheroot in the other, was regarding her finished sculpture fondly. ‘The Spirit of the Garden can go to be cast right after Christmas.’

  ‘It’s very generous of you to give us a sculpture, Ottie. I’m sure lots of people will want to come and see it. Seth showed me that small biography of you they
did at the time of your last big exhibition, Ottilie Winter: Cast Lives. I thought we could stock copies of that in the shop, and perhaps have postcards done of the sculpture too.’

  ‘You could have postcards made of the sketches for it as well, if you like?’ she offered. ‘In fact, you can have the sketches. You could hang them in the café to give the punters something to look at with their tea.’

  ‘Thanks, Ottie,’ I said gratefully, though I thought that even sketches by my celebrated aunt might be too valuable to risk on open display.

  ‘And remember, if push comes to shove and you look like losing the house, you can sell the sculpture.’

  I sincerely hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but she was right—it did give me a valuable asset. But it also might prove a visitor attraction.

  ‘Seth not come back with you?’ she asked. ‘And where’s that nice friend of yours got to?’

  ‘Anya’s gone to Mike’s house for tea. He’s coming for Christmas dinner. I left Seth at the lodge because he had a…visitor.’

  ‘Not Mel? Don’t tell me she sobered up that quickly,’ Ottie said in amazement.

  ‘Perhaps she’s come to persuade him to go to Barbados with her after all.’

  ‘Well, he won’t,’ Ottie said confidently. ‘Even if he’d wanted to, which I’m sure he doesn’t, he wouldn’t leave his beloved knots for that long, would he?’

  ‘Probably not,’ I conceded.

  ‘What about you, though? Doesn’t the idea of joining the jet set in the sun appeal?’

  ‘No, not in the least. I’d much rather be here, getting Winter’s End ready to open.’

  ‘You know, you and Seth have so much in common,’ she mused.

  ‘Unfortunately, we have even more not in common,’ I assured her.

  I’d left my bag containing my bunch of keys and notebook upstairs in my room that morning, though tucked out of sight at the back of the wardrobe. They were still there, but so too was a familiar, lingering trace of Amouage Gold.