Twelve Days of Christmas

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘Not at all, I was only going to look at some notes for a recipe book I’m compiling — Cooking for House-Parties. I’ve been collecting recipes and tips for years, but now I’m finally hoping to get it ready to send out to publishers in the New Year.’

  ‘Do people have large house-parties any more? I remember them as a young man, and jolly good fun they were, too!’ said Noël a little wistfully.

  ‘Oh yes, you’d be surprised — but probably they’re very different from the ones you knew.’

  ‘I know Becca still gets invited to shooting and fishing ones,’ he said. ‘And the family have always gathered here at Old Place between Christmas and Twelfth Night, so that is a house-party too, I suppose.’

  ‘I think your book needs a less boring title than Cooking for House-Parties, Jess said frankly.

  ‘That’s just the working title, but if you can think of a better one, let me know.’

  ‘I’m writing a vampire book, with lots of blood,’ she confided.

  ‘I expect there would be in a vampire book.’

  ‘There wasn’t a great deal, as I recall, in Bram Stoker’s Dracula,’ her grandfather said doubtfully.

  ‘There will be in mine. I’m going to kill off all the girls at school I don’t like — horribly.’

  ‘Good idea — that sounds immensely satisfying,’ I said.

  Noël settled comfortably on the sofa in front of the fire. Jess came through to the kitchen with me and, while I brewed a fresh pot of tea and laid the tray with cups and saucers and the remains of my fast-vanishing fruit cake, fetched a carton of long-life orange juice from the lavish supply in the larder and opened it.

  ‘Jude likes this with his breakfast.’

  ‘Going by the ready meals in the freezer, he doesn’t do much cooking, does he? There’s lots of other food in there, but most of it looks as if it’s been there for ages, especially the game.’

  ‘I think he forgets to cook half the time, apart from breakfast. It’s Aunt Becca who puts all the game and trout and stuff in the freezers — she’s forever visiting friends and coming back with more than she knows what to do with. She gives it to Granny, too. Do you like rabbit?’

  ‘When it’s cooked properly.’

  ‘I don’t. I can’t help thinking about how harmless and nice rabbits are.’

  ‘Well, no-one’s going to force you to eat one, are they?’ I said with a smile. ‘I could make you a rabbit you would like one day though — a chocolate blancmange one! There’s a lovely Victorian glass mould in one of the cupboards and I’m dying to try it. You could come to tea, if your grandparents say it’s all right.’

  ‘Oh, they won’t mind. What’s blancmange?’

  ‘A kind of flavoured milk jelly.’

  ‘Is it like Angel Delight? Granny has some of that in the cupboard.’

  ‘Sort of. You know, someone ought to eat up the game in the freezer, it’s such a waste otherwise.’

  ‘As long as it isn’t me. Though actually, your cooking might be better than Granny’s — her food is all a bit weird.’

  ‘I expect she just cooks like she did early in her career and tastes have changed,’ I said tactfully. ‘By the way, the black stuff in those pinwheel sandwiches she gave me for lunch. . I don’t suppose you know what that was?’

  ‘It’s a heavily guarded secret. I call it minced rancid car tyre.’

  ‘That’s a pretty fair description,’ I admitted.

  ‘I know Granny carries on as if she does all the cooking herself, but actually Edwina does most of it really,’ Jess confided. ‘That’s the real reason why they always move into Old Place when she goes off to her relatives for Christmas and New Year. Goodness knows what Christmas dinner will be like this time!’

  I felt another inconvenient pang of conscience, though why I should I can’t imagine, since it’s Jude Martland who ought to be having them, not me!

  ‘You can help her with the cooking,’ I suggested. ‘I used to help my gran, that’s what started me off thinking I wanted to become a chef.’

  ‘She’s very bossy and says she doesn’t want little girls in the kitchen under her feet when she’s busy, even though I’m nearly thirteen and way taller than she is! I help Grandpa with the washing up, instead.’

  The tea was ready and I carried the tray into the sitting room, finding Noël half-asleep before the fire, though he woke up the instant the crockery rattled.

  ‘Lovely to see the fire lit in here again,’ he said, ‘it seemed so cold and unwelcoming without it.’

  ‘I thought it would air the house out — old houses seem to get dank and musty very quickly, don’t they?’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Of course, with only a week to go until Christmas Eve, this room would usually be decorated for Christmas by now, with the tree in the corner by the stairs and a kissing bough. .’ he said regretfully. ‘All the decorations are in the attic, though Jude’s mother used to make swags of greenery from the garden, she was very good at that sort of thing.’

  ‘The attic is locked, as are one or two other rooms,’ I said. ‘That’s fine, but do you have the keys in case there’s an emergency, like a burst water pipe?’

  ‘The attic isn’t locked, it’s just the door that’s very stiff,’ Jess said. ‘I remember that from playing hide and seek last Christmas. When I went up there, no-one found me for ages.’

  ‘That was because it was supposed to be out of bounds,’ Noël reminded her. ‘But yes, I do have all the rest of the keys, including the one for the mill studio, just in case.’

  ‘Oh good. I don’t suppose for a minute I’ll need them, I just like to know. I expect I’ll only really use this room, apart from the kitchen wing — it has a lovely warm, homely feel to it, despite being so big.’

  ‘Yes, it was always the heart of the house.’ He sighed and his gaze rested on a black and white family group photograph that stood on one of the occasional tables. ‘There were five of us children, you know, and now only Becca and I are left. Jacob was the eldest, but he was killed at Dunkirk, poor chap, and another brother, Edward, was badly wounded later. Alex — Jude’s father — inherited, though he didn’t marry until late in life. But they’re all gone now, all gone. .’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Alex passed away last January, after a long illness.’

  ‘I noticed the house had some adaptations for an invalid, like the stairlift. . and excuse me, but did you say one of your brothers was called Edward?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, though we always called him Ned.’

  I was startled by the revelation that there had indeed been a Ned Martland, a contemporary of Gran’s — but surely this was just one more of those strange coincidences that life throws at you? I couldn’t see how their paths could ever have crossed. .

  ‘He was a bit of a rip, but full of fun and mischief — Jude’s younger brother, Guy, reminds me of him.’ Noël shook his head with a rueful smile. ‘There was no real harm in him, but he was the black sheep of the family, I suppose, whereas Guy has settled down very well lately — he’s an international banker in London, you know.’

  ‘He’s settling down with Uncle Jude’s ex-fiancée,’ Jess pointed out. ‘And I don’t think Uncle Guy is very nice at all.’

  ‘He is very naughty to tease you,’ Noël said, ‘but he doesn’t mean any harm by it.’

  Since Jess was at the age where your main wish in life is to be totally invisible and anyone even glancing at you could be an agony, I thought Guy Martland sounded very insensitive and mean indeed! Just as objectionable, in his own way, as his brother Jude, in fact.

  ‘I’m sure it was all for the best that Jude’s fiancée broke the engagement, because she can’t have been in love with him,’ Noël said, ‘and I am a firm believer in marriage being for life.’

  ‘Yes, me too — and beyond,’ I murmured absently, my mind still on Ned Martland.

  ‘Guy and Coco — that’s her silly name — just got engaged,’ Jess said. ‘It was in the paper and I think that’s why Uncle Jude sai
d he wasn’t coming back from America until after Christmas.’

  ‘Oh, but he already had the invitation to spend the holidays with friends after the event to mark the installation of his sculpture. . Though perhaps you are partly right, Jess,’ her grandfather conceded. ‘I expect Guy would have thought nothing of turning up for a family Christmas despite everything, had Jude stayed at home.’

  ‘They haven’t spoken since last Christmas,’ Jess explained. ‘Jude invited Coco here to meet the family and she and Guy got very friendly. Uncle Jude was pretty grim.’

  ‘I expect he would be!’ I agreed, though going by the photographs I’d seen, and my brief conversations with him, he was always pretty grim.

  ‘Then she and Jude had a big argument and Guy drove her home and that was it.’

  ‘I don’t feel that Guy behaved very well in the circumstances, even if there was a mutual attraction between him and Coco,’ Noël said, looking troubled. ‘It upset my brother, too, that there was a breach between his two sons and Jude thought it hastened his last illness.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Not that Alex liked her very much — it was her first visit to Old Place and she made it clear she was expecting a much larger and grander house.’

  ‘It seems pretty large and grand to me,’ I said, surprised.

  ‘Still, she won’t have to live here if she marries Guy — and Jude will just have to forgive and forget.’

  ‘I don’t suppose she’ll come here much anyway,’ Jess said. ‘She didn’t seem to like being in the country at all and wouldn’t go out except in the car, because she hadn’t brought any shoes except stiletto heels, though she could have borrowed some wellies. And she’s scared of horses and dogs. Granny says she’s all fur coat and no knickers, and Guy could do better.’

  I swallowed a sip of tea the wrong way and coughed, my eyes watering.

  ‘I don’t think you should repeat that phrase, really,’ Noël said mildly.

  ‘How on earth did she meet Jude in the first place?’ I asked. ‘It doesn’t sound as if they had a lot in common.’

  ‘She is a model and also, I believe, aspires to be an actress. Someone brought her to Jude’s last big retrospective exhibition and introduced her. She’s very, very pretty indeed, if your taste runs to fair women.’

  ‘Uncle Jude’s must, mustn’t it?’ Jess said.

  ‘I suppose we do tend to be attracted to our opposites,’ I suggested.

  ‘You’re very dark, so was your husband fair?’

  ‘Jess, you really shouldn’t ask people personal questions!’

  ‘I don’t mind — and yes, my husband had blond hair and blue eyes. His younger sister is my best friend and has the same colouring — she’s very pretty too.’

  How I’d longed to be small, blonde and cute when I was at school, rather than towering above everyone, even the boys! I’d been thin as a stick too, which had made me even more self-conscious — though actually I wasn’t sure it was any better later when I filled out and men started to talk to my boobs instead of me. . except Alan, of course.

  ‘Well, I think we ought to be going!’ Noël said, getting up.

  ‘I’m walking down to the village tomorrow, to explore,’ I told him. ‘I’ll call in at the lodge to see if there’s anything you’d like me to bring back from the shop.’

  ‘I’ll ask Tilda,’ he promised. ‘You are very kind!’

  It seemed to me that, far from being isolated and alone at Old Place, I was going to be inundated with visitors!

  The day had gone by in a flash, so I went to put the dried beet to soak in a bucket for Lady’s bedtime mash and then went out with it and some of Billy’s goat munchies to lure them back into the stable.

  Thanks to a bit of timely advice from Becca, I knew that if I was carrying the bucket then Lady would simply follow me into her loosebox and Billy would come with her, and so it was. Then I shut them both up all cosily for the night.

  After my conversation with Noël, I abandoned my cookbook notes and brought down Gran’s journal and read on steadily into the evening. I was again tempted to flick forward and see if I could spot any mention of Ned Martland, but I’d been enjoying all the details of Gran’s life as she slowly came out of her shell under Hilda and Pearl’s influence and I didn’t want to rush it: this was a girl whose idea of a night of dissipation was a trip to the cinema!

  I finished that journal and read the first page or two of the next in bed before I went to sleep. By then Gran had started referring to the new patient as ‘N.M’! It occurred to me that there was a very natural way her path might have crossed with the Old Place Ned Martland — and after what Noël had said about his brother being a black sheep, I’ll be really worried for her if it turns out to be him.

  But I suppose even if it is, then given Gran’s upbringing and nature, it could only have been some kind of Brief Encounter!

  Chapter 9

  Daggers

  Hilda and Pearl kindly warned me that N.M. was a flirt and not to take anything he said seriously, but he was very sincere and sweet when I told him about Tom and my intention to devote my life to nursing. He is kind when he is being serious and easy to talk to.

  February, 1945

  Next morning the wind had died down a bit, but everything was thickly furred with frost. But then, it’s been growing steadily colder since I got here and, according to the radio, the odds on it being a white Christmas were getting shorter and shorter by the minute.

  The house was already starting to warm through now I’d lit the fire, though, and I was keeping it going by a lavish application of logs from the cellar. The place will soon feel cosy, despite its size.

  After breakfast (which I ate with the latest of Gran’s journals propped in front of me) I let Lady and Billy out. Billy ignored the open gate and jumped straight over the fence like a. . well, I was going to say goat!

  I hung a filled haynet on the rail, high enough so that Lady wouldn’t catch her feet in it when it was empty (another bit of advice from the invaluable Becca!) and broke a thin skin of ice on the trough, before tidying up the loosebox.

  Merlin had wandered off up the paddock, which I thought was probably exercise enough for the morning, so I went back in and prepared to give the sitting room the sort of cleaning my Gran always referred to as ‘a good bottoming’, something it clearly hadn’t had for quite some time.

  It’s part of the Homebodies remit that we keep the rooms of the house that we actually use neat and clean, it’s just that the houses aren’t usually quite on this scale!

  I don’t enjoy the process of cleaning, but I do love a nice clean room, so I suppose you could call that job satisfaction. Although it’s not in the same league as providing an excellent dinner for twenty-five people with mixed dietary requirements every day for a fortnight with effortless expertise. Now that’s satisfying on a creative level, too — I sometimes think cooking is a kind of ephemeral art form.

  Anyway, by the time I’d vacuumed the pattern back into existence on the lovely old carpet, mopped the bit of stone floor around the edges, removed spider’s webs from every corner and polished the brass fender, fireguard and furniture (and even the front door knocker, while I was about it), it all looked wonderful — and I looked a grubby mess and had to go and shower again.

  By this time it was late morning, so I put on my warm, down-filled jacket and set out for the village with Merlin, since he was desperate to come with me. The poor old thing seems to have attached himself to me already, but life must have been very confusing for him lately.

  As well as exploring, I wanted to see if the shop had the extra supplies I had on my list and anything Tilda might want, so I hoped there would be something to tie Merlin to outside it. I suppose I should have taken the car really, only I like to walk and my rucksack is very roomy.

  Noël insisted I went into the lodge for a moment, even though Merlin seemed to take up a lot of space in the small, cluttered room, and when he wagged his tail he nearly took out the Christmas t
ree and a snowglobe. I felt a bit like Alice in Wonderland when she’d drunk the get-bigger potion, myself.

  Tilda was reclining on the sofa, resplendent today in an orange satin blouse and a long black skirt, though I thought she looked a little tired under the lavish makeup. Jess was sitting on the floor doing a vampire jigsaw on the coffee table, the lid with its gory picture propped up in front of her.

  ‘There aren’t enough corners,’ she said by way of greeting.

  ‘Life’s like that sometimes,’ I commiserated. ‘Or sometimes there are too many.’

  She gave me a look from under her fringe.

  ‘Have you tried the phone up at the house today? Only you’ll find it keeps going dead, because of the wind,’ Tilda said.

  ‘The wind?’

  ‘Blows the wires about, but it’s much worse than usual,’ Noël said. ‘We hadn’t noticed until George Froggat — he owns Hill Farm further up the lane — told us. One of the poles is leaning at an angle between here and the village, so the wire is practically down. He called BT and they say it’ll be after Christmas before they can get someone up here to look at it, but those poles have wanted replacing the last two years and more.’

  ‘That’s a nuisance,’ I said, but thinking that at least it might spare me one or two of Jude Martland’s irritating calls!

  ‘It will be if it falls right down and cuts us off completely,’ he agreed. ‘Jess’s mobile works, but not terribly well.’

  ‘And only if I walk down the lane towards the village,’ Jess said. ‘Uncle Jude phoned when we got back yesterday and the phone was a bit dodgy even then, wasn’t it, Grandpa?’

  ‘Very, I could only hear what he was saying intermittently.’

  ‘I suppose he was fretting about Lady again?’

  ‘Her name did crop up,’ he admitted. ‘But then he said something about you coping, so I expect he has realised that everything will be absolutely fine. The line went dead after that and he didn’t try and ring back again.’