Twelve Days of Christmas

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘She’ll have to stay tonight and then perhaps she can get a lift down to the village tomorrow with George when he ploughs our drive, to see if her car still works.’ He shrugged. ‘If not, perhaps she can bribe one of the boys to run her to the station instead. So,’ he said, flashing a smile of outstanding charm in my direction, ‘I wondered if you’d be an angel and make another bed up besides mine, which is the one opposite Jude’s?’

  ‘I haven’t made yours up,’ I said shortly, ‘nor am I going to! Presumably you know where the linen cupboard is? I’ve had the fire in the sitting room going since I got here and all the doors upstairs open to air and warm the rooms.’

  He looked taken aback. ‘Oh. . right.’

  ‘I think Coco will have to go in the little bedroom on the nursery floor, next to Jess, which I don’t suppose she’ll be keen on. Otherwise there’s only Jude’s room, which is locked, and even Noël doesn’t have the key to that.’

  Becca said, ‘It’s almost a full house!’

  ‘There’s the other servant’s room in this wing too, I’d forgotten that, though it’s a bit Spartan and unused looking,’ I said.

  ‘She wouldn’t like that at all,’ Guy said.

  ‘Well then, give her your room and you can have one of the others tonight,’ Becca suggested.

  ‘Not me! She can put up with the nursemaid’s room.’ He paused, eyeing me uncertainly, presumably for signs of weakening. ‘Well, I suppose I’d better go and do something about the beds, then,’ he said finally.

  Becca got up. ‘I’ll find you the clean sheets, or God knows what you’ll be putting on them — tablecloths, probably. But after that you’re on your own, because I’ve already seen to the horses and I’m tired.’

  ‘You told him,’ Tilda said to me approvingly when they’d gone out. ‘He’s a good boy really, but he expects other people to carry him round all the time.’

  ‘I just needed to make my situation plain. I’m not a servant and I’m not going to run around after him.’

  ‘Of course not — we consider you as a guest, almost one of the family,’ Tilda said graciously. ‘And you are quite a good cook, dear — something smells delicious.’

  ‘It’s the chocolate cake,’ I explained again. ‘I’d better take it out. And if you switch the kettle on, I’ll make us some tea in a minute. There are cheese scones, too.’

  ‘Shop ones?’ sniffed Tilda, as I took the cake out of the oven and turned it out on the cooling rack.

  ‘No, ones I made myself.’

  Becca returned and by unspoken agreement we had our tea at the kitchen table, leaving Coco as sole occupant of the sitting room, though I did offer her a cup of tea and a scone when I took Noël’s through to the parlour, which she rejected with evident loathing.

  Tilda asked me what we were having for dinner and approved my choice of sausage and mash.

  ‘Good wholesome winter food!’

  ‘I’ve made sardine pâté for a starter. I thought we could have that in the sitting room on a tray.’

  ‘And what about dessert?’

  ‘It’s either a raspberry Eton Mess, or alternatively there are some overripe bananas that the Chirks left, so I could do cold banana custards or bananas in rum, with cream. What do you think?’

  ‘Oh, custards. With just a teeny sprinkle of nutmeg on each one.’

  ‘If you say so,’ I agreed. Along with squirty cream, nutmeg and paprika seemed to feature largely in the foodstuffs Tilda had brought from the lodge to add to the catering supplies. ‘In fact, I’d better do those now, so they will be chilled by dinner time.’

  While I was making the custard, Tilda helpfully sliced up the bananas and put them in the ramekins, talking about her past glories on TV, especially her wonderful series on canapés, on the subject of which she had enlightened the nation.

  ‘You have no need to worry about canapés while I am here,’ she said generously.

  ‘Well, that’s a huge weight off my mind,’ I assured her.

  ‘I’d better call Jess in,’ Becca said. ‘I’d forgotten she was still sledging and it’s pitch black out there, though of course the light bounces off the snow. But she must be cold by now.’

  While she went to fetch her in, I asked Tilda whether Jess was having a Christmas stocking or not.

  ‘She had one last year,’ Tilda said, ‘but Roz — my daughter — didn’t mention it to me, though she did leave Jess’s presents. She might have forgotten about the stocking, because she is the scattiest creature. Or perhaps Jess is too old?’

  ‘Mrs Comfort said they are never too old, so I got a few things from her to make one up, in case.’

  ‘Oh well — you carry on with that, then,’ she ordered autocratically, as Jess came in with red cheeks and covered in snow, and was sent straight back out into the passage to remove her coat and wellies.

  Chapter 20

  Flickering

  I begin to wonder if Hilda and Pearl are right about N, because despite the offer of a job he still has not asked me to marry him. Every time we meet he reassures me that we will always be together, but I can’t go on in this clandestine way any more and so have told him that I would not meet him again unless we agreed to tell our parents and get engaged.

  April, 1945

  Luckily Coco retired to her bedroom once it was ready for her, so everyone could go back into the sitting room for a pre-dinner drink and warm-through by the fire, which got them from underfoot while I cleared and laid the kitchen table for dinner.

  Now there were so many of us, I suppose it would have made sense to have used the dining room, but I felt too tired to be traipsing to and fro with hot dishes: no, the kitchen would have to do. And with a bit of luck and perhaps an overnight thaw, maybe I could get rid of Guy and Coco in the morning. Getting Coco safely home again was his responsibility, after all, and I didn’t want him here either, charm though he might.

  He was so not my type, but if Ned Martland was anything like Guy, then I could see why poor Gran fell for him, and not surprised that he now seemed to be playing fast and loose with her.

  I popped upstairs to apply a little makeup, brush my hair and change my jeans for smarter black crepe trousers and a dark red tunic top with a beaded neckline: last night both Becca and Tilda had come down for dinner in long skirts, though since Noël and Jess hadn’t changed at all, that might have been more for comfort than anything.

  Of course, I don’t bother what I wear when cooking for house-parties, because I don’t eat with the clients then, but in the kitchen. However, now we were all to eat in the kitchen.

  The family were gathered together in the sitting room when I went through with the pâté and French toast starter on a tray. Tilda and Becca were in their long skirts again and Noël was now wearing a Tattersall check shirt under a rubbed dark blue velvet smoking jacket, while Guy, in oatmeal cashmere, looked like an advert for upmarket men’s clothing. Jess had an endless supply of black jeans and tops, so it was impossible to tell whether she had changed or not. She was sitting at the table by the window, doing something fiddly with scraps of paper.

  ‘Let me take that for you, it looks terribly heavy,’ Noël said, starting to get to his feet as if I was some fragile creature, rather than a six-foot Amazon.

  ‘No — do let me,’ offered Guy with a ravishing smile, preempting him. He put it down on the coffee table and asked me, ‘Would you like a drink? Sherry, gin and tonic? Name your poison.’

  ‘No thanks, I’m not much of a drinker, especially when I’m cooking. Is Miss Lanyon coming down for dinner?’

  ‘Coco — and you must call me Guy, because I feel we’re on intimate terms already, now all my dirty washing has been dragged out in front of you.’

  ‘I’m sure we all know much more about your private affairs after today than we ever wanted to,’ Tilda said severely. ‘So, is your young woman going to grace us with her presence this evening?’

  ‘She’s not my young woman, Tilda, and I’ve no idea.’
>
  ‘I wouldn’t put it past her,’ Becca said, ‘though I’m sure we are all quite sick of the sight of her. I was actually grateful to you when you went off with her last Christmas, Guy — think how awful it would have been if she’d married Jude and settled here!’

  ‘Actually, I think it was the thought of spending most of the year here that put her off Jude before she even set eyes on me,’ Guy said dispassionately. ‘She’s not a country girl and she has her eyes firmly set on her career.’

  ‘If you can call prancing up and down a catwalk half-naked a career,’ Tilda commented acidly.

  ‘She’s trying to break into acting too,’ he said and just at that moment the door swung open and Coco stood revealed, a vision of angularly icy beauty. She is so pretty she is unreal and I’m not at all surprised that Guy and Jude fell for her.

  She held her catwalk pose long enough for us all to take in the one-shouldered, slinky, nude-silk trousered garment that she was almost wearing. I sincerely hoped the slashed top part was held on with boob tape, because otherwise she would be in serious danger of dangling her little dumplings in the dinner.

  ‘Here you all are,’ she said gaily, then directed a dazzling smile at Guy. ‘Darling, get me a drink, won’t you? You know what I like.’

  Clearly she’d regrouped and was now changing tactics to one aimed at luring back her errant lover.

  ‘You’re going to catch your death in that outfit,’ Becca observed. ‘Have you got it on the right way round?’

  ‘Of course! It’s supposed to look like this,’ she said indignantly.

  ‘Then I’d better lend you a cardigan — Tilda’s won’t be big enough.’

  ‘Oh, I’m quite warm enough, thank you!’ Standing close to Guy as she accepted her drink, she laid a hand on his arm and said seductively, ‘If not, Guy can warm me up, can’t you, darling?’

  ‘Oh yuk! Horlicks is getting soppy,’ Jess said disgustedly.

  ‘Do all help yourselves to the starter and I’ll call you through into the kitchen when dinner’s ready,’ I said, making a neat exit.

  ‘Aren’t we eating in the dining room?’ I heard Coco ask piercingly as I went out again. ‘Why do we have to eat in the kitchen, with the help?’

  That comment hardly endeared her to me and nor did her announcement, once we were seated at the table, that she didn’t eat carbs.

  ‘Or any kind of processed food,’ she added, looking at the dish of sausages with something akin to horror.

  ‘These are extremely good sausages I found in the freezer,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid if you want something else, you’ll have to cook it yourself.’

  Coco looked at me with dropped jaw. ‘Me? Why can’t you do it? That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it isn’t!’ Becca told her.

  ‘That’s right, Holly isn’t our resident housekeeper and cook, you know, she only came here to look after the house and animals while Jude was away,’ Noël said gently. ‘She isn’t employed to cook or look after his family as well, and is only doing it from the kindness of her heart. And we are all very grateful.’ He gave me one of his charming, lopsided smiles.

  ‘Not at all, I’m sure we’re going to have a lovely Christmas,’ I lied. ‘Much more fun than being on my own.’

  ‘And this food is wonderful,’ Guy said, tucking into his mustard mash with gusto. ‘You can cook as well as look stunning, so you’re everything I ever wanted in a woman: will you marry me?’

  Jess giggled but Coco shot daggers at both of us, even though he was just playing the fool.

  ‘On your past track record, no.’

  ‘That told him,’ Becca said.

  ‘I must say, you have cooked this very nicely,’ Tilda said. ‘And the pâté was lovely too — simple but good.’

  ‘Hearty plain food is the best,’ agreed Becca. ‘I’ll eat Coco’s sausages and mash if she doesn’t want them.’

  ‘Not if I get there first,’ Guy told her with a grin.

  ‘Or perhaps Jess should have them: she needs to keep her strength up if she’s helping me with the horses,’ Becca suggested. ‘Luckily, she appears to have outgrown her allergy to them.’

  Jess gave her a dirty look, but she seemed to be putting away her dinner without any difficulty, even though I’d spotted a crumpled scatter of silvery chocolate tree decoration wrappers on the table where she’d been doing her origami earlier.

  ‘I have to eat something,’ Coco said sulkily and helped herself to one sausage, a bare teaspoon of mash, and a microscopically small fragment of carrot.

  The room went dark again, just for an instant.

  ‘Why do the lights keep doing that? The electricity isn’t going to go off, is it?’ Coco asked nervously. ‘I’d hate that, because I’m sure this house is haunted.’

  ‘Don’t worry, if it does the generator will take over,’ I said soothingly. ‘And if it doesn’t, the gardener showed me how to switch it on manually.’

  ‘Henry did?’ said Noël, opening his eyes wide. ‘He has never let me anywhere near it.’

  ‘Or me,’ said Guy. ‘Not that I want to, I’m not at all mechanically minded, unlike Jude.’

  ‘You’re the kiss of death to all machinery,’ Tilda told her husband. ‘Look what you did to the Magimix.’

  ‘I did fly aeroplanes during the war, m’dear, so you can’t say I am hopeless with all machinery.’

  ‘That was entirely different,’ she snapped and I could see she was tired out and hoped she would go to bed right after dinner. I think the fall must have shaken her up much more than she was letting on, though at least her eye was now only faintly rimmed with a yellow and blue bruise.

  Predictably, Coco spurned the banana custards I’d made for dessert and said she would go and smoke a cigarette in the sitting room until we came through with coffee.

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m afraid this is a no-smoking household: it said so clearly in the owner’s information folder,’ I said apologetically.

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ she snapped, ‘and anyway, Jude isn’t here to see!’

  ‘That’s immaterial: I’m responsible for the house until he returns and must follow his instructions.’

  ‘Yes, and we agree with Jude, so you’ll have to do it in the porch like last Christmas,’ Tilda told her.

  ‘But I’ll freeze!’

  ‘You certainly will in that garment,’ agreed Becca. ‘I’d go and put something more sensible on, first.’

  ‘I haven’t got anything sensible,’ she said sulkily. ‘Well, the coat and hat you arrived in, then.’

  ‘Yes, and that’s another thing — my white coat cost me a fortune and after being in that tractor it’s never going to come clean again!’

  She flounced out and I think we breathed a collective sigh of relief.

  ‘I expect she will just go and smoke in her room instead, she’s that kind of person,’ Becca said. ‘Really, Guy, we could have done without her here, she is such a drag. I don’t know what you and Jude ever saw in her.’

  ‘Apart from being stunningly beautiful, she can also be fun, believe it or not,’ he said dispassionately. ‘But she’s shallow as a puddle and totally self-centred.’

  ‘You have lots in common then,’ Tilda said tartly. ‘I can’t think why you broke up.’

  ‘I think you are tired, m’dear,’ Noël said gently. ‘Wouldn’t you like to go to bed and I will bring you a hot drink up?’

  ‘Perhaps that would be a good idea,’ Tilda conceded. ‘The child could do with an early night, too.’

  ‘I’m not a child,’ Jess protested, ‘and I want to finish making the last present before I go up.’

  ‘Half an hour, then,’ Tilda said firmly.

  The others went into the sitting room and I took the coffee tray through and then retired to the kitchen to clear away and look over tomorrow’s menu, sincerely hoping that I wouldn’t have two extra mouths to feed after breakfast!

  Guy brought the tray back. ‘Still at it? On
ly everyone else has called it a day and gone to bed. What are you doing?’

  ‘Putting the jelly layer on this trifle and then I’m going to let Merlin out for a last run and check on the horses before I go to bed.’

  And I would take the journal back upstairs with me too, because, however weary I felt, I was sure I could manage to read another page or two. It kept drawing me like a moth to the flame — I’d been dipping into it at every opportunity.

  The light flickered off and then, with extreme reluctance, back on again.

  ‘The horses will be fine. Put Merlin out and then come and have a nightcap with me,’ he suggested.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Pity. Still, we’ll have lots of time to get to know each other so much better over Christmas.’

  ‘I hope not — I’m expecting you and Coco to leave in the morning.’

  ‘Well, Coco’s certainly going, even if I have to bribe one of the farmer’s boys to take her all the way to London in the tractor. But I’m staying.’

  ‘That’s very unchivalrous of you!’

  ‘Not entirely: she’s such a crap driver I certainly wouldn’t let her drive herself back to London in these conditions, even if they do get her car out of the ditch.’

  ‘I still think you should take her yourself,’ I said. ‘Jude won’t want you staying here and I would much prefer it if you left, too.’

  ‘You don’t mean that really,’ he said, but finally, getting no response to his flirting, he took himself and his amazingly effulgent aftershave off to bed.

  I put the trifle in the fridge and then, accompanied by Merlin, went through and banked up the fire in the sitting room, set the guard safely round it and tidied up. Apart from the usual creakings and sighing of an old house all was quiet and peaceful.

  ‘Last run, Merlin?’ I asked, shrugging into my down-filled jacket and picking up my big, rubber-cased torch, because whatever Guy said, I knew my duty. But we’d only just got to the back door when the lights went out — and this time stayed out.

  The generator and I were about to get better acquainted.