Twelve Days of Christmas

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘What on earth. .?’ I began indignantly, but he ignored me and kept snapping away. Lady seemed quite blasé about it: if anything, she held the pose better than I did.

  Nutkin, who had closed his eyes and dozed off after his share of the carrot, opened them and stared at us with mild astonishment through the barred partition dividing the boxes.

  ‘Right, now stay like that while I fetch a sketch pad,’ Jude said, putting the camera back in his pocket.

  ‘I can’t, I’ve things to do in the kitchen. And why do you need me? I thought you were only interested in horses.’

  ‘They are my main subject, but I sculpt all kinds of other things and I often include a human form with my animal sculptures. The way you were standing with one arm across Lady’s back while she turned her head towards you was full of lovely, flowing lines,’ he said regretfully, as I gave Lady a last pat and unbolted the door to come out past him. ‘Oh, well, I suppose it doesn’t matter — I have the pictures on film and in my head,’ he said, though he still seemed a bit reluctant to move out of my way right until the last minute, looking down at me with those deep-set eyes like dark, peaty, dangerous pools. .

  But right then, that just reminded me of poor Gran again.

  Back in the warmth of the kitchen I said to Merlin, ‘Your boss is a great, big, surly, autocratic bear!’ Though in fact I’d been the surly one this time: he had just been bossy. Merlin wagged his tail politely.

  I prepped everything ready for lunch, which was actually going to be another early cooked dinner, but dead easy: the whole salmon I’d taken from the freezer the previous morning, Duchesse potatoes, petits pois and a piquant sauce.

  Jude stayed outside so long I’d forgotten about him. By the time he came back in, Michael had also come downstairs and we were laughing together over something silly as I cooked bacon for breakfast and he laid the table.

  Jude, who I could now see in the clearer light of the kitchen, was sporting so much black stubble along his formidable jawline that he looked like an overgrown Mexican bandit, glowered darkly at us and went on through without a word. Perhaps he’s not really a morning person? Or any time of day person?

  He did reappear later, washed, shaved and smelling faintly of the wholesomely attractive aftershave that was presumably designed for rugged men, and put away an impressive amount of breakfast. But he didn’t really join in the conversation with the others, though he probably wouldn’t have got much out of Coco, anyway. She drifted silently in, wearing her diaphanous pink negligee, like some species of attenuated jellyfish, and then communed silently with a cup of black coffee until I cut the yolk out of a fried egg and plonked the remains down in front of her. She shuddered.

  ‘Eat it!’ I ordered and she gave me a slightly alarmed look and picked up her knife and fork.

  Jude seemed increasingly abstracted and soon disappeared into his little study/studio next to the library. Perhaps a lot of his taciturnity is actually artistic temperament and he simply vanishes into a new idea? I get a bit withdrawn when I’m working out a new recipe, only without the rattiness, of course. . or usually without the rattiness. I did feel I had been a bit mean to him earlier, taking something out on him that wasn’t his fault.

  Everyone else (except Coco) had talked around him as they ate, as though he were the elephant — or Yeti — in the room that all saw but no-one mentioned, so presumably they are quite used to his moods.

  Jess made me promise I’d go out as soon as I’d finished clearing up in the kitchen and join her in sledging down the sloping paddock with Guy and Michael — and even Coco ventured out eventually, in borrowed wellingtons and her grubby once-white quilted coat.

  I’d been sledging before of course, though using a flattened cardboard carton to sit on, but I’d never made snow angels until Jess and Guy showed me how, by falling backwards into the virgin whiteness and waving my arms up and down to make wing shapes. The horses and Billy were astonished.

  It was great fun and so was the snowballing. . until I got one down the back of my neck. I wasn’t so keen on the icy trickle down the spine as it melted.

  We were all freezing and wet by the time we went in to dry off and change, but healthily glowing too. And everyone glowed even more when Guy concocted mulled wine in a jam pan on the small electric stove, demanding cinnamon sticks and other ingredients while I was busy putting the salmon in the larger Aga oven, wrapped in a loose parcel of foil with butter and bay leaves.

  He left the pan and all the mess for me to clear, of course — but then, that’s typical of most men when they cook anything, isn’t it?

  I didn’t drink the small glass of wine he gave me, beyond a token sip to see what it tasted like (surprisingly nice).

  Michael came back long after everyone else, because he’d trudged up the hill in the snow to phone his little girl, but this time his ex-wife wouldn’t let him speak to her.

  ‘Debbie said it would just upset her, because since my last call she keeps asking for Da-da and she’s been unsettled.’

  He was so upset that I gave him a comforting hug — and just at that moment Jude wandered in, cast us a look that was hard to read, silently poured himself some coffee from the freshly-made pot, and went out again.

  He does choose his moments to appear! And I expect he’s drawn entirely the wrong conclusions — if he noticed at all, that is, because he did look very abstracted.

  I gave Michael the remains of my mulled wine: that seemed to cheer him up a bit.

  We had a starter of little savoury tomato and cheese tartlets I’d made and frozen a couple of days ago. Becca took a plate of the tartlets to Jude in his study and said he was working, but he still hadn’t emerged by the time we were in the dining room, sitting down to the perfectly-cooked salmon (adorned with the very last bit of cucumber, sliced to transparency), so I went to call him.

  He was leaning back in his chair, his long legs in old denim jeans stretched out, and the crumb-strewn plate by his elbow. The desk and the corkboard behind it were covered with line drawings and photographs of me and Lady, so he must have one of those instant digital printer things and possibly an instant digital memory, too.

  ‘Dinner — it’s on the table,’ I announced loudly, but when he finally looked up at me it took his eyes a couple of minutes to focus. Then he smiled seemingly involuntarily — and with such unexpected charm and sweetness that I found myself responding. Then the smile vanished as suddenly as if it had never been, leaving only the memory of it hanging in the air like the Cheshire Cat’s grin.

  ‘Dinner?’ I repeated, and finally he got up and followed me obediently to the dining room, though he didn’t seem to notice what he was eating, even when Tilda pointed out that the capers in the piquant sauce had been her idea. It was sheer luck he didn’t choke on a salmon bone, really. (But I can do the Heimlich manoeuvre, I would have saved him.)

  Before dessert, which was a choice between the very last scrapings of the trifle and Christmas cake, he abruptly got up, declaring that he was going down to work in the mill studio for a couple of hours.

  ‘Can I go with you again, Uncle Jude?’ asked Jess eagerly. ‘You promised to show me how to weld.’

  ‘Not today — another time,’ he told her and her face fell. ‘Holly — you come down to the studio in about half an hour or so, I want you to pose for me.’

  ‘Me? Not nude?’ I blurted, horrified, then felt myself go pink as they all looked at me.

  ‘Not if you don’t want to, though I’ll have had the big Calor heaters on for a bit by then, so the place will have warmed up,’ he said, his mouth quirking slightly at one side. I thought he was joking, but I wasn’t quite sure.

  ‘Absolutely not,’ I said firmly. ‘I’ve got some black velvet leggings and a fairly clinging tunic jumper I can change into, if you like, but that’s as figure-revealing as I’m prepared to go.’

  ‘I’ll settle for that,’ he said gravely.

  ‘I certainly like the sound of it! Can I come and wa
tch?’ asked Guy cheekily.

  ‘Or maybe I should go, as chaperone?’ Michael suggested, twinkling at me.

  Jude scowled at them both, his sudden burst of good humour vanishing. ‘Unnecessary!’ he snapped and went out. We heard the front door slam a few minutes later.

  ‘The dear boy does spend most days down at the studio when he is at home,’ Noël said. ‘He works very hard.’

  ‘Edwina usually takes him a flask of coffee and sandwiches for lunch,’ Tilda said, ‘she dotes on him and I am sure he would starve if she didn’t, because he forgets the time when he is down there.’

  ‘Does jolly good sculptures, especially the horses,’ Becca said. ‘Look like mangled metal up close, then step away — and there they are! Seems like you’re going to be in one, Holly.’

  ‘I don’t know why he wants you as a model when he could have had me,’ Coco said, inclined to be even sulkier than Jess.

  ‘Oh, but anyone can have you,’ Guy said ambiguously, though luckily Coco didn’t seem to have caught the double meaning.

  ‘It’s because you’d be two-dimensional, Horlicks,’ Jess said.

  ‘That was quite good, Jess,’ Tilda said impartially, ‘if a trifle rude.’

  ‘It was only that he saw me with Lady this morning and liked the way I was standing with my arm across her,’ I explained. ‘I expect if it had been Becca he’d seen, he’d have asked her instead.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so!’ Becca said, with one of her deep barks of laughter. ‘Face that sank a thousand ships.’

  ‘It seemed to be lines rather than features he was interested in.’

  ‘Well, I’ve certainly got a lot more of those than you have.’

  ‘I still think he’s really mean,’ Jess complained. ‘He promised to teach me how to weld and there’s lots of modelling clay in the studio, too. I’m bored.’

  ‘I don’t see how you can possibly be bored, with the amount of presents you got yesterday, young lady,’ Tilda observed. ‘Go and play with that wee-wee thing your poor, misguided parents bought you.’

  ‘Wii, Granny!’ Jess said.

  ‘I hope you and Jude aren’t going to be down there long, because I thought we could all read through our parts in the play later this afternoon, now we’ve had a look at them,’ Coco said, which was optimistic as far as Jude and I were concerned at least, since we both had other interests to keep us occupied already.

  ‘I’ll be busy when I get back, it might have to be after supper,’ I said and her face fell.

  ‘I’m not sure that Viola isn’t a better part for me, with Michael as Orsino, now I’ve read it,’ she said. ‘We might have to re-cast.’

  ‘Oh? I thought Olivia was the big romantic lead?’ I said.

  ‘Viola seems to get the better lines and I have to pretend to fall in love with her for most of it!’

  ‘Do you?’ I said, surprised. I really would have to find time to read it!

  ‘It’s a comedy of errors, with two entwined romances,’ Michael explained. ‘But I see myself more as a Sebastian than an Orsino, and I already know the part.’

  ‘I suppose I’d better stick with Olivia then,’ she said reluctantly. ‘We could practise our scenes on our own somewhere, Michael, if the others are busy?’

  She bestowed on him an intimately promising smile and a fleeting expression of horror crossed his mobile face. Then, with huge aplomb inspired by the instinct of self-preservation, he tossed a big fat truffle of a diversion in front of her: ‘Noël, didn’t you mention that there were costumes somewhere in the attic we might use, if we really wanted to get into our parts?’

  ‘Oh — costumes!’ breathed Coco, avidly taking the bait.

  ‘I know where they are — the dressing-up box!’ Jess said, brightening up instantly too. ‘I could show you!’

  ‘Perhaps I’d better go with you,’ Noël said anxiously. ‘It’s not the big chest at the front — that has the Twelfth Night Revels costumes in it, though of course the heads are stored with the swords in the barn behind the pub. No, it’s the cabin trunk further back.’

  Actually, I’d much rather have explored the dressing-up box with them than trudge down through the snow to pose for Mr Bossy-Boots Martland, but I had a feeling that if I didn’t show up he would come back and carry me off by brute force anyway: he was quite capable of it.

  ‘I think you should all dress up for your parts,’ Jess said. ‘Don’t worry, Holly, I’ll find something nice for your big love scene with Uncle Jude.’

  ‘Which big love scene?’

  ‘Haven’t you read the play yet?’ asked Coco.

  ‘Yes, at school, but I’ve forgotten about it; it was a long time ago. And I haven’t even had time to read through those printed scenes you gave us all. But I thought the central love affair was between Sebastian and Olivia?’

  ‘There’s a sort of double love tangle going on,’ Noël explained. ‘The play has its roots in mumming, with lots of cross-dressing and characters not really being who they appear to be — a bit like the Revels!’

  I really must try and glance through my helpfully-highlighted printout and find out exactly what I’ve let myself in for!

  Chapter 31

  Fool’s Gold

  I felt guided by this voice to visit the father of my childhood sweetheart, the Strange Baptist minister of the chapel in Ormskirk. I had been avoiding Mr Bowman ever since my fall from grace, which must have both puzzled and hurt him.

  May, 1945

  I changed into my black velvet leggings and dark green tunic jumper, which is an outfit I usually only wear for relaxing in when I am on my own, since it’s all very clingy, especially in the bum and twin peaks areas.

  When I knocked on the studio door there was no reply, but I went in anyway: it was too cold to hang about outside like an unwanted carol singer.

  Jude barely looked up from what he was doing, which was hauling out thick metal rods and wire from a large plastic bin, and grunted at me, but I don’t speak pig, so I left my snowy wellies just inside the door and had a wander around in my socks until he became a little less Animal Farm.

  The building had once had two floors, though now the upper one had been removed and skylights set into the roof to make a large, well-lit space. The walls were painted a creamy white and it smelt of a complicated, but not unpleasant, mingling of Calor gas heater, damp sacking and hot metal. Jude’s aftershave might have been based on it.

  There were enormous double doors let into one wall, presumably for the removal of finished sculptures. . and come to think of it, that must be why the path up from the drive was wide and rutted, because they probably had to reverse large vehicles right up it to the studio.

  It was furnished with a large, raised wooden model’s dais, like a mini-stage, a smaller door that presumably gave on to a storage area for materials, a small furnace of some kind, easels, tables, large metal and wooden stands, a tilting draughtsman’s desk and workbenches covered in a clutter of sketches, tubs of brushes, modelling tools and pencils, bits of clay, little models of sculptures and fragments of twisted metal. It all looked in need of a good sort and dust to me, but I expect he preferred it like that.

  Dotted about on what remained of the floor space were finished sculptures in various mediums, most mounted on bases, plinths or stands of one kind or another. The biggest — life-size, in fact — was unmistakably Lady, even if it was composed of metal triangles, but Becca was right and from close to it looked like a heap of junk. Another was just a series of fluid lines in bent tubular metal that were equally unmistakably the Celtic red horse up on the hill.

  He’d been telling the truth about it being reasonably warm down there once the heaters got going, but nothing would have induced me to strip down to the buff, though I did finally take my anorak off and hang it up. That was as far as I was prepared to go.

  When I turned round, I found Jude was looking at me assessingly, one corner of his straight mouth quirking up in a way that seemed to denote privat
e amusement.

  ‘Very dryad.’

  I am a little on the large side for ditsy dancing in the woods, so I ignored this as sarcasm and asked, ‘What did you want me for?’

  ‘To try and capture the way you were standing this morning, with your arm across Lady’s back and her head turned towards you. The whole thing looked as if you were fused into one. . though it would have been better if she hadn’t been wearing her rug. Still, I’ve got loads of photographs, sketches and models of her already, like this one.’ He indicated the finished life-sized sculpture. ‘If you stand next to it, in the same pose, I could get some ideas down of the scale and how it will go, even if the horse isn’t in the right position.’

  He seemed serious, so I climbed onto the rectangular block the sculpture was sitting on and draped an arm across it as directed, while he pulled an easel up at an angle and stuck a large sketchbook on it.

  ‘Is this one sold somewhere?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you always work to commission?’

  ‘Only sometimes, I generally just do what I feel like and then sell it — or not, if I don’t want to. I decided to keep that one. Turn slightly to face her head. . No, just your head, not your whole body!’ he exclaimed, then with two impatient strides he seized me and actually manhandled me into the position he wanted, which felt really weird.

  Then he went back to his easel and studied me minutely, as if I was a slightly dodgy car he was thinking of buying, for want of anything better, before swiftly making sketch after sketch, using big sticks of charcoal. These he then simply dropped on the floor around his feet.

  At first I was disconcerted by the way he barely took his brooding, deep-set dark eyes off me, his brow furrowed with concentration, but I slowly relaxed as I realised it was an impartial and remote scrutiny: it wasn’t me as a person he was seeing at all!

  From time to time he dragged the easel into a different position, so he could draw me from all angles and presumably get some concept of me in the round. It seemed to take him ages — but then, I do have a lot of round.