Twelve Days of Christmas

by Trisha Ashley

  There were three small models on the bench, one in clay, one seemingly twisted from wire, and one constructed with snippets of tin stuck together with blobs of wax.

  Weird.

  I went back to sitting on the edge of the dais and watched him for a bit to see if he might want me for anything, since he’d been so insistent I go down; but I think he’d forgotten me again. Maybe he’d just wanted his lunch brought?

  He didn’t seem to feel the cold at all. Although it wasn’t that hot in the studio he’d stripped off his jumper and the thin T-shirt beneath was stretched across an impressive array of muscles I remembered all too clearly from my private viewing of them on Christmas Eve, tapering down to a slim waist and hips. .

  I was just thinking that although he was a giant, he was a very well-proportioned and fit-looking one, when he looked up and gave me one of those dramatically sudden, heart-stoppingly sweet smiles, before going back to work again.

  I don’t think he realises he’s doing it! But I expect it’s only an expression of sublime happiness, blissed out in the act of creation.

  Now that feeling rang a bell in the distant recesses of my memory. .

  From time to time he made a random comment, evidently thinking aloud. Once he said, ‘I must arrange a way for Jess to speak to her parents, when we can get out of Little Mumming,’ and later he told me my lines were nearly as beautiful as Lady’s. I took that as a compliment.

  Eventually, when I could see the light outside was starting to go, I got up, and Merlin uncoiled himself to come with me. ‘Jude, I’m going now. You won’t forget to come back for supper, will you?’

  He looked up absently. ‘No, okay,’ he said, but I wouldn’t put money on him remembering, unless his stomach insisted.

  When I got back Becca and Jess had long since brought the horses in and Guy had driven Old Nan and Richard home in Jude’s Land Rover.

  The kitchen was in a bit of a mess because Jess had been showing Tilda how to make microwave meringues and chocolate cake in a mug. I promised to write the meringue recipe down for Tilda. I could imagine endless plates of them appearing at the lodge, garnished with the ubiquitous squirty cream and, perhaps, sliced strawberries in summer.

  ‘We found Coco in your room earlier,’ Jess said, ‘searching for her Fruity-Go.’

  ‘That’s because there are hardly any left in my handbag,’ Coco said sulkily. ‘I only wanted a few more.’

  ‘I’m afraid I flushed them all away — cutting out the middle woman, as it were,’ I confessed and then she slightly hysterically accused me of wanting to ruin her figure, her career and her entire life.

  Tilda told her she should be grateful someone cared about her health, but if she found herself constipated she would brew her up a nice dose of senna pods.

  That seemed to have a remarkably calming effect.

  Jude did remember to come back for supper, which was just sausage rolls, tomatoes (the very last of the salad), smoked salmon sandwiches and more microwave cake and meringues (with swirls of squirty cream, of course). We’ll all be as fat as pigs by New Year.

  Guy had noticed some additions to the jigsaw and accused me of putting them there, as if it was a crime. When I admitted my guilt, he said pettishly that since I was so good at it I might as well finish the whole thing.

  He and Coco have so much in common, it’s a pity they didn’t make a go of it!

  I told him I’d got it for everyone to share and we’d all done a bit of it, even Coco (probably the upside-down bits in the wrong place), so he could stop throwing his rattle out of the pram.

  ‘Hear, hear!’ said Becca.

  Honestly, hurt male pride over something as trivial as a jigsaw? And okay, beating him at snooker and then Scrabble first probably didn’t help. .

  I would quite happily have continued playing Monopoly, Scrabble or Cluedo with the others all evening, but no, Coco had us all practising our scenes in the play again, though mainly she just wanted an audience to watch her unintentionally hamming it up with poor Michael. I think it’s called overacting.

  However, I caught the bug and started hamming it up a bit myself — and then, to my surprise, Jude began playing up to me, so it was not such a drag as it might have been.

  Chapter 33

  Turning Turkey

  Mr Bowman was extremely shocked and grieved by my story, but said though I had done wrong, the fault was not all mine. He offered to seek out N to try and make him see where his duty lay, but I refused, because clearly N has abandoned me and could never have been serious in the first place, since he was already engaged to marry someone else. But then we prayed together for guidance. .

  June, 1945

  I fell asleep last night on another of those long, moralising passages from Gran’s journal, this time describing what Mr Bowman said in his prayers (which obviously he must have said aloud, since she wasn’t telepathic) and how grateful she was that he hadn’t turned her away like her parents had.

  Then she compared her lot at length to some scene in The Pilgrim’s Progress, which apparently had a Slough of Despond, though that does seem a bit harsh on Slough.

  Times were so different then: I still couldn’t understand how Ned could have been so heartless as to abandon her.

  When I let Merlin out, I saw that it hadn’t snowed any more, but nor did the winter wonderland show signs of going away any time soon: it was all deep and crisp and even, as the carol says.

  Jude was downstairs again soon after I was, but I don’t mind if it becomes a habit, since he doesn’t get in my way while I’m making my preparations for the day. In fact, it’s handy having someone to ply me with cups of tea or coffee while I’m working, tend the fire and do other odd jobs around the house, though so far he’s shown no sign of taking me up on the vacuuming.

  Becca was down quite early too, but Jess has now been let off morning horse mucking-out duties, to her huge relief. I expect she’s already in training to become nocturnal when she’s a teenager.

  This morning’s first task had been to remove the remaining meat from the turkey carcass and put the bones on the stove to simmer for stock. Then I turned what was left — which was a surprising amount, really — into a good spicy curry to go into the freezer. A few bits of turkey found their way into Merlin, too.

  I’d finished this and the kitchen was filled with the aroma of gently simmering stock and rich spices by the time Becca and Jude came back in from the stables, adding a not-unpleasant hint of warm horse and hay to the mix.

  ‘Something smells good,’ Jude said appreciatively.

  ‘It’s just stock and turkey curry for the freezer.’

  ‘What are you doing now?’ asked Becca. ‘Isn’t that the old mincing machine?’

  ‘Yes, I found it in one of the drawers.’ I finished screwing it down firmly on the edge of the kitchen table. ‘I’m making mince for burgers — that’s what we’re having for dinner tonight.’

  ‘What, you’re turning my best steaks from the freezer into burgers?’ demanded Jude predictably, spotting them on a plate.

  ‘There aren’t enough steaks for everyone, but minced up there is enough to make burgers — and they’ll be delicious, you’ll see,’ I promised, turning the handle briskly.

  ‘I have to believe you,’ he said, watching me with that now-familiar quirk of the lips, ‘everything else you’ve cooked so far has been!’

  ‘It certainly has and Jude should offer you a permanent job,’ Becca suggested with a grin.

  ‘He couldn’t afford me.’

  ‘Yes I could, I can’t imagine why you persist in assuming I’m on my uppers.’ He paused on his way out, presumably to change and shave, since he was back to the Mexican bandit look. ‘Can we have chips with the burgers?’

  ‘You can have my version of them, done in a baking tin in the oven with a little olive oil and a few herbs.’

  When he came back, looking about as civilised as a Yeti can get, he helped me to cook breakfast for everyone again befo
re he went off to the studio, reminding me to come down after lunch and bring him something to eat, so clearly the pattern of our days is now going to be like this. Perhaps he just wants me on tap, in case of a sudden urge to check the pose, or something? Or then again, it may be just a cunning ruse to get his lunch delivered daily until Edwina returns to the lodge.

  After breakfast Tilda got up and she, Noël and Becca decided to watch an old film on video — they seem to especially love musicals.

  Jess and Guy were all for going out with the sledges again, but I think Michael would have been quite happy to carry on sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and discussing recipes with me; except that Coco said that if he wasn’t going out they could practise their love scenes together, and he changed his mind. In the end we all went out, though I came in earlier than the rest to make another chocolate blancmange rabbit for later, seeing as the first one hadn’t just gone down well with Jess, but had also been a surprise hit with everyone else. Then I set out a nice lunch of turkey and ham pie, warm garlic bread (garlic paste and ready-to-bake baguettes from the larder) and the last of the tinned pâté.

  When lunch was cleared I left for the studio with Jude’s substantial picnic and the big flask of coffee.

  By then Coco had got her way and she and Michael were to practise their parts for the play this afternoon — only not alone, but with Noël helpfully reading mine and Jude’s parts and Jess in attendance as Props, wearing her crown.

  Jude had finished making the armature and was welding bits of leaf-shaped metal together around it when I went into the studio, though he stopped and gave me a protective visor like the one he was wearing.

  ‘Sparks aren’t going to fly as far as the dais, are they?’ I asked, though I noticed Merlin had taken one look at his master and retired underneath it.

  ‘No, but the light from the torch is very bright, better to be safe than sorry,’ he said, and then went back to work. As yesterday, he just seemed to want to have me around, without actually needing me.

  The torch was fuelled by two different sorts of gas cylinders and I thought it all looked a bit dangerous, though he seemed to know exactly what he was doing.

  ‘Are you really going to teach Jess to do that?’ I asked, pouring him a cup of coffee when he finally stopped to eat his late lunch.

  ‘Yes, why not?’ He sat down on the edge of the dais next to me. ‘It’s safe enough if I watch her all the time — I know what I’m doing. I’d like to leave it until she comes for part of the summer holidays, though, when she’ll be thirteen.’

  ‘Does she spend most of the school holidays with Noël and Tilda?’

  ‘It depends — her parents are away a lot. You’ll have gathered that Roz and her husband Nick study wildlife and make documentaries, so Jess does end up here with Noël and Tilda quite a bit. But sometimes she gets to fly out to exotic locations, too.’

  ‘You’re her favourite uncle, she cheered up no end once you came back.’

  ‘She’s seems to have taken a shine to you, too — like Merlin, she’s happiest if we are both in the same room!’

  ‘I’m sure I was just your stand-in and you’re her real security figure,’ I said. ‘She does seem surprisingly accepting about her parents being away so much and having to go to boarding school.’

  ‘Actually, she loves it. It’s a surprisingly old-fashioned and Enid-Blyton sort of school, where the girls can go riding and keep pets, but after thirteen they have to leave, so that will be difficult for her. It’s not how I’d want to bring up my children if I had any, would you?’ he said, and gave me a swift, sideways glance that I found impossible to interpret. ‘I’d want them around, not packed off somewhere away from home.’

  ‘Me too, I can’t see the point in having children otherwise,’ I agreed and we were silent for a minute. I was thinking about single motherhood, and how different it would be for me, compared to how it would have been for poor Granny — but it was still quite a daunting proposition. Good forward planning is obviously required in that situation, just as in cooking.

  Goodness knows what Jude was thinking about.

  When he went back to work we exchanged a few sporadic (and sometimes illuminating!) remarks, and then after a bit Merlin and I slipped out and walked home. . Or back to Old Place, which is somehow starting to feel like home.

  I beat Guy three times at snooker, and what with that and my having finished a whole section of the jigsaw in an absent moment earlier, when I had gone in to put more logs on the fire, he was a bit huffy.

  Oddly, it didn’t seem to put him off flirting with me after we’d had yet another read-through of the play scenes. And, do you know, I think Michael was right because Guy only really flirts with me when Jude’s there! So he must think he’s making Jude jealous. . unless he’s misinterpreting Jude’s interest in me?

  Jude had so far performed no suitable or unsuitable actions, apart from twirling an imaginary moustache in a faintly lascivious way at me and tossing his blue velvet cloak over one shoulder. We were getting hammier and hammier in our scenes and it was driving Coco mad, especially when Michael joined in.

  ‘You’re not taking it seriously!’ she practically screamed when Jude and I were overacting the scene where Orsino says he quite fancies Viola, now he knows she’s a woman, only he’d like to see her in a dress. (And I’d thought Jude had been joking about that bit.)

  ‘It’s only a family entertainment, after all,’ Noël said. ‘Why not have fun? I expect that’s what Shakespeare intended when he wrote the play.’

  ‘I’m sure Michael would rather we did it seriously,’ Coco said.

  ‘No, I do enough serious acting the rest of the time — and really, I’d have preferred a complete rest from it.’

  She pouted, which is not a good look on someone of four, never mind twenty-four.

  ‘Can she act?’ I asked him later, when no-one could overhear. Michael is forever taking refuge from Coco with me in the kitchen, and he’s proving very helpful at peeling vegetables and hand-washing anything that won’t go in the machine, though he borrows my long rubber gloves to do it. I suppose actors can’t really afford to have dishpan hands.

  ‘No, she’s as wooden as a log,’ he said, with an attractive grin.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I thought. Poor Coco!’

  ‘Poor nothing! Her parents are super-rich and have spoilt her rotten, so it’s about time she learnt that money can’t buy you everything.’

  ‘It’s certainly not going to buy her way into acting if she’s useless, is it?’

  ‘It isn’t going to buy her me, either,’ he said grimly and I laughed.

  ‘You’ll be so glad to get away from here.’

  ‘No, actually, apart from Coco this has been one of the best times of my life! I’m really enjoying it. What about you?’

  ‘Me? Well, it’s just work really — another busman’s holiday like yours, but. . well yes, I suppose I am enjoying it. Or most of it. It’s strange, because I’ve always felt miserable at Christmas before.’

  ‘That’s not surprising, considering how many sad things have happened to you around this time of year,’ he said sympathetically.

  ‘Yes, but in retrospect, I can see hiding myself away and going into mourning at the first sound of a Christmas song and a bit of tinsel wasn’t the best way to go about dealing with it,’ I admitted. ‘But I think I’ve now been immunised against fear of Christmas forever.’

  ‘Or immunised with it, so you now have to celebrate it?’ he suggested.

  He might just have a point.

  Tuesday followed much the same pattern as the preceding days, except that as soon as the sun came out you could see a thaw starting on the courtyard cobbles and the part of the drive where George and Liam had ploughed it clear.

  I went down to the village with Guy, Coco and Michael mid-morning, in order to stock up on my depleted food supplies at Oriel’s shop, though of course there would be no fresh fruit, bread or vegetables yet, let alo
ne a new consignment of the squirty cream so beloved of Tilda and Jess!

  We all went into the shop — I think we felt that we hadn’t seen one for months.

  ‘I hear George gave you one of his sticks for a present?’ Oriel asked me, stacking up flour, baking powder and tinfoil in front of me on the counter.

  ‘That’s right and it’s beautifully carved. It was very kind of him,’ I replied cautiously.

  ‘Oh yes. . he’s kind all right, is George,’ she said jealously and I felt a sudden pang of sympathy: I found George very attractive, but I wasn’t seriously interested in him and until my advent Mrs Comfort had been without a rival. What if she was in love with him?

  ‘Yes, he’s such a nice man that I wish I had a father just like him,’ I said firmly and she looked pleased. A broad smile crossed her face.

  ‘A father? Would you now? I suppose he is a lot older than you.’

  He was. . though not that old! But anyway, it had the desired result and in a flood of bonhomie she presented me with a paper bag of Jelly Babies, free.

  I slipped off while the others were still debating their purchases, leaving Oriel telling Coco firmly that no, she couldn’t sell her all her remaining stock of laxatives: she was rationing them to one box per customer until new deliveries arrived.

  I went to check that Old Nan and Richard were all right and gave them the last slices of the turkey and ham pie and some cake I’d brought with me. Then I rang Laura from the church porch, where it was a little sheltered.

  She said Ellen had called her, complaining that she couldn’t get hold of me to tell me about the wonderful job she had lined up for me, starting the weekend after Twelfth Night, and how she was sure I wouldn’t mind cooking for a Middle Eastern client’s huge house-party at a swish London address, now I’d had a nice rest from it.

  ‘I hope you put her right!’ I said indignantly. ‘I’ve done nothing but prepare and cook meals since I got here. And she knows I only do home-sitting until Easter.’

  ‘I wound her up by telling her you’d settled in so well that they’d probably pay you a fabulous sum to keep you as permanent cook.’