Twelve Days of Christmas

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘That’s just a physical thing. . and anyway, even if it wasn’t, I think our family relationship is too close for anything else.’

  ‘Right. . well.’ He gave me another charming sideways smile. ‘In that case, there’s always me if you want a volunteer donor that you actually know — and I can tell you from my daughter, I make very nice babies! Only for God’s sake don’t tell Jude I volunteered!’

  ‘That’s really sweet of you,’ I said, touched. ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

  Chapter 38

  Photo-Finish

  The baby arrived, thankfully late and quite small, but healthy. It is a girl and we have called her Anne. She is very precious to both of us and Joseph dotes on her as if she were his own. He says she is a gift from God.

  January, 1945

  Gran’s journal slowly peters out soon after the baby — my mother — arrived, but I expect she found other things to occupy her time with and was too busy. I knew she’d been a very active minister’s wife.

  I was still quite stiff and sore from my fall and my bum was probably black and blue — but also maybe green, from the liniment Becca gave me to put on after a long, hot soak in the bath. She said she swore by it, so I gave it a go even though it smelt very odd and I suspected it was designed for horses. It certainly seemed to take a lot of the soreness out. I ought to try it on my fetlocks after a hard day in the kitchen!

  I wasn’t quite so quick off the mark as usual going downstairs and I knew Jude had beaten me to it, because I heard him down in the courtyard as I was getting dressed. He’d cleaned out the sitting-room fire, too, when I checked. . and there was just one small, tantalising corner of the jigsaw left to do. Before I knew it, the pieces were snapped into place, and the Victorian Christmas scene complete.

  I’d put saffron in water to steep overnight for the Revel Cakes, and the liquid was a beautiful golden yellow. When I’d made myself a cup of coffee, I got out the biggest mixing bowl, a vast affair with a blue-glazed inside, and made the dough. Kneading it energetically for ten minutes released quite a bit of bottled-up emotion and was probably very therapeutic. Jude came back in while I was pummelling and looked at me with some surprise.

  ‘Revel Cakes,’ I explained, ‘They’re a sort of lightly-fruited spiced bread, really, so the yeast needs to work for two or three hours at least, before I make them.’

  I dropped the yeasty yellow mass into the bowl, covered it in cling film and set it near the Aga to rise.

  ‘Sorry I got the wrong end of the stick yesterday,’ he apologised, putting the kettle on and making more coffee without being asked, one of his main early morning assets, while I started on my next task, a hearty winter casserole of venison for dinner tonight, which we would have with jacket potatoes from Henry’s store, followed by a baked custard. This was apparently Noël’s favourite dessert, just as it had been my Gran’s.

  ‘You certainly jumped to some strange conclusions about me — but then, you’re always doing that!’

  ‘You’re right,’ he admitted. ‘I’ve misjudged you all along. But this time the truth is even weirder! Holly, I can’t believe you’re seriously going to go it alone and have a baby by AI! You can’t have thought—’

  ‘I’ve thought of everything,’ I interrupted. ‘I have it all planned — and it’s none of your business anyway, is it?’

  He sighed and ran his fingers through his dark hair, which was starting to curl, being in need of cutting. ‘It feels like it is — but we can discuss it later.’

  ‘No, we can’t: I’m going to be busy all day and then I’ll have to pack.’

  ‘But, Holly, you don’t really intend to dash off tomorrow morning if the roads are cleared, do you? Why not stay for the Revels? It seems silly to miss them now and the family will be really disappointed if you aren’t there. You could stay one extra night, couldn’t you?’

  I looked at him and weakened slightly, because I so desperately wanted to see them now I’d heard so much about them. . especially Jude as Saint George!

  ‘I suppose I could. . But I don’t have to stay on, I can pack my car and leave right after it’s over, like Michael’s doing.’

  ‘But he’s only driving as far as his friend’s place near Leeds tomorrow night, and you’ll have a much longer drive. Anyway, if you leave immediately, you’ll miss all the fun.’

  ‘What kind of fun?’ I asked suspiciously, remembering Sharon’s hints of some kind of Wicker Woman sacrifice.

  ‘Well, the wassail, for a start.’

  ‘Wassail?’

  ‘A sort of hot apple and ale punch that Nancy brews up.’

  ‘Oh yes, I think she did mention that.’

  ‘And Old Nan, Richard and Henry will all expect you to be there too, right to the end with the rest of the family. So you see, you might as well stay over that night.’

  That brief but wonderful smile flashed across his face like a rare comet and I felt my willpower dissolving faster than sugar in hot water. .

  One more night couldn’t hurt, could it?

  ‘Okay,’ I heard myself say.

  ‘Good.’ He looked pleased, but that was possibly because he knew he was going to get one extra well-cooked dinner before he was forced back onto his usual diet of convenience foods.

  He started off cooking bacon for breakfast while I finished the casserole and put it in the slow oven. The pot custard could go in later, when I baked the Revel Cakes, and possibly a carrot cake — goodness knows, we had enough of those, since Henry was clearly the Carrot King.

  For once, everyone else came down for breakfast at more or less the same time, except Coco, who arrived late demanding black coffee — though I made her eat an omelette too — and then went back up to finish her packing. You’d have thought she’d already have done it, if she was so desperate to leave!

  Guy set off in his big Chelsea tractor right after breakfast with Coco, her white coat a testament to my laundering skills, but her hat still a trifle manky. She’d made it so unendearingly plain that she couldn’t wait to shake the dust of the place off her stilettos that we all gathered outside, prepared to wave her off with huge enthusiasm.

  ‘Goodbye, Horlicks!’ Jess called gaily, but she pretended she hadn’t heard.

  Guy kissed everyone goodbye before he got in, including me, and wished me good luck, though I don’t know why he thought I would need it more than anyone else.

  ‘And by the way, I forgive you for doing the last bit of jigsaw!’ he added.

  ‘It was too tempting and I didn’t think you’d have time this morning. But now Jude can take it back to Oriel’s shop and get half the price refunded.’

  ‘Thrift is clearly your middle name,’ Jude said to me with amusement as we waved goodbye to the vanishing people-carrier. ‘Are you going to come down to the studio later?’

  ‘I could walk down with your lunch early, but I won’t be able to stop — I’ll need to get back and start making fifty fiddly little spiral Revel Cakes. The dough will have risen by then.’

  Or at least, I hoped it would.

  I made my pot custards and the carrot cake, went out to have a long talk over the fence with Lady, then gave Merlin a good brushing in the tackroom, which would be his last before I left.

  That thought made me feel sad: I’d become so attached to him that I would be lost without my faithful shadow following me about. I’d miss Lady, too, and even Billy. .

  We had an early lunch, which Jess didn’t eat a lot of, due to her having searched out and devoured every last remaining chocolate decoration on the tree while everyone else was occupied. The older members of the party had been closeted in the morning room with Road to Rio and Michael, who is house-trained, had washed, dried and pressed his laundry in the utility room.

  I was so busy I should have asked Jess or Michael to take Jude’s lunch down to the studio for me, but instead found myself drawn down there one last time, like iron filings to a magnet.

  And I was glad I had, because the sculpture
was really taking shape! It looked a bit as though a tornado had whirled huge metal leaves into the semblance of a horse and woman, rather than having been purposely constructed: I suppose that was what Jude intended?

  He was deeply absorbed in what he was doing and I put the basket down where he would spot it when he returned to Earth and tiptoed away — or as much as you can tiptoe when wearing wellies.

  Rolling dough into fifty small sausages, winding them into tight spirals and sprinkling them with chopped candied peel and sugar took forever.

  Just as I was transferring the last lot from an oiled muffin tin to the cooling rack, Noël popped in to tell me that their housekeeper, Edwina, had managed to get through in her small estate car, bringing fresh groceries for both them and Becca, so I made a tray of tea and some of the carrot cake and took it through to the sitting room.

  Edwina was a spare, middle-aged woman with severely scraped-back sandy hair and the expression of a martial marmoset. She seemed to have them all organised for their own good, even Tilda, and I could see she was very efficient.

  ‘I found Jude in his studio and he told me what happened and that you were all up here,’ she said. ‘I’ve filled your fridge and freezer, Becca, and you owe me fifty-seven pounds and eighty-five pence — the receipt’s on the worktop by the microwave.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Edwina,’ Becca said gratefully. ‘I’ll ride Nutkin home after breakfast tomorrow, and then perhaps someone could drop my bags off later?’

  ‘I expect Jude will,’ Noël said.

  ‘Jude suggested you and Tilda stay here tonight and come home in the morning and I said it was a good idea,’ Edwina said. ‘It’ll give me a chance to take down the decorations and have a good clean through.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ Noël said. ‘Holly’s made a custard tart for tonight and I was looking forward to it.’

  Dinner being sorted, apart from popping the ready-scrubbed jacket potatoes in the oven, I went up early to change into my red velvet dress: this was, after all, the last family dinner I would have here. I thought I might as well make a bit of effort.

  And, hot on the heels of that thought, it suddenly dawned on me that I would be alone at Old Place with Jude tomorrow night — apart from Merlin and Lady and Billy, of course. . I can’t think why I hadn’t realised that before! But still, he would be in one wing, and I the other. .

  There was still lots of time, so I started packing a few things together, like my laptop and cookbook notes, and bundling Gran’s journals back into the trunk again. . though first I reread the last entry. And then, for some reason, it occurred to me to turn the page and there I found another tiny black and white photo, fixed in with a sort of gummed paper hinge.

  N with his parents, she’d written underneath.

  He showed it to me, then must have dropped it, for I found it one day after he had gone then slipped it into my bag and forgot about it.

  On succeeding pages she’d later added one or two more random entries, mainly to mark tragic events — and hadn’t she already had enough to bear? The one about my mother made me cry:

  It was very hard to lose my only child and a cruel blow to Joseph. But he said we must accept God’s will and not see it as a punishment for any wrongdoing, for he firmly believed that the Almighty was not a vengeful God.

  December 1972

  ‘Holly’s staying until the day after tomorrow,’ Jude told everyone at dinner.

  ‘Oh, good. And then you will be back again soon, now you have found us, won’t you, m’dear?’ asked Noël.

  ‘Of course, I’ll miss you all,’ I said, though there was little likelihood I would ever see them again. .

  ‘Easter,’ he suggested, ‘if not before.’

  ‘There isn’t an Easter Revel too, is there?’

  ‘No, only a little pace egging, that kind of thing,’ he said vaguely. ‘But you’re one of the family now, you should be here.’

  ‘That reminds me,’ I said, picking up the photo, which I’d put inside a folded bit of card next to my plate. ‘I found another picture stuck into the last of Gran’s journals — it’s Ned again, with your parents.’

  I handed the photograph to Noël and he nodded. ‘Oh, yes — I remember this picture of Ned being taken. It was just after he came to live with us.’

  ‘What do you mean, “live with us”?’ asked Jude puzzled. ‘Where else would he live?’

  ‘He means after Ned was orphaned,’ Becca said helpfully.

  ‘No, I don’t know,’ Jude exclaimed. ‘What on earth are you all talking about?’

  ‘I thought you knew — my parents adopted Ned, who was a second cousin. He’d have been two or three years younger than Jess at the time,’ Noël said.

  ‘So. . Holly is only the granddaughter of a connection of the Martlands?’ Jude said, astounded.

  ‘Well, he was a Martland all right, anyone could see that, though through the distaff line, and we always thought of him as our brother. But yes — and actually, I suppose that accounts for why Holly looks like him more than anyone else in the family.’

  ‘Seems like it,’ said Jude. ‘Well, well!’

  Jess asked, puzzled, ‘So is Holly still my auntie, then?’

  ‘Nominally, but the family connection by blood is so diluted it’s transparent,’ Jude said cheerfully.

  ‘But she still is, and always will be, a member of this family,’ Noël said and then, while I slowly digested the implications of his revelation, he meandered on about the Revels and how my arrival had been the end of one thing and the beginning of something new, just as the Revels symbolised the end of the old year and the start of the next.

  ‘And then next Christmas, we’ll all be together again, a new cycle completed,’ he said.

  ‘Except Coco, I hope,’ Tilda put in acerbically.

  ‘She wasn’t so bad in the end, m’dear.’

  ‘Huh!’ Tilda said inelegantly.

  ‘And me,’ said Michael, who had been interestedly listening, ‘I won’t be here.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll always be welcome, too,’ Jude told him, ‘I feel you’re quite one of the family,’ and Michael grinned at him.

  ‘Uncle Jude, if you and Holly aren’t really cousins, does that mean—’ began Jess, but I hastily diverted her by appealing to her greed.

  ‘Jess, why don’t you go and fetch that box of Chocolate Wishes that the Chirks left? I’d forgotten all about them. They’re sort of a chocolate fortune cookie.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ she squealed, running out of the room.

  The wish inside mine said, Follow your heart: you are already in the place you were meant to be.

  If the chocolate hadn’t already been moulded together, I would have suspected Jess of writing it herself and putting it in there.

  ‘So we’re not even kissing cousins any more — or perhaps this means that we are?’ Jude said, following me into the kitchen later while I was stashing a load of dirty crockery in the dishwasher.

  I turned to find him standing too close for comfort and looking down at me very seriously.

  ‘It’s good news anyway, because ever since we kissed, I can’t stop thinking about you and you’re driving me mad!’

  ‘You’re driving me mad too, Jude Martland, but not in a good way!’ I snapped, on the defensive as usual. But this time I knew it was because I didn’t want my heart breaking again — and Jude could do just that, if I let him.

  That sudden smile appeared. ‘Couldn’t we try that kiss again? You might change your mind!’

  ‘No! I’ve had such a rollercoaster of a journey finding out about Gran — and now this, to end it all! I don’t know what I think any more about anything: I’m totally confused.’

  ‘Poor Holly,’ he said sympathetically — and just then Jess burst in to ask if either of us wanted the last Chocolate Wish.

  ‘No, I think I just got the answer I wanted from mine,’ Jude told her.

  Chapter 39

  Signs and Portents

  Right at the end
of her journal, in an entry dated simply ‘Christmas 2001’, Gran had written very poignantly:

  It is poor Holly’s turn to suffer a great loss — that of her husband. But she is still young and I pray that one day she will find long and lasting happiness with someone else.

  Just as I once knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that God still had a purpose for me, I am certain that my prayers for Holly will be answered, like a True Cross on the sampler of my life.

  I don’t think having my heart broken by another Martland is quite what Gran was praying for and Jude certainly didn’t fit into the pattern of my life sampler. In fact, he was more in the nature of a huge, tangled knot, rather than a True Cross, and I’m sure she herself would have described him as a great streak of nowt — I could hear her saying it now.

  What on earth was I thinking of, agreeing to stay on tomorrow, for Twelfth Night?

  Becca got up early this morning, which I was grateful for, since it meant I wasn’t left alone with Jude. After a largely sleepless night I still felt just as confused about my feelings for him — and about his intentions.

  When they came back in from the stables, bringing that now-familiar sweet smell of horses with them, Jude didn’t linger helpfully in the kitchen, but went off to shower and change and by the time he’d come down again the rest of the party had started to appear, too.

  There was that strange last-day-of-the-house-party feel about things that I was familiar with at second-hand: a reluctance to leave, mingled with looking forward to being home. But since I shared it for once, I found it unsettling. .

  ‘We didn’t put the horses out first thing, since Becca and Nutkin are off after breakfast,’ Jude said, constructing a giant egg and bacon sandwich using a large, floury bap.

  ‘We thought they might as well spend a little time together in the stable before we go, then Jude can put Lady and Billy out in the paddock,’ Becca said. ‘I mucked out yesterday, so a bit of a clean-up should do the trick.’