The Magic of Christmas

by Trisha Ashley

  Mind you, Tom was not much of a reader, though luckily that meant he had never, to my knowledge, even opened one of my Perseverance Chronicles.

  ‘No, Tom, I’m looking for a particular marzipan petit four recipe for the Christmas Pudding Circle to try,’ I said patiently. ‘The only love letters I’ve got are a couple of short notes from you, and they’re so old the ink’s faded.’

  ‘So you say, but I don’t find you poring over them all the time, like you do over Nick’s precious postcards,’ he said, going to wash his hands at the kitchen sink.

  I dished out some of the casserole that was simmering gently on the stove and put it on a tray, together with a chunk of home-made bread, since he now preferred to take all his meals alone in the sitting room in front of his giant TV. Jasper and I had the old set in the kitchen and tended to leave him in sole possession.

  He picked up the bowl of stew now and stared into it like a sibylline oracle, but the only message he was likely to read was ‘Eat this or go hungry.’

  ‘What are these black things, decayed sheep’s eyeballs?’

  ‘Prunes. It’s Moroccan lamb tagine.’

  From his expression you would have thought I’d offered him a dish of lightly seasoned bat entrails.

  ‘And I suppose Nick gave you the recipe. What else has he given you lately?’ he said, with a wealth of unpleasant innuendo. ‘Don’t think I haven’t noticed that your son looks more like him every day!’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t start on that again!’ I snapped, adding recklessly, ‘You know very well why Jasper looks like Nick, just as you look like Great-uncle Roly: your mother must have been having an affair with Leo Pharamond while she was still married to her first husband! Why don’t you ask her?’

  It was certainly obvious to everyone else, since those slaty purple-grey eyes and raven-black hair marked out all the Pharamonds instantly. But Tom went livid and hissed like a Mafia villain in a bad film, ‘Never ever malign my mother’s name again like that — do you hear me?’

  Then he followed this up by hurling the plate of hot casserole at the wall with enormous force, shattering it and sending fragments of bowl and spatters of food everywhere. He’d never been physically violent (I wouldn’t have stood for it for one second) so I don’t think he was particularly aiming at me, but a substantial chunk of green-glazed Denby pottery hit my cheekbone and fell at my feet.

  It was a shock, though, and I stood there transfixed and staring at him, one hand to my face, in a silence broken only by the occasional slither and plop of a descending prune. Suddenly finding myself released from thrall, I turned and walked out of the door, dabbing lamb tagine off my face with the hem of my pale green T-shirt as I went, then headed towards the village.

  I must have looked a mess, but luckily it was early evening and few people were about, for the Pied Piper of TV dinners had called them all away, using the theme tune of the popular soap series Cotton Common as lure.

  I didn’t have far to go for refuge. Annie’s father used to be the vicar here, but now that he and his wife are alleviating the boredom of retirement by doing VSO work in Africa, Annie has a tiny Victorian red-brick terraced cottage in the main street of Middlemoss.

  ‘Lizzy!’ she exclaimed, looking horrified at discovering me stained and spattered on her doorstep. ‘Is that dried blood on your face and T-shirt? What on earth has happened?’

  ‘I think it’s only prune juice and gravy, actually,’ I reassured her, touching my cheek cautiously. ‘A bit of plate did hit me, but it must have had a round edge.’

  ‘Plate?’ she repeated blankly, drawing me in and closing the front door.

  ‘Yes, one of those lovely green Denby soup bowls we had as a wedding present from your parents.’

  ‘Look, come into the kitchen and I’ll clean you up with warm water and lint while you tell me all about it,’ she said soothingly.

  The lint sounded very Gone With the Wind — but then, she has all the Girl Guide badges and I don’t suppose the First Aid one has changed for years. So I followed her in and sank down on the nearest rush-bottomed chair, my legs suddenly going wobbly. Trinity (Trinny, for short), Annie’s three-legged mutt, regarded me lambently from her basket, tail thumping.

  ‘There’s nothing much to tell, really,’ I said. ‘Tom flew into one of his rages and lobbed his dinner at the wall.’

  ‘Oh, Lizzy!’

  ‘I said something that made him angry and he just totally lost it this time. I don’t think he was actually aiming at me, though it’s hard to tell since he’s such a rotten shot and — ouch!’ I added, as she dabbed my face with the warm, damp lint.

  ‘The skin isn’t cut, but I think you might get a bruise on your cheek,’ she said, wringing the cloth out. ‘I could put some arnica ointment on it.’

  ‘I don’t think I could live with that smell so close to my nose, Annie,’ I said dubiously, but her next suggestion, that we break out the bottle of Remy Martin, which she keeps in stock because her father always swore by it in times of crisis, met with a better reception.

  ‘I think you really ought to leave Tom right away, Lizzy,’ Annie suggested worriedly. ‘He’s been so increasingly horrible to you that it’s practically verbal abuse — and now this!’

  ‘I’m just glad Jasper wasn’t there,’ I said, topping my glass up and feeling much better. ‘He’s gone straight from the archaeological dig to a friend’s house, and won’t be back till about ten.’

  ‘His exam results should be here any time now, shouldn’t they?’

  ‘Yes, only a couple more days.’ I sipped my brandy and sighed. ‘Even though I’ll miss him, it’ll be such a relief to have him safely off to university in October, because I live in dread that Tom will suddenly tell him to his face that he doesn’t think he’s really his son. That would be even more hurtful than ignoring him, the way he’s been doing the last couple of years.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s got into Tom,’ Annie said sadly. ‘He always had so much charm … as long as he got his own way.’

  ‘He still does charm everyone else. I’m sure no one would believe me if I told them what he’s really like at home.’

  ‘True, but he’s so used to me being around, he’s let the mask slip sometimes, so I’ve seen it for myself,’ Annie said. ‘He was all right with Jasper for the first few years, though, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Well, he didn’t take a lot of notice of him, but he was OK. But he started to turn colder towards me even before he got this strange idea that I had a fling with Nick, so I think whoever he’s been having an affair with since then has had a really bad effect on his character.’

  ‘You did have a fling with Nick,’ Annie pointed out fairly.

  ‘Oh, come on, Annie! I was way too young and anyway, it only lasted about a fortnight before he told me he was going abroad for a year because he wasn’t changing his life-plans for my sake. I didn’t see him after that until the day I got married to Tom and he turned up then with Leila in tow — do you remember?’

  ‘Gosh, yes. She was so scarily chic, in a Parisian sort of way, that she made me feel like a country bumpkin — she still does! But I thought it was nice of Nick to make the effort, even though he and Tom had grown apart over the years. They never had a lot in common, did they?’

  ‘I think the main problem was that Tom always felt jealous of Nick, since Nick was a real Pharamond and Roly’s grandson, whereas he was just a Pharamond because his mother had married one. Allegedly,’ I added darkly.

  ‘It’s odd how things turn out,’ mused Annie, putting away the bowl of water and tossing the lint into the kitchen bin. ‘You always had much more in common with Nick than with Tom.’

  ‘How on earth can you say that, when we argue all the time?’ I demanded incredulously. ‘The only thing Nick and I have ever had in common is a love of food, even if mine is much less cordon bleu.’

  Though of course it is true that food has played an important part in both our families. The search fo
r a good meal in the wrong part of a foreign city was the downfall of my diplomat parents and would be the downfall of my figure, too, were I ever to stop moving long enough for the fat to settle.

  As to the Pharamonds, the gene for cooking was introduced into the family by a Victorian heir who married the plebeian but wealthy heiress Bessie Martin, only to die of a surfeit of home-cooked love some forty years later, with a fond smile on his lips and a biscuit empire to hand on to his offspring.

  ‘You and Nick have both got short tempers and you love Middlemoss more than anywhere else on earth,’ Annie said. ‘And of course I know that Jasper is Tom’s son, but it’s unfortunate that he’s looking more and more like Nick with every passing year.’

  ‘Well, yes, that’s what Tom said earlier, so I reminded him about the rumours that his mother had an affair with Leo Pharamond before her first husband was killed, and that’s what started the argument off! He always flies into a complete rage if I say anything against his sainted mother.’

  ‘It’s quite a coincidence that Leo Pharamond and her first husband were both not only racing drivers but killed in car crashes,’ Annie said, ‘though there did seem to be a lot of fatal crashes in the early days.’

  ‘Someone told me they called her the Black Widow after Leo died, so it’s not surprising her third husband gave it up and whisked her off back to Argentina,’ I said.

  Tom’s mother had started a whole new life out there, but her firstborn was packed off to boarding school and farmed out at Pharamond Hall in the holidays. That made us both orphans in a way, which had once seemed to make a bond …

  Annie said, ‘Tom’s hardly seen his mother over the years, has he?’

  ‘No, or his half-siblings. He blames it all on his stepfather, of course, and won’t hear a word against her. Come to that, I’ve only met her a couple of times and we can’t be said to have bonded.’

  ‘You’d think she’d at least be interested in her grandson — Jasper’s such a lovely boy,’ Annie said fondly.

  ‘I used to send her his school photos, but since I never got any response, I gave up. In fact, with all this rejection, it’s wonderful that poor Jasper isn’t bitter and twisted, too!’

  ‘Oh, he’s much too sensible and he knows we all love him: me, Roly, even Mimi.’

  I considered Unks’ unmarried sister, Mimi, who is not at all maternal and whose passions are reserved for the walled garden she tends behind the Hall. ‘You’re right, she does seem to like him, despite his not being any form of plant life.’

  ‘And Nick is fond of him — Jasper and he get on well.’

  ‘He only really sees him during our occasional Sunday lunch up at the Hall, when we’re all on our best behaviour for Roly’s sake, because Tom’s made it abundantly clear he isn’t welcome at Perseverance Cottage.’

  ‘How difficult it all is!’ Annie sighed, which was the under-statement of the year. ‘I always agreed with Mum and Dad that marriage should be for ever, but once Tom started having affairs and being really nasty to you and Jasper, I changed my mind. He’s not at all the man you married.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I reflected. ‘I think perhaps he is, it’s just that his true nature was hidden underneath all that charm. His sarcastic tongue has suddenly become a lot more vicious, though, which I expect is because he really wants me out of the cottage now, but I mean to try and stick to my original plan and hang on until I’ve got Jasper settled at university. It doesn’t do a lot for my self-confidence when Tom’s constantly belittling me and telling me how useless I am, though.’

  ‘You’re not useless,’ she said, ‘you’ve been practically self-sufficient for years in fruit, vegetables and eggs, made a lovely home for him and Jasper, and written all those wonderful books.’

  ‘I don’t actually get paid very much for the Chronicles — they’re a bit of a niche market — and I’m running late with the next, what with one thing and another.’

  ‘I suppose it’s hard to think up funny anecdotes to go between the recipes and gardening stuff, what with all the worry about Tom. But if you want to leave him right now, you know you and Jasper can move in here any time you like, and stay as long as you want,’ she offered generously.

  ‘I do know, and it’s very kind of you,’ I said gratefully, not pointing out that her cottage isn’t much bigger than a doll’s house: two tiny rooms up and down, crammed so full of bric-a-brac you can hardly expand your lungs to full capacity without nudging something over. Jasper, when he visits, tends to stand in the corner with his arms folded so as not to damage anything.

  ‘Once Jasper is at university I might have to take you up on that offer, but very temporarily. I’ll still need to make a home for him to come back to. I’ll have to get a job stacking supermarket shelves, so I can rent somewhere. I’m not really qualified to do anything else.’

  ‘Then what about Posh Pet-sitters? Business is expanding hugely since I added general pet-feeding and care to the dog-walking, and I could do with an assistant.’

  Annie set up Posh Pet-sitters several years ago with a loan from her parents, and business seemed to be building up nicely, due to the patronage of several of the actors from the long-running drama Cotton Common, set in a turn-of-the-century Lancashire factory town, who have suddenly ‘discovered’ the three villages that comprise the Mosses.

  Where they led, other minor celebrities followed, since although off the beaten track, we’re within commuting distance of Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool and the M6, and in pretty countryside just where the last beacon-topped hills slowly subside into the fertile farmland that runs west to the coast.

  Some of the actors live in the new walled and gated estate of swish detached houses in Mossrow, but others have snapped up whatever has appeared on the market, from flats in the former Pharamond’s Butterflake Biscuit factory, to old cottages and farms.

  ‘Did you go and see Ritch Rainford yesterday?’ I asked, suddenly remembering how excited Annie had been at getting a call from the singer-turned-actor who plays Seth Steele, the ruggedly handsome mill owner in Cotton Common. (All that alliteration must have been too much for the producers of the series to resist!)

  He’s bought the old vicarage where Annie’s family used to live, a large and rambling Victorian building with a brick-walled garden, in severe need of TLC and loads of cash. (The new vicar is now housed in an unpretentious bungalow next to the church.)

  Annie’s pleasantly homely face, framed in a glossy pudding-bowl bob of copper hair, took on an unusually rapt — almost holy — expression and her blue-grey eyes went misty. ‘Oh, yes! He’s …’ She stopped, apparently lost for superlatives.

  ‘Sexy as dark chocolate?’ I suggested. ‘Toothsomely rum truffle?’

  ‘Just — wonderful,’ she said simply. ‘He has such charisma, it was as though a … a golden light was shining all around him.’

  ‘Bloody hell! That sounds more like finding all the silver charms in your slice of Christmas pudding at once!’ I stared at her, but she was lost in a trance.

  ‘Lizzy, he’s so kind, too! When I explained that I used to live at the vicarage, he took me around and showed me all the improvements he’s made, and told me what else he was going to do. Then he just handed me a set of keys to the house so he could call me up any time to go and exercise or feed his dog.’

  ‘Well, if your clients didn’t do that, you wouldn’t be able to get in,’ I said drily. ‘What sort of dog does he have?’

  ‘A white bull terrier bitch called Flo — very good-natured, though I might have to be careful around other dogs.’

  ‘And what’s the new vicar like?’ I asked, but she hadn’t noticed, being full of Ritch Rainford to the point where her bedazzled eyes couldn’t really take in another man. However, a crush on a handsome actor was not likely to get her anywhere.

  Annie was once engaged, but was jilted with her feet practically on the carpeted church aisle. Since then she had safely confined her affections to unsuitable — and unattainab
le — actors.

  ‘I’ve heard he’s single and has red hair,’ I said encouragingly since, despite her own copper locks, she has a weakness for redheaded men.

  ‘He hasn’t got red hair, he’s blond!’ she protested indignantly, and I saw that she was still thinking of Ritch Rainford. Perhaps I ought to watch Cotton Common to see what all the excitement was about.

  Eventually Annie ran me home, since I wanted to be there when Jasper returned. I was by then attired in one of her voluminous cardigans — a bilious green, with loosely attached knitted pink roses — to hide the dried but dubious-looking stains on my T-shirt.

  She said she was going to come in with me and give Tom a piece of her mind, which would not have gone down well, but luckily Tom, his van and some of his clothes had vanished. He’d also locked me out; but not only did Annie have our key on her ring, I kept one hidden under a flower pot, so that wasn’t a problem.

  ‘Looks like he’s gone away again,’ I said gratefully. ‘Thank goodness for that.’

  Of course he hadn’t thought to feed the hens, who had put themselves to bed in disgust, or the quail, so Annie helped me to shut everything up safely for the night.

  As we walked back to the cottage Uncle Roly Pharamond’s gamekeeper, Caz Naylor, sidled out of a small outbuilding and, with a brief salute, flitted away through the shadows towards the woods behind the cottage.

  He’s a foxy-looking young man, with dark auburn hair, evasive amber eyes and a tendency to address me, on the rare occasions when he speaks, as ‘our Lizzy’, thus acknowledging a distant relationship that all the Naylors in the area seemed to know about from the minute I set foot in the place for the first time at the age of eleven.

  Annie looked startled: ‘Wasn’t that Caz? What’s he doing here?’

  ‘I let him have the use of the old chest freezer in there. Since I cut down on the amount of stuff I grow, I don’t need it,’ I said, for I’d been slowly running things down ready for the moment that I knew was fast approaching, when I must leave Perseverance Cottage. ‘He comes and goes as he pleases.’