The Magic of Christmas

by Trisha Ashley

  ‘Dark Heart’s how the woman Dad was having an affair with signed herself,’ Jasper explained helpfully. Roly was leaning on his arm as he picked his way over the smooth, slightly slippery stones. ‘It’s that novelist woman — Polly Darke. Would you believe it? She’s got to be even older than Mum, and a complete hag.’

  ‘Thank you, darling,’ I said. ‘I think she is fashionably haggard, rather than a hag, really. And I’m sorry, Roly, I didn’t mean to tell you about her. It just slipped out.’

  ‘Boy must have been mad!’ Unks exclaimed, patting my arm. ‘Wondered why she turned up to the funeral. Wearing a black see-through nightdress, too. Woman’s got more bones than a picked chicken carcass!’

  ‘Was she in church? I didn’t actually take in most of who was and who wasn’t.’

  ‘She was there, Mum, but I thought Uncle Nick was going to throw her out when she tried to sit in one of the front pews. And it was a black chiffon dress, Unks — but she’s, like, fifty years too old to wear it.’

  I think that might have been a slight exaggeration, but I didn’t feel I was a winner in the sartorial stakes either. I didn’t have any black, so was wearing a floaty, dark, paisley-patterned Indian dress over a long pink crinkle-cotton skirt, both borrowed from Annie. I’d belted it severely in around my waist, but I still looked like Widow Twankey.

  ‘Woman’s got a nerve turning up at all, if she was carrying on with Tom! Well, well, it just goes to show you that the boy wasn’t himself the last few years.’ Roly shook his head.

  ‘His character had changed …’ I began cautiously, and then broke off as the nose of Tom’s white van appeared, followed by a cortège of assorted vehicles. ‘Here they come! Dave must have got tired of waiting and decided to lead the way instead.’

  ‘Let’s have a drink before battle commences, shall we?’ Roly suggested.

  ‘It’s only tea or coffee, Unks, unless you want Jasper to fetch you a glass of elderberry wine? I’ve hidden a few bottles under the table in the corner, just in case. I didn’t want this to turn into some kind of drunken revel and go on for hours.’

  ‘Quite right, but I’ve got some brandy in my cane,’ he said. ‘Ah, Annie, my dear …!’

  We established him in the greenhouse, on one of the chairs grouped before a veritable thicket of tomato plants and rampant bell peppers, and he unscrewed the top of his cane and poured a generous slug of brandy into his tea while I went and peeped out of the entrance.

  As the cars arrived, people milled about in front of the cottage, so Jasper went out to usher them in the right direction and I retreated back to Unks. I expect I should have stood in the doorway and accepted their condolences as they came in, but I couldn’t face it.

  The mourners massed in the entrance like worried sheep, nearly balked and broke away, then came slowly in a surge towards me. At the last minute most of them sheered off and spread out to range up and down the trestle tables, probably looking for alcohol.

  I accepted a slug of brandy in my teacup from Roly and sat down.

  ‘That’s it: let them come to you and do the polite,’ Unks said. ‘The ones with manners, anyway. Half of this lot weren’t at the funeral — probably just after food and drink. Freeloaders!’

  ‘Weren’t they? The church did seem to be full, though, and I thought the new vicar made a brave job of it.’

  ‘Not bad. Bit much to expect him to do a complete stranger’s funeral two seconds after he arrives. Let’s hope he lasts longer than the last vicar. Ah, here’s Nigel.’

  Roly’s portly retired stockbroker son was indeed forging towards us, though there was no sign of his wife. Still, I hadn’t expected even Nigel, who didn’t seem to care much for the North — or indeed Tom, for that matter, whom he considered a cuckoo in the nest — to make the effort to come today.

  ‘My son and heir,’ Roly said drily in my ear. ‘And unless Nick and that French woman get a move on, nearly the last in the line.’ He nudged me with a sharp elbow. ‘What do you think, Lizzy — is she past it?’

  Leila, chic in a vintage Chanel suit, bold red lipstick and with her hair drawn sleekly back like a bleached Paloma Picasso lookalike, stood poised in the doorway looking capable of anything, though the curl of her lip said exactly what she thought of her current location. Just wait till she saw the catering!

  Nick, wearing his best sardonic Mr Rochester expression, loomed behind her.

  ‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Unks,’ I said.

  Chapter 10: Cornish Mist

  I found myself mentally writing the recipe for a funeral feast, as though it was something I could put into one of the Chronicles.

  Recipe for a Fine Funeral Feast

  Step 1: In a large greenhouse mix together approximately sixty assorted mourners, half of them uninvited, several wearing wildly inappropriate surfer garments, and some that you’re certain you’ve never met before in your entire life hovering furtively around the edges.

  Step 2: Add two police officers steeped in dark suspicions, a mad historical novelist dressed like the porno version of a Poldark widow, and a depleted folk/rock group all wearing identical black ‘Gaia Rocks!’ T-shirts.

  Step 3: Gently fold in your best friend, trying valiantly to suppress her natural expression of cheerfulness; a mourning, lightly intoxicated nonagenarian great-uncle by marriage; a tall, dark and glowering chef and his acidulated and tangy French wife (soon to be ex and who might, or might not, have been having a fling with your late husband), and the man from the garage who’d volunteered to drive Tom to the funeral in his own white van with the ‘Board Rigid’ logo up the side.

  Step 4: Throw in a pompous stockbroker, the entire Mystery Play committee, including a nervous but well-meaning vicar and a furtive-looking youngish man in a strangely mossy green suit, who has forgotten to remove his Rambo-style headband.

  Step 5: Sprinkle with borrowed WI tea and coffee urns and crockery, garnish with triangular sandwiches, halved scones spread with clotted cream and home-made blackcurrant jam, trays of cubed chocolate Spudge on cocktail sticks, wedges of bread-and-butter pudding and bowls of Cornish Mist.

  Step 6: Stir well before it coagulates into clumps or — even worse — curdles.

  Step 7: Garnish with assorted hens, a three-legged whippet, and one yapping haggis-sized hairball that someone, probably Jasper, has let out of the cottage.

  Step 8: Stand back, since once warm the mixture could go up like a rocket — and down like the stick …

  But now the Pharamond family (and one or two of the bolder hens) began slowly to converge on me from all directions. Nigel reached me first, but once he’d kissed my cheek and said he was very sorry he wandered off again, probably in search of non-existent sherry.

  Great-aunt Mimi was pushing Juno in a wheelchair, though she’d told me last night she was hoping Dr Patel (not KP, but his daughter) was going to let her start walking again by the end of the week. The expression on her face was grimly stoical, at odds with the gaily frivolous arch of tissue-paper flowers Mimi’d attached to the back of the chair.

  ‘Isn’t that the bower from the Adam and Eve temptation scene that the Infants’ School made last year — the one that kept falling on the snake?’ Annie asked.

  ‘Yes. Thought it would brighten things up,’ Mimi agreed. ‘Damned gloomy things, funerals,’ she added. ‘Better if he’d gone ages ago, because he was nowhere near as much fun, the last few years.’

  ‘Mimi!’ protested Juno. ‘What a thing to say!’

  I focused slightly (for the shot of brandy had been generous, on an empty stomach; I hadn’t been able to eat anything before the funeral). ‘Oh, did you notice that too, Mimi?’

  She leaned over Juno’s chair towards me. ‘Possessed!’ she hissed. ‘The devil was looking out of his eyes!’

  Juno twisted her head upwards. ‘Mimi, you haven’t taken your pill today, have you? Where have you hidden it?’

  Mimi backed off, looking guilty and slightly agitated. ‘I didn’t need
it — why do I need it? Lizzy doesn’t need one, and she’s seen the devil looking out, too!’

  ‘She’s quite right, I did,’ I assured Juno. ‘And Mimi seems fine to me. I’ll get her a glass of elderberry wine, that’ll do her good. I’ve hidden it under the end table, so the surfers and Mummers don’t get drunk and silly. Sillier,’ I added, for they seemed to have joined forces behind the tomato plants, together with some flagons and bottles I certainly hadn’t supplied.

  As well as the wine I collected a plate of food, since I was suddenly ravenous. One or two people spoke to me (including one of the WI ladies, who complimented me on the garnish of golden quail eggs, an effect I achieved by boiling them wrapped in onion skins), but I was glad I’d decided to dispense with the moving-about-graciously-thanking-everyone-for-coming thing, because I didn’t feel at all thankful to most of them.

  The Mummers of Invention — or what was left of them — now struck up a lively tune at one end of the greenhouse. The drippy girl (and I can only assume Tom was desperate when he slept with her) stuck one finger in her ear and started to drone a song. She’d have to do her own harmonising without Tom, but since she talks to herself worriedly all the time just like Alice’s white rabbit, that shouldn’t cause her any great problem.

  I gave Mimi her glass of wine and then sat next to Unks, eating steadily, as is my usual wont when stressed, unhappy, worried … or happy, cheerful and optimistic. Let’s face it, I eat. That morning’s fast was simply an aberration.

  Leila seemed to have the same thought. ‘If you didn’t do all that digging and outdoor work, you would be as fat as a pig,’ she commented, coming to a halt in her stilettos in front of us, Nick right behind her like an attendant thundercloud. Then she kissed the air about an inch from Unks’ cheek and said, ‘Well Roland, how are you?’

  ‘Fine, Leila,’ he said cautiously. ‘Nick, you haven’t heard how the two thirty at Haydock went, have you? Only I had a sure thing running. Happy Wave out of Surfer’s Paradise — couldn’t go wrong with that pedigree, could it?’

  ‘On a day like today, you can have no interest in horse racing!’ Leila exclaimed, scandalised, and Roly looked slightly abashed.

  ‘Joe’s probably listening to it on the car radio, Unks,’ I said. ‘I’ll go and ask him in a minute. In fact,’ I added slightly worriedly, ‘I ought to go and see where Jasper is.’

  ‘It’s all right, I saw him sitting on the Daimler running board talking to Joe when I came in,’ Nick said. ‘That’s a weird-looking dog he’s got! I thought you’d go for another lurcher, like Harriet.’

  I pulled a face. ‘It’s one of Annie’s strays. We’re only supposed to be fostering it, so it wasn’t put down, but she and Jasper have taken a shine to each other. I’m going to end up looking after it when he goes to university, I can see.’

  One more responsibility, when it came to leaving Perseverance Cottage and forging a new life on my own, too …

  Leila seemed to be thinking along the same lines, for after looking me over in her usual critical way, as though she found me wanting in all aspects (which she probably did), she said in her strongly Parisian-accented English, ‘So, Lizzy, I expect you will be moving on, now? Those books are your only real source of income, are they not? And those you can write anywhere.’

  ‘But they are the Perseverance Chronicles,’ Juno pointed out, ‘about her life here in Perseverance Cottage — that’s the whole point! All Lizzy’s daily struggles — that’s what her readers like.’

  ‘They’ll certainly love the next volume, then, even though I’m ending on a happier note, before the tragedy. After that,’ I shrugged, ‘who knows?’

  ‘But you must keep writing them and including the wonderful recipes,’ Juno enthused, her square, rather weather-beaten face animated. I hadn’t realised she was a fan.

  ‘Oh God,’ groaned Nick, temporarily distracted from silent thundercloud mode, ‘don’t remind me! Why anyone should find Lizzy’s sugary, fatty recipes for nursery puddings and inedible bakes of any interest at all entirely beats me. And what’s more, wasn’t that bowl of yellow, lemon-flavoured stuff someone just offered me candyfloss?’

  ‘Cornish Mist,’ I said automatically, and Leila snorted.

  Roly, who’d been sitting looking quietly baffled, suddenly put in, ‘What did you mean, Leila, that Lizzy would be moving on? Moving on where?’

  ‘I suppose Leila meant that I would be looking for somewhere else to live, Unks.’ I smiled at him affectionately. ‘It’s been wonderfully kind of you to let us have Perseverance Cottage all these years, when you might have rented it out for a decent amount, but I realise you’ll have other plans for it now.’

  ‘That’s right,’ agreed Nigel belligerently. He’d suddenly reappeared behind his father and was swaying slightly, like a pot-bellied palm tree in a breeze. I couldn’t imagine him hobnobbing with the Mummers and surfers, so he must have found the elderberry wine the way pigs find truffles. ‘Told you it was stupid, not charging them rent all this time, Father — and Tom not even a real Pharamond! Besides, the place is too big for Lizzy on her own. I’d do it up and sell it — get a fortune for it, the way house prices are rising round here.’

  ‘Would you?’ Unks said coldly. ‘Perhaps you’d sell off the rest of the estate for housing too, while you were at it?’

  ‘Probably wouldn’t get planning permission. Sodding red squirrels and trees are more important than people,’ he slurred. ‘But you could divide the Hall up into apartments — executive ones — and keep the best for yourself. Make a huge profit!’ His eyes lit up with the fire of greed.

  ‘So, that’s what you would do to the Pharamond estate, Nigel, is it?’ Unks said. ‘If you inherited it, of course.’

  ‘But he is the heir, is he not?’ Leila said. ‘And his ideas, they are eminently practical!’

  ‘Nigel shouldn’t count his chickens before they are hatched. The entail on the estate was broken long ago, don’t forget, so it is mine to leave to whoever I wish.’

  Roly turned his head and smiled at me: ‘I told Tom that I was making Perseverance Cottage over to him and Lizzy, but now it will be Lizzy’s home for as long as she needs it — and Jasper’s, of course.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Unks! That is so sweet of you!’ I said, tears coming to my eyes, and kissed the top of his head.

  ‘It’s been a pleasure having you living so close, my dear. And the boy’s a Pharamond — he should grow up here and regard it as his home.’

  ‘But he isn’t really a Pharamond, Father,’ Nigel pointed out, swiftly sobered by the possibility of disinheritance.

  ‘Course he is,’ Mimi said, leaning on the wheelchair and waving her empty glass emphatically, and Juno twisted her head round and gave her another anxious look. She would be getting a crick in it at this rate. ‘Only have to look at him to know that. The boy’s the spit of Nick.’

  There was a small silence, which Unks broke by saying drily, ‘Before anyone lets their imagination run riot, when Tom’s mother asked me to take Tom on, she confessed to me that she was having an affair with Leo before her first husband died, and she was pretty sure Tom was his. I promised not to say anything, but I feel current circumstances absolve me from that now.’

  ‘His mother said that? Oh, I wish she’d told him!’ I said indignantly. ‘He always had a chip on his shoulder about not really being a Pharamond, but he wouldn’t hear a word against her. Instead, he pretty well accused me of—’

  I broke off hastily, meeting Nick’s eyes, and went pink. ‘Well, I just wish he’d known, that’s all.’

  ‘I think you, Roland, are just saying this to cover up the truth! Jasper is Nick’s child — Tom told me this himself,’ Leila exclaimed unguardedly. ‘They had an affair when they were very young, and then they picked it up again after she married Tom.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Unks said firmly. ‘Boy-and-girl affair one summer and fought like cat and dog — and then Nick went off on his travels and that was that. Dare say they har
dly even saw each other for years, and Lizzy was mad about Tom when they married, anyone could see that!’

  ‘Of course it isn’t true,’ I said hotly. ‘Jasper is Tom’s child. But I’m glad to have the truth I suspected come out at last, even if it is a bit late in the day.’

  Nick was glaring at his wife. ‘You mean, Tom told you that and you believed it? When did he tell you?’

  ‘Oh, years ago.’

  ‘It can’t have been that many years ago. He only got that stupid idea after Jasper had meningitis,’ I said.

  ‘I think we all know you’ve had a difficult time with him lately,’ Roly remarked, to my surprise. ‘I hear things — know more than you think.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m afraid it had got to the stage where I was going to leave him, Unks,’ I confessed. ‘I couldn’t take any more. I was just waiting for Jasper to be settled at university.’

  ‘Well, now you don’t have to,’ Mimi said brightly. ‘You can stay here and dear Jasper can come home in the holidays. Such a clever boy!’ She took a bowl of Cornish Mist from a passing tray and dug in her pastry fork. ‘Mmm!’

  Then, yellow-moustached, she looked up again at our rather silently thoughtful tableau. ‘Where’s Tom? He’s missing all this lovely food and he is so fond of his stodgy puds.’

  ‘He’s gone, Mimi,’ Juno said shortly. ‘I’ll explain later.’

  Mimi’s brain had clearly done one of its little loops and shunted Tom’s death into a siding. I wished mine would.

  ‘Oh, will you? Good,’ she said, her eyes wandering around the very motley crowd. ‘Look, that woman’s wearing a black baby-doll nightdress! Should I have come in fancy dress too, Lizzy?’

  ‘Good grief, it’s that Polly Darke woman! As if it wasn’t bad enough her coming to the funeral, without turning up in your home, Lizzy!’ Annie exclaimed, scandalised, appearing beside me suddenly with her bob of coppery hair attractively ruffled and her cheeks flushed — but then, it was getting slightly steamy in the greenhouse, in more ways than one.