Christmas At Thrush Green (22 page)

As he dusted down his trousers, Winnie thanked him. ‘You’re a dear man, Edward. What would I do without you!’

‘It’s a pleasure, Winnie, you know that. Now, can you and Jenny manage the rest?’

‘Yes, we’re fine now. We can reach the back by leaning over the banisters. And Jenny is quite happy to stand on the step-ladder to do the top at the front. We shall have a lovely time decorating it. And I expect Donald will be hovering somewhere, telling me that I’ve tied something on crookedly.’

Winnie laughed, a little embarrassed at what she’d said, but Edward was used to it. Everyone knew that Winnie frequently chatted to her late, much-loved husband.

Edward kissed her soft, wrinkled cheek and to Jenny said, ‘You’ll come over on New Year’s Eve, won’t you, Jenny?’

‘Thanks, Mr Young, but I won’t. I’m going to have supper with some friends in Lulling and will be back here in time to see Mrs Bailey is tucked up safe and sound. I’ll pop in for a moment when I come to collect her.’

‘I won’t stay until midnight, Edward,’ Winnie explained. ‘That’s much too late for me.’

‘You stay just as long as you want, and not a moment more. I’ll see you both at church on Christmas Day?’

‘Of course,’ said Winnie. ‘And here’s a present for you and Joan.’

‘Oh, Winnie, you shouldn’t have,’ protested Edward, taking what felt remarkably like a bottle wrapped up in pretty festive paper.

‘It’s more a thank you for helping with the tree. Open it whenever you want.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t dream of opening it until Christmas Day,’ replied Edward and, with a wave, he went out of the front door, closing it quietly behind him.

Winnie and Jenny stood looking at the bare tree.

‘Let’s have our elevenses first,’ said Winnie, ‘then we’ll get to work. What fun we’ll have!’

 

Shortly before a quarter to four, Charles Henstock’s car drew up outside Ella’s house. The forecasters had been right. Light snow was falling. There wasn’t yet enough to settle on the grass, but the bushes and shrubs in the gardens surrounding Thrush Green looked as though someone had sprinkled icing sugar over them.

‘You go on across to Rectory Cottages, Charles,’ Dimity said. ‘As chairman, you should be there before it starts. I’ll see Ella into the cottage.’

As Charles made his way to Rectory Cottages, he recalled the happy years that he had lived in Thrush Green rectory. He knew many people, especially Edward, cheered when it had burned down but he had been fond of it. Also, living inside it meant that he didn’t have to look at its somewhat unlovely Victorian embellishments on the outside.

Meanwhile, Dimity helped Ella from the car, taking care to protect the broken wrist. She took Ella’s good arm as they went through the gate but Ella shrugged it off.

‘I’m perfectly capable, thank you!’ she said gruffly, and Dimity left her to it.

However, a moment later, Ella had to ask for help since the key to the front door was in the bottom of her huge untidy handbag and, after rummaging in it for a moment, she shoved it at her old friend and said, ‘Go on then, you find it.’

Dimity never took offence at Ella’s abruptness. After all, they had shared this cottage for long enough, before Charles had swept her off to the rectory, and she knew all Ella’s foibles and forgave her for them.

‘At least it’s warm in here,’ Dimity said, having opened the front door and gone in. ‘It would have been so silly to have turned off the heating and ended up with frozen pipes.’

Ella had tried to persuade Dimity to drive up to the cottage on Sunday to turn off the heating since there was no one in the house, but Dimity had rightly told her it was a false economy.

‘Now, are you going to be all right on your own?’ she asked Ella. ‘I don’t have to go to the drinks party. I can stay here and help, if you like.’

‘I don’t like,’ said Ella, shuffling through a pile of post that she had picked up from the front door mat.

‘Fine!’ replied Dimity, not in the least put out. ‘We’ll be about an hour. But promise you’ll ring me if you need any help. You’ve got the Cartwrights’ number.’

Ella didn’t answer but Dimity persevered. ‘Ella, do you promise?’ she said firmly.

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said Ella. ‘Now off you go. I’ll be fine.’

Dimity looked back as she left the kitchen. Ella was gingerly holding an envelope in her bad hand, slitting it open with a kitchen knife held in her good hand. Dimity shuddered and hoped she wouldn’t return to a bloodbath.

 

The Christmas party was held in the communal sitting-room at Rectory Cottages and its adjoining conservatory. When the retirement cottages had been built, the room had been included in the plans for occasions such as this. However, Edward Young, who was the architect engaged, had not envisaged that the residents would use it so much and it soon became obvious that it was too small. The problem was rectified by the addition of a conservatory which, for a time, had proved satisfactory.

However, Mrs Thurgood - one of the Trustees - had later pressed for even the conservatory to be enlarged. She had nagged poor Charles Henstock, and any other Trustee within range, like a dripping tap. For a time, Charles had parried her demands by saying there was no money for a further extension but then an angel - in the guise of an American with connections back to Mrs Curdle and the May Day Fair - had appeared and donated the funds.

Edward had been able to extend the conservatory without spoiling its overall appearance and it seemed that everyone was happy, including Mrs Thurgood. Looking round the room and the conservatory now, filled with all the residents and most of the Trustees, Charles had to admit the extra space had been needed.

Jane and Bill Cartwright, the wardens, had decorated the rooms festively. Albert Piggott had paid a second visit to Lulling Woods, and had again dragged back a tarpaulin heaped with fine sprigs of holly and mistletoe which he delivered to Rectory Cottages. The brightly berried holly was now tucked behind the pictures on the walls, and coloured streamers criss-crossed both the main room and the conservatory. In one corner, a small Christmas tree stood on a table, its pretty lights winking.

The elderly residents were in their favourite chairs, while the Trustees perched on other chairs brought in for the party or sat on the conservatory window seat. Cups of tea had already been poured and handed round and now Bill Cartwright circulated with the sweet sherry much favoured by the residents. It was perhaps a bit early for sherry but it had become a tradition. Jane Cartwright handed round plates of sandwiches and squares of Christmas cake, and later there would be mince pies.

Like small children, the residents had clamoured to be allowed to pull the crackers the Trustees always provided, and now most present were wearing paper hats. Mrs Thurgood, however, declined to take off her large blue felt hat with its jay’s feather tucked into the ribbon round its crown. She felt that paper hats were rather undignified for people of their age - not that she was as old as the residents of Rectory Cottages, she thought hastily.

Charles Henstock sat near his old friend Tom Hardy. Both men were wearing their paper hats, Charles’s somewhat askew on his round bald head. Tom had aged and slowed up a lot in the past year, he thought, and the old man’s once very blue eyes were rheumy, but he seemed content enough.

‘Will you come to St Andrew’s on Christmas morning, Tom?’ he asked.

‘Course, I will, sir,’ Tom replied. ‘Those that can will walk to the church but John there’ - and he waved a hand towards his friend John Enderby - ‘I’m not sure he’ll make it. His bronchitis is bad again, and Dr Lovell told him to stay indoors and keep warm.’

Across the room, Harold Shoosmith was talking to Mrs Bates and Miss Fuller, congratulating them respectively on the brasses and flowers in St Andrew’s. ‘Wonderful, quite wonderful,’ he said, in his best churchwarden’s voice. ‘I don’t know what we would do without you good ladies.’

And the good ladies simpered appreciatively.

As promised, mince pies were brought round and Harold pretended not to notice when he saw old Mr Cross carefully lift the lid and pour a slurp of his sweet sherry inside.

Jane Cartwright suddenly clapped her hands, calling for hush. ‘The carol singers are here!’ she said. ‘They will sing the two carols we requested, so if you all like to go into the conservatory you will be able both to see and hear them in the garden.’

This, too, was a tradition. Alan Lester with a merry band of carol singers of both children and parents made Rectory Cottages their first port of call, while the annual party was in progress. This year, the residents had chosen ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ and ‘The Holly and the Ivy’. During the singing of the second carol, little Annie Curdle came round with a collecting box marked ‘For St Richard’s Hospice’, and the residents and Trustees generously dropped their coins into it.

As the carol singing party left the garden, Jane Cartwright stood at the gate with a plate of mince pies.

Bill Cartwright brought the sherry bottle round once more and filled up the glasses. Dimity caught Charles’s eye from the other side of the room, and when she slightly raised her glass, Charles remembered it was his duty, as chairman of the Trustees, to give the annual Christmas toast. He patted Tom Hardy’s arm, and then rose to his feet, clearing his voice as he did so. The room hushed.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends in Rectory Cottages, it only feels a short while ago that we were here toasting last Christmas. But I know how time flies as one gets older.’ There was a murmur of agreement. ‘I would like to thank Bill and Jane for another lovely party.’ He paused while the residents variously raised their glasses to the two wardens, or called out, ‘Thank you, happy Christmas!’

Then Charles continued: ‘We lost our dear friends Eric and Carlotta Jermyn during the year, but are so pleased that Martha and Stephen Hill have settled in so quickly.’ The newest residents, sitting side by side on the window seat, beamed. ‘We, the Trustees, wish you all a very happy Christmas and a healthy and happy New Year.’ And, raising his glass, he called out, ‘To the residents of Rectory Cottages, a very merry Christmas!’

 

‘Everyone seems very happy there,’ said Dimity a short while later, as she and Charles were walking back to Ella’s cottage. They made their way with great care since the snow was now falling more seriously and the pavement had been quickly covered. Their feet crunched on the virgin snow in a most satisfying way.

‘Yes, it gives one such comfort to see them so settled,’ replied the good rector, ‘but Tom Hardy indicated that John Enderby isn’t very well, rather frail now.’

‘I expect it comes from all those years he spent out of doors, working in people’s gardens,’ Dimity replied. ‘Jane will keep a close eye on him.’

‘Just as we must keep a close eye on Ella,’ said Charles.

‘She’s far more stubborn than John Enderby,’ Dimity said. ‘And proud.’

Charles was about to push open the garden gate of Ella’s cottage when the party of carol singers came down the road.

‘Hello, Vicar,’ called Alan Lester. ‘Would Miss Bembridge like us to sing her a carol?’

‘I think that would be a lovely idea,’ cried Dimity. ‘Just hang on a tick and we’ll go and fetch her to the door.’

Dimity found Ella sitting in the kitchen, an extremely frayed roll-up sticking out of her mouth. It was a very familiar scene, apart from her plastered arm.

‘Ella, the carol singers are here. They’d like to sing you a carol. Here, put your coat round your shoulders and come to the front door.’

As Ella lumbered to her feet, she had the presence of mind to leave her cigarette in the ashtray on the table, and pick up her purse.

‘Now, what carol would you like?’ Dimity asked, as the two old friends made their way to the front door.

‘Oh, golly, I don’t mind. Hello, Alan,’ Ella said, greeting the schoolmaster. Then, as a snowflake landed gently on her nose, she looked up. ‘Goodness, I didn’t realize it had snowed so much. Is there a carol with snow in it?’

‘I think it had better be “Good King Wenceslas”, hadn’t it?’ Alan replied. ‘The children like that one.’

The three friends stood on Ella’s doorstep and listened, smiling, as the words of the carol floated out in the snowy evening air, and when the carol had finished, they clapped appreciatively and more coins tinkled down into the proffered collecting box.

‘Good night, merry Christmas,’ the singers called and they walked down the path, stamping their feet to keep out the cold, and set off to find another audience.

Back in the kitchen, Ella sat down on her chair again, picked up her cigarette and re-lit it. Only when she had sent the first cloud of pungent smoke into the air, did she speak.

‘Had a good time at the old folk’s home?’ she asked gruffly.

‘Yes, indeed,’ Charles replied. ‘Mrs Bates and the Angells sent their best wishes for a speedy recovery. Now,’ he said, ‘are you ready for us to take you home?’ And as he said it, he knew he’d made an error.