Home to Roost (6 page)

Before I go, I also look in on the peafowl. The cock and the hen are new to Poet’s Tenement, having arrived just before Christmas. The Humphreys have revamped the shed behind the house into cosy quarters for them, to overwinter, so they haven’t been out and about yet. I open the door a tiny crack, to check on them, as Edna and Hector asked me to. Doug has shovelled a path and covered the short distance from the house to the shed with a thick layer of sand, so that the couple can come out and feed their new pets every day. But I always take a peek whenever I visit my hens.

They’re asleep and barely open their eyes when I look round the door. It’s warm in the shed, there is plenty of food and water for them, so I don’t go inside to disturb them. I leave the peafowl to their winter’s rest, looking forward to seeing them shortly, when spring is finally here and the Humphreys decide it’s warm enough for the peafowl to live in their garden.

The short walk home through the churchyard is magic. It is more sheltered here so the wind is not so fierce. The coating of snow on the grass, the tombstones, and the shrubs and bushes, gives a serene feel to the scene, a kind of blanket of peace. I’m filled with a sense of well-being broken only by thoughts of Edna and Hector. If the old holm oak is really sickening, even dying, then it could be dangerous. A gale like this one today could blow it right over, on top of their house, crushing it and the couple inside.

They need an expert opinion on this and I know just who to ask. There’s a young man on my postal round who has recently qualified as a tree surgeon. With a bit of luck, Edna and Hector will agree to let him visit to look at the oak. Feeling better now that I’ve thought of this, I walk quickly towards home, the wind again fierce and blowing me into the house
with
a whoosh. Jake, who had to stay behind as he and the Humphrey’s cat do not get on, barks with glee, and from the sitting room and kitchen the various members of my family call out greetings. The warmth of the house wraps around me like a cashmere glove, feeling cosy and safe as the sound of the wind intensifies outside.

CHAPTER THREE

Chivalry Lives On

THE FROST STAYS
for the next week. Another light snowfall fills the lanes. Work gets even busier as the winter starts taking its toll, with more people than usual on sick leave. By now many more customers are also housebound by the weather or seasonal illness and we bring them supplies, news, and gossip.

There are still many farms and houses I can’t reach by road because the lanes are blocked either by snow or a sheet of ice. I park the van as close as I can and walk the rest of the way. I don’t mind except when the only post is junk mail, the unsolicited mailings that most people loathe. I’ve had customers get quite cross with me and either give it straight back, or tear it up in front of me. I don’t blame them. I decided once to simply stop delivering it, as there wasn’t one of my customers who wanted it. But then Susie, another postie and a mate of mine at the Royal Mail, told me that what I was doing was a big no-no; that we were legally obliged to deliver the wretched stuff.

Today it’s a small package from New Zealand that I’m delivering, and I know who it’s from. Going on to the next village, where the roads are clearer than most, I park the van in front of the small bungalow where Annie lives with her husband, Pete. ‘A letter from your mum, City Mouse,’ I holler as I poke my head in at the door.

Annie is there at once, giving me a quick kiss, taking the letter, pulling me into her warm kitchen, and at the same time saying, ‘You can’t call me that any more, Country Mouse. I won’t allow it. I’m as rural and bovine as you are now.’

‘How can you say that? You’ve not been here a year yet!’ I plop myself down at the kitchen table, enjoying the smell of something baking, the sound of the kettle hissing, the warmth pumping out from the Aga. But especially I’m enjoying the special warmth of being here with my dearest and oldest friend. When we moved from London, leaving so many people behind was hard, but parting from Annie was particularly sad. I’m still pinching myself that she’s actually here, living in a village only a few miles away from Treverny.

‘How’re your parents, by the way?’ I ask, indicating the small package from New Zealand. ‘Do open it, I don’t mind.’

‘I know what it is. I left my favourite earrings behind when we were staying there – they were a present from Pete – and Mum said she’d send them on. They’re both fine. Missing us, I think. It was so good being with them after the wedding, since they couldn’t come.’

She pours us tea and sits down opposite me. Her once perfectly cut hair hangs messily on her shoulders in a random manner, her lips are chapped with cold, and her nose, like everyone’s nose these freezing days, is red. And she looks terrific, which I tell her. ‘Better than you ever looked in London, Annie. Not as sophisticated maybe, but healthier. Glowing.’

‘That’s what Pete says.’ She pauses, looking dreamily into space, as she always does when she thinks of her husband. Well, they are newlyweds after all. They married less than a year ago, here in Cornwall, where Pete, an agricultural merchant, was born and raised. Annie, a city girl through and through, and a researcher for the BBC, met him on one of her visits to us, and it really was love at first sight.

I pull her back to earth. ‘Well, your nose is glowing anyway. Like Rudolph’s.’ I give her a mischievous grin.

‘Oh, don’t get me started!’ She’s already starting to giggle. ‘What a fiasco that was!’

We were chuckling about the Christmas pantomime in Annie’s village last month. Annie, only recently settled into the village after her wedding, her extended honeymoon, and visit to her parents in New Zealand, volunteered to help. ‘Pete’s been here for ever,’ she told me, ‘and I’m the newcomer, so it’s a great way for me to start fitting in, to become part of the community.’

Not only did the villagers accept her help, they roped her into taking a role: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. This entailed her wearing huge fake antlers and a contraption on her nose that lit up when she pressed a hidden button.

The week before the performance in the village hall was funnier than the pantomime itself. Annie, determined to be a good sport, and knowing she was going to be on show as the local boy’s Up Country new wife, threw herself into her role. I spent hours with her, getting her costume just right, helping her learn lines – the script called for talking, singing, and dancing reindeers – and laughing helplessly as she tried to balance the antlers on her head. These were immense. ‘God knows where the villagers got hold of them,’ Annie said. ‘No one knows. Apparently they get dragged out every Christmas; they’ve been in a cupboard in the village hall for ever.’

They looked it, too. They were attached to a sort of cap which fitted precariously on Annie’s head; luckily there were straps she could secure under her chin. They were heavy, too, made of wood and actually exquisitely carved. She and Pete brought the antlers to my house when she was first given her costume. With Pete’s help, she tied them onto her head and we all ceremoniously drank a toast with a glass of mulled wine to the new Rudolph. Annie started to take a sip and then began sneezing ferociously. The antlers bobbed about totally out of control, knocking down some DVDs from a shelf and nearly poking Pete’s eye out. Somehow he managed to get them off Annie while she continued to shake helplessly with the sneezes.

When she finally stopped, had blown her nose, mopped up her watery eyes, and taken an antihistamine, she said mournfully, ‘I thought I was over all my allergies. I haven’t taken a pill for them for ages. Oh, they can’t be coming back, surely!’ She looked so forlorn that we all rushed to reassure her. Before she moved here, she suffered from all sorts of allergies, living practically permanently on antihistamines, especially when she visited us in Cornwall. But for months she’d not been plagued by them at all, until this evening.

Pete looked at her fondly and put his arm around her. He’d been looking closely at the antler headpiece and now said, ‘This cap is made of some kind of burlap, quite old, too, and dusty. Smells terribly musty. It’s the kind of thing that would make anyone sneeze.’

Annie looked horrified. ‘Oh no! What do I do?’

‘You’ll get used to it, I’m sure you will.’

‘Air it out a bit. And give it a good clean.’

‘And don’t forget to take an antihistamine before you go on stage.’

The next few days were hilarious. Every time I popped in to see Annie, she was wearing her antlers. Once as I drove up to the village I saw her actually leave the house with them on her head. She went down a few steps before she realised and ran back inside. ‘I can’t believe I did that,’ she said when I called in. ‘But I need to practise wearing the thing; it’s so heavy and awkward. And get used to its smell so it stops making me sneeze.’

The night of the performance saw the village hall packed. Ben and I were there, with Will and Amy. We arrived early to get a good seat so I went backstage to wish Annie luck, and take a quick photo of her in full reindeer regalia. ‘Annie, you look magnificent,’ I cried, and she really did. She was holding her head high and steady, not an antler wobble in sight and the red light on her nose glowed beautifully. Over her shoulders and covering her body was a kind of furry brown cape or blanket that also covered Rudolph’s back end. This undistinguished role was played by a sweet young village boy who came up to Annie’s shoulders, so that the blanket costume worked perfectly.

They were both in place, the front and back end of Rudolph, and I was filming a video of them performing some dance steps when there was a sharp cry from the lad at the back and he slumped to the floor, writhing in agony.

In the pandemonium of the next ten minutes, a doctor was summoned from the growing audience to take a look at the boy’s ankle. It appeared he had sprained it somehow while he was gyrating around, perhaps showing off a bit too ambitiously for the video. It was pronounced not a bad sprain but in no way could he go onstage. The director, who was one of my customers, was stamping his feet in despair, throwing a truly theatrical hissy fit when he spotted me. ‘Tessa! Thank the Good Lord you’re here. You’ll have to fill in.’

I looked at him in horror. He rolled his eyes impatiently. ‘Oh don’t worry, I’ll make sure your ticket money is refunded,’ he cried, as if that might be the reason I was shaking my head in protest.

Everyone, including Annie, ignored me while I objected that I didn’t know what to do, didn’t know the play, and they’d have to find someone else familiar with it. But apparently there was simply no spare person who could fill in; everyone had a job to do. ‘Anyway you know lots of the script,’ Annie said. ‘All those times you helped me with my lines, or with the dance steps.’

So there I was, unceremoniously pushed behind Annie, the furry brown blanket cape over my head. The director cried, ‘Tessa, you’ll have to stoop. Rudolph looks like he has a hump in his back.’

‘Is that all the stage direction he’s giving me?’ I muttered to Annie, or rather to Annie’s back.

‘Shush, we’re on. Just follow me.’

‘Do I have a choice?’

There was a blare of music and song and suddenly we were onstage. There was a wild round of applause, for the set, the costumes, and the twelve reindeer prancing about, though none as large and splendid as Rudolph as they were only one-person creatures, mostly village children with a small set of plastic antlers on their sweet heads.

I don’t know how I got through the next hour and a half. There were certainly some dicey moments, like when Amy and Will suddenly recognised my shoes under the blanket and shouted to Ben, ‘Oh no, that’s Mum up there!’ I nearly stuck my head out to shout back, ‘So you’ve only just noticed I’m not sitting beside you?’ I must have spoken aloud because Annie made a strangling noise that I knew, from years of being together in London, was the beginning of a laugh. What made it worse was that it was a particularly silent, sombre moment, when an angel or some such was about to float down, and all us reindeers were supposed to be watching in awe.

The muffled giggle coming from in front of me started me off, too. Within moments, we were both shaking as we struggled to control our about to become uncontrollable laughter. The furry blanket holding us together trembled and though I couldn’t see them, I knew Annie’s antlers were wobbling with the effort of holding in her giggles.

Finally I exploded. A huge guffaw escaped from my throat like water from a broken dam. Annie lost control at the same moment, but luckily for us both, the angel had descended and the choir roared out a riotously joyful song, drowning out our hysterical laughter, and saving us from shameful humiliation, not to mention the wrath of the director.

‘Do you realise?’ Annie said to Pete later when the four of us were alone together. ‘I could have blown it. All my work to fit into your village, ruined in one mad, giggling moment.’

‘But you didn’t,’ he said, hugging her affectionately. ‘No one but Ben and I noticed that Rudolph had the shakes. Everyone was looking at the angel. Anyway, they love you, for taking part.’