Twelve Days of Christmas (9 page)

But I suppose even if it is, then given Gran’s upbringing and nature, it could only have been some kind of
Brief Encounter
!

Chapter 9
Daggers

Next morning the wind had died down a bit, but everything was thickly furred with frost. But then, it’s been growing steadily colder since I got here and, according to the radio, the odds on it being a white Christmas were getting shorter and shorter by the minute.

The house was already starting to warm through now I’d lit the fire, though, and I was keeping it going by a lavish application of logs from the cellar. The place will soon feel cosy, despite its size.

After breakfast (which I ate with the latest of Gran’s journals propped in front of me) I let Lady and Billy out. Billy ignored the open gate and jumped straight over the fence like a . . . well, I was going to say
goat
!

I hung a filled haynet on the rail, high enough so that Lady wouldn’t catch her feet in it when it was empty (another bit of advice from the invaluable Becca!) and broke a thin skin of ice on the trough, before tidying up the loosebox.

Merlin had wandered off up the paddock, which I thought was probably exercise enough for the morning, so I went back in and prepared to give the sitting room the sort of cleaning my Gran always referred to as ‘a good bottoming’, something it clearly hadn’t had for quite some time.

It’s part of the Homebodies remit that we keep the rooms of the house that we actually use neat and clean, it’s just that the houses aren’t usually quite on this scale!

I don’t enjoy the process of cleaning, but I
do
love a nice clean room, so I suppose you could call that job satisfaction. Although it’s not in the same league as providing an excellent dinner for twenty-five people with mixed dietary requirements every day for a fortnight with effortless expertise. Now
that’s
satisfying on a creative level, too – I sometimes think cooking is a kind of ephemeral art form.

Anyway, by the time I’d vacuumed the pattern back into existence on the lovely old carpet, mopped the bit of stone floor around the edges, removed spider’s webs from every corner and polished the brass fender, fireguard and furniture (and even the front door knocker, while I was about it), it all looked wonderful – and
I
looked a grubby mess and had to go and shower again.

By this time it was late morning, so I put on my warm, down-filled jacket and set out for the village with Merlin, since he was desperate to come with me. The poor old thing seems to have attached himself to me already, but life must have been very confusing for him lately.

As well as exploring, I wanted to see if the shop had the extra supplies I had on my list and anything Tilda might want, so I hoped there would be something to tie Merlin to outside it. I suppose I should have taken the car really, only I like to walk and my rucksack is very roomy.

Noël insisted I went into the lodge for a moment, even though Merlin seemed to take up a lot of space in the small, cluttered room, and when he wagged his tail he nearly took out the Christmas tree and a snowglobe. I felt a bit like Alice in Wonderland when she’d drunk the get-bigger potion, myself.

Tilda was reclining on the sofa, resplendent today in an orange satin blouse and a long black skirt, though I thought she looked a little tired under the lavish makeup. Jess was sitting on the floor doing a vampire jigsaw on the coffee table, the lid with its gory picture propped up in front of her.

‘There aren’t enough corners,’ she said by way of greeting.

‘Life’s like that sometimes,’ I commiserated. ‘Or sometimes there are too many.’

She gave me a look from under her fringe.

‘Have you tried the phone up at the house today? Only you’ll find it keeps going dead, because of the wind,’ Tilda said.

‘The wind?’

‘Blows the wires about, but it’s much worse than usual,’ Noël said. ‘We hadn’t noticed until George Froggat – he owns Hill Farm further up the lane – told us. One of the poles is leaning at an angle between here and the village, so the wire is practically down. He called BT and they say it’ll be after Christmas before they can get someone up here to look at it, but those poles have wanted replacing the last two years and more.’

‘That’s a nuisance,’ I said, but thinking that at least it might spare me one or two of Jude Martland’s irritating calls!

‘It will be if it falls right down and cuts us off completely,’ he agreed. ‘Jess’s mobile works, but not terribly well.’

‘And only if I walk down the lane towards the village,’ Jess said. ‘Uncle Jude phoned when we got back yesterday and the phone was a bit dodgy even then, wasn’t it, Grandpa?’

‘Very, I could only hear what he was saying intermittently.’

‘I suppose he was fretting about Lady again?’

‘Her name
did
crop up,’ he admitted. ‘But then he said something about you coping, so I expect he has realised that everything will be absolutely fine. The line went dead after that and he didn’t try and ring back again.’

‘Anyone would think we would all fall apart without his lordship home,’ Tilda scoffed. ‘But even when he is here, he spends most of his time shut up in his studio.’

‘Did you want me to get you anything from the village?’ I offered.

‘George brings us the paper every morning, that’s why he stopped by, but you could fetch us a bottle of sherry from the pub,’ Tilda said. ‘In fact, you should have lunch there; they do a good ploughman’s or a pot pie.’

‘Do they? That would be nice,’ I said, remembering that I hadn’t had lunch yet and breakfast seemed an awfully long time ago, ‘but I’ll have to do it another day because I wouldn’t be able to take Merlin in.’

‘Oh, the Daggers won’t mind.’

‘The
who
?’

‘Daggers. The Dagger family have always had the Auld Christmas. In fact, Nicholas Dagger plays the part of Auld Man Christmas in the Revels on Twelfth Night,’ Noël said. ‘Jude is Saint George and I used to be the Dragon, only I’ve had to hand the part on to a younger man.’

‘I’m sure Holly isn’t interested in our local customs, you old fool,’ Tilda said.

‘I think they sound fascinating,’ I said politely, though I’ve never been a great one for Morris dancing and the like, and if this one was all Christmassy too, then that took the icing and the cherry off what was already a quite uninteresting cake.

‘It’s a pity you will miss it,’ Noël said.

‘Yes, I’ll be leaving that morning, because your nephew will be on his way home from the airport. Now, I’d better get going.’

‘Can I come down to the village with you?’ asked Jess. ‘In fact, can I come to lunch at the pub with you, too?’

‘Well, I—’ I began, hesitantly, glancing at her grandparents.

‘Not if you don’t want her to,’ Noël told me.

‘I’m afraid she is having a very boring holiday here in the lodge this year,’ Tilda said, ‘but that is no reason why she should impose herself on you if you don’t feel like company.’

I didn’t really mind and, even if I had, it would have been impossible to say so. I just hoped they were right about the pub letting in dogs. Jess went off to get her coat, which was of course black, and Tilda made her put on a beanie hat and gloves. Then, to her complete disgust, she handed her a wicker basket shaped like a coracle in which reposed three greaseproof-wrapped parcels.

‘Cheese straws,’ confided Jess once we were walking down the lane. ‘Granny keeps making them because they’re dead easy, but they don’t taste of anything much, especially cheese. They’re for the oldies in the almshouses.’

‘Oh yes, that’s the old Nanny—’

‘
Everyone
calls her Old Nan – she’s ninety something.’

‘And the retired vicar?’

‘Richard, Richard Sampson. He’s pretty old too, but he walks miles, though he’s a bit absent-minded and sometimes forgets to turn around and come back. People phone up Uncle Jude from miles away and he has to go and collect him in the car.’

‘Then let’s hope the weather keeps him at home until your uncle gets back! The other house is Henry the gardener’s isn’t it?’

‘Yes, but he’s pretty active too and although he’s retired he’s always up at Old Place.’

‘Yes, the walled garden and the generator do seem to be his chosen stamping grounds. He sounded a bit territorial about them.’

‘His daughter lives in the village and keeps an eye on him – she works in the Weasel Pot farm shop in summer. But Old Nan and Richard haven’t got any relatives left, they’re
way
too old, so they’re used to coming up to the house for Christmas Day dinner. I’m not sure what they’re going to do this year – I’m not even sure I’ve got it into their heads yet that it isn’t going to happen.’

I had another of those inconvenient pangs of conscience – which are so unfair, since none of this was my fault in the least!

‘Now Jude has gone away I wish Edwina, Granny and Grandpa’s housekeeper, were still here, because I think Granny’s Christmas lunch will be a major disaster,’ Jess said frankly. ‘
And
she’s overdoing things. I don’t really think she’s up to it.’

‘Mr Martland’s absence does seem to have made it very difficult: selfishly flouncing off when he must know that everyone depended on him!’

‘Yes, he’s a selfish pig,’ she agreed and sighed. ‘Even having Christmas dinner with Mo and Jim was something to look forward to, but now everything is
so
boring I was even glad to see Aunt Becca yesterday.’

‘Don’t you like her?’ I asked, surprised. ‘I thought she was very nice.’

‘I like her, but all she ever talks about is horses, fishing and shooting things and she didn’t even stop more than a couple of minutes because the wind was too cold to leave Nutkin tied up outside.’

‘She was a great help telling me what to do with Lady. A horse is quite a responsibility when you’re not used to looking after them.’

‘She said you were competent and capable and she didn’t see why there should be any problems.’

‘No, I don’t either, though it’s good to know I can get hold of someone who knows a lot more about horses than I do if a problem comes up.’

‘Aunt Becca said Mo and Jim left you the huge turkey and everything for the Christmas dinner we were having,’ Jess remarked with a sideways look at me from under her fringe. ‘Couldn’t you cook it instead, Holly?’

I was taken aback by her directness. ‘You haven’t been talking to your Uncle Jude, have you?’

‘No, it just seemed like a good idea.’

‘Well, it might do to you, but it’s not what I bargained for when I agreed to take this job! I do house-sitting so I can have a rest from cooking the rest of the year,’ I told her firmly, and her face fell. ‘And remember I said that I don’t celebrate Christmas anyway? In fact, I do my best to ignore it.’

‘Oh, that’s right, it’s against your religion.’

‘Strictly speaking, I don’t actually have a religion any more,’ I admitted, ‘but the grandparents who brought me up only celebrated the religious aspects of it – extra chapel services and readings from the gospels – so it’s not something I really miss.’

‘You mean when you were little there were no presents, or a Christmas stocking or anything?’ she demanded, turning stunned brown eyes up towards me.

‘No, there was nothing like that, and no big blow-out special dinner either, though Gran was a good plain cook. Her raised pork pie was
legendary
.’

Jess was unimpressed by pork pies in the face of my other childhood deprivations. ‘No tree, or decorations, or Father Christmas . . . ?’

‘No, though I secretly used to exchange presents with my best friend, Laura – I did a paper round, so I had some money of my own. But when I got married my husband loved all that side of Christmas, so we celebrated it just like everyone else. We’d buy the biggest tree we could tie on top of the car and load it down with lights and baubles; hang garlands and Chinese lanterns and make each other surprise stockings full of silly bits and pieces . . . it was fun.’

But then, everything I’d done with Alan had been fun . . .

‘Then why did you stop?’

‘Because he died,’ I said shortly. ‘It was just before Christmas and there didn’t seem any point in celebrating it at all after that.’

‘What did he die of?’ she asked with the directness of the young. ‘And was it ages ago?’

‘It was an accident . . . eight years ago on Monday.’

This was an anniversary I usually marked quietly and alone, though the way things were going, that would not be an option here unless I stopped answering the door and took the phone off the hook.

‘What sort of accident?’

‘He fell through the ice on a frozen lake.’

‘I keep thinking my parents are going to fall through the ice in Antarctica and a killer whale or something will eat them,’ she confessed.

‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so, I’m sure they know what they’re doing.’

‘Yes, but Mum tends to keep walking backwards with the camera.’

That
did
sound a bit dodgy.

‘A lion nearly got her once – I saw it. If they’re not home during the holidays I usually fly out to wherever they’re working, only I couldn’t really do that this time.’

‘No, I don’t think it would be very easy to get to Antarctica,’ I agreed. ‘By the time you got there it would probably be time to turn around and come back, too. You go to boarding school, don’t you?’

‘Yes and I quite like it really – I’ve got lots of friends.’

‘I used to get bullied because I never fitted in and I was always taller than my classmates, even the boys. There was a group of girls who made my life a misery – I was really self-conscious about my height.’

‘I get that a bit sometimes, but we all have a sixth-form mentor we can talk to and they sort it out for us.’

‘Sounds like a good idea. I wish we’d had something like that.’

We’d arrived at the village by now and Jess decided to offload the cheese straws first, starting with Old Nan, who when she answered the door was the size of a gnome and wrapped in a crocheted Afghan shawl. On her feet were fuzzy tartan slippers with pompoms and a turn-over collar that fitted snugly round her ankles.