Christmas At Thrush Green (31 page)

‘I quite understand, old chap. We’ll manage without you. Give my love to Dimity.’

After supper that evening, Charles stoked the fire so it blazed in the grate, and then got some port glasses from the dining-room, along with the bottle of port Ella had given him for Christmas.

‘This really is a most excellent bottle, Ella. I can’t tell you how much I’m enjoying it. Can I give you a glass?’

‘Thanks, Charles, I most certainly will.’

Charles poured out three glasses, and put one by Dimity’s chair, and handed one to Ella. Then he sat himself in his armchair on one side of the fire but didn’t pick up his book to read as he usually did.

Dimity came in with a tray of coffee cups, and handed them round.

‘Where’s that box of chocolate-covered ginger?’ asked Ella. ‘The one that Harold and Isobel gave me.’

Dimity found it and handed it round before she, too, sat down on the other side of the fire.

Ella gave a long, contented sigh. ‘If it weren’t for this wretched wrist, this would be nearly perfect.’ She stretched out her large legs towards the fire.

‘Nearly perfect?’ asked Charles.

‘Perfection would be a ciggy, of course! Do you know, it’s thirty-six hours since I had my last one. And so far, touch wood, I haven’t really missed them. That damn specialist gave me such a rollicking about smoking that it really does seem that I mustn’t smoke again.’

‘Poor Ella,’ said Dimity with feeling. She had lived with Ella long enough to know how much those pungent cigarettes had meant to her.

‘I’ll have to find something else to do to compensate,’ said Ella, scrabbling in the box for another chocolate and then leaning forward to pass them to Charles. ‘Singing, perhaps.’

‘Singing?’ Dimity said, horrified. ‘But you can’t sing a note. Totally out of tune.’

‘Well, perhaps I should learn.’

‘Don’t you think you’re a bit too old to have singing lessons, my dear?’ asked Charles.

‘Well, if not singing, then something else. What do blind people do all day in those old folk’s homes?’

Neither Charles nor Dimity answered that, and there was silence for a few moments. Then Charles cleared his throat.

‘Ella, my dear . . .’

Ella slanted her head towards him, presumably so she could see him with her peripheral vision.

‘Charles.’

‘Ella, my dear,’ Charles repeated, ‘Dim and I have been talking.’

‘Well done!’ Ella quipped.

‘Shush, listen,’ said Dimity. ‘Listen to Charles for a moment.’

‘Dim and I would very much like you to come and live with us here at the vicarage. Full-time, not just for now. We’ve plenty of space here. It will just mean changing the rooms round a bit. You can have all the independence you want, but we suggest you eat with us.’

‘And it would be so easy for you here, almost in the middle of Lulling. Quiet, yet just five minutes from the High Street,’ added Dimity.

‘What?’ spluttered Ella, unable to take this in. ‘Here? Permanently? Not go into a home?’

‘Yes,’ Dimity and Charles both said together, then Dimity added, ‘We’d love to have you here with us.’

For a moment, no one spoke. The clock ticking on the mantelpiece was the only sound.

Then into the silence, Ella said one word. ‘Yes.’

Dimity leaned forward. ‘Yes? Yes, you’ll come?’

‘Yes, if you’re both sure.’

Dimity immediately went across to her friend and gave her a big hug. ‘Oh, my dear, I am so pleased.’

‘What you mean,’ Ella said, ‘is relieved that you won’t have to trail round all those bins with me.’

‘No,’ said Charles, ‘but I think all those homes will be thankful that Miss Bembridge isn’t going to be one of their residents. I think this calls for another glass of port, don’t you?’

And both women held out their glasses to be filled up. It was agreed to leave further discussion about the Grand Plan until the next morning. Charles picked up his book, Dimity her knitting and the two women talked quietly together, mostly about the old days at Ella’s cottage.

‘It’s come full circle, Dim,’ Ella said when she rose to go to bed some time later. ‘My coming to live with you here. I can’t thank you enough.’

‘It’s going to be fun for us all. Now sleep well, and we’ll talk in the morning.’

E
lla woke early the next morning; it was only six-thirty and much too soon to be thinking of getting up. She switched on the bedside light and took her book from the table beside the bed. A folded sheet of paper marked her place but instead of continuing to read from where she had last reached, she unfolded the bit of paper and read out loud the words she had written on it in bold capital letters.

‘ “Lord, thou knowest, better than I know myself, that I am growing older and will some day be old. Keep me from being talkative and particularly from the fatal habit of thinking I must say something on every subject and every occasion.” ’ Ella paused. ‘Hmm . . .’ she said, ‘no one could accuse me of being talkative - unless you count talking to myself.’ She continued to read the words she knew so well. ‘ “Release me from craving to try to straighten out everybody’s affairs.” ’ Ella snorted. ‘It would be nice if everyone else stopped trying to sort out my affairs,’ she said, and then immediately felt guilty. Dimity and Charles were being so kind.

Ella resumed reading from the prayer that had been written by a seventeenth-century nun. ‘ “Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally it is possible that I may be mistaken.” Very very occasionally,’ she added, and then laughed at herself. ‘ “Keep me reasonably sweet.” ’

Ella put down the sheet of paper, and gazed round the room. Dimity had done so much to make her comfortable. There was a vase of sweet-smelling freesias on the dressing-table, and on the bedside table beside her was a little round tray that held a glass, a carafe of water and a tin that she knew contained digestive biscuits. ‘Dear Lord,’ she said, ‘give me strength to be sweet. I must show my appreciation of all they are doing for me.’

Then, satisfied, Ella found her place in the large-print book and settled down to read until it was time to get up. She had brought some loose-fitting garments with her from the cottage, which she could manage to put on herself, and she presented herself, brushed and dressed downstairs for breakfast.

‘Good morning, good morning,’ she said, coming into the kitchen.

After exchanging the usual pleasantries about sleeping well, Dimity sat Ella at the kitchen table and passed her the cereal.

‘I’ve got morning prayers in St John’s at ten,’ Charles said, ‘but I’m free after that. I suggest we sit down together then and talk. What time are Robert and Dulcie arriving, Dimity?’

‘They said they would leave London soon after lunch. So about mid-afternoon here. The traffic shouldn’t be bad coming this way. Most people will be heading back into London after the long Christmas break.’

‘Splendid,’ said Charles, beaming behind his round spectacles. ‘That’ll give us plenty of time.’

While Charles was out, Dimity and Ella made preparations for the Wilberforces’ arrival. When Isobel had asked if there would be room for them at the vicarage, Dimity had agreed eagerly. She and Charles were very fond of the young couple and she had been thrilled to hear that a baby was on the way.

Dimity had already made up the beds in the second guest room but Ella now flicked a duster round and put a carafe of fresh water on the tray with two glasses that sat on the chest of drawers.

They were asked for eight o’clock at the Youngs’ party so Dimity made some drop scones and flapjacks for tea. ‘We’d better line our stomachs well before the evening’s celebrations,’ she said.

When Charles returned to the vicarage shortly after eleven, he found an empty kitchen and a cooling tray of drop scones. It was no surprise to Dimity to find one missing when she walked in a moment later.

‘Just testing they’re up to scratch,’ said Charles, looking a little guilty.

‘I thought you might, which is why I made one extra,’ Dimity replied. ‘I’ll make some coffee, then I suggest we sit down and talk. Will you call Ella? I think she went up to her room.’

So the three friends settled down at the kitchen table, with mugs of coffee at their elbows and a plate of biscuits between them. Dimity and Charles had decided that Dimity would outline their proposal since she was the practical one of the pair, and knew Ella backwards.

‘What we suggest is that we make you a sort of apartment upstairs. We would like to retain our two spare-rooms for ourselves, but it seems to us that the rooms in the Victorian extension - those that are above us now - would be ideal for you. They would give you all the privacy that you wanted - although, of course,’ Dimity hastily added, ‘we’re not expecting you to stay a prisoner up there. The whole house will be your home, and you must spend as much time with us as you want.’

‘Is that where the back stairs lead to?’ Ella asked, pointing to a door set in one of the kitchen walls.

‘Indeed, it is,’ said Charles, ‘but they are rather steep and we think it would be much better, safer, for you to use the main staircase. The main part of the vicarage is a classical Queen Anne house,’ he explained, ‘then around the mid-nineteenth century they built an extra chunk onto the back. I suppose it was to house the huge families that the Victorian clergy were so fond of.’

‘Poor wives,’ muttered Ella.

‘Indeed. But at some point between the two world wars, the Victorian wing was demolished. Not all of it, but most of it. Thus we are left with the original house plus a much smaller extension and that is where we are now. This big kitchen, and the larder, boot-room and so on. The rooms above have never really been used while we’ve been here.’

‘We’ve used them just a couple of times,’ said Dimity. ‘Once when that choir from Sweden came to perform in St John’s, and we had to put up seven or eight of them, and . . .’ she paused, frowning to remember.

‘We had that family from France when that ecumenical conference was held in Oxford,’ added Charles.

‘Could we go upstairs and have a look?’ Ella asked.

‘Of course.’

And so the three of them made their way across the big hall and up the wide curving staircase.

‘We’ve seen from the time you’ve been here,’ Dimity said, from behind Ella, ‘that these stairs don’t seem to give you any problems.’

‘Those eighteenth-century chaps always built good staircases,’ said Ella, puffing a bit. ‘None of the uneven risers that I’ve got in the cottage.’

Charles opened a door off the landing that led into a passage with a window at the end.

‘Being at the back of the house, these rooms get the morning sun but otherwise, I’m afraid, are a little dark.’

Ella barked her laugh. ‘That won’t worry me, will it?’

Charles opened a door on the left onto a not very large square room into which the pale winter sunlight was filtering. The walls were simply white-washed and in one corner the staircase from the kitchen below arrived. It wasn’t furnished in the proper sense, but there were two divan beds, a small scrubbed pine table and a couple of bentwood chairs. Standing in a row against the nearest bed were several suitcases and some cardboard boxes.

‘This is the closest we got to decorating when the choir came. Otherwise, as you can see,’ said Dimity, ‘the room is used as a sort of dumping ground. But it’s a very useful place to keep the cases. Saves climbing up into the attic.’

Charles led the way back into the passage and showed Ella a slightly larger room next door to the first; it was similarly furnished although it had the luxury of a rag mat between the two beds.

‘There are three rooms on the other side of the passage, two quite small,’ said Charles, opening doors. ‘The bathroom’s in this one, but I suggest it would be better to take it out and start again.’

He was probably right. There was a very stained narrow bath on legs, a large washbasin set in a wooden surround, and a lavatory with a cistern mounted high above on the wall.

The three stood silently, surveying the dismal room. Then Ella broke the silence. ‘Could you leave me here for a moment?’ she asked. ‘I’d like to look around on my own.’

Obediently, Charles and Dimity went back into the main house. ‘I’d forgotten how awful it is,’ said Dimity as Charles shut the connecting door.

‘It’s not that bad,’ said Charles, sitting down on a chair on the landing. ‘It’s suffering from neglect, that’s all. A lick of paint and a few open windows would make all the difference.’

‘Yes, I realize that,’ replied Dimity, running her finger along the top of a picture, and tut-tutting at the ridge of dust collected on her finger. ‘I must remember to get Mrs Allen to do these pictures next week.’

‘Talking of Mrs Allen, would she have time to do for Ella, too?’ asked Charles.

‘I hadn’t thought of that, but in fact I think it would work very well. Mrs Allen told me only the other day that one of the people she cleans for is moving in the spring. Perhaps she would like to put in more time here instead. I’ll ask her.’

‘Once we know what Ella thinks,’ said Charles. He got up and walked along the landing, then stood and looked down into his much-loved garden. It was asleep now, of course, but soon things would be stirring. The first snow-drops wouldn’t be far away.

And Charles was moved to quote one of his favourite poems.

Dimity laughed. ‘I don’t think Rupert Brooke wrote that for you, my dear. No one could say you were “lissom”! Nor “sly” for that matter.’