Twelve Days of Christmas (29 page)

Chapter 29
Abominable

I was just trudging back up the drive through the dark stand of trees above the lodge when a huge menacing figure suddenly stepped right out in front of me.

The adrenaline was pumping and I had my heavy, rubber-coated torch raised ready in my hand to defend myself with, by the time it occurred to me that Merlin wasn’t in the least alarmed. I upended it and clicked on the beam, following him as he bounded forward and greeted Jude, who must have been lurking at the end of the path that led to his studio.

‘Hello, you fickle old fool,’ he said, fondling Merlin’s ears, then he looked up apologetically, squinting into the light in a way that did little to aid his beauty. ‘Sorry, did I startle you? I felt like some fresh air and thought I might as well go down to the mill and maybe walk back with you. I didn’t like the idea of you wandering about alone in the dark and snow.’

‘Actually, I wasn’t at all nervous until you suddenly loomed up. I have a perfectly good torch, as you see.’

‘Yes, I’ve noticed – and taking the beam out of my eyes would be a kindness,’ he said acidly.

I lowered it slightly.

‘Thanks, it felt like I was being interrogated under a searchlight. It must be a
big
torch?’

‘All the better to hit you with, if you’d turned out to be an assailant,’ I explained. ‘Rubber casing, though, so it would only have concussed you, at worst. Or best.’

‘No chance, you couldn’t have reached up that far!’

‘I might have had to go for a different, softer target,’ I admitted and he winced. ‘Generally, though, most muggers wouldn’t be much taller than me.’

‘I suppose not,’ he said, falling into step beside me as I headed past him up the drive. Merlin took up his position with his nose pressed to the back of my leg – or rather, the back of my long winter coat.

There was no snow under the thick stand of pines, though it glimmered ahead where the wood opened up to the snowy turf in front of the house. Somewhere away to the left was the faint rushing noise of the stream, mingling with the sound of the bitter wind stirring the treetops.

‘Christmas dinner was wonderful,’ he said finally, breaking the silence. ‘Did I tell you?’

‘Yes, you even proposed a toast to my cooking. And I loved my presents – thank you. They were a surprise, because I wasn’t expecting any except Jess’s necklace, which she’d been hinting about.’

‘That’s okay, I’m just glad I had that mad moment in the airport shop and bought the place up. But you must be tired – you’ve barely stopped since early morning.’

‘No, not really, I’m used to cooking for house-parties, though I don’t usually do anything else
but
prep, cook and clear. Tonight we’re only having sandwiches, sausage rolls, cake, mince pies and trifle for supper, which I’ll put out in the sitting room – that should do it. Or people can take a tray into the morning room if they want to eat and watch TV.’

‘You know, I really am grateful that you took Tilda and Noël up to Old Place after Tilda’s accident,’ he said. ‘It’s made me realise just how frail they are – I think seeing them every day must have blinded me to it. I just took everything Tilda said about doing the cooking at face value.’

‘In her head, Tilda is still capable of doing everything she used to and she seems to have deluded herself and Noël that she still does most of the cooking at home, though according to Jess it’s their housekeeper that actually does it.’

‘I think Noël knows, but he always goes along with whatever she says for a peaceful life. She tries to boss you about, too, I’ve noticed.’

‘I don’t mind, it’s a head-chef sort of bossing – I had to take a lot of that when I first started my career in a restaurant in Merchester. I ended up being head-chef there myself before . . . well, before I left and joined Homebodies instead.’

‘Was that after your husband died?’

We were now out of the trees and crunching through the crusty snow up the side of the drive, where it was less slippery. ‘Yes, I wanted a complete change.’

If he was asking personal questions, then I didn’t see why I shouldn’t, too, so I said, ‘I hadn’t realised until today that you were a widower?’

‘Yes, I met Kate at art college, we married while still students and then, as you probably gathered, she died of leukaemia a few months later.’

‘That was tragically young. What was she like?’

‘Sweet, talented, funny . . . brave, especially towards the end,’ he said, remembered pain in his voice. ‘I felt guilty just for being healthy when she was literally fading away before my eyes. Coco looks a bit like her – I think that must have been what attracted me to her, though she’s nothing like Kate in character.’

‘I’m
so
sorry: I shouldn’t have reminded you of her.’

‘It doesn’t matter – it’s better to face your demons, isn’t it?’

‘That’s the conclusion I’ve come to,’ I agreed, ‘but it’s taken me some time.’

‘But your loss is much more recent than mine: I lost Kate such a long time ago that mostly she’s just a sad, distant memory . . . though I knew I never wanted to feel pain again like I did when I lost her,’ he added in a low voice, more to himself, it seemed to me, than for my ears.

‘I was married for eight years and my best friend is my husband’s sister, so I’d known Alan most of my life. We were
very
happy.’

‘I expect he liked being bossed about, then,’ he suggested outrageously; back to normal Jude mode, just as I was feeling much more in sympathy with him.

I was about to vehemently deny this suggestion when the words stuck to my tongue, because it was perfectly true, even if Alan didn’t actually mind. ‘It wasn’t like that,’ I explained. ‘He was easy-going, but stubborn, too – if he made up his mind to something, I couldn’t change it.’

Like taking up jogging, for instance, which led to his death . . .

‘He was killed in an accident, Jess said?’

‘Yes, just before Christmas – another reason why I’ve never celebrated it since. In fact, I usually spend the anniversary of his death somewhere quiet, where no-one knows me.’

‘Then—’ he stopped. ‘Oh,
now
I see what made you so reluctant to do what I wanted at first! I’m sorry if you were forced into a celebration you didn’t want!’

‘That’s okay, I’ve started to think all this enforced festivity is actually good for me. And Alan was a sensitive, quiet man with a strong sense of humour – he wouldn’t have wanted me to become a hermit on his account, even once a year.’

‘No, not if he loved you, he wouldn’t,’ he agreed. ‘Have you been out with anyone since . . . ?’

‘His cousin, Sam.’ I didn’t say that it wasn’t a real date at all, since I didn’t want to sound totally unsought after. ‘What about you?’ I didn’t see why he should ask all the intimate questions!

‘Oh, loads of girls, but nothing serious until Coco: there was something . . . vulnerable about her. I thought she needed looking after. And she’s stunningly pretty too, of course.’

‘True,’ I said, feeling oversized, ugly and capable, none of them terribly attractive traits. ‘There is something of the little girl lost about her, isn’t there? But it would be like living with a petulant toddler forever.’

I hoped that didn’t sound sour-grapes.

We crunched on a bit towards the house and then out of the blue he asked, ‘The grandmother who brought you up – is that the same one whose diaries you’re reading?’

‘Yes,’ I admitted reluctantly, ‘though it’s not so much a diary as jottings about her nursing career during the war. My mother died giving birth to me, which sounds a bit Dickensian, but she had acute liver failure. And my grandfather was much older than my gran, so I only just remember him.’

‘Your life seems to have been a succession of tragedies!’

‘Not really, not much more than most people’s are. And yours doesn’t sound much better either, when you think about it, because you lost first your wife, then your mother and father.’

‘Well, let’s not wallow in it,’ he said more briskly. ‘At least, thanks to Noël, Christmas at Old Place has always been a high spot of the year, whatever happens – he does love the whole thing. And so do I, really – deciding to stay away this year was a stupid idea. I feel guilty for forgetting that Jess’s parents weren’t going to be at the lodge for the holidays, too.’

‘You do seem to be her favourite uncle.’

‘She’s taken a shine to you, too,’ he said and added pointedly, ‘like Merlin. Have you been putting something in their food?’

‘Only goodness,’ I said. ‘Noël seems to have unlimited enthusiasm for the Revels too, doesn’t he?’

‘Local people appear to have been telling you an awful lot about them, which we don’t do usually,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘They must forget you’re a stranger, probably because, as Noël said, you’re tall and dark like the Martlands.’

There seemed to be a slight questioning note in his voice, so I thought I would get things straight (or as straight as I was absolutely certain of, to date!): ‘Until a couple of weeks ago, I hadn’t even heard of you,’ I said, which was true enough. ‘I take after my gran’s side of the family, who came from Liverpool originally. Gran always thought there was a foreign sailor ancestor in the mix somewhere.’

‘Oh? Well, the Martland colouring dates back to a long-ago Spanish bride and the darkness genes seem to win out, more often than not, over centuries of fair brides. Becca’s hair was dark before she went grey, too, though her skin was always peaches and cream, not sallow like mine and Guy’s. She was quite a beauty in her day, was Becca.’

‘Since first Alan’s cousin and then Guy thought I looked like Nefertiti, maybe I have Egyptian blood and should get regressed and find out?’ I said dryly.

‘I wouldn’t take anything my brother says too seriously.’

‘I think I’m quite smart enough to work that out for myself, thanks, and anyway, he isn’t my type.’

‘What exactly
is
your type?’ he asked curiously. ‘What was your husband like?’

‘Same height as me but slim, fair, blue eyes . . .’

‘Sounds like Michael.’

‘I suppose it does, really.
He’s
a really nice man too, like Alan, very kind and thoughtful,’ I said warmly and we were silent after that until we reached the house.

We went round through the courtyard so Jude could go and have a look at Lady and I could go and towel-dry Merlin before letting him loose in the house. His shaggy coat was hung with icy droplets, so that he looked as if he was covered in Swarovski crystals: but he was already a precious object to me.

At Coco’s insistence, Noël had found the printed excerpts from
Twelfth Night
, so she could practise her scenes with Michael. This seemed to me more of a ruse to retire with him to a dark corner, though he firmly declined to go into a quieter room where they could be on their own.

Noël said the rest of us could read through our parts tomorrow, which would be soon enough, since we were not going to act them out.

‘Though I daresay you could all perform, even if you don’t memorise the words and have to
read
your parts,’ he said, ‘it would make a pleasant change?’

It all seemed to me, as the Bard would have put it, much ado about nothing, but if it kept Coco relatively quiet and occupied I was prepared to put up with almost anything!

‘Do you like Uncle Jude now?’ asked Jess when, at her insistence, I went up to say goodnight.

‘Well, I—’

‘Only he keeps looking at you, so I think
he
likes
you
.’

‘I think he’s just still sizing me up, that’s all.’

‘He’s much younger and richer than George.’

‘That’s very true, but I’m not actually searching for a rich, young, new husband, Jess, so—’

‘I think he really
does
like you,’ she insisted.

‘You’re wrong, Jess – I’m not his type, or he mine,’ I assured her, though I did feel a bit more sympathetic towards him since our conversation on the walk back earlier. ‘Funnily enough, he asked me what my husband was like earlier and I told him fair and blue-eyed.’

‘Uncle Jude’s wife was blonde too, I’ve seen her picture.’

‘Yes, like Coco: opposites often do attract.’

‘But not always?’

‘No, not always.’ I looked down at her, tucked into the little white-painted bed, along with her worn teddy bear, the wolf and a Beefeater bear and said, ‘But in the case of your Uncle Jude and me, it ain’t gonna happen, baby!’

She looked disbelieving, but let it drop . . . for the present, though she did seem horribly taken with the idea.

‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ she said, ‘Horlicks snores!’

Back in my room, I picked up Gran’s journal, which earlier I’d been dying to get back to, only now the words seemed to be dancing about on the page so I didn’t get very far.

But my heart was absolutely wrung for her and I positively
hated
Ned Martland!

Chapter 30
A Bit of a Poser

Waking early as usual on Boxing Day, I reread the entry in Gran’s journal and cried over it, despite knowing that she really wouldn’t drown herself like the heroine of a Victorian melodrama, but in the end marry and keep the child – my mother.

Poor Gran sounded
so
racked with guilt and desperation!

I still can’t help but feel fond of Noël, Tilda and Becca, but their acceptance of Noël’s casual dismissal of Gran as ‘a little mill girl in trouble’ does not reflect well on them. Evidently none of them ever wondered what had happened to her after Ned abandoned her!

But I’ll have to accept that I’m part of this family, whether I want to be or not, though at least now there’s a rational explanation for the pull of attraction to both the people (or some of them) and Old Place that I’ve felt since I arrived here.

The house was still totally silent when I got up and let Merlin out into the darkness of the courtyard, then cleaned out the grate in the sitting room and scattered the ashes outside the back door as usual – in fact, by now I had gritted quite a decent path halfway to the stables!

Merlin followed me back in, shaking off flecks of snow from his wiry dark grey coat, and ate his arthritis-pill-laced breakfast with gusto, while I slipped back out to Lady’s stall with a morning gift of Henry’s home-grown carrots for her, Nutkin and Billy.

I clipped back the top of the stable door to the courtyard and I was in the stall, standing with one arm across Lady’s warm back while she nuzzled carrot chunks from my hand, when Jude looked in. I knew who it was, because his enormous frame eclipsed all the light from the courtyard, until he shifted slightly to one side.

‘Hello – did you forget that I said I’d come down early and do the horses instead of Becca and Jess this morning?’

‘No, but I only came out to give Lady a bit of carrot, that’s all. I haven’t got time to see to her and everything else!’ I snapped. It might be totally irrational, but I felt angry with him because it was his uncle who had put poor Gran in such a harrowing plight!

‘That’s okay, I’ll do it,’ he said, sounding mildly surprised – but then, we had seemed to have come to a better understanding of each other yesterday so I don’t suppose he expected to have his head bitten off.

‘And I was going to clean out the fireplace in the sitting room, too. Just leave all that for me, now I’m back.’

‘I like to get things sorted early – but someone should run the vacuum cleaner over the sitting-room floor later, if you
really
want to be helpful,’ I said and he gave me a puzzled look from his deep-set dark eyes.

Lady, having eaten her carrot, turned her head and vigorously rubbed her nose up and down my arm, the muscles of her neck rippling and Jude suddenly said urgently, ‘Stay
exactly
like that!’

I had no time to wonder if the command was meant for me or Lady before he’d whipped out a small camera and flashed it right in my eyes.

‘What on earth . . . ?’ I began indignantly, but he ignored me and kept snapping away. Lady seemed quite blasé about it: if anything, she held the pose better than I did.

Nutkin, who had closed his eyes and dozed off after his share of the carrot, opened them and stared at us with mild astonishment through the barred partition dividing the boxes.

‘Right, now stay like that while I fetch a sketch pad,’ Jude said, putting the camera back in his pocket.

‘I can’t, I’ve things to do in the kitchen. And why do you need
me
? I thought you were only interested in horses.’

‘They
are
my main subject, but I sculpt all kinds of other things and I often include a human form with my animal sculptures. The way you were standing with one arm across Lady’s back while she turned her head towards you was full of lovely, flowing lines,’ he said regretfully, as I gave Lady a last pat and unbolted the door to come out past him. ‘Oh, well, I suppose it doesn’t matter – I have the pictures on film and in my head,’ he said, though he still seemed a bit reluctant to move out of my way right until the last minute, looking down at me with those deep-set eyes like dark, peaty, dangerous pools . . .

But right then, that just reminded me of poor Gran again.

Back in the warmth of the kitchen I said to Merlin, ‘Your boss is a great, big, surly, autocratic bear!’ Though in fact
I’d
been the surly one this time: he had just been bossy. Merlin wagged his tail politely.

I prepped everything ready for lunch, which was actually going to be another early cooked dinner, but dead easy: the whole salmon I’d taken from the freezer the previous morning, Duchesse potatoes, petits pois and a piquant sauce.

Jude stayed outside so long I’d forgotten about him. By the time he came back in, Michael had also come downstairs and we were laughing together over something silly as I cooked bacon for breakfast and he laid the table.

Jude, who I could now see in the clearer light of the kitchen, was sporting so much black stubble along his formidable jawline that he looked like an overgrown Mexican bandit, glowered darkly at us and went on through without a word. Perhaps he’s not really a morning person? Or
any
time of day person?

He did reappear later, washed, shaved and smelling faintly of the wholesomely attractive aftershave that was presumably designed for rugged men, and put away an impressive amount of breakfast. But he didn’t really join in the conversation with the others, though he probably wouldn’t have got much out of Coco, anyway. She drifted silently in, wearing her diaphanous pink negligee, like some species of attenuated jellyfish, and then communed silently with a cup of black coffee until I cut the yolk out of a fried egg and plonked the remains down in front of her. She shuddered.

‘Eat it!’ I ordered and she gave me a slightly alarmed look and picked up her knife and fork.

Jude seemed increasingly abstracted and soon disappeared into his little study/studio next to the library. Perhaps a lot of his taciturnity is actually artistic temperament and he simply vanishes into a new idea? I get a bit withdrawn when I’m working out a new recipe, only without the rattiness, of course . . . or usually without the rattiness. I did feel I had been a bit mean to him earlier, taking something out on him that wasn’t his fault.

Everyone else (except Coco) had talked around him as they ate, as though he were the elephant – or Yeti – in the room that all saw but no-one mentioned, so presumably they are quite used to his moods.

Jess made me promise I’d go out as soon as I’d finished clearing up in the kitchen and join her in sledging down the sloping paddock with Guy and Michael – and even Coco ventured out eventually, in borrowed wellingtons and her grubby once-white quilted coat.

I’d been sledging before of course, though using a flattened cardboard carton to sit on, but I’d never made snow angels until Jess and Guy showed me how, by falling backwards into the virgin whiteness and waving my arms up and down to make wing shapes. The horses and Billy were astonished.

It was great fun and so was the snowballing . . . until I got one down the back of my neck. I wasn’t so keen on the icy trickle down the spine as it melted.

We were all freezing and wet by the time we went in to dry off and change, but healthily glowing too. And everyone glowed even more when Guy concocted mulled wine in a jam pan on the small electric stove, demanding cinnamon sticks and other ingredients while I was busy putting the salmon in the larger Aga oven, wrapped in a loose parcel of foil with butter and bay leaves.

He left the pan and all the mess for me to clear, of course – but then, that’s typical of most men when they cook anything, isn’t it?

I didn’t drink the small glass of wine he gave me, beyond a token sip to see what it tasted like (surprisingly nice).

Michael came back long after everyone else, because he’d trudged up the hill in the snow to phone his little girl, but this time his ex-wife wouldn’t let him speak to her.

‘Debbie said it would just upset her, because since my last call she keeps asking for Da-da and she’s been unsettled.’

He was so upset that I gave him a comforting hug – and just at that moment Jude wandered in, cast us a look that was hard to read, silently poured himself some coffee from the freshly-made pot, and went out again.

He does choose his moments to appear! And I expect he’s drawn
entirely
the wrong conclusions – if he noticed at all, that is, because he did look
very
abstracted.

I gave Michael the remains of my mulled wine: that seemed to cheer him up a bit.

We had a starter of little savoury tomato and cheese tartlets I’d made and frozen a couple of days ago. Becca took a plate of the tartlets to Jude in his study and said he was working, but he still hadn’t emerged by the time we were in the dining room, sitting down to the perfectly-cooked salmon (adorned with the very last bit of cucumber, sliced to transparency), so I went to call him.

He was leaning back in his chair, his long legs in old denim jeans stretched out, and the crumb-strewn plate by his elbow. The desk and the corkboard behind it were covered with line drawings and photographs of me and Lady, so he must have one of those instant digital printer things and possibly an instant digital memory, too.

‘Dinner – it’s on the table,’ I announced loudly, but when he finally looked up at me it took his eyes a couple of minutes to focus. Then he smiled seemingly involuntarily – and with such unexpected charm and sweetness that I found myself responding. Then the smile vanished as suddenly as if it had never been, leaving only the memory of it hanging in the air like the Cheshire Cat’s grin.

‘Dinner?’ I repeated, and finally he got up and followed me obediently to the dining room, though he didn’t seem to notice what he was eating, even when Tilda pointed out that the capers in the piquant sauce had been her idea. It was sheer luck he didn’t choke on a salmon bone, really. (But I can do the Heimlich manoeuvre, I would have saved him.)

Before dessert, which was a choice between the very last scrapings of the trifle and Christmas cake, he abruptly got up, declaring that he was going down to work in the mill studio for a couple of hours.

‘Can I go with you again, Uncle Jude?’ asked Jess eagerly. ‘You promised to show me how to weld.’

‘Not today – another time,’ he told her and her face fell. ‘Holly – you come down to the studio in about half an hour or so, I want you to pose for me.’

‘Me? Not
nude
?’ I blurted, horrified, then felt myself go pink as they all looked at me.

‘Not if you don’t want to, though I’ll have had the big Calor heaters on for a bit by then, so the place will have warmed up,’ he said, his mouth quirking slightly at one side. I
thought
he was joking, but I wasn’t quite sure.

‘Absolutely not,’ I said firmly. ‘I’ve got some black velvet leggings and a fairly clinging tunic jumper I can change into, if you like, but that’s as figure-revealing as I’m prepared to go.’

‘I’ll settle for that,’ he said gravely.

‘
I
certainly like the sound of it! Can I come and watch?’ asked Guy cheekily.

‘Or maybe
I
should go, as chaperone?’ Michael suggested, twinkling at me.

Jude scowled at them both, his sudden burst of good humour vanishing. ‘Unnecessary!’ he snapped and went out. We heard the front door slam a few minutes later.

‘The dear boy does spend most days down at the studio when he is at home,’ Noël said. ‘He works very hard.’

‘Edwina usually takes him a flask of coffee and sandwiches for lunch,’ Tilda said, ‘she dotes on him and I am sure he would starve if she didn’t, because he forgets the time when he is down there.’

‘Does jolly good sculptures, especially the horses,’ Becca said. ‘Look like mangled metal up close, then step away – and there they are! Seems like you’re going to
be
in one, Holly.’

‘I don’t know why he wants
you
as a model when he could have had
me
,’ Coco said, inclined to be even sulkier than Jess.

‘Oh, but anyone can have you,’ Guy said ambiguously, though luckily Coco didn’t seem to have caught the double meaning.

‘It’s because you’d be two-dimensional, Horlicks,’ Jess said.

‘That was quite good, Jess,’ Tilda said impartially, ‘if a trifle rude.’

‘It was only that he saw me with Lady this morning and liked the way I was standing with my arm across her,’ I explained. ‘I expect if it had been Becca he’d seen, he’d have asked her instead.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so!’ Becca said, with one of her deep barks of laughter. ‘Face that sank a thousand ships.’

‘It seemed to be lines rather than features he was interested in.’

‘Well, I’ve certainly got a lot more of those than you have.’

‘I still think he’s really mean,’ Jess complained. ‘He promised to teach me how to weld and there’s lots of modelling clay in the studio, too. I’m
bored
.’

‘I don’t see how you can possibly be bored, with the amount of presents you got yesterday, young lady,’ Tilda observed. ‘Go and play with that wee-wee thing your poor, misguided parents bought you.’

‘Wii, Granny!’ Jess said.

‘I hope you and Jude aren’t going to be down there long, because I thought we could all read through our parts in the play later this afternoon, now we’ve had a look at them,’ Coco said, which was optimistic as far as Jude and I were concerned at least, since we both had other interests to keep us occupied already.

‘I’ll be busy when I get back, it might have to be after supper,’ I said and her face fell.