lunched. Elise was the dark-eyed eighteen-year-old daughter of a paper manufacturer. They had fallen in love when he painted her. He asked her father if he could marry her, and her father said no, that Edwin was a flaky London painter without roots, living in a shambolic studio in Hampstead, of all places.
So my great-great-grandfather, who until then had never thought about anyone but himself, went looking for somewhere to settle down, and found Keeper House. The owner had just died: his family had lived there since it was built in 1592, and he was the last of the line. Just one family, for three hundred years. It was small, dilapidated, unloved and scruffy, but my great-great-grandfather looked out over the valley, at the meadows, the fields and the stream, and up into the twinkling windows, and knew immediately he would live there with Elise. When he persuaded her father to bring her down to see it, family legend has it that all three stood in the hallway and toasted Elise and Edwin’s future happiness. I’ve always loved that story.
Keeper House is built in a mellow golden stone that gleams in summer and glows in winter. It’s L-shaped, with high, leaded windows whose casements jam in wet weather, long, rambling corridors with uneven floorboards, and evil hot-water pipes that rarely work and sound like the Edinburgh Tattoo when they do. It’s a beautiful house, and we were lucky to have grown up there. It is encircled by a wall, and at the front there is a terrace of flagstones, worn smooth with age, where tiny white flowers spring up in the cracks each spring. At the back there is a long lawn and a walled garden, where rows of lavender stretch from the kitchen door, punctuated by tumbling, sweet-smelling roses, mustardy lettuce and the tastiest potatoes.
In summer it’s the best place in the world to live. In winter, it can be a nightmare: freezing, draughty, prone to break-downs and temperamental behaviour, but we never mention this out of politeness to the house – at least, I don’t. I once found Mum hugging the ancient boiler and banging her head against its red-painted curves, moaning, ‘Why do you do this to me?’
Tom took the last corner and we veered left down the driveway. Jess and I craned our necks like a couple of five-year-olds. ‘There’s Chin, and that must be Gibbo,’ Jess said. I could see them all through the big leaded bay window as Tom brought the car to a halt – Mum, mug in hand, half standing, smiling, Dad beaming as he walked towards the front door, Chin and Gibbo following him, then Kate.
They filed out one by one. ‘Hello!’ we cried. ‘Hello!’ I hugged Dad, shook hands with Gibbo and kissed Chin.
‘Darlings, you’re here!’ My mother was holding a stodgy-looking piece of cake, which she waved at us. ‘Oh, I’m so glad to see you. You made good time, didn’t you?’ She kissed me and Jess, then Tom. ‘Come inside, we’re having a Bavarian stollen I’ve made.’
Jess and Tom rolled their eyes, just as Kate appeared. ‘Hello, Tom,’ she said, and gave him the kind of hug that the Rock would have been proud of.
As we entered, the smell of home flooded over me, a potent blend of damp old flagstones, burning logs and something baking in the Aga. Then I caught the scent of the Christmas tree in the hall and the boughs of pine that were laid along the windowsills throughout the house.
‘I’ll make a fresh pot of tea,’ Mum said. ‘Why don’t you shove your bags upstairs so we don’t fall over them?’
Jess and I lugged our suitcases up the carved staircase that curved over the hall, along the galleried corridor, from which you could drop things on the heads of new arrivals, past the alcove with the worn-out rocking chair and a bookcase crammed with green Penguins and cheap old cloth hardbacks, past our parents’ room, to the corner of the L where my bedroom was, a long low room with windows on both sides.
I threw off my shoes, flung my bags of presents on to the bed, then went to open the corner casement. Out beyond me stretched the sloping valley, with the lights of Wareham in the distance, smoke curling from the occasional chimney. The clouds had cleared and the stars were out, shining in clusters above the fields. The mulberry tree on the terrace had been festooned with white lights that shone like magic in the dark. I could hear Mum talking to Kate in the kitchen. An owl hooted in the woods behind me.
‘I’m home,’ I said, and hugged myself.
There is a tradition in my family that on Christmas Eve we drink sloe gin. This is one of the many traditions that characterize the yuletide period of joy, which starts in October when we pick the sloes in the hedgerows above the house. Armed with plastic bags and hats, because it always rains, we all set forth from the house searching for the plump, blue-black berries that nestle between the thorns.
It’s not easy, sloe-picking. A film executive from LA took me out to lunch in a glassy Soho restaurant this year and peered quizzically at my scratched hands, which looked rather dramatic against the white linen tablecloth. ‘I do all my own stunts,’ I said, then told him how I’d spent Sunday afternoon. He evidently thought I – and my family – was completely mad.
When Jess was little she looked like a monkey, not facially but in physique. She could climb anywhere, once Mum smacked her for climbing on to the roof at home and playing her recorder there (a bit like Brian May at Buckingham Palace, but smaller and with less hair). She used to put up the lights in the mulberry tree, scampering among the branches until she had nearly garrotted herself. When our late cat Seamus climbed up to the highest bookshelf in the study and refused to come down, Dad handed Jess a fiver and a ladder and left the room. She was brilliant at sloe-picking – small and lithe, she would have located lots of berries while the rest of us were crying, ‘Ooh, where’s the bag? I think I’ve found one!’ This year she had excelled herself, so there was a lot more gin than usual to drink.
Later that evening we all gathered in the sitting room to taste the results of our hunter-gathering, and wish each other a happy Christmas. If I’d been at home in London, I’d have been settling down with a large glass of red wine and a plate of pasta mixed with butter and Marmite (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it) in my bobbly old socks with my hair pushed back in a bobbly old hairband. But at home in Keeper House the formalities of another age lingered: although no one dons white tie and tails or dusts off the tiara, I had still felt it necessary to run a brush through my hair, change my top and put on some more lip gloss. Mum and Kate, both creatures of habit, were modelling Marks & Spencer’s festive collection – a riot of burgundy crushed velvet and elasticated palazzo pants.
Mum had put ivy along the sitting-room mantelpiece and around the lamps, and sprigs of holly on top of the paintings. She was pouring the sloe gin into little glasses and singing along to a Frank Sinatra CD, while Dad was handing round crisps. Gibbo, who had endeared himself to us by calling Chin ‘mate’ and giving her a fireman’s lift up the stairs, was standing by the fire. He’d smoothed down his extraordinarily curly long hair with water and now wore a plaid shirt buttoned to the neck and a confused expression.
‘No sign of Mike, then?’ asked Kate, as she came into the room.
‘He could still turn up, you know,’ said Dad. ‘He booked his flight and the car ages ago. Perhaps he’ll call.’ He looked hopefully at the phone, as if he expected it to suddenly say, ‘He’s on his way, sir, just passing Membury Services now in fact.’
‘When was the last time you spoke to him?’ Tom asked.
‘Not sure – Kate, he rang you last week, didn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ Kate said. ‘When did he phone you?’
‘Last week. But he left a message yesterday – it didn’t make much sense. I think he was a bit the worse for drink, unfortunately.
