it would have been a bit difficult this year, what with my poor brother passing away last January and then Jude falling out with Guy,’ Noël sighed.
‘It wasn’t Guy’s fault, really,’ Tilda said dispassionately, ‘that girl just got her hooks into him.’
I didn’t ask who Guy was because, to be honest, I wasn’t terribly interested in people I was never going to meet. I finished my coffee and put down my cup and plate. ‘Well, that was unexpected but delicious: thank you so much! And now I’d better get up to the house and settle in.’
‘Sharon, the cleaner, should still be there, so get her to show you round before she goes. It might be the most useful thing she’s done all year,’ Tilda suggested.
‘I expect she does her best: it is a large house for one person to clean,’ Noël said mildly. ‘Not that Jude can make much of a mess, because when he is home he seems to spend most of his time down at the mill, working on his sculptures, or in his little study next to the library.’
‘Oh yes, I heard he was a sculptor.’
‘He’s very famous,’ Jess said, ‘and very bad tempered. He only cancelled Christmas because he saw that engagement announcement and I think he’s mean. I bet he didn’t even remember that Mum and Dad wouldn’t be able to be here this year and I’d be coming on my own.’
‘Jess, that will do!’ commanded Tilda, and she lapsed into sulky silence.
I got up. ‘Well, I think I’d better go up to the house while it’s still light and settle in.’
Noël also got up and found me a vast bunch of keys, pointing out the largest. ‘That’s the front door. I expect you will work the rest out for yourself.’
‘I could come and show you,’ Jess offered quickly.
‘Now, Jess, you know you’ve promised Old Nan you will visit her this afternoon: you’d better go and get ready, you can’t disappoint her,’ Tilda said. ‘She’ll have made you a special tea.’
‘More nursery food!’ Jess said disgustedly.
‘And change into something that isn’t black.’
Jess groaned and stomped off upstairs.
‘She’s so disappointed not to have Christmas atOld Place,’ confided Noël in a whisper, as though he thought we could be overheard from above, ‘and whatever she says, she adores Jude. It will be very quiet here for her, I’m afraid. Mo and Jim kindly invited us to share their Christmas dinner and that would have been something.’ He sighed again. ‘I am an expert on Christmas, you know – I’ve written a book on its history and traditions, so I do like to celebrate properly.’
‘And so we will! I have a plump little chicken that will do very well for the three of us,’ Tilda said stoically.
I suddenly wondered if they were expecting me to offer to cook Christmas dinner instead of the Chirks, even though I hadn’t even arrived at Old Place yet, so I said quickly, ‘I don’t celebrate Christmas.’
‘Not celebrate Christmas?’ Noël looked as stunned as if I had admitted to some abhorrent crime.
‘No, I was brought up as a Strange Baptist.’
‘Oh – right,’ he said uncertainly. ‘I think I’ve heard of those … And the lady who runs the Homebodies agency – Ellen, is it? – mentioned that you have not long since lost your grandmother, so I don’t expect you feel particularly festive this year?’
‘No, not at all … or any year, in fact.’
‘My dear, I am so sorry,’ Tilda said and added, graciously, ‘We quite understand – and if you feel at all in need of company at any time, you are always welcome to call on us.’
‘But surely – with a name like Holly – you must have a birthday to celebrate during Christmas?’ Noël asked suddenly.
‘It’s Christmas Day, actually, but I don’t celebrate that, either.’
‘So is mine and I feel just the same,’ he said understandingly. ‘It would simply be too presumptuous to share the Lord’s birthday, wouldn’t it?’
Chapter 4
Rose of Sharon
I was brought up to consider the tawdry trappings of Christmas and the practice of avarice and extreme gluttony to be far removed from the way we should celebrate Christ’s birth. And yet, the gaiety of my fellow nurses was heart-warming as they decorated the hospital wards and endeavoured to bring some seasonal cheer to the patients.
December, 1944
Safely back in the car I tried to decide what had been in the pinwheel sandwiches. Whatever it was had tasted like decayed fish paste, but looked like black olive pâté. It was a complete mystery to me and I might have to ask Tilda for the recipe, out of sheer curiosity.
The drive went up one side of a steeply-banked stream through the pine wood and then turned away, opening up onto a vista of sheep-nibbled grass across which, beyond a ha-ha, I could see a long, low, Jacobean building. It was rather larger than I had expected, though I suppose the size of the lodge should have given me some idea. The low-slung wintry sun sparkled off the mullioned windows, but there was no sign of life: not even a wisp of smoke from one of the line of four tall chimneys.
I drove over a cattle grid and pulled up on the gravel next to a battered red Ford Fiesta, noting as I did so that the flowerbeds that flanked the substantial front door inside an open porch looked neglected and the doorknocker, in the shape of a Green Man with frondy foliage forming his hair and beard, had not been cleaned for months.
I longed to have a go at it with Brasso. It’s not that I love cleaning, because I don’t, just that I like things neat, clean and orderly. I really have to fight the urge sometimes in other people’s houses; you’d be surprised what a mess they can leave them in.
As I got out of the car, a youngish woman came out, a half-smoked cigarette in one hand. Her magenta hair was scraped back into a ponytail, apart from one long, limp strand that hung over her face like wet seaweed, and she was wearing a salmon-pink velour tracksuit that left a goose-pimpled muffin top of flesh exposed.
‘Hello,’ I said, holding out my hand. ‘You must be the cleaner, Sharon? I’m glad you’re still here, I’m late and I thought you might have gone by now.’
‘I was just about to when I heard your car,’ she said, taking my hand as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it and then letting it go immediately. ‘Call me Shar – and I’m not really a cleaner, I’ve just been helping Jude out for a bit of extra cash since my Kevin’s been laid off. Not that he pays me the going rate, he’s too mean.’
‘Isn’t that illegal?’
‘Cash in hand, innit? He’s got me over a barrel. You’d better watch out you get your money.’
‘Oh, that’s okay, the agency pays me.’
‘You
