A Cornish Christmas (2 page)

T
he desk fitted
under the alcove in my attic-turned-studio, as if that was where it was always meant to be. With its view spanning the ocean and the evergreen countryside, the little writing desk seemed a familiar, yet unfamiliar object. In a way, I was grateful for its unobtrusiveness. In the weeks before I summoned the courage to fetch it, I'd wondered if I would ever be able to actually use it. But having it here, removed from my childhood home, felt different, not quite as embedded in the salt-sting memory of her, so perhaps I could. I'd brought it upstairs as soon as I arrived home. Thankfully, Stuart had gone to the country market.

I needed a quiet moment alone with the desk to get reacquainted and to sift through my emotions. He'd left a hurried note in blue ink, held in place on the fridge with a porcelain magnet that read:

Good lord, I thought. Let's hope not. I was still recovering from the pak choi jelly.

I had to laugh at how different our lives had become. Just a few months ago in London, a message from Stuart would ping on my mobile telling me to have dinner without him, or that I should go along to friends alone, because he was stuck in some or other long-winded executive meeting. As a senior marketing director for a large pharmaceutical company, Stuart had run on the fumes of lack of sleep, filter coffee, and the unmistakable and unrelenting feeling that he was living a life against his values. As much as he'd tried to convince himself that their practices were ethical, that they were helping save millions of lives, he couldn't help but notice how some products were rushed into the market barely out of trials, when a few more months of analysis and study could have halved the side effects, or how expensive and inaccessible their medications were for those who really needed them and how fat and wealthy the top administrative flotsam had become.

He would come home to find me seated at the large dining room table (the one I'd painted French white and vowed we'd dine on every night after a holiday in Provence and that we'd yet to eat a meal on, as it housed all my various and sundry art supplies). He'd pull up a chair next to me, look at one of my latest illustrations of Muppet, aka ‘Detective Sergeant Fudge', or my pet project, the one I dabbled with in that twilight hour after midnight, when the world was asleep and I created my own magical forest realm, capturing the adventures of a most adventurous mouse named Mr Tibbles, who made his home amongst the enchanted toadstools in the Lake District. Stuart's tired espresso-coloured eyes would light up and he'd stare at the images and exclaim, ‘Mr Tibbles went to Devon?' picking up from where I'd left the story the night before.

I would smile, showing him Mr Tibbles's most recent expedition, which on that occasion included cream tea with his cousin Molly and a trip to the seaside.

‘Tonight they are going to a night market in the forest.'

Stuart's face lit up, his dark eyes hopeful. ‘With fairy lights?'

‘With fairy lights,' I agreed.

‘That's good, I like fairy lights...' he mumbled, resting his weary face on his arms, and closing his eyes. I smoothed Stuart's dark, silky black hair off his forehead, worried at how stressed he'd become.

So this year, when he'd suggested a different pace, I readily agreed. We were fortunate enough to have some savings and, with the royalties from
The Fudge Files
, the most we'd ever achieved, we were able to buy the house. But to keep the inflow of cash ticking over and I suspect, more importantly to keep Stuart busy, he'd begun a series of successful and some not so successful (see pak choi incident) home industry creations under his Sea Cottage label, which I'd helped design.

I placed Mum's box of things on an empty spot on one of the heaving shelves that lined the wall at the back of my studio. Only to pause, open it, remove the unfinished postcard and Christmas card and place them in the writing desk, along with a display of my fine watercolour brushes in a glass jar, a haphazard pile of watercolour paper, a large dusk-pink paper peony, blotting pads and a photo of Mum and me – both with identical grins and teary eyes – taken on my wedding day.

Stuart found me sitting there not long after, staring at the little Christmas card, deep in thought. ‘Pretty,' he said, giving me a kiss, his head nodding towards the card. ‘Getting in the spirit?' He smiled at me with those dark, gentle eyes that crinkled at the corners.

‘It was Mum's – I found it in her desk. She hadn't finished it.'

He studied it, and then shook his head. ‘She was very talented; it's gorgeous. Are you going to finish off his little nose?'

I tilted my head, considering. ‘I've been trying to decide.'

He pulled up a chair from the old dining table that was now my official studio table (the long-ingrained paint marks had helped this decision along), his impossibly long legs stretched out in front of him, and stared at me, his hand in his palm, dark eyes thoughtful. ‘What's to decide?'

‘Well. It's a bit mad, I know. My first thought was that I would... but now...'

‘But now?'

‘But now, I'm not sure I should.'

He nodded slowly, eyes solemn. ‘Well, you'll figure it out.'

I smiled at him and shook my head. ‘You know, that's one of the things I love about you. You always get it.'

‘Just one of the things that you love about me?' he said in mock affront, eyes wide, sitting up straight.

I raised a brow. ‘Well, it certainly won't be turnip jam,' I replied, unable to hide my grin.

He frowned. ‘Am I due a talk?'

I nodded. ‘Mr Everton, we need to talk,' I said seriously.

He sighed, dramatically, flinging his forearm across his head in mock horror. ‘Is it about the jam?'

I nodded. ‘It is about the jam.'

He hung his head.

I patted his knee. ‘My love, the truth is... not everything is meant to be jam. I think that some vegetation is destined for other possibilities, wondrous and transformative, definitely... but not in the jam family really. Maybe they'd be better off as pickles, or curd possibly, not that I am entirely sure what curd is, but possibly that, or even chutney.'

‘Chutney?' he said, his eyes lighting up at the possibility.

‘Chutney,' I concurred.

He got that look in his eye, so I hastened to add firmly, ‘But not for turnips.'

‘Ah.' His shoulders drooped. ‘Tomas said much the same thing,' he said, with a small sad sigh, referring to his eighty-five-year-old French vegetable guru, who lived at the far end of the village and who was giving Stuart a very practical education on vegetable preservation, to Stuart's rather creative chagrin.

‘Good man,' I said with a wink, silently thanking the heavens for Tomas's wise counsel.

He nodded, eyes amused, laughter lines crinkling at the corners. ‘He's trying.

‘And what's this?' asked Stuart, picking up the empty postcard. ‘My God,' he said, looking at the old card in awe and noting Mum's fine script. ‘It's addressed to you,' he breathed.

I nodded.

‘Level?' he asked, eyes grave.

‘
Eight
on the
Everton Scale.
'

Stuart and I had developed our own emotional pain scale based on our surname, during the Mum passing and our failed conceiving years.
Eight
was code for:
Mild heart attack.

‘I can imagine,' he said, leaning over and giving me a hug. ‘Though the weird black tracks leading to your ears are a bit of a clue,' he teased.

I smacked his arm.

‘It's just so strange. I mean, why would she start writing me a postcard from a place we'd gone to together?' I asked. ‘And then... stop?'

He shook his head and leant the card back against the pink paper peony. ‘Very strange,' he agreed. ‘But it's nice that she was thinking of you.'

I nodded. Still, I couldn't help but wonder... what had she left unsaid?

Stuart didn't offer much in the way of speculation. He was comfortable with it just being a mystery.

Men. Honestly.

He gave the card a last frown and said, ‘I'm thinking rocket pesto and prosciutto linguine,' and I answered with, ‘I'm thinking: yes. Starving,' and grinned.

He left with a salute, clicking his brown wellington-clad heels together. I shook my head and laughed.

I am one of those lucky marvels whose husband has banned them from the kitchen; the last and now permanent ban was during an
Everton Three:
Door slamming on hand
when he'd lamented, in a crazed manner, to no one in particular, after my failed tomato soup experiment, ‘She'd burn air, so she would,' accompanied by wild pacing around the tomato-splattered linoleum.

I took the time, while he was occupied, to call my best friend, Catherine Talty, from our first day of primary school, when Ted Gramble lifted her long red plait and asked if he'd get gingivitis from touching it, and she replied, ‘No... but I'll give you something, anyway,' and she punched him point blank. I was thoroughly impressed and offered to match his other eye for her. Now we write children's books together that I illustrate.

She answered on the second ring. ‘Was it brutal?' she asked, in lieu of a hello, well apprised of the writing desk expedition. Muppet seemed to sense her presence and began whining for her favourite unlawful feeder, while gently scraping off the skin of my shin with her paw.

‘You've no idea,' I said, filling her in on the day and how difficult it was packing up Mum's desk, while I redistributed my shins to safety.

When I told her about the postcard though, the creator of Detective Sergeant Fudge offered a few ideas. The last – and the worst – unfortunately seemed to offer the most sense and I had to conclude that it seemed the most likely.

Catherine suggested, ‘Maybe it was just a mistake – like she was talking to you and meant to write a card to someone else and put your name instead? I mean, it happens to me rather a lot, I'm afraid. Just the other day Ben was trying to get my attention, shouting at me that he wanted to watch the bloody Minion movie again, and I wrote “Minion” four
bloody
times...'

Since she was a writer, I took her word for it. But the prospect that it was simply a mistake was rather awful. I'd hoped, despite the pain that it would no doubt cause me, that maybe Mum had had some final thing left to say; perhaps one last ‘I love you' or a bit of her typically idiosyncratic, but usually sage wisdom. Anything besides this.

At my silence, Catherine hastened to add, ‘Ivy, I could be wrong. I mean, who knows? You know your mum. She wasn't the kind of woman to leave things unfinished. If she'd done that – made a mistake with your name – chances are you would have gotten it anyway. She'd have told you the funny story and that it was probably because she was meant to tell you that she loved you, or something, and mailed it to you. She was like that...'

I smiled at the recollection, my throat a little tight. She was right too. It still amazed me how well Catherine knew Mum. Though, then again, we'd grown up together. Catherine hadn't had a mum – hers had died when she was born – and she loved Mum rather fiercely. It was a very mutual affection. Mum had loved absentminded Cat, who spent most of our childhood with her head in a book, dearly too. So perhaps her intuitive knowledge of Mum wasn't surprising at all.

She had a point though; Mum wasn't the type to leave things undone. She was thrifty and imaginative and could be counted on to turn a
faux pas
into something special. It was one of her best qualities that I hoped to emulate some day. My eye fell onto the little Christmas card and Rudolph's missing nose.

Why would she have left these unfinished?

Perhaps the simplest answer was that, in the end, faced with such pain, it was hardly surprising that a few things would have come undone.

After Catherine rang off to ‘feed the horde', which consisted of her husband Richard and three sons Tim, Jason, and Ben, all under the age of seven (I didn't mention that Stuart was cooking dinner as it seemed far too cruel), I decided I'd give Rudolph his nose. I crossed the wooden floor to the shelves behind, in search of the perfect shade of crimson gouache, only to shake my head in puzzlement as my search left me empty-handed. I scratched around and behind all the boxes, paints, and paper, to no avail. I walked the length of my studio, searching the long table and even the open writing desk, though I knew I hadn't placed it there. Nothing. And I knew I'd had it. I'd bought the crimson just days before, in an art shop in Penzance; it was the colour I'd used for Mr Tibbles's special raincoat.

The more I looked, I noticed something stranger still: it wasn't just the crimson that was gone, but every last shade of red in every medium I owned was missing as well. From my watercolours, acrylic, ink, pen, gouache... all the burgundies, clarets, scarlets and all the shades in between... it was all simply gone.

It was desperately odd. I have my scatter-brained moments, sure, but nothing like this. Especially not as a professional artist. We're often, despite the label of ‘creative messiness', neat and tidy out of sheer necessity, as damaged £100 paintbrushes can attest. So where were they?

I set Rudolph down next to the empty postcard, wondering if perhaps Stuart had decided to take up homemade signage with my supplies. Though I really would have thought he valued his life more than that.

I found him in the kitchen, his face bathed in steam from the simmering contents in the pan, which he was scenting with blissful intensity. He caught me staring and beckoned me over with a dreamy smile and inclination of his head. I breathed in the aromatic bouquet of garlic and cream, forgetting instantly why I had come down to confront him in the first place.