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Authors: Lily Graham

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BOOK: A Cornish Christmas
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It didn't feel like the right time to bring up the baby either. To be honest, I didn't know when it would be the right time. The trouble was that even though she meant well, and I didn't doubt
that
, she had a way of making a stressful situation worse. She had a tendency of not trusting us to make our own decisions, to insist that I visit a battery of professionals that she had sanctioned, as if only via her own investigations they could be degreed to the right level, despite what I, or science may have to say on the subject.

Three years ago when I'd refused to change my gynaecologist and see her experts instead, she had implied that because we hadn't seen ‘the best' professionals, who would have advised against my fondness for long walks (which she believed weren't good for the baby), there was a chance we wouldn't have miscarried. Three guesses why we've decided to keep the third pregnancy – the one all our doctors were calling the lucky one – secret.

‘But Ivy, is that a good idea? These are the last good years, you don't want to throw them away!'

Last good years?
I gritted my teeth. ‘We're not throwing them away!' I gasped. Couldn't she just understand that we'd been through hell and needed a minute to recover from it all? Even if, yes, right now I was lying and probably going to hell... it was a
good
lie, for all our good really, even hers, a lie that would reduce the stress all round rather considerably.

Genevieve pressed on, ‘You've got to push through – I know it's hard, but this could work. It takes around six months to get the body ready apparently, with twice-weekly appointments. You could both come stay here, I could arrange for James to fetch you, and take you back, you wouldn't have to worry about a thing. Or... you know, I could set up an area for you to live in the manor house, just to make things a little easier... John said the other day that they could install a whole kitchen in the east wing in a week... It'll be no trouble, I'll call the builders tomorrow.'

Come live with her?
What?
The woman went from zero to a hundred faster than I could blink, and after the day I'd had all I really wanted to do was go to sleep. I was regretting not handing the phone to Stuart when he offered.

I took a deep breath. I didn't need to explain myself to her. Something that I kept forgetting, and something she needed a reminder of as well. ‘I appreciate your help, Genevieve, I do, but please respect our decision.'

A long silence followed, where I suspected Genevieve, too, was attempting to find her own inner calm. ‘Well, all right, that's your choice. I'll respect it. Give my love to Stuart,' she said, then hung up.

I closed my eyes.

‘Scale?'

I opened an eye and gave a dry, humourless laugh. ‘About a
Five: Third degree burn.
'

‘Ah, well that's good then... shows she's grown,' he said with a wink.

I couldn't summon a laugh; all I wanted to do was sleep.

He looked so worried that I said, ‘She means well... in her own twisted sort of way.'

Stuart patted me on the knee. ‘I'm sure I'm the one who is meant to tell you that.'

I snorted. ‘Maybe we can tell her... when it's about nine.'

‘Nine?'

‘Nine years old.'

He gave me a look. ‘Just say the word.'

Stuart was sorely tempted, but I couldn't do that. I might not have wished her to know about the pregnancy just yet... but I couldn't do that. She might drive me mad, but you couldn't fault the fact that she cared. Finally, we put out the light, where I tried, and failed, to put aside all the anxiety speaking to her had caused, dredging up more than one old ghost.

Chapter 3
Rudolph Has a Shiny Nose

I
dreamt
of Mum that night. Perhaps, it wasn't surprising. After bringing the desk home, a part of me knew I was bringing something else along with it too. Something I'd been trying to bury, along with everything else. A piece of her, I suppose.

I hated it when I dreamt of her.

Hated how easy it was to forget. How easy it was to slip back to before.

I hated it, because I loved it so much. Because when I dreamt of her, it was as if she was still there. My traitorous mind was always so quick to peel away the years, to erase all the pain and heartache, and put me once again back in my childhood home, without a moment's hesitation.

Except that night, I wasn't a child. It was now, just after the phone call with Genevieve, except now I was calm. What had I to fear? There she was, just when I needed her. Soon she'd tell me not to worry...

In my dream, she sat at her writing desk, penning a letter. I smiled, at how often I'd found her sitting there, doing that. Her hair was once again long and dark blonde, a loose tangle of curls that flickered in the soft firelight. When I entered the room, she smiled, patted the seat next to her, making Fat Arnold, our squashed-face Persian, glare as he was made to relocate. She laughed, and then took a sip of tea, out of that old pink and gold teacup that she loved so much, and in the pause, I glanced over and saw that she wasn't writing a letter at all.

It was a postcard. A familiar one, with a pretty French cover. As I peered I saw her wink, as she picked up her pen, and addressed the card to
Darling Ivy.

I smiled in return, and watched as she began to write.

I opened my mouth to ask her why she was writing me a postcard but found that no words came out. I tried again. But my voice was gone. My heart started to beat faster. What was happening? I tried to touch her arm, get her attention, but my hand felt like it was coming from very far away. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't touch her. I couldn't reach her.

‘Mum?' I cried, until I was hoarse. My throat sore. The words ricocheting in my head like a machine gun. But no sound came out of my mouth at all.

I stood up fast, and all at once I was peering at her from the end of a long tunnel. A tunnel that was getting fainter and fainter, as I called her name over and over again, till I could taste the blood in my mouth. But she never looked up. She never heard my cries. She just sat there, with that soft smile on her face as she wrote and wrote the words I would never, ever read.

I awoke to painful, gasping tears. The kind where your lungs forget to breathe. Somehow in my fog-covered gaze, I saw Stuart's gentle eyes, and felt his arms hold me tight. ‘It's okay, love,' he said while stroking my hair. ‘Just a dream, just a dream,' he added, trying to soothe me.

But I could find no solace. She'd been there. Her face so vivid. The room so real... and that bloody postcard. That postcard with its cruel emptiness filled with nothing but silence, a silence that seemed to both haunt and taunt me. All I could do was sob for it. For the sheer waste and cruelty of it.

‘What is it?' asked Stuart, his eyes tired, worried.

I tried to squeeze the words out past my grief, past everything that had been left unsaid, but I couldn't. Somehow, though he must have guessed.

He held me closer. Finally when the words came, they were a jagged rock-heap of things, from missing Mum, to the ever-present fear that when our dream of finally having a baby was so close to being realised it would be taken away. Like it had so many times before.

‘We've just got to trust, my love. That's all we've got to do. I'm sorry that I kept encouraging you to get your mum's desk. I thought it would be good for you, I should have known...' he said, his brow furrowed.

I shook my head. ‘Don't, it was... it is good. It's so hard to explain... but as hard as it is, and it's well, brutal in a way, it's the closest I've felt to her in years.' I took a shuddering breath. ‘It's just... no one tells you about this, that it can come back and hit you again when you least expect it to. When finally everything seems to be going all right.'

Stuart sighed, then said wisely, ‘But that's the way of it, isn't it? We're so wired to expect the worst that when something good happens, it's like our subconscious minds need to find something to torture us with, because if we dared to trust, well then there's a chance we'd be disappointed.'

I nodded. ‘Though in my dream... it was only realising she was gone again that was the torturous bit.'

Stuart gave me a sympathetic squeeze.

I always appreciated that about him, he didn't tell me I was silly, or try to sweep away my emotions. Or worse, try to cover them up. He just let me feel them.

Finally, I drifted off again, this time into a dreamless sleep.

I
t was
the first thing I noticed as I entered my studio in the early chill of the morning, despite my tired, swollen eyes. I pulled my cardigan close and stood just inside the doorway and swallowed in sudden trepidation. Like a sentinel guiding me in, burning so brightly, it appeared to have an almost otherworldly glow, the little card with my mother's reindeer and his missing guiding light: Rudolph had a very shiny nose.

A perfect little nose in a shade I'd never seen; like crimson mixed with stardust, seemingly lit from within. I blinked, unable to move; it took a while before my legs obeyed my command.

It was all some mad joke of Stuart's, surely? A strange pre-Christmas trick? I rushed forward to the desk and picked up the card. Up close, the little nose seemed even more delicate, like red spun fairy dust. If he had done it, I couldn't even be upset. It was exquisite. Except, when could he have done it?

Perhaps last night as I slept, maybe he had tiptoed out... Maybe that would explain the missing paint, even though he said he hadn't taken it.

I frowned, remembering Stuart hadn't even been home when I'd brought the desk, he hadn't seen the card until later... and wouldn't have had the incentive to steal the paint... unless he found some and thought it would be a way of making me feel better, after last night?

I set the card down, a sudden thought occurring to me as I crossed the room to look again through the boxes, only to pause in bewilderment. They were all still missing.

Perhaps Stuart had found a bit of paint somewhere and had done it as a surprise, though I wondered why. It was sweet, a beautiful gesture in a way, but still unlike him; he would have usually left well alone; left me to sort out how I felt about it; or so I had thought.

I placed it next to the postcard, noting how, in the early morning, the postcard seemed to glow. Then I turned away from it, last night's dream still fresh in my mind. A part of me wanted to simply shut it in the drawer and out of sight. A bigger part knew I never would.

I rubbed my eyes, thinking ‘coffee', and retreated downstairs to put on a pot. Muppet heard the sound of my footfall and roused herself to follow. I stepped over Pepper and Pots, lounging by the Aga in the kitchen, and gave them both a morning rub. ‘Hello boys, where've you been?'

They circled me, while Muppet looked on disdainfully. They had a mutual understanding, which I understood as follows: when the curly-haired human, ‘The One Who Feeds', is in the holy place with the most saintliest of deities, whom the humans call ‘Fridge', which opens with a great holy light to reveal ‘Food', we are all on our best behaviour.

When my back was turned, of course, all bets were off.

I fed the livestock, popped some homemade bread (Stuart's) in the toaster and made some filter coffee, sighing as I examined our impressive collection of preserves, which included squash, cucumber, and even beetroot. Wishing that, just once, Stuart would think ‘strawberry'...

‘Beetroot it is,' I said to Muppet and Pots, who'd lingered by the Aga, while Pepper slouched off in search of a vacant bed.

I unhooked my navy parka from behind the back door and slipped on my wellies, fetching a tray that I filled with two cups, toast, jam and the coffee pot. If the mountain won't come to Muhammad, Muppet and I would meet him in his polytunnel.

‘Slugs,' he moaned in despair, a bucket at his feet into which he dropped the soft molluscs, favouring each one with a pointed glare and a disgruntled shake of his head, as if each little shell-less slug owed him a personal debt.

‘Coffee?' I asked, interrupting his morning tirade against the slugs.

‘Bless you,' he said, crossing the cabbage patch, looking rather fetching in an emerald green jersey that brought out his dark eyes. He gave his runner beans a fondle as he took a cup and joined me, perching on one of the raised cement beds.

‘Back to the 2 a.m. patrol?' I asked.

‘Looks like it. Little buggers!' He glared at the bucket. ‘You will not get my prize lettuces,' he declared, like a general announcing war.

‘Lettuces,' I mused, ‘is that the plural? Sounds odd.'

He frowned. ‘Lettuci?'

‘That sounds vaguely diseased. Mrs Sprout, I'm afraid you've got a nasty case of lettuci...'

He laughed and took a sip from his cup. ‘I'll ask Tomas.'

‘I'll Google,' I said, having more faith in the search engine than an eighty-five-year-old Frenchman who insisted on calling me Eve, despite numerous corrections. Stuart's vegetable guru lived alone in a small rundown cottage at the end of Cloudsea, where he had placed a collection of handmade ‘Keep Out' notices in a violent shade of red paint all along a rather grim-looking path of stinging nettles, to his neighbour Gertrude Burrows's long-suffering despair. The small front garden looked like something out of
The Addams Family
. Ironic, considering the back resembled something that could be entered in the veggie division of the Chelsea Flower Show. There had been a petition to declare that bit of Cloudsea – the bit belonging to Tomas – as a no man's land for the last, oh, twenty years. All of which had only encouraged Stuart to get to know the odd gardening recluse who lived there more, because, well, Stuart is Stuart.

The geriatric Tomas had long grey hair that swept his shoulders, wore a green beret at all times, even inside, had purpled, arthritic fingers that perpetually smelt of kale, and bright blue eyes that got a distinct twinkle whenever he saw Stuart's long-legged approach up the hill, and a distinctive glint whenever he saw Gertrude Burrows's more laborious shuffle.

No one really knew what the old Frenchie was doing here, but the rumours were pretty intense. Some said he escaped the French Foreign Legion, others that he was a Nazi spy, a very small sect maintained that he'd followed his heart and the village baker, Robyn Glass, here, after she holidayed in Marseille – he certainly seemed to blush a ripe prize-winning radish shade every time she handed him one of his favourite iced buns. But I suspected that the truth was stranger than fiction: the old goat was a closet Anglophile.

For instance, an offering of coffee whenever he came around to inspect the state of Stuart's polytunnel was met with a distinct shake of his head, as were any other teas
except
English breakfast, which was greeted with a faint, yet affirmative nod. Once I even caught him grin (when he thought no one was looking) as he dunked a digestive into his ‘Building Tees', without getting any of it into the mug en route to his gummy maw...

Stuart snorted, the laughter lines around his eyes creasing.

‘So...' I began.

‘So?'

I gave him a look, waiting for him to say something about the Christmas card.

‘Yes?' he said, pointing his ear towards me, his expression for ‘I'm all ears', so I threw a bit of toast at him.

He ducked. ‘It sounded like you wanted to ask me something?'

I rolled my eyes and smiled. ‘Fine, have it your way.'

He frowned. ‘Okay, what way?'

‘Stuart.'

‘Ivy.'

‘Stuart...'

I sighed. Fine. ‘I love his nose.'

Stuart blinked. ‘
Whose
nose?'

I glared. ‘Stuart, stop teasing. I'm serious. Rudolph's nose, it's beautiful. I have no idea what you used, but frankly it's incredible.'

But Stuart looked at me as if I'd gone crazy. ‘What are you talking about? Who is Rudolph?'

I stared at him, feeling a bit off-kilter. ‘Rudolph... the little reindeer from my mother's card. You... you painted in his little missing nose... didn't you?'

Stuart's eyes went wide. ‘Ivy, I would never do that.'

‘But...' I said, feeling suddenly like the ground beneath my feet was shifting.

He came over, touched my arm, his face concerned.

‘But someone did,' I insisted, feeling my blood turn cold.

He shook his head. ‘Can't be, love.'

‘It is, I saw it... his nose is there now,' I exclaimed. ‘Come, I'll show you.'

Stuart looked at me, but didn't move.

‘Come,' I insisted.

‘Ivy, love, it was probably you. You know how you get caught up in your work. Maybe you did it without realising?'

I blinked. ‘Are you serious? I just popped Rudolph's nose on my dead mum's old Christmas card and... forgot?'

‘Love...' he began, but I shook my head.

‘It's okay. Next, you'll tell me that I'm tired, I'm stressed... It's the pregnancy hormones... But I know what I saw. I didn't do it. For one, it was... well, luminescent really.'

‘Luminescent,' he repeated in some surprise.

‘Yes... It was like, like a really beautiful technique that I don't know how to do, or special paint because it shimmers... I couldn't do that.'

He laughed. ‘Darling, you are one of the best illustrators in the business. Of course you could... and if you thought you couldn't, why on earth would you think that I could?'

I stared at him, mouth slightly ajar, hoping that he'd just jump out and say, ‘Gotcha'... Though I'd probably punch him out at this point if he did. ‘I don't know... I just thought maybe, maybe you had some really great paint,' I said, somewhat faintly.

BOOK: A Cornish Christmas
9.7Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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