Christmas At Thrush Green (11 page)

‘Do be careful,’ Harold cautioned. ‘It might be poisonous. ’

‘If it’s on that shelf, it’s certainly not poisonous. I keep everything like that in the garden shed.’ She had another lick, a bit bigger than the first.

Harold looked at the shelf she’d pointed out, and took down a jar of instant coffee. ‘Here’s the coffee,’ he said and took off the lid to check inside. ‘Yes, that’s coffee all right. But what’s in your jar?’

‘I know!’ said Ella triumphantly. ‘It’s bran! I heard a piece about it on the wireless the other day, about how it’s good for you, fibre and all that. Thought I’d have a try. Didn’t like it much. Got in the teeth.’ And with that, she tipped the contents into the pedal bin beside the sink.

‘I could have used that for my slug traps,’ said Harold. ‘Now sit down, Ella, and I’ll make us both some coffee with this.’ And he held up the jar of instant coffee.

Over the mugs of perfectly decent coffee, Harold talked to Ella about her eyesight. He knew Ella was a very proud, independent person, but they’d always got on well and Ella appreciated Harold’s good sense.

‘I went to see the eye man a week ago, and he wants me to go back to the specialist in Oxford. He reckons the macular degeneration has got worse . . .’ Her voice trailed away, then she added very quietly, ‘Much worse.’

‘Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry,’ said Harold, with immense sympathy for Ella. ‘I knew you were having problems with your eyes, but I didn’t know quite what. Tell me about it.’

Ella gave a great sigh and she didn’t speak for a moment.

‘Ella,’ prompted Harold, ‘a problem shared is a problem halved.’

Ella shifted in her chair, and looked at Harold. ‘It developed quite slowly to start with. About eighteen months ago, the optician thought there’d been degenerative changes to the back of both eyes, and sent me to Mr Cobbold, the specialist in Oxford. He confirmed the onset of macular degeneration, which was worse in the left eye. Both eyes are affected but because the right eye wasn’t as bad as the left, I’ve been managing.’ Ella stopped to cough, a wheezing chesty cough. ‘But now the right eye is in trouble. If I look at you head on’ - and Ella turned her head so she was staring straight at Harold - ‘then I can hardly make you out at all. But if I turn my head, and look at you sort of sideways, I can see you a little better but your face is still blurred.’

‘Can anything be done to stop the degeneration?’ Harold asked.

‘Apparently not. The chap told me they’re throwing a great deal of money into research but it won’t be in time to help me.’

‘And what of the future?’

Ella sighed. ‘I don’t know. He wants me to go back to see Mr Cobbold. He said the disease can progress at different speeds. I won’t go completely blind and will always retain a little peripheral vision but the central vision of the right eye is damaged, which is why I’ve recently been having such difficulty with the things I love most - my handiwork, my sewing and knitting. And reading. Soon I may not be able to do them at all.’ She swallowed hard and looked away.

Harold sat quietly and waited for her to get her emotions under control.

Then Ella got up and walked through to the sitting-room. She returned with the piece of needlework that she had been inspecting when he had arrived.

‘Look at that,’ she said, tossing it onto the table in front of him.

Harold picked it up, and then turned it so the design was the right way up. He recognized the rabbit and the unicorn from the famous tapestries he had seen in the Musée de Cluny in France. He didn’t know anything about tapestry or needlepoint, but he had always admired the way Ella’s chubby fingers were able to produce such tiny stitches.

‘Just look at it! Stitches all over the place.’

Even Harold, who seldom had the need to hold a needle, was able to see there were a great many false stitches and, in several places, the coloured thread seemed to be in quite the wrong place. The unicorn’s horn, for instance, definitely had a kink in it.

‘More than anything,’ Ella said, ‘is my worry about what I shall do when I can’t do my needlework or handiwork any more.’

‘What did the optician say?’ asked Harold, handing the needlework back to Ella. ‘What about using a magnifier? I’ve seen advertisements for those.’

‘But it won’t work if my central vision goes completely. At the moment, it comes and goes, but I’m finding it much more difficult. It’s fine at one moment, then the lines go all distorted and squiggly. That’s why I am putting the stitches in the wrong place.’

Ella heaved a great sigh, and then in what Harold realized was an act of great frustration, she hurled the piece of needlework across the kitchen.

‘To be honest, Harold, life just won’t be worth living.’ And with that, she turned her back on Harold and stared out of the kitchen window.

‘Ella, I’m so sorry—’ began Harold.

‘Don’t,’ said Ella fiercely. ‘I can’t be doing with sympathy. Just go, will you?’

Harold put out his hand and touched Ella’s shoulder. ‘Chin up, old girl. We’ll think of something. Bye now.’

When Harold looked back as he left the kitchen, she was in the same position. But as he put his hand on the front door knob to let himself out, he thought he heard a faint, ‘Thanks for coming.’

 

When Harold got home, he found Isobel in the kitchen icing the Christmas cake, and told her of his worries about Ella.

‘It’s not that I think she’s a danger to herself. It’s not like someone beginning to lose their mind. You know, like putting the electric kettle onto the gas ring to boil. But she seems so utterly depressed.’

Harold pulled out a chair and sat down. He dipped a finger into the bowl of icing, like a child might do. And Isobel, equally as she might with a child, gently admonished him. ‘Don’t pick! You can have the bowl to lick out when I’ve finished - although too much sugar isn’t good for you.’ She dipped her palette knife into a jug of hot water standing on the table beside her, and continued to smooth down the icing.

‘Don’t make it too level,’ said Harold. ‘I like the top to look a bit like snow. It makes it more fun for the little sledges.’

‘Honestly!’ laughed Isobel. ‘Grown men turn into little boys when it comes to Christmas. But talking of sledges, can you fetch the box of cake decorations for me. They’re in the spare-room cupboard.’

When Isobel had married Harold, she had left most of her old life behind but she had brought the old Clarks shoebox that contained the Christmas cake decorations her mother had used when Isobel was a child. There was a little snowman, his once-red scarf now very faded; a couple of sledges; and a reindeer with only three legs. Isobel now craftily set it against a little crest of icing to compensate for its lost limb. The final decoration, which was always placed in the middle of the cake, was a robin on a log - and the robin was on a tiny spring so it wobbled.

After Isobel had carefully placed this on the cake, she stood back to admire her work. ‘That’ll do, I think,’ she said, wiping her hands on her apron.

Harold leaned across the table, and tapped the robin so it rocked back and forth. ‘Hello, robin. Happy Christmas!’

Isobel smiled indulgently at her husband. ‘Now, once I’ve cleared all this up, what about a cup of tea? You can tell me more about Ella, and we can have a think about what we can do to help.’

O
n the Monday morning of the award week, Nelly Piggott at last found time to take an hour off to go shopping. Her plan to look for a new dress had suffered a set-back when Rosa had called in sick the previous Monday, which meant they were one assistant short in the tea-room and Nelly had had to help out. But the girl had sent a message with her sister on Friday to say she was better and would be back to work the following week. It was always quiet first thing on a Monday and Nelly had gone in early to get the lunch preparations under way.

‘Just poppin’ out,’ she said to Rosa as she walked through the tea-room. ‘Won’t be a tick.’

After her large bulk had gone down the handsome steps in front of The Fuchsia Bush and turned left down the High Street, Poppy turned to Rosa. ‘Want a bet that she comes back with a bag from one of them designer clothes shops?’

‘And why not,’ her sister responded, sticking up for their boss. ‘Wouldn’t you if you’d won an award? We’ll have to be extra neat an’ tidy on Thursday, too.’

Nelly was away a little longer than she had intended. She found just the dress she wanted - hyacinth blue with a white collar - but, after turning this way and that in front of the changing-room mirror, she had to admit that she really needed one size larger and the assistant said they were sold out of that size.

Typical, thought Nelly, as she struggled out of the dress. Why don’t they order more of the most popular sizes? She seemed quite oblivious of the fact that the size she needed was very close to the top end of the range.

After searching through the rails of another two shops, she was beginning to despair. One of the problems was that the dress shops were full of party wear - all glitter and tinsel - and she’d had to share changing-rooms with giggling office girls trying on impossibly short and tight-fitting confections in which they would grace their office parties the following week.

Finally, Nelly had overcome her pride and had gone into a shop in a little arcade that sold ‘clothes for the more generous figure’. And here she found the perfect dress. It was in a colour that the assistant described as a ‘loverly crushed raspberry’, had three-quarter sleeves and a pretty scalloped neckline. It was high-waisted and the skirt fell in soft folds, hiding Nelly’s portly figure. Before she went back to work, she popped into Boots to buy a new lipstick to match the dress. She smiled when she saw it was called Ripe Raspberry.

She was so pleased with her purchases that she didn’t mind the smirks on the faces of Rosa and Poppy as she walked through the tea-room, not even when the word ‘outsize!’ floated in the air before the door into the kitchen swung behind her.

 

‘So you sees,’ said Albert Piggott to his drinking companions in The Two Pheasants the following day, ‘I’ll be at the wife’s side when she gets her award come Thursday.’

Percy Hodge snorted. ‘That’s typical of you, Albert Piggott. You runs your wife down at every possible moment, but you’re quick enough to go and bask in her glory.’

‘It’s a fair return,’ responded Albert. ‘After all, I took ’er back when she were down on ’er luck.’

Bob Jones stopped drying one of the pint glasses and eyed Albert on the other side of the bar. ‘Well, if you’re going to be there, what with all the photographers and reporters, you’ll have to spruce yourself up. You’re a right shambles at the moment. Your chin is a mess, your hands need a good scrub and goodness only knows when you last had a haircut.’

‘My Nelly . . .’ Albert paused when Percy Hodge gave another of his resounding snorts. ‘My Nelly does me hair regular once a month. I were goin’ to get ’er to do it for Chris’mas but I’ll get ’er to do it tomorrer. An’ these shavin’ cuts,’ he said, fingering his stubbly chin, ‘will ’ave gone by Thursday.’

‘What you goin’ to wear, then?’ asked Percy. ‘Something a bit tidier than what you’re wearin’ now, I trust.’

‘Course, I will. It’ll be my funeral suit. Just the ticket. The ol’ gel come back yesterday with a very posh frock. Must’ve cost ’er a fortune.’

‘I just might turn up to watch this pantomime. Specially if there’s to be cameras,’ chortled Percy.

‘Nelly said she’d be layin’ on a bit of a celebration after closin’ time,’ said Albert, getting stiffly off the bar stool.

‘Then I’ll definitely come down,’ Percy said.

‘For staff only she said - an’,’ Albert added quickly, ‘family, of course.’

 

The Fuchsia Bush was a hive of activity from before it even got light on Thursday morning. Nelly had arranged for Bert Nobbs, the Lulling taxi driver, to collect her from Thrush Green and take her to work. She wasn’t going to risk creasing her lovely new dress by carrying it over her arm as she walked down the hill to Lulling. And there were her best high heels and handbag, too.

‘See you this afternoon,’ said Albert as Nelly was leaving to go out to the waiting taxi.

Nelly turned on the doorstep. ‘What? You’re not coming, and that’s flat. You’d disgrace the ceremony.’

‘Go on wi’ you. Course I’m comin’. I’m not lettin’ me wife receive her award and not be there for her big day.’ Before Nelly could argue, he added, ‘Anyways, I’m proud of you, gel.’

That stopped Nelly in her tracks. He’d never said that before. ‘Well, if you must,’ she relented. ‘But mind you tidy up, and have a good scrub first.’

On the way down to Lulling, Nelly thought about her lazybones of a husband. Now that he’d finally decided to hang up his churchyard boots, what on earth would he do with himself all day? Of course, she knew the answer to that - drink his pension away in The Two Pheasants - but she’d have to find something to occupy him. Then she pushed all thoughts of Albert to the back of her mind and ran through what there was still to be done.

With the award ceremony at four o’clock, it had been decided to close the tea-room at three, once the customers who had come in for a late lunch after an exhausting morning’s Christmas shopping had gone. At first, Nelly had thought they would re-open for teas later but then she decided that she could afford to lose one afternoon’s takings: after all, it wasn’t every day that they got a Gold Award.

The hour after closing would give them time to clear away the lunch things, lay up some of the tables for tea for the visitors, and change out of their working clothes. The girls - Gloria, Rosa, Poppy and the kitchen staff - all seemed to be as excited as she was. Clare Border, who didn’t usually work in The Fuchsia Bush in the afternoons, had arranged for her children to be collected from school by a neighbour and given their tea so she could be here. And quite right, too, thought Nelly. Clare had been such a help when they’d set up Nelly’s next door. She was one of the team now. Gloria had decided to close the sandwich shop at two o’clock, once all the locals had been in for their lunchtime sandwiches and rolls, so she too could help with the preparations.