Christmas At Thrush Green (23 page)

‘This is my home,’ snapped Ella. She paused a moment, then continued quietly, ‘I love this cottage, I really do. I couldn’t bear to have to leave it.’

She looked round at the familiar room: the scrubbed pine table in the middle of the kitchen, and the little Welsh dresser against the wall between the two windows. Dimity noticed Ella had lit the candle on her favourite Christmas decoration: the heat from the candle made a whirligig of angels slowly move round in circles, tinkling gently.

She then took a deep breath, stubbed out the cigarette, and said, ‘And, yes, I’m ready. That needs to come with me.’ She pointed to a bulging carrier bag containing wrapped parcels, and a roll of Christmas paper. ‘I’ve put a few clothes out on my bed,’ she continued and then stopped. Neither Charles nor Dimity said anything and, after a moment, Ella went on in a quiet voice. ‘I can’t get my little suitcase down off the top of the cupboard without standing on a chair, and I didn’t think it would be very safe for me to climb up one-handed.’

Dimity shuddered at the thought. ‘I’ll go up and pop them in the case. Why don’t you and Charles take the rest of the things out to the car? I won’t be a moment.’

‘Thanks, Dim,’ said her old friend. ‘Thank you both very much.’ She heaved herself to her feet, crossed to the Welsh dresser and blew out the candle on her Christmas decoration. She watched the circling angels slowly come to a halt and then turned to Charles who was waiting quietly by the door. ‘I’m ready now. Shall we go?’

 

 

At about the same time as the Thrush Green carol singers were entertaining the residents of Rectory Cottages, another group of carol singers arrived outside The Fuchsia Bush, which was serving tea to the last exhausted shoppers. It was nearly five o’clock, and the shops’ brightly lit windows shone out onto the pavement. The white Christmas lights, strung high across the fronts of the High Street shops, twinkled cheerfully.

Poppy, who was idling at the back of the tea-room and wondering how quickly these last customers might leave because she was going out that evening with Geoff, the photographer who had attended the award ceremony, pushed open the door into the kitchen and called through, ‘Mrs Piggott, the carol singers is come.’

Nelly came bustling through into the tea-room. ‘Well, open the door, girl, so as we can hear them!’

Poppy dutifully opened the door, letting in the cold evening air. Ha! she thought. That’ll shift the dawdlers.

The carol singers’ voices followed the cold air in. ‘God rest ye merry gentlemen,’ they sang. It was the choir from St John’s and Nelly waved to a few people she knew. The remaining customers smiled and sat back to enjoy the music.

Nelly pulled the last remains of the cakes resting on the counter towards her, and sliced great chunks of rich fruit cake, chocolate cake and coffee cake. When the carol singers had finished their second carol, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, she handed two plates piled with cake to Poppy and Rosa.

‘Look sharp now!’ she said. ‘Take the cake down to them and make sure you come back with empty plates. It’s nippy out there, and this’ll keep ’em warm.’

The singers gratefully stretched out for slices of cake, and one or two popped an extra slice into their pockets. Then, calling out their thanks, they moved off down the road towards their next stop. As Nelly held the door open for the last of the customers to leave, she thought that the singing was sounding a little muffled - no doubt the slices of cake had something to do with it.

 

At six-thirty that evening, Derek and Jean Burwell arrived home having spent the afternoon in Oxford. As Mr Burwell turned the car across the Woodstock Road to enter his driveway, he let out a surprised cry, and stopped the car between the two stone pillars.

‘What’s happened to the lights?’ he spluttered.

‘Oh dear, there must be a power cut,’ Jean Burwell said.

‘Rubbish, woman!’ snapped her husband. ‘There are lights on in the house next door.’

He backed the car a little, so the headlights lit up the stone gateposts, and then got out of the car, crossing to peer more closely at them. When his wife saw him bending down and fumbling around the base of the pillars, she realized that the uplighters were not shining either.

‘Come on, dear,’ she called. ‘It’s perishing cold with your door open.’

Derek got back into the car. ‘I think they’ve been vandalized, but I’ll be able to see better with a torch.’

Having parked the car, he grabbed a large torch from a shelf in the garage and marched back up the tarmac drive to the gateway, leaving his wife to take all their shopping into the house. She was pouring boiling water into a teapot when her husband marched into the kitchen, slamming the back door behind him.

‘I was right - vandalized!’ he exclaimed. ‘What a nerve! The wreaths round the lion and unicorn seem to be all right but I’ve found at least two of the little lights smashed which has shorted the rest. And the bottom lights have been kicked to one side.’

‘Who’d have done such a thing?’ his wife asked indignantly.

‘Lord knows,’ he replied. ‘Some of the kids, I expect. That Cooke family that lives down the Nidden Road, they’re always making trouble. It came up at the PCC meeting the other day.’

‘Ring Harold Shoosmith, then,’ Jean Burwell said. ‘It’s not right to damage people’s property like that. The lights were so pretty, too.’

‘I’ll go down to Lulling in the morning and get some replacements.’ He waved away his wife’s proffered cup of tea. ‘I’ll have it in a moment. I’m going to ring Shoosmith now. Got to get to the bottom of this,’ and he stormed out of the kitchen.

‘Tell him it’s scandalous behaviour,’ called his wife to his retreating back. ‘And at Christmas time, too!’

C
hristmas Day was the busiest day of the year for Charles Henstock, with services in all four of his churches, and he was up long before dawn started to glimmer on the eastern horizon. Dimity was still asleep in bed; she had been to the midnight service with him the evening before in St John’s, and they hadn’t got home until after one o’clock.

She had left out the box of cereal on the kitchen table for him, and he poured a generous helping into a bowl as he waited for the kettle to boil.

‘You must have breakfast before you leave for Nidden, dear,’ Dimity had said. ‘And make sure you wear your thermal vest - that church is never warm enough for the eight o’clock service.’

As Charles opened the back door a quarter of an hour later, he could smell the frost outside rather than see it for it was still very dark. He stood for a moment and sniffed the air as a curious rabbit might. Much to the disappointment of the local children, the snow that had fallen two days previously had not lingered. Rain on the morning of Christmas Eve had melted it swiftly and all that remained were a number of sagging snowmen. The previous night’s frost would mean an awkward drive to Nidden. The vicar tilted his round face up to gaze into the dark sky; he could see stars high above - and shining brightest of all was the Morning Star. How apt, he thought, as he crossed the gravel to the garage.

Charles set off for Nidden, passing through Thrush Green as he went. The village was beginning to stir. He was glad to see the figure of Albert Piggott pushing open the church gate; he would be going in to turn on the heating, ready for the eleven-fifteen service. There were lights on in the Curdles’ home next to the Youngs’. No doubt George, Annie and Billy were opening their stockings.

As he turned up the Nidden Road, he dropped his speed. Although the steep hill from Lulling to Thrush Green had been dry and frost-free, the gritting lorry would not have come up here the evening before. He passed the ramshackle cottage where the Cooke clan lived. It was still in total darkness. He wondered if the youngest children would have any sort of Christmas. Cooke senior was still serving time at Her Majesty’s pleasure and he didn’t know if Mrs Cooke had any work. It was certain that none would appear in church, and he made a resolution to call on them in the New Year.

He hoped there would be more than the usual four worshippers at the eight o’clock communion service but doubted it. He sometimes wondered how long the little church could continue to remain open. There were only ever two services a month here, the regular worshippers having to go to one of his other parishes if they wanted to attend every Sunday. After Nidden, he would have the nine o’clock service at Lulling Woods, a dash back for the ten o’clock service at St John’s in Lulling and then, finally, he’d have to hurry to get to St Andrew’s in Thrush Green.

Christmas Day was always a rush - but it was worth it. Churches fuller than usual, children, happy faces. Yes, a very good time of the year, he declared, as he pulled into his regular parking place outside the little church.

 

The rector had been right about the Curdle household: it had had a very early start. Much too early, Ben had chided, sending Annie back to her room when she’d appeared beside his bed and his clock told him it was not yet five o’clock.

‘But Father Christmas has come, an’ I want to open my stocking,’ she’d whispered so as not to wake her mother.

‘If you don’t go back to bed, Father Christmas might come and take it back,’ her father had said sternly. ‘You can come in at seven. And no opening of the stocking beforehand,’ he added to his daughter’s retreating figure.

It had been closer to six-thirty when Ben and Molly’s bedroom door had burst open, and two over-excited children had come in, dragging their stockings behind them.

‘Happy Christmas, Mum, Dad!’ they cried.

Ben opened one eye and saw the time. Well, they’d managed an extra hour and a half’s sleep. ‘Happy Christmas, George. And happy Christmas, Annie,’ he said, sitting up, running a hand through his tousled hair.

The two children scrambled up onto the end of the bed, and Annie wriggled her way towards her mother. ‘Are you awake, Mum?’ and she shook a shoulder under the bedclothes.

‘Yes, I’m awake. Now get off me so I can go and fetch our Billy.’

Their youngest had pulled himself up on the bars of his cot in the little single room next door, and was shaking the side vigorously.

‘Just as well you’re the last,’ said Molly, lifting the child out. ‘That cot won’t last much longer.’ She took him off to the bathroom to change his nappy.

Five minutes later, everyone was squeezed onto and into the double bed, and Ben called, ‘Ready, everyone? Right, one, two, three, go!’ And the two elder Curdle children delved into their stockings - long green woollen stockings that had been in the Curdle family for years - and the room was soon filled with cries of delight and the bed covered with pieces of discarded wrapping paper.

Molly stretched out a hand to her husband. ‘Happy Christmas, Ben.’

‘Happy Christmas, darlin’,’ he replied, and gave her a hug.

 

Winnie Bailey stood at her bedroom window in her dressing-gown. The sky was beginning to lighten, and was softly streaked. A well-wrapped-up figure was bicycling slowly past and Winnie wondered where on earth anyone would be cycling to at this hour on Christmas morning. A blackbird’s alarm call brought her gaze into her own garden. The grass was white with frost and the bushes round the bird table were already a-twitter with expectant sparrows and finches. She resolved to put out an extra large helping of bread as soon as she’d had her breakfast. She could already hear Jenny downstairs in the kitchen, and remembered that scrambled eggs were on the menu. Winnie had to admit that Jenny’s scrambled eggs were the best in the world.

When her nephew Richard had telephoned one day a few weeks earlier to say that he, Fenella and the children were going to stay in London for Christmas, Winnie had felt immense relief. She was too old, she decided, to have a house full of over-excited youngsters. They had all come to stay a few years before and she had been exhausted even before lunchtime. On top of which she found it very difficult not to show her disapproval of the way the children opened their presents with abandon, hardly glancing at one before tearing the paper off the next. Richard had done his best to keep a list of who had given what, but she doubted many bread-and-butter letters were written.

Isobel Shoosmith had been with her when Richard had rung. She had popped over to get a recipe for a sherry trifle that had been handed down to Winnie by her mother, and which Harold had declared ‘the most delicious ever’ when they’d been having lunch there one day.

‘That was Richard,’ Winnie had said, putting down the telephone. ‘Not coming for Christmas, thank goodness. It will be nice to be on our own.’

‘You must come and have Christmas lunch with us,’ Isobel had said immediately. ‘There’s no point the four of us sitting down to huge lunches on separate sides of the green.’

When Winnie had demurred that it would be too much trouble, Isobel had insisted. ‘We tend to eat at about two o’clock,’ she’d said, ‘so have a good breakfast to last you through.’

And so, the evening before, Winnie and Jenny had planned their breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast, with grilled bacon. Afterwards, they would open their presents before getting ready for church at eleven-fifteen.

She turned away from the window and crossed the room towards the bathroom. She paused by the chest of drawers on top of which stood her favourite photograph of Donald. He’d been asleep in a deck-chair under a shady tree in the garden, and the book he had been reading had fallen sideways in his lap. She loved the peaceful look on his face, and she had never regretted creeping up on him and taking the photograph.

‘Happy Christmas, dearest Donald,’ she said now, and gently touched his face in the photograph. ‘It’s scrambled eggs for breakfast!’

 

‘Are you awake?’ called Connie, pushing open her aunt’s door. She was still in her dressing-gown and was carrying a tray carefully in front of her.