The Christmas Invitation Page 3

  Clara was looking speculatively from me to River. ‘Did you say the Winter Solstice? Do you then celebrate the shortest day of the year and Yule at your farm, rather than Christmas?’

  ‘We do indeed, and have a special ceremony in a sacred spot nearby, followed by a week of feasting and celebration. Meg always comes home for that.’

  Well, I’d always at least made it for the ceremony, though the feasting could last even longer than a week, with much consumption of River’s home-made mead, which always made the holiday memorable … or rather, unmemorable, since it was strong enough to fell hard-drinking men like ninepins.

  ‘What a coincidence! We also have a ceremony every year at Starstone Edge, on the night of the Winter Solstice,’ she said. ‘Meg could go to that instead.’

  ‘Starstone?’ said River eagerly. ‘I’ve heard rumours of the Starstone ceremony, and that it’s based on a very old ritual!’ Then he added wistfully, ‘I’d like to see that myself.’

  ‘Then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t. You can stay with us; there’s plenty of room,’ she offered. ‘You’ll be able to see how Meg’s portraits are coming along, too.’

  I opened my mouth to remind her that I hadn’t agreed to start on the commission before the following January, but only a croak came out.

  She’d certainly pressed the right buttons with River, however, because he was looking very tempted. ‘That’s extremely kind of you, but I’m never away from the Farm for the important ceremonies of the year, especially this one.’

  I didn’t see why he should deny himself this treat, whether I was there or not. ‘But you said yourself last year that the climb up the mountain to ignite the bonfire was getting a bit much and you were going to hand over the ceremonial staff to Oshan,’ I pointed out. ‘He’s perfectly capable of managing it on his own. You could still get home after this Starstone ceremony in time for the feasting.’

  ‘I suppose I could …’ he agreed, mulling it over. ‘It’s extremely kind of you to invite me, Professor Mayhem Doome.’

  ‘Call me Clara, both of you. The rest of it makes me sound like a firm of dodgy solicitors. And I’m so glad you feel able to come.’

  ‘If Meg’s finished the portraits by then, she can return to the Farm with me after the Solstice,’ River suggested.

  I stared speechlessly at them both, for there seemed to have been a sudden seismic shift and it appeared now to be taken for granted that I was going to Starstone as Clara decreed.

  ‘I’m sure she’ll need a little longer than that to paint both of us,’ Clara said. ‘In fact, I hope she’ll stay on and celebrate Christmas with us, and then she can complete both portraits afterwards, at her leisure.’

  ‘But I’ve never celebrated Christmas,’ I objected, last ditch, because although I was perfectly capable of turning the suggestion down, the growing desire to paint Clara was sapping my will to resist any further. ‘If I do begin the portraits before Christmas, then I’ll go to the Farm after the Solstice and complete them in the studio.’

  ‘Nonsense! Everyone should experience a proper family Christmas at least once in their lives,’ she said. ‘There’ll be a house full, I expect, and Henry loves the traditions, so we’ll have the tree, the stockings, the giant plum pudding … the even more gigantic cake, the—’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m vegetarian, so I’d be a nuisance,’ I interrupted hastily, though there was a certain fascination about the prospect offered. A proper family Christmas … what would that be like?

  ‘No problem at all,’ Clara said airily. ‘So are we all at the Red House, in a manner of speaking. It’s because of Henry: he’s vegetarian most of the time, though he eats a small amount of fish and seafood too.’

  ‘Pescetarian?’ suggested River helpfully. ‘But so are Meg and I – what a coincidence!’

  ‘Perfect!’ Clara beamed at us and gave a deep sigh of satisfaction. ‘There we are then, that’s all settled. Now, what time shall I collect you tomorrow, Meg?’

  ‘I’m afraid that would be impossible, because I really do have things to arrange first,’ I told her. ‘Besides, I’d prefer to drive up in my own van.’

  ‘You have a van?’

  ‘A small camper van. I keep it on my friends’ smallholding near St Albans and they drop it off here when I need it.’

  That wasn’t very often, and Freddie and Joe had the use of it the rest of the time, so the arrangement worked well. It wasn’t as if it was a romantic old vintage Dormobile or anything like that, but a more modern small vehicle, narrow but tall, and containing only the modicum of living facilities. I could get all my painting gear in it and also safely transport tacky canvases, so I’d found it useful to camp in it when it was inconvenient to stay with my sitters. In fact, I often much preferred to do that, though in this case, it wouldn’t be an option up on the Lancashire moors in the middle of winter.

  Clara, having attained her main objective, conceded the point. ‘In that case, you can follow me up to Starstone Edge as soon as you’re ready.’ She turned that force-field smile on me again. ‘If you do decide to stay on over Christmas, Henry would be so delighted to introduce you to all the festive manifestations of the season.’

  That all sounded a bit Jacob Marley.

  ‘Most of the Christmas traditions are actually a late Victorian embroidering of old pagan rites,’ River said.

  ‘That’s true, which makes them very suited to the Red House, which is Victorian Gothic of the most overblown kind. I let Henry have full rein over the celebrations: it’s the highlight of his year, especially the tree. He always chooses one so tall, we have to decorate half of it from the stairs or using a stepladder.’

  At the farm, we also had a pine tree, a small one, which was hung upside down in the hall and decorated with corn dollies, nuts, sprigs of holly, mistletoe and other symbolic odds and ends.

  Christmas at the Red House sounded so interestingly different from anything I’d known, and it was tempting. But then, I’d only just escaped from one house full of people, so did I want to be pitchforked into a party of strangers?

  I needn’t decide now, I reasoned. I’d go there and begin the portraits, and then, if it was all too much, escape with River back to the Farm after the Solstice.

  Clara, mission accomplished, removed herself and the force-field of her personality back to the club she was staying at, leaving only a large dent in the sofa cushion to show she’d ever been there.

  I think she’d used up most of the oxygen in the room, because I barely had the energy to eat the takeaway when it arrived.

  When I woke late next morning, River had already set off for home. He’d left a pebble on the coverlet of the bed in the spare room, inscribed in pencil with the message, ‘See you on the 21st!’

  When I turned it over, I saw he’d added, ‘May the Goddess bless you!’

  But I think she already had, even though it might well turn out to be a blessing of the mixed kind.

  Clara

  I was born over seventy years ago in the Lancashire village of Starstone. My father, Cecil Mayhem (always pronounced ‘Maim’), was the vicar there, a quiet, scholarly man with a keen interest in ancient languages and archaeology.

  I grew up to all intents and purposes an only child, for my sister, Bridget, was an exceedingly last-minute arrival, long after we had moved to a parish in Devon. I was precocious and clever, and Father augmented the teaching of the small local school with lessons in such subjects as Latin and Ancient Greek, while Mother, the daughter of a diplomat, made sure I was fluent in French, German and Italian.

  These lessons were shared by my great friend Henry Doome, second son of the family who lived in the local manor house, Underhill. Although almost a year younger than me, he was my equal in everything and even as children you could see the direction our careers would one day take. Henry was keenly interested in poetry and the interplay of words, while my early fascination with epigraphy was sparked by an ancient stone incised with runic markings that
stood in the graveyard of the small village church. Henry and I spent ages taking rubbings from it and trying to decipher them.

  Henry’s brother, George, was his complete opposite, being vain, rather stupid and games mad. The only thing they shared was the fair, blue-eyed Doome colouring and the straight Grecian nose that appeared in so many of the family portraits.

  George was sent off to prep school at eight and was destined to follow the family tradition of going into the army for a few years, a rite of passage presumably intended to instil a sense of discipline and turn the eldest son into an officer and gentleman. Of course, in his case that was a forlorn hope, for though he became an officer, he was never a gentleman, nor did he ever develop any discipline or self-control that I ever noticed.

  Starstone was an ancient upland village, set in a beautiful valley, surrounded by hills that often bloomed over with the saffron and purple hues of gorse and heather.

  As well as the church, we had a village hall, the pub, a general shop and a tiny school: everything you might need, right on the doorstep.

  The pub, the Pike with Two Heads, also let rooms and was frequented both by anglers, keen to try their luck in the river that ran through the middle of the village, and by artists attracted by the rugged scenery and the striking inverted V of the Starstone (or rather stones, for there were two leaning together) atop the hill behind the Doomes’ manor house, from which the village got its name.

  The hamlet of Starstone Edge was clustered along the top road that ran around one side of the valley until it came to a stop at the upper end, by the rear entrance to the Underhill estate. Beyond that, it was just a gated farm track that wandered off over the moors in the general direction of Yorkshire.

  But if you followed the road the other way, down the valley and through the clustered cottages and villas of the hamlet, you arrived at the large Victorian Gothic pile that was the Red House, home of the Gillyflowers. The name of the house derived from the red bricks that divided up the local sober grey stone into layers, like some strange cake.

  There were no more dwellings beyond it, just the turning that would take you up over the moors to the village of Thorstane in the next valley, unless you headed down the scary hairpin bends of the Grimlike Pass to the small market town of Great Mumming, which to us at that time seemed an exciting metropolis.

  This, for the first eight years of our lives, was our world.

  4

  Poetic Licence

  I spent the next two days in a whirlwind of activity, including answering all my mail and messages, once I’d charged up my iPad and phone.

  I’d been quite right about at least half the messages being from Rollo and, sighing, I deleted them unread.

  He was four years my senior. When I first met and fell in love with him at a student party in my second year, he had a golden, mercurial quality, combined with a lot of charm. He could be very sweet then, too … but I suppose the spoilt child was always lurking within the man.

  Rollo was a poet and one of the proprietors and contributors to a precious little quarterly magazine called Strimp! (Don’t ask me why it’s called that; I have no idea.)

  By now he was also a part-time lecturer in creative writing, which gave him access to an endless supply of female students, though since he’d turned forty, all that mercurial charm had started to transmogrify into elderly Peter Pan, so perhaps it was drying up.

  He was a performance poet, and came alive on the stage in a way that made his poetry sound a lot better than I suspected it really was.

  As to his looks, imagine an ageing but still handsome cross between Dylan Thomas and Lord Byron, all red-gold hair, sulky mouth and brooding gaze, and you’ve got him.

  My mind wandered back to that brief time six years before, when marriage and a family had finally seemed within my grasp, only to be snatched away again. I’d wanted a clean break between us after that. It was Rollo who insisted we remain friends, which would, he’d said, show that I didn’t entirely blame him for the accident.

  I firmly wrenched my thoughts back to the present, but there was no escaping Rollo, for he rang me on the Monday morning to demand histrionically why I was ignoring him.

  ‘I’ve been ignoring everyone,’ I told him patiently. ‘I’ve had pneumonia, remember? Fliss told you and you sent flowers.’

  ‘But that was ages ago!’

  ‘I was very ill and you don’t get over pneumonia in five minutes. I’ve been at the Farm convalescing since I got out of hospital and I’ve only just come home. How are things with you?’

  I wedged the phone between cheek and shoulder and let him ramble on while I made myself coffee and ate a couple of slightly limp gingernut biscuits. I caught the odd phrase like ‘… she didn’t really appreciate my work and then, when she saw me with one of the students, she …’

  ‘Did she?’ I murmured with absent disinterest. Since he flitted from female to female like a hummingbird visits flowers, I could join the dots without listening properly. I’d been the only woman he’d ever had a relationship with that lasted longer than a fortnight, even if it had turned out that I’d never had exclusive rights … but even now, so long after our break-up, he didn’t seem able to function without constantly unburdening his soul and using me as a sounding board. That was not what friendship was about and, along with his increasing and unattractive self-absorption, it was a habit I’d like to break.

  ‘But at least they appreciate my work in the States, and a new collection of my poetry is being published there next spring,’ he finished on a triumphant up-note. He’d always been more popular in the USA than here.

  ‘Well, that’s wonderful, Rollo. I’m so glad. But I’m afraid I’ll have to go now, because I’m off north on Wednesday to paint a portrait commission and I’ve got a lot to do.’

  ‘But you’ve only just got back, you said so,’ he said aggrievedly.

  I thought of something, other than himself, that would interest him. ‘My sitter is the wife of Henry Doome, the poet.’

  I wished I’d kept this information to myself because he instantly became over-excited.

  ‘Henry Doome?’ he gasped, awed. ‘They say he’s turned down the Poet Laureateship twice! Of course he’s a bit old hat,’ he added, on a less exalted note, ‘but still a Big Name.’

  ‘Well, I’m supposed to be painting him, too.’

  ‘He’s said to be a total recluse these days and hardly ever gives an interview … but what a coup it would be for Strimp! if he’d talk to me and perhaps let us publish one of his poems. Meg, you’ll have to prepare the ground before I contact him – or wait, maybe it would be better if I just happened to be in the area and dropped in to see you … and then you can introduce me and I’ll take it from there.’

  ‘Absolutely not. Are you mad?’ I said, aghast. ‘If you want to interview him, then you set it up yourself and don’t try to involve me. I’ve never even met the man and I’m not going to try to persuade him into doing anything he doesn’t want to.’

  ‘But, Meg, it would be—’

  ‘No,’ I said flatly. ‘I’ll have to go now, Rollo, and I’m going to be very busy, so don’t call me. I’ll catch up with you when I get back.’ Or not, if I can help it, I added mentally. Then I put the phone down while he was still being persuasive.

  It didn’t work on me any more: the magic charm had broken, like my heart, several years earlier.

  I managed a quick chat on the phone with most of my closest friends, though none was free to meet up before I left, for they were all busy procreating, or child rearing, except Fliss, and I expected she’d be following suit as soon as physically possible.

  She was the only one who did manage to meet up with me for coffee. When I told her all about my commission and Clara and everything, she said I’d probably vanish into the Bleak North, never to be seen again, and I must ring and email her with updates because it sounded fascinating.

  ‘It’s a pity you’re going right away, though, because I wanted to
introduce you to Calum’s cousin, Rob. He’s just your type.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve got a type,’ I told her. ‘Or my type is extinct. I’ve decided I’m going to move to a little cottage in the country and devote myself to my Art.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ she said, unconvinced, but since both my only serious (though on and off) relationship and my single attempt at motherhood had come to nothing, I thought I was finally embracing my destiny.

  That reminded me of Rollo and I told her I’d come back to a load of messages from him and then he’d rung me.

  ‘I can’t imagine why you let him keep pestering you,’ she said. ‘I mean, you’ve no feelings for him any more, have you?’

  ‘No, especially since he seems to be turning into some kind of self-obsessed monster. But getting rid of him is easier said than done, short of changing my phone number and email addie and moving house without telling him.’

  ‘That would be a bit drastic,’ she said. ‘You’ll just have to be brutally frank with him.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve come to the same conclusion,’ I admitted. ‘I’ll do it when I get back home after this commission.’

  I blew the dust off my big folding studio easel and painting gear and packed them up ready to go. I’d exchanged cards with Clara, so I could ask her what size of portraits she envisaged, which was, as I might have guessed, large. Luckily I keep a stock of stretched and primed canvases in various sizes. I put in a few smaller ones too, because I had a one-woman show in a tiny gallery coming up in February and I was stockpiling work for that. I might have a little spare time and spot an interesting subject.

  There was a wardrobe unit in the van, which took my easel, canvases and paints, so I generally just stowed a few clothes in two small drawers under the bunk. This time, though, I packed a suitcase and large holdall.