Eleven Pipers Piping

Inhabitants of Thornford Regis

Visitors to Thornford Regis

10 JANUARY

Dear Mum
,

I hope you’re prepared for snow! I switched on the radio once the Teasmade had done its job this morning and the Met was issuing a severe weather warning for the entire country. We are to be
inindat inud
inundated! And we WILL be by the time this letter reaches you, so I hope you and Aunt Gwen are all right in Cornwall. You must have Aunt Gwen phone me if you think there’s anything I can do at this end, though last time we had an enormusous dump of snow in the West Country the phones went down. And the electricity went off too. It really was quite a to do, wasn’t it! I know lots of folk have no weather memories, can’t remember what year had what conditions. In fact, Old Bob asked me while I was getting a loaf at Pattimore’s the other day, when was the Great Storm of 93? It was in 1993, Bob, I said, not batting an eye. (I do think he’s not very well.) But that was a great wind storm. Both you and I remember the last great
snow
storm, don’t we? Maureen did pick her moments. No one could drive out of the village. No ambulance could get in. Dr. Philpot had got himself stuck in Torquay. And it was Christmas Eve day. I can still see the spot on Mr. James-Douglas’s dining room rug where Maureen’s water broke. Well, not “see” it as such. Of course it cleaned up easily. Poor Mr. J-D, I think at first he was more worried about the state of his Tabriz rug than the state of Maureen. And he did go out and shop for that enor
mus
ous canopy bed soon after Maureen gave birth to Tamara on his old one. (What a trial it was getting that bed into the vicarage!) Anyway, you and I did splendid work as midwives, didn’t we? Even Dr.
Fuss
Philpot couldn’t find a reason to caution us later. And now your granddaughter is at university at Exeter. Time has flown, hasn’t it? It was so lovely seeing her at Christmas with all of us in Cornwall. She’s coming down to perform in Totnes with her old group Shanks Pony tonight, but I can’t go, as Mr. Christmas has the Burns Supper at the hotel and Miranda is having her first sleepover in the vicarage with some of her friends. I’m not sure Mr. C is looking forward to the haggis. I once fed him my very good braised lambs’ kidneys with onions. He ate most of it, but I could sense organ meats weren’t his cup of tea. I think Miranda fed most of hers to Bumble! I was not pleased! Anyway, I think Mr. C will be surprised at the B. Supper, but I shan’t tell him what the surprise is and spoil it. Molly Kaif is cooking the Supper, by the way. I don’t think she’s the best caterer hereabouts, but it’s good that she’s coming out of her shell, poor woman, though it’s a bit odd she’s chosen to do so at the Moirs’. Well, Mum, I must get on with the day. I’m doing a special meal for the girls this evening and I’ve been asked to contribute something to the B. Supper, so there’s that to cook too, and Mr. C has a wedding in Pennycross this afternoon, which will keep him busy. Mum, I just glanced at the window and even though it’s so dark this early in the morning, I could see a snowflake
fall on the glass. I expect it’s starting. Oh dear, I wonder what the next days will bring? Last time, with all the snow, it felt like the whole village was
maruned
marooned. We coped wonderfully, though, didn’t we? Still, I wouldn’t wish for the sort of drama we had last time. A cosy fire and the sudoku machine Mr. C bought me for Christmas will suit me until it all blows over. Cats are well and still sulking over the dog, though Bumble does try to make friends. Love to Aunt Gwen. Glorious day! We hope!

Much love
,
Madrun

P.S. I’m still investigating the Yorkshire problem! I’ll let you know when it’s solved
.

D
id they not feed you after the wedding, Mr. Christmas?”

“I dropped into the reception for only a minute,” Tom replied, conscious of the passing figure of his housekeeper, as he continued his contemplation of the bounty in the vicarage refrigerator. “I didn’t have a chance for a bite.”

He barely knew the young couple he had married that afternoon—Todd and Gemma—other than to have a brief preparatory discussion with them the month before. He had never seen them in church, nor had he seen their families or friends, and didn’t expect to see them again, unless the couple wished their baby baptised—which mightn’t be far off, given that the bride, wearing a meringue with a train half a mile long, had fairly waddled up the aisle at St. Paul’s, the second of the two churches in his charge. Her plump face, when she’d pushed back her embroidered veil, had looked much like a blazing beetroot, he recalled, staring at a jar of the pickled variety inside the door of the fridge. Sweat had sparkled in tiny beads along
her exposed hairline—this despite the glacial damp of the nave in s—which some might have construed as the effect of energy expended getting up the aisle, but which Tom interpreted as a dew born of anticipation and triumph.

The groom, however, had been a figure of bemusement, his face a kind of Belisha beacon, one moment as blanched as that leftover rice pudding in its puddle of cream on the second shelf, the next as pink as the Virginia ham one shelf below. Tom shouldn’t have fancied their chances at marital success—they were much too young; he was a farm labourer and she was a health-care aide of some sort and they were living with his parents—but for some reason he did, and could only chalk it up to a decade’s experience splicing couples of varied sorts. He imagined them receiving their sixtieth-anniversary card from the Queen (or the King, as would most probably be then) where other couples, more advantaged, would fall by the wayside. “When betrothal is brief, the marriage lasts long,” he recalled his father-in-law saying, quoting some bit of Jewish wisdom when he was trying to reconcile himself to his daughter’s elopement. How wrong he had been, at least in Tom and Lisbeth’s case.