The Magic of Christmas (11 page)

‘Thanks, but I’ve got Annie — and the rest of my friends in the CPC have volunteered to help. The new vicar seems very pleasant and helpful too. In fact, everyone has been so kind. Roly offered to have the bunfight after the funeral up at the Hall, but I wanted it here. I’m going to do everything just the way the Tom I married would have wanted it — the fun one with a sense of humour.’

‘Let’s hope it’s a nice day then, because you won’t get more than six people standing up in your sitting room.’

‘I’m going to use the old greenhouse: that’s certainly big enough. I was going to get rid of it, so it’s fortunate I haven’t got round to it yet.’

‘It’ll still have to be a fine day, because it leaks like a sieve,’ he objected.

‘Caz Naylor asked me if he could do anything, and he’s out there now mending the cracked panes with gaffer tape.’

Saying Caz had volunteered to help was a slight exaggeration, since his precise words had been a questioning, ‘Do owt, our Lizzy?’

‘You’re honoured,’ Nick said drily. ‘Whenever Roly or I ask him to do anything, he vanishes. How’s Jasper taking all this?’

‘Stoical and quiet, but much the same as me: in some ways it’s a relief to know Tom’s not coming back, but then we feel guilty for even thinking that, and sad at the same time and …’ I broke off, my voice wobbling.

‘Do you want me to come straight back now?’ he asked abruptly.

‘No, of course not! What could you do?’ I said, braced by his tone.

‘Nothing, I suppose. Where’s Jasper now?’

‘He’s been back at the dig since Monday. He thought he might as well, rather than mope around the house.’

‘Very sensible. Has he sorted out his university accommodation yet? Or is he going to live at home?’

‘I wanted him to live in the hall of residence for the first year at least, because that’s what university is all about, isn’t it — getting away from your parents and making your own life? Only now he says he might share a house with one of his friends and some other students instead.’

‘He’s very level-headed for his age. I’d let him do whatever he wants.’

‘Yes, I suppose so, and at least Liverpool is close enough for him to come home for the weekend, or for me to drive over, if he gets homesick or anything.’

‘I expect he’ll quickly have other distractions.’

‘I should think the course will be distraction enough. I’m so proud of him, getting onto it. And he should get the full student loan now too, I think, because it’ll be based on my income and I’ve hardly got any, because I don’t suppose barter counts. Unks told Jasper yesterday that he was going to make him an allowance. He’s so kind, and really, we have no claim on him.’

‘Roly thinks of you as family. And speaking of family, have you heard from Tom’s mother and stepfather? You’d think they would offer to help!’

‘Oh, they have, and it was
dreadful! He
phoned and said Tom’s mother was too upset to speak to me and probably wouldn’t be well enough to travel all this way for the funeral, but he would pay for it all! I told him I didn’t want his money and I haven’t heard anything since.’

‘Well, burn all your boats at once, why don’t you?’ he said sarkily.

‘You’re such a comfort to me!’ I snapped, but beginning to feel much more like the real Lizzy Pharamond under all this bracing common sense.

‘Fellow feeling, darling. Leila and I are going to split, though I hope not in
quite
so final a manner as you and Tom.’

‘You are? I’m so sorry!’

‘Are you? Then don’t be! Things haven’t been good between us for a long time, though she’s always refused to discuss divorce.’

‘Well, she’s Catholic,’ I pointed out. ‘That’s probably it.’

‘Only nominally, and she’s going to have to get used to the idea, so the sooner the better. That’s why I’m going straight down there now, to tell her.’

‘You mean she doesn’t know yet?’

‘She knows how I feel: our marriage is dead in the water, and it’s time to call it quits. And I want to spend much more time in Middlemoss: I feel more creative there.’

‘Lawrence Durrell’s “spirit of place”,’ I agreed. ‘Middlemoss gets your creative juices flowing. Mine, too — this is my real home and I’m not sure I could write anywhere else.’

‘If you can call your stream-of-consciousness burblings
writing
, any more than you can describe your recipes as
cookery
,’ he said. ‘We can only be grateful you do your ghastly
Chronicles
under your maiden name and disguise anything that might give away the location!’

‘At least anyone can make my recipes, you don’t need a thousand pounds worth of equipment and three underlings to help you!’ I shot back rather unfairly, since I know very well he whips up his recipes in his own kitchen, or the one at the Hall: personally tried and tested before being unleashed in his Sunday newspaper cookery page, or in his books. They’re mostly straightforward recipes too, not
nouvelle cuisine
or anything, though some are still a little fancy for my taste. I like to keep things simple.

‘Plebeian’, he once called me, when he found me devising a recipe for strawberries and custard bread-and-butter pudding. But then, as I recall, he ended up eating two plates of it … and now I come to think of it, I haven’t made that for quite a while and it’s yummy …
real
comfort food.

‘I think we’re digressing,’ he said, sounding pleased as always to have got a rise out of me. ‘I’m going to London to tell Leila that I’m instructing my solicitor to start divorce proceedings, whether she wants it or not. After that, I’ll be back at the Hall, so I’ll be around if you want me. Don’t tell anyone about the divorce yet. I’ll break the news to Roly later. I’m not sure how he’ll take it, and I don’t want to give him any more shocks.’

Actually, I thought Roly would be pleased rather than shocked, but I didn’t say so. ‘No, I won’t mention it to anyone and—’ I broke off as a thought struck me. ‘Nick, I don’t think Leila knows about
Tom
yet! How awful, I forgot to tell her!’

‘I’ll tell her and I’ll be back before the funeral,’ he said, and put the phone down.

If he’d been here in person, I wondered if he would have given me a big, comforting hug like he had in hospital that time, when Jasper was ill … and looked at me with that same startled expression in his slate-coloured eyes, as though surprised to find himself doing it?

He
does
have a softer side and, although he can be a bit taciturn, he’s all bark and no bite.

In the event, Nick wasn’t back before the funeral, calling from London to explain briefly that Leila insisted on being present at it and was refusing to discuss anything about the divorce until afterwards, so he’d be driving her up on that morning.

There wasn’t anything for him to do, anyway — I was pretty well organised, Annie having taken over the finer details. When you’ve been Leader of the Pack (Brownies) for years, these things come naturally to you.

The funeral being on a Tuesday, the preceding Monday’s CPC meeting had been cancelled and instead my friends all brought to Perseverance Cottage food for the buffet and then stayed to help get everything ready. Annie must have spent half the night making little sausage rolls, Faye had baked both sweet and savoury scones, Marian brought the makings of three different kinds of sandwich and Miss Pym had assembled two huge platters of cold meats.

So by late Monday afternoon the preparations for the Feeding of the Five Thousand — or however many turned up to be fed and watered after the ceremony — was complete. Every surface in the kitchen and larder groaned under the weight of plates and bowls and platters. The fridge door kept trying to spring open, and plastic bags of yellow candyfloss swung from the rack above the kitchen table. The very air could have been sliced up and served with whipped cream, it was so loaded with mingled aromas.

Annie came back later, and she and I sat in the tiny sitting room, drowning our sorrows in elderberry wine and eating some of the mincemeat brownies intended for tomorrow, while Jasper was out the back, immolating Tom’s favourite surfboard on the garden bonfire. He was accompanied by the strange, small dog (rather like a hairy haggis with legs) which Annie had brought with her, along with Trinny, and it had immediately attached itself to Jasper.

He came in from his bonfire with the creature under one arm and vanished up to his Batcave in the attic to bludgeon his emotions with loud music.

‘Annie, that dog—’ I began.

‘Jasper’s agreed to foster it until he goes to university,’ she interrupted brightly. ‘The kennel was full, and no one seems to want to adopt it.’

‘You surprise me,’ I said tartly. ‘It nipped my ankles when it came in and it sheds so much hair it leaves a trail behind it across the carpet.’

‘I expect Jasper will give it a good brushing. You’ve still got all Harriet’s stuff, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, but I don’t want another dog at the moment, and what if Jasper gets attached to it? He can’t take it to university with him. You’ll have to take it away with you right now!’

Putting my glass down I went upstairs, determined to oust the creature before things went too far. Jasper’s door was open just a crack and through it I saw him sitting on his bed, his face buried in the hairy haggis and his shoulders shaking.

Silently I backed away and tiptoed downstairs.

‘It can stay for a couple of weeks,’ I conceded to Annie, ‘but that’s it. You’ll have to keep looking for a permanent home for it.’

‘OK,’ she agreed. ‘Unless you find you want to keep her, after all.’

‘I doubt it. I’ve got puncture marks in my ankle.’

Annie went home soon after that. She was going to come here straight after the church service the next day, instead of attending the interment, and organise the Women’s Institute volunteers who are manning the buffet at the funeral feast in the greenhouse.

Around three in the morning, entirely unable to sleep, I went downstairs and whipped up a batch of strawberries and custard bread-and-butter pudding
à la
Lizzy Pharamond, and then Mimi wandered in out of the night, dressed in wellies and with a man’s Burberry overcoat over her nightie.

‘Hello, dear, I’ve come for tea,’ she said brightly, sitting down at the kitchen table. ‘And to tell you that Tom’s dead.’

‘I know,’ I said, handing her a portion of bread-and-butter pudding and the cup of cocoa I was just about to drink myself.

She seemed very taken with the words, and was still repeating softly: ‘Tom’s dead, Tom’s dead!’ all the time I was walking her back up the dark drive to the Hall later, which was a little trying.

When we got there, Juno had just discovered her absence and was frothing gently at the mouth. But there was no harm done, though the sooner her leg is healed so she can keep tabs on Mimi again, the better.

I had one of those confused moments standing at the edge of the grave, where I couldn’t remember where I was — or even
who
I was — let alone who was six feet below me, tastefully attired in sustainable Norwegian pine. The coffin was crowned with a home-made wreath of dried hops (Tom had been a great devotee of real ale), bearing the handwritten epitaph: ‘For the Tom we loved, from Lizzy and Jasper’. We had refrained from adding ‘if he ever existed’.

The circle of eyes fringing the grave reminded me of a stargazy pie, except that they were not blank and dead, but expectant — and fixed on me. What could they want?

There was Nick’s tall, broad-shouldered figure, his purple-grey eyes dark and brooding, possibly because his chic French wife was hanging tightly on to his arm, as she did to all her possessions.

Next to him was his father, Nigel, in whom the strong Pharamond genes had surprisingly been subjugated by the more nondescript ones of his mother, his expensive suiting trying to turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse.

Dr Patel, Marian and Clive Potter and Faye, wearing a borrowed-looking black hat jammed over her dark curls and with her squarely-built, rosy-cheeked husband in tow. Miss Pym, nodding encouragingly at me, as if I were a recalcitrant four-year-old. A ragbag of Tom’s old surfing chums, looking shifty. Polly Darke, wearing a short and inappropriate black chiffon garment cut low over the twin pink Zeppelins of her bosom, hovering uninvited and unwanted on the fringes of the crowd. Gareth, the new vicar, with his pale, interestingly knobbly face, bright red hair blowing in the slight breeze like a fiery halo …

Jasper nudged me with a bony elbow. ‘
Mum?
’

As though his action had opened the sluice gate, a scummy dark tide of realisation rushed into my head: I was Lizzy Pharamond, widow, mother of the willowy youth next to me, and now expected to toss earth onto my late husband’s remains like a cat tidying up after itself.

The husband who had once had a quirky sense of humour, until something dark, angry and increasingly nasty had slipped in to inhabit that space instead. I’d been mourning the loss of the old Tom for a long time, but now these last rites seemed to form an epilogue to our life together and a full stop.

‘Mum?’ Jasper said again, more questioningly, draping a sinewy arm across my shoulders. For a teenage boy this was touchingly demonstrative and, for the first time that day, I felt painful tears at the back of my eyes, though earlier I’d struggled to suppress grossly unbecoming giggles during the vicar’s eulogy, when he tried to reconcile wildly conflicting descriptions of Tom’s character by using surfing as a metaphor for his journey through life and on into the great ocean that was Death.

I remembered what was expected of me. Slowly I reached into my large, gaily embroidered shoulder bag and took out Tom’s mobile phone and the TV remote control, then tossed them with a clatter into the open grave on top of the coffin. Grave goods: the things most dear to him — apart from his favourite surfboard, immolated by Jasper of course. But even
that
was here in spirit, for as I turned and left amid stunned silence, I stumbled over its effigy worked in wired flowers, with a card attached reading, ‘Yo, dude! Catch a big one.’

From behind me came the light patter of earth as the mourners hastened to cover up the evidence of my eccentricity, though I fear Tom will be gone but not
entirely
forgotten until the battery on his mobile runs out. He was always popular with his drinking companions.