The Magic of Christmas (22 page)

‘I can handle it! I mean, I’m only selling an old greenhouse, not the crown jewels,’ I said firmly. I’m used to doing everything myself, so why would I suddenly need a man to do it for me?

‘I’ll walk down with you anyway, just make sure—’ he began to insist, as though I were some frail little flower; then his BlackBerry went off and while he answered it I slid quietly away home.

The man was waiting for me in the yard outside the cottage, leaning against an old pick-up truck and smoking a roll-up, and I instantly rather regretted refusing Nick’s offer so hastily, because there was just
something
about him I didn’t like, even apart from the aroma of stale alcohol.

‘Had a bit of trouble finding you,’ he said, straightening with a leer and running bloodshot eyes over me as though I were a dubious filly. ‘Lonely down here, isn’t it?’

‘Not really, people go past on the main road all the time and my family live up the drive,’ I said briskly. ‘So, Mr …’

‘Roach,’ he slurred.

‘So, you’re interested in having the greenhouse?’

‘Well I was, but I took the liberty of having a look at it while I was waiting, and it’s in pretty poor condition.’

‘The supports are fine and it should dismantle easily. Anyway, what were you expecting for nothing?’

‘It’ll cost you a fortune to pay someone to take it away for you,’ he said. ‘But I don’t suppose a lady like you would know about that. Recent widow, aren’t you? Bet you miss having a man about the place.’

He came a bit closer, flicking his cigarette onto the cobbles.

‘Look, are you interested or not?’ I demanded, ignoring the innuendo but backing off slightly. The yard brush was leaning against the wall behind me and I reckoned that if desperate, I could always beat him into submission with it: it was a good, sturdy one.

‘Perhaps I might be,’ he said, with what was
definitely
a leer. ‘Maybe you’d like to discuss it somewhere more comfortable? I wouldn’t say no if you invited me in.’

‘Oh, Nick!’ I exclaimed thankfully, as his tall, broad-shouldered figure appeared round the end of the barn. He looked from one to the other of us from under dark brows and I took his arm and squeezed it meaningfully. ‘This is Mr Roach. He came to look at the greenhouse.’

‘Loach,’ the man corrected me, backing off warily. ‘But I’ve had second thoughts. It’s not quite what I wanted. Doubt it’s what
anyone
wants,’ he added. ‘Well, see you!’

He climbed back into the cab of his pick-up and drove off with a bit of unnecessarily macho revving and tyre screeching.

Nick looked at me with one raised eyebrow, but nobly refrained from saying, ‘I told you so.’

Realising I was still clinging to his arm, I hastily let go and moved away.

‘Do you want to come in?’ I asked. ‘Or go back for lunch? I’m going to have ham and split-pea soup and home-made bread.’

‘I’ll stay, but only if you promise to let me handle anything else you want to get rid of. I’m sure Roly will back me on this one — and the cottage
is
part of the estate.’

‘Oh, all right!’ I agreed. ‘But don’t think I couldn’t have handled that horrible man without you, because I could! I’ve already had much nastier people chasing me up for money they say Tom owed them, when they don’t seem to have the least bit of proof.’

‘You haven’t paid them, have you?’

‘Despite what you think, I’m not
entirely
stupid,’ I said with dignity. ‘I asked Unks’ advice, and he told me to pass them all on to his solicitor, Smithers, and he would deal with them for me and let me know which were the genuine ones that had to be settled.’

‘I don’t think you’re stupid,’ he said, following me into the cottage. ‘You just take independence a little too far sometimes, that’s all.’

‘Did you come down just to lecture me, or did you want something?’ I asked pointedly.

He smiled innocently and said, ‘I just wanted to know what recipe you’d already tried for the coffee granita?’

‘One
you
sent me from Italy on a postcard of the Leaning Tower of Pisa,’ I said with satisfaction. I hauled out the postcard album to look for it and he seemed amazed that I’d not only kept them all, but also carefully put them into a book. However, show me anyone interested in cooking who
wouldn’t
have hoarded the recipes.

We ended up looking through the album for almost a whole hour without arguing, which must be a record. Maybe he was mellowing.

‘I’ll see you at the first Mystery Play rehearsal on Tuesday night,’ were his surprise parting words before striding off whistling, the sun glinting on his blue-black hair.

What
could
he mean? Had he volunteered to help Clive?

Ritch phoned and invited me for a quiet drink at the café-bar in the former Pharamond’s Biscuit factory on Tuesday night, so he could ‘get to know me better’! He said he was tied up until then, which gave me a bad moment because I remembered that note from Polly Darke I found in Tom’s pocket just before he died …

I told him I couldn’t go, since I had a Mystery Play meeting and the cast tended to go to the village pub afterwards, but he said that was OK, he would meet me and come along too, and I simply couldn’t think of a way of telling him not to on the spot.

I looked long and hard in the mirror and was at a loss to understand why, unless he was currently desperately short of another woman for his frequent, healthy sex rota.

He probably wouldn’t bother after all, but if he did, I’d just have to hide behind the crowd and hope avid
Cotton Common
fans mobbed him, which seemed quite likely.

I tried out two varieties of coffee granita on Jasper, later, but although he said they were delicious I still felt they lacked that little extra something …

On the other hand, some mincemeat fudge turned out really well.

I was a little late setting off for the first Mystery Play rehearsal on the Tuesday evening, because I’d spent the afternoon making a start on my Christmas cake — and not just my own, but the six small ones that each member of the CPC makes for the local Senior Citizens Christmas Hampers, to be distributed by Marian and the rest of the Mosses Women’s Institute.

I like to soak the fruit in dark rum for about five days — no faffing around pouring alcohol into holes in the base for me! — so, after an afternoon of chopping and mixing, I had three enormous covered bowls sitting in the larder gently marinating, and an aching arm.

When I got to the village hall the actors were standing about in groups, chatting. Acts 1 to 9 of the Mystery Play rehearsal would be supervised by me, the vicar, Miss Pym and Marian, whose husband, Clive, was, as usual, overall director. Roly, Voice of God in perpetuity, never put in an appearance until the final performance, since having played the role for so many years he could do it in his sleep. On the actual day he sits in a corner of the courtyard in a little striped canvas pavilion like something from a jousting field, well wrapped up and with a warm brazier, and speaks his lines into a mike connected to the speaker just inside the barn door.

Clive was putting cardboard signs up in the parts of the room where the different acts were to gather and I found Marian filling the boiler in the kitchen area behind the hatch, ready for its long, slow journey towards the tea break.

I was just handing her my offering of treacle flapjacks, to go with what was left of her experimental gingerbread biscuits, when Nick loomed up beside me.

‘Hi, Lizzy: should
I
have brought something to eat, too?’

I nearly dropped the box: he moved disconcertingly quietly for such a big man. ‘Oh, hello Nick!’

‘No, that’s all right. These of Lizzy’s are just extras, because I always bring a tin of Teatime Assortment with me,’ Marian said, ‘though the current one’s down to them pink wafer things, which no one seems to go for. But nice of you to offer, Nick — and that lamb recipe of yours in the Sunday supplement was a right cracker! I’d never have thought of doing that with olives.’

‘Oh, thanks, Mrs Potter,’ Nick said modestly with one of his most charming smiles, and she blushed. I was quite sure he knew the devastating effect these had, like silvery sunshine breaking out from behind lowering, purplish storm clouds.

Clive, clipboard in hand, bustled up. ‘Ah, Nick, you’ve told Lizzy you’ve volunteered?’ he beamed.

‘To help out?’ I asked. ‘Continuity man? Props?’

‘To be Adam to your Eve,’ Nick told me blandly. ‘Delving while you spin. Giving in to your temptations. Eating the apple from your hand.’ He looked down at me quite seriously, though one eyebrow was quizzically raised. ‘Passing you the fig leaves.’

‘
You?
’

‘I’m sure we’re all delighted,’ Clive said. ‘I hadn’t thought to ask him before, because he’s been here so infrequently in recent years, but now he’ll be able to make most of the rehearsals, so that’s all right. And it’s only one fairly short scene, isn’t it?’

‘Er — yes,’ I agreed, still taken aback.

‘If I do miss any rehearsals, Lizzy can put me through my paces at home,’ Nick suggested. ‘I’ll be based up at the Hall from now on.’

‘I’m sure we’re all very glad to hear that,’ Marian said warmly.

‘Oh, there’s Annie,’ I exclaimed, spotting her walking in. ‘I thought she’d be going to the other rehearsals on Thursdays?’

‘She’s very kindly going to assist the vicar, too, since he hasn’t done this before,’ Clive said, then clapped his hands and announced into the resultant silence, ‘To your places, please!’

Everyone separated to his or her group. Mine was small, since I was in charge of only the Fall of Satan, the Creation and my own scene in the Garden of Eden.

We began with the Fall of Satan, which is basically just the Voice of God (which I read, in Roly’s absence) and Lucifer, plus nine entirely silent angels.

As always, God has the last word: ‘I am reet disappointed in thee, Lucifer, thou art too sharp for thine own good. I loved thee like a son, yet thou art naught but a foul fiend, fit only for t’pit of damnation. Get thee gone!’

After this, Lucifer vanishes in a puff of yellow smoke, signifying the sulphurous fumes of Hell, with a receding wail — or in some years a shriek, depending on the interpretation of the role. At any rate, he vanishes. We ran through it a couple of times, then I released the angels to go over to the vicar’s corner, where they were required during the Nativity to join with the shepherds and Three Wise Men in a stirring rendition of ‘Silent Neet, ’Oly Neet’ around the manger.

The Creation is a monologue by the Voice of God, with sound effects off, and after I’d read through that I handed over the directing to Lucifer while I put Nick through his paces as Adam. He refused a script and had evidently been studying the video of last year’s Mystery, because he was word perfect and you couldn’t fault his Lancashire accent.

It went smoothly right up to the point where he asked, ‘What are thou eating, Eve?’

I replied: ‘’Tis a fruit the snake told me were reet tasty — and see, yonder birds peck at it and come to no ill. Dost thou want a bite, flower?’

I offered him an imaginary apple and he said warmly, ‘From you, darling,
anything
!’

‘That’s not in the script,’ Lucifer objected.

‘I thought we could change the script if we liked?’ Nick said innocently.

‘Only if it’s an improvement — this is
serious
,’ I said severely. ‘Stop messing about.’

‘I was serious,’ he protested, and Lucifer grinned. I was just glad I’d sent the angels away, reducing the audience by nine in one stroke.

‘And don’t think me coy, but on the night, how do we preserve our modesty, Lizzy? I’ve forgotten.’

‘In my case, with a very long wig and a bodystocking. The last Adam wore a pair of beige swimming trunks and carried a strategically placed leather bucket. Apparently, in the old days Adam and Eve used to speak their lines standing behind boards painted to look like bushes.’

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said gravely. ‘Is it a
big
bucket?’

I gave him a stern look: we seemed to be rapidly reverting to the innuendo and sparring of our teenage years, and this was a Nick I’d pretty well forgotten ever existed. Perhaps the euphoria of pending divorce had brought it out in him again?

‘Thou hath tasted t’fruit of knowledge that wor forbidden thee and found it sweet — yet shall it be bitter henceforth on thy tongue!’ read Lucifer, in his temporary role as Voice of God, though still grinning. We stopped for refreshments after that, before I ran everyone through their lines again: I would work on the movements and check the props and costumes during later rehearsals.

‘That’ll do for tonight,’ I said finally, and went to see how Annie and Gareth were getting on with the Nativity cycle.

Dave Naylor from the garage, as Joseph, was wheeling Mary to Bethlehem on the back of an old-fashioned butcher’s boy bike. On the night of the performance a star lantern is hauled slowly across the stage on a wire, a very pretty effect.

‘Not far to go now, luv. Bethlehem’s on t’horizon, ower yonder.’

Mary, who was inspecting her fuchsia-painted fingernails, replied absently, ‘The sooner the better, chuck, for my time’s close — but will we find a place t’lay our heads?’

‘I’ll find thee a roof ower thy head this night, flower,’ Joseph promised, ‘no matter what, don’t thee worry thi’sen.’