The Magic of Christmas (6 page)

This threw him into the first of his really frighteningly violent rages during which he said that living with a cold bitch of a wife who thought food could cure anything was enough to send any man off the rails, and stormed out.

After this I began sleeping in the small boxroom off our bedroom, and things between us went downhill rapidly. He made no attempt to conceal his affairs, though this note was the first hard evidence that any of them were serious …

Feeling suddenly dizzy, I put my head on my knees and closed my eyes, wishing our old lurcher, Harriet, was still around to snuffle sympathetically in my ear.

When the feeling passed off I resolutely got up and washed my face in the kitchen sink with cold water, ate an entire packet of those chocolate mini-flake cake decorations, then went out to the workshop, from where faint strains of Metallica now wafted through the Judas door.

Tom had his back to me when I went in, spray-stencilling some intricate, hand-cut Celtic design onto a surfboard. He was wearing a mask and baggy dungarees over his T-shirt and jeans, and his dark hair curled onto the nape of his neck in a familiar ducktail.

Where his cousin Nick was built on a large and rugged scale, Tom was a slight, wiry man and every slender bone of his body was beautiful. But despite (allegedly) not being a Pharamond other than in name, he did have the unmistakable look of one, so I was convinced that all the rumours about his mother were true.

I stood there for a minute, thrown by that familiar curl of hair, shaken by the stirring of a tenderness I had thought long dead. Then he must have felt my presence, for he turned cold grey stranger’s eyes on me, pushing down the mask. The CD came to an end and there was silence.

His eyes flicked to the fading bruise on my cheek and away again. ‘You’re still here, then? Thought you might have cleared off.’

‘Like where?’ I demanded. ‘And Jasper? The animals? Did you think I had an ark ready and waiting somewhere?’

‘Ah, yes, I forgot:
my
great-uncle by marriage,
my
cottage. Poor little orphan Lizzy has nowhere to go, has she?’

‘Don’t think I intend staying with you any longer than I have to,’ I told him coldly. ‘The minute Jasper’s off to university, that’s it. And if you’re interested, his results came and he got into Liverpool.’

‘It’s always
Jasper
, isn’t it?’ he said pettishly.

‘You should be pleased because he’s your son too, whatever mad ideas you’ve got in your head. But I’m not playing your games any more, Tom — you can believe what you like.’

‘Oh, come on, Jasper’s the spitting image of Nick, my dear old no-blood-relation cousin — and don’t forget I caught you in each other’s arms at the hospital when Jasper was ill.’

‘I’ve told you repeatedly that he was just comforting me — and
you
could have been doing that, if I’d been able to get hold of you! But I conceived Jasper practically as soon as we’d got married and I never even looked at Nick in that way — or any other man! No, there’s another obvious reason why both you and Jasper look like Pharamonds, only you’d rather believe ill of me than your mother!’

‘We’ll leave my mother out of this,’ he said, that ugly look in his eyes. ‘But the sooner you clear out, the better.’ Turning back towards his board he said dismissively, ‘Fetch me a beer out will you? There’s some in the fridge.’

‘Fetch it yourself. I didn’t come out here to wait on you. Oh, and here’s a restaurant bill from Leila. I only hope the meal was worth it!’

‘What?’ He swung round and snatched it from me, glanced at it and then looked up suspiciously. ‘Where did you get this?’

‘Nick called by early this morning. You left Leila’s without paying the bill, and she wants her money.’

‘Oh, I don’t think this is Leila’s idea,’ he said, crumpling the bill into a ball and tossing it into a corner. ‘I’ve already paid her — in kind. Bed and board. So now you know, and presumably Nick also knows.’

‘Suspects, perhaps … but … Leila can’t possibly be “Dark Heart”!’ I blurted.

He took a menacing step towards me. ‘What do you know about Dark Heart?’

‘I found a bit of a note in your pocket when I was sorting the washing, but it didn’t sound like Leila,’ I said, standing my ground.

‘It isn’t,’ he said shortly. ‘It’s someone else … someone more conveniently local, who’s prepared to please me in ways you wouldn’t have, even if I’d
asked
, dearest wife.’

‘Is it someone I know, Tom? And Leila — was that a one-off? She isn’t the woman you’ve been having an affair with since before Jasper was ill, is she?’

He didn’t reply, just smiled rather unpleasantly. I hoped he hadn’t been running two of them in tandem even then. But someone local … who could it be?

Oh God, he hadn’t got drunk and started an affair with that drippy girl who played the electric violin and sang in the Mummers, had he? I’d noticed she hadn’t been able to look me in the eye for months, but thought she’d maybe been one of his one-night flings. Evidently, he wasn’t going to tell me anyway.

I thought of something else. ‘Where’s your van?’

‘It broke down in a lay-by about twenty miles away. I had to get the garage to bring it in — think the gearbox’s had it. Now, any more questions? Only I need to finish this board because I’m off down to Cornwall at the weekend to deliver it, assuming the van’s fixed by then.’

I stared at him, thinking how normal a monster could look.

‘If you aren’t leaving immediately, you could make yourself useful and fetch that beer,’ he suggested.

‘Fetch it yourself! I’m going for a walk in the woods to think all this over, and then later I’ve got a Mystery Play Committee meeting, the first of the year,’ I said, and saw a flash of anger in his eyes.

As I left I heard the music restart, and the hissing of the spray.

Outside I practically fell over Polly Darke, our local purveyor of stirring Regency romances — and I use the term ‘Regency’ very loosely, since she never let historical facts come between her and the story. She gave me one of them once and I noticed the words ‘feisty’ and ‘lusty’ appeared on practically every page to describe the heroine and hero.

And now I came to think of it, she never let facts come between her and a
modern
story either, since she was always snooping about under one pretext or another, and twisting things she saw and heard into malicious gossip. Divorced, she had lived in her hacienda-style bungalow between Middlemoss and Mossedge for several years, and I’m sure was convinced that she was accepted everywhere as a local.

While I didn’t suppose she could have heard anything much through a wooden door, that wouldn’t prevent her from spreading lurid rumours about me and Tom around the three villages by sundown.

She was looking her usual strange self, in a severely truncated purple Regency-style dress, and with her hair cropped and dyed a dense, dead black. She clutched a small blue plastic basket of field mushrooms to her artificially inflated bosom, which might or might not be a fashion statement — are plastic baskets currently a must-have accessory?

Apart from the kohl-edged eyes and puffy, fuchsia-pink lips (which reminded me, strikingly, of a baboon’s bottom), her face was pale as death. Paler.

‘Oh, Polly, are you all right?’ I asked. ‘You haven’t been eating your own home-bottled tomatoes or anything like that, have you?’

From time to time she fancied herself as the Earth Mother type and tried her hand at jams, chutneys and bottled goods, which she then gave to all and sundry, in my case together with a generous dose of botulism or something equally foul. Just my luck to get
that
one!

‘Oh, no, I haven’t had time for any of that, Lizzy — I’ve got a book to finish, you know.’

‘Yes, Senga does like you to keep them coming, doesn’t she?’

Having fallen out with two agents and three publishers, Polly had been taken on by my own agent, Senga McDonald — and may the best woman win.

Her dark eyes slid curiously to the closed workshop door and back to my face. ‘I thought I heard raised voices — is everything OK with you and Tom? Only sometimes lately you haven’t seemed entirely happy, and you
know
you can always depend on me if you need a shoulder to cry on.’

Oh, yes, but only if I kneel down first, I thought, as she smiled at me in a horribly pseudo-sympathetic sort of way.

‘I’m fine,’ I said shortly. ‘We were just discussing business. Were you looking for me?’

She gave a start. ‘Oh, yes. I picked loads of mushrooms in the paddock this morning early and I thought you might like to swap them for some quail eggs? But if it’s inconvenient, it doesn’t matter.’

‘No, not at all. I’m just off for a walk, but you know where they are in the small barn? Help yourself and leave the mushrooms there,’ I told her, and walked off, not caring whether she thought me rude or not. When she first moved to Middlemoss she went all out to be my best friend, but we had absolutely nothing in common (apart from Senga). Anyway, I already have a best friend in Annie.

Nor, it occurred to me, was she the type to skip about the fields at dawn gathering mushrooms, which in any case looked suspiciously like shop-bought ones, small, clean and perfectly formed. My marzipan mushrooms looked earthier than those!

I headed for the woods, for I found their dark, cool depths wonderfully soothing, especially on a hot day. They restored a sense of my unimportance in the great scale of things, shrinking my problems down to a more manageable, acorn size.

Luckily I was wearing a pinky-red T-shirt, so Caz would spot me if I strayed onto the smaller paths he stalked so relentlessly. But if he was out there with his gun, he didn’t make himself known. He’s not much of a talker in any case; but then, most of his dealings are with squirrels, so he doesn’t need to be.

After a while I found my thoughts turning away from more painful subjects onto the comforting one of food, wondering which member of the Christmas Pudding Circle would come up with the best recipe for brandy butter ice cream.

More than likely it would be Faye, since she’s a farmer’s wife who has diversified by opening a farm shop and café, where she sells her own home-made organic ice cream. She was already perfecting a Christmas-pudding-flavoured one.

Eventually, as the shadows lengthened, I reluctantly had to turn for home, even though I dreaded seeing Tom again. But there was no need: he wasn’t there and, more to the point, neither was my car.

Come to that, even the punnet of mushrooms Polly Darke had presumably left had vanished into thin air, though possibly Caz had been around and fancied them. He knows he can help himself to anything edible he can find, though it seemed a bit greedy to take them all. (He keeps the freezer I gave him locked, so goodness knows what’s in there. Better not to know, perhaps?)

I searched for a note saying where Tom and my car had gone to, but there was nothing. Unless he came back by the time I returned from the Mystery Play Committee meeting, Jasper was going to have to cycle home that evening, and I would be extremely annoyed.

I fed, watered and generally cared for everything that needed my attention, then changed and set off for the village hall — on foot.

The members of the Middlemoss Mystery Play Committee were gathered around a trestle table in the village hall, which exhibited reminders of its many functions: the playgroup’s brightly coloured toys poked out from behind a curtained alcove and their finger-painting decorated one wall, while the other bore posters of footprints illustrating the various new steps the Senior Citizens’ Tuesday Tea Dance Club were trying to master.

Personally, I thought salsa might give one or two of them a bit of trouble, but I was sure they would all give it a go. Their line dancing ensemble at the last Christmas concert had been a big hit, and Mrs Gumball, the cook up at Pharamond Hall, had got so excited she fell off the end of the stage. But fortunately foam playmats were always stacked there after an incident a few years back, when one of Santa’s little elves fell over, causing a domino effect along the line until the last one dropped off and broke a leg.

‘I think we might as well start, Clive,’ I suggested to the verger, opening the plastic box of Choconut Consolations I’d brought with me and setting it in the middle, so everyone could help themselves. ‘I don’t know where Annie’s got to, but Uncle Roly’s gone to the races. He said after all these years he could do the Voice of God in his sleep, so you could sort it all out without him.’

This year’s committee was formed of the usual suspects; some of them also CPC members. There was Dr Patel, our semi-retired GP, Miss Pym the infants’ schoolteacher, the new vicar — untried and untested and looking more than a little nervous — and Clive and Marian Potter, who between them ran the post office, the
Mosses Messenger
parish magazine and also pretty well everything else that happened round Middlemoss, including directing the annual Mysteries. Then there was my humble self, for Clive liked to have a token Pharamond on tap, since Uncle Roly was inclined to give his duties the go-by if something more interesting came along. Annie was presumably held up somewhere.