Twelve Days of Christmas (30 page)

‘I’m not sure that Viola isn’t a better part for me, with Michael as Orsino, now I’ve read it,’ she said. ‘We might have to re-cast.’

‘Oh? I thought Olivia was the big romantic lead?’ I said.

‘Viola seems to get the better lines and I have to pretend to fall in love with her for most of it!’

‘Do you?’ I said, surprised. I really would have to find time to read it!

‘It’s a comedy of errors, with two entwined romances,’ Michael explained. ‘But I see myself more as a Sebastian than an Orsino, and I already know the part.’

‘I suppose I’d better stick with Olivia then,’ she said reluctantly. ‘We could practise our scenes on our own somewhere, Michael, if the others are busy?’

She bestowed on him an intimately promising smile and a fleeting expression of horror crossed his mobile face. Then, with huge aplomb inspired by the instinct of self-preservation, he tossed a big fat truffle of a diversion in front of her: ‘Noël, didn’t you mention that there were costumes somewhere in the attic we might use, if we really wanted to get into our parts?’

‘Oh –
costumes
!’ breathed Coco, avidly taking the bait.

‘I know where they are – the dressing-up box!’ Jess said, brightening up instantly too. ‘I could show you!’

‘Perhaps I’d better go with you,’ Noël said anxiously. ‘It’s not the big chest at the front – that has the Twelfth Night Revels costumes in it, though of course the heads are stored with the swords in the barn behind the pub. No, it’s the cabin trunk further back.’

Actually, I’d much rather have explored the dressing-up box with them than trudge down through the snow to pose for Mr Bossy-Boots Martland, but I had a feeling that if I didn’t show up he would come back and carry me off by brute force anyway: he was quite capable of it.

‘I think you should
all
dress up for your parts,’ Jess said. ‘Don’t worry, Holly, I’ll find something nice for your big love scene with Uncle Jude.’

‘
Which
big love scene?’

‘Haven’t you read the play yet?’ asked Coco.

‘Yes, at school, but I’ve forgotten about it; it was a long time ago. And I haven’t even had time to read through those printed scenes you gave us all. But I thought the central love affair was between Sebastian and Olivia?’

‘There’s a sort of double love tangle going on,’ Noël explained. ‘The play has its roots in mumming, with lots of cross-dressing and characters not really being who they appear to be – a bit like the Revels!’

I really
must
try and glance through my helpfully-highlighted printout and find out
exactly
what I’ve let myself in for!

Chapter 31
Fool’s Gold

I changed into my black velvet leggings and dark green tunic jumper, which is an outfit I usually only wear for relaxing in when I am on my own, since it’s all very clingy, especially in the bum and twin peaks areas.

When I knocked on the studio door there was no reply, but I went in anyway: it was too cold to hang about outside like an unwanted carol singer.

Jude barely looked up from what he was doing, which was hauling out thick metal rods and wire from a large plastic bin, and grunted at me, but I don’t speak pig, so I left my snowy wellies just inside the door and had a wander around in my socks until he became a little less
Animal Farm
.

The building had once had two floors, though now the upper one had been removed and skylights set into the roof to make a large, well-lit space. The walls were painted a creamy white and it smelt of a complicated, but not unpleasant, mingling of Calor gas heater, damp sacking and hot metal. Jude’s aftershave might have been based on it.

There were enormous double doors let into one wall, presumably for the removal of finished sculptures . . . and come to think of it, that must be why the path up from the drive was wide and rutted, because they probably had to reverse large vehicles right up it to the studio.

It was furnished with a large, raised wooden model’s dais, like a mini-stage, a smaller door that presumably gave on to a storage area for materials, a small furnace of some kind, easels, tables, large metal and wooden stands, a tilting draughtsman’s desk and workbenches covered in a clutter of sketches, tubs of brushes, modelling tools and pencils, bits of clay, little models of sculptures and fragments of twisted metal. It all looked in need of a good sort and dust to me, but I expect he preferred it like that.

Dotted about on what remained of the floor space were finished sculptures in various mediums, most mounted on bases, plinths or stands of one kind or another. The biggest – life-size, in fact – was unmistakably Lady, even if it
was
composed of metal triangles, but Becca was right and from close to it looked like a heap of junk. Another was just a series of fluid lines in bent tubular metal that were equally unmistakably the Celtic red horse up on the hill.

He’d been telling the truth about it being reasonably warm down there once the heaters got going, but nothing would have induced me to strip down to the buff, though I did finally take my anorak off and hang it up. That was as far as I was prepared to go.

When I turned round, I found Jude was looking at me assessingly, one corner of his straight mouth quirking up in a way that seemed to denote private amusement.

‘
Very
dryad.’

I am a little on the large side for ditsy dancing in the woods, so I ignored this as sarcasm and asked, ‘What did you want me for?’

‘To try and capture the way you were standing this morning, with your arm across Lady’s back and her head turned towards you. The whole thing looked as if you were fused into one . . . though it would have been better if she hadn’t been wearing her rug. Still, I’ve got loads of photographs, sketches and models of her already, like this one.’ He indicated the finished life-sized sculpture. ‘If you stand next to it, in the same pose, I could get some ideas down of the scale and how it will go, even if the horse isn’t in the right position.’

He seemed serious, so I climbed onto the rectangular block the sculpture was sitting on and draped an arm across it as directed, while he pulled an easel up at an angle and stuck a large sketchbook on it.

‘Is this one sold somewhere?’ I asked. ‘Don’t you always work to commission?’

‘Only sometimes, I generally just do what I feel like and then sell it – or not, if I don’t want to. I decided to keep that one. Turn slightly to face her head . . . No, just
your
head, not your whole body!’ he exclaimed, then with two impatient strides he seized me and actually
manhandled
me into the position he wanted, which felt
really
weird.

Then he went back to his easel and studied me minutely, as if I was a slightly dodgy car he was thinking of buying, for want of anything better, before swiftly making sketch after sketch, using big sticks of charcoal. These he then simply dropped on the floor around his feet.

At first I was disconcerted by the way he barely took his brooding, deep-set dark eyes off me, his brow furrowed with concentration, but I slowly relaxed as I realised it was an impartial and remote scrutiny: it wasn’t me as a
person
he was seeing at all!

From time to time he dragged the easel into a different position, so he could draw me from all angles and presumably get some concept of me in the round. It seemed to take him ages – but then, I do have a
lot
of round.

‘I wish I had Lady here,’ he said at one point, and then later murmured, as if to himself, ‘and I
wish
you would take your clothes off!’

‘I bet you do, but it ain’t gonna happen! Look, Jude, I’ve gone numb down one side, so can I move now? I must have been standing here for hours.’

‘Oh . . . yes, I suppose you have,’ he said, blinking at me as if he’d forgotten I was an animate object, with a voice and a lot of opinions. ‘I think I’ve got enough to make a start.’

‘On a sculpture?’ I climbed down slightly stiffly and fetched the flask of coffee I’d had the foresight to bring with me.

‘Yes, but I’ll make a maquette or two, first.’

‘Maquette?’

‘A small three-dimensional study, exploring ideas.’

‘Right.’

‘We’ll see if Lady will oblige with the same pose without the rug when she comes in later and then I can take a few more pictures. And I’ll need you down here again tomorrow.’

He came and sat next to me on the wooden edge of the model’s dais and I handed him a plastic mug of coffee and a mince pie from a plastic box.

‘I can hardly wait,’ I said politely. ‘It wasn’t so bad, was it?’ he asked, sounding surprised. He was close enough so I could see all the fascinating little specks of gold – probably fool’s gold – suspended in his molasses-dark eyes.

‘Well, no . . .’ I admitted, ‘though I thought you were only going to do one or two quick sketches, not dozens.’

‘You’re going to be immortalised in brazed and welded steel for posterity,’ he promised, which has to be the best offer of any kind I’ve had for a long, long time – and certainly one up on the popcorn and Coke Sam bought me the time we went to the pictures.

‘Where’s Merlin?’ he asked.

‘I left him up at the house. I wasn’t sure if he was allowed in the studio or not.’

‘Yes, he always comes with me, unless lured away by visiting dryads,’ he said wryly and then we sat there silently, but fairly companionably, drinking our coffee and eating mince pies.

‘Sorry I bit your head off earlier, I was upset about something,’ I said eventually.

‘That’s okay – anything you want to share?’

I looked away from his enquiring eyes and shook my head firmly. ‘The others have gone into the attic to look for costumes for the play,’ I said, changing the subject. ‘The way Coco’s carrying on, we’ll end up having to act out
our
parts too, though in my case I’ll have to read the lines, because I won’t have time to learn them by heart.’

‘I don’t know them by heart either: it used to be Becca, Tilda and Noël who did most of the reading. At least it doesn’t take long, because not only is it quite a short play, but Noël’s edited out all the slapstick and Malvolio stuff and filled in with a brief linking summary,’ he said, then glanced at me from under his heavy dark brows and added, his already thrillingly deep voice going even lower, ‘But if we act them out, then I expect I can manage a few
appropriate
actions.’

The corner of his straight mouth quirked up again, but I wasn’t quite sure what he meant by that, since most of his actions towards me so far have been highly
inappropriate
, like dragging me into his bedroom on Christmas Eve!

Jude came back to the house with me and we went round through the stableyard, where we found that Becca had just brought the horses in and started grooming Nutkin.

‘I was playing hide and seek with the others, but me and Tilda got spotted first, behind the sitting-room curtains,’ she said. ‘One of my feet was sticking out. They’d found everyone except Coco when I thought I’d better do the horses, so I left them to it. She’s so skinny, she probably slipped between a crack in the floorboards.’

‘That’s a slight exaggeration, but she is worryingly thin now,’ Jude said.

‘I’m thinking about confiscating her laxatives,’ I confessed. ‘I don’t want her to waste away while I’m doing the cooking and have her on my conscience.’

‘Even if you do, she’ll probably just go back to them when she leaves,’ he pointed out.

‘Perhaps, but at least I’ll have tried.’

Jude removed Lady’s rug and took some more pictures of me standing with her, though I declined to take my wellies off this time, even if I did reluctantly part with my anorak. He even drew a couple of quick sketches, though the light wasn’t exactly brilliant in there and Lady kept trying to nibble the edges of the paper.

‘You’re a muse now,’ Becca said, pausing in her steady brush-strokes. ‘I’ve read about artists and their muses, you need to watch yourself!’ And she laughed heartily.

Luckily I don’t think Jude took in what she’d said, because he seemed to have mentally retired to his own little Planet Zog again, closing his sketchbook and walking off to the house without another word to either of us.

We exchanged a look and then I put my anorak back on and started to groom Lady, which has to be one of the best arm-toning exercises going.

When I went into the house a little while later, Coco was still missing and they were getting anxious about her.

‘I can’t think where she’s got to,’ Guy said. ‘We’ve even looked in the attic, which was supposed to be out of bounds, but there’s no sign of her anywhere.’

‘Did you check to see if her coat and hat were missing? She might have gone outside,’ I suggested.

‘Yes, I thought of that,’ Michael said, ‘but they’re still there. I don’t think she’d have stayed out very long anyway, it’s too cold. And she’s not exactly the hillwalking type, so she won’t have got lost.’

‘No, I just thought she might have had a sudden impulse to set out for the village, but obviously not.’

‘Did you look in all the chests and trunks?’ asked Tilda from the sofa, where she was comfortably reclining while watching the hunt. ‘Only I suddenly remembered that story about the bride playing hide and seek on her wedding day and vanishing, only for them to find her skeleton in a chest years later.’

Noël looked very struck by this. ‘Of course! It’s just the sort of silly thing she would do – and there are two or three in the attic, as well as the sandalwood chest on the landing.’

Guy, Jude and Michael dashed upstairs, but I couldn’t myself see Coco squeezing herself into a trunk. ‘Did you check the cellars?’ I asked Jess.

‘Yes, and the utility room and everywhere else I could think of. Come on, let’s go up the backstairs and see if they’ve found her yet.’

I followed her upstairs, stopping to check the wardrobe in my room and Michael’s and the linen cupboard between them. And then suddenly I remembered Noël telling me there was another door at the top of the staircase, leading to a stairway to the unused servants’ rooms in the smaller attic over this wing. It was in a dark corner, easy to miss, but from behind it came a faint scrabbling and a wavering cry of, ‘Help! Heeelp!’

‘Coco? It’s all right, we’ll have you out of there in a minute,’ I called, tugging at the handle, which wouldn’t budge. ‘Quick, Jess, go and get your Uncle Jude and the others, I can’t shift this.’

Jude could, though, and with one mighty wrench it creaked open, revealing a tearstained, pallid figure huddled on the bottom stairs.

He picked her up as if she weighed nothing and she clung to him whimpering, ‘I thought no-one would ever find me and I was going to be there forever! And I went upstairs to see if there was another way out and something big and white flapped at me!’

Shuddering she turned her face into his shoulder as he stroked her hair and said gently, ‘It’s all right, Coco, I’ve got you now.’

At that moment I felt a sudden pang of something that I feared might be jealousy:
I
had never been held so tenderly in someone’s arms as if I was feather-light and fragile! (Alan would have fallen over, had he tried.)

‘You’d better put her on her bed,’ Guy suggested. ‘Come on, Coco, you’re safe now and we would have found you eventually.’

‘I hadn’t even noticed that door was there,’ Michael said.

‘Noël told me about it and I suddenly remembered. But Guy’s right and she ought to go and lie down for a bit. Someone make her a hot drink and I’ll sit with her.’

‘Guy can do that while I check for the mysterious ghostly thing,’ Michael said. ‘If I vanish, you know where I am!’

I followed after Jude, who had laid Coco down on her bed and was now attempting to detach her arms from their death grip around his neck.

‘Oh, there you are,’ he said to me with some relief.

‘Guy’s making her a hot drink and Michael’s gone to see what frightened her in the attic.’

‘Oh, it was horrible, swooping at me out of the darkness!’ Coco shuddered, reaching for Jude again, though he was now out of reach.

Guy brought a mug of tea and said, ‘I’ve told the others we’ve found her and Michael says there was a pigeon up there – one of the windows is broken – so that must be what flew at you.’

Coco sat up and took the mug, pleased if anything with all the attention she was getting and starting to look a lot better. ‘Is there sugar in this?’ she asked after a sip.