A Winterfold Christmas Read online

  “Room for a little one?” said Kathy.

  “Of course.” Martha moved along so she could sit down. She tried to think of something normal to say. “The choir sounds beautiful, Kathy.”

  “Good. I’m so glad.” She didn’t look at Martha or touch her, just sat next to her, watching John and smiling. “I love the preparation for the service tonight. So much good purpose in this church. We have mince pies shaped like Rudolph. Not strictly ecumenical, but I’ll let it slide.”

  Martha smiled, still watching. One of the ladies of the parish was winding ivy and pine around the wooden planks that were screwed into the choir stalls every Christmas. Another was carefully fitting thick creamy candles into each hole. In years gone by, that might have been her.

  “I don’t like Christmas,” she said suddenly. “Too many memories.”

  “Yes,” said Kathy easily. “I didn’t use to like it. It can be very hard, can’t it?”

  Slowly Martha said, “Can I tell you something, Kathy?”

  “Of course.”

  “It would have been our sixtieth wedding anniversary on Christmas Eve.”

  “Oh, Martha.” Kathy squeezed her hand.

  Martha sat quite still, staring ahead. “I haven’t told anyone. But I can’t stop thinking about it. Everyone’s coming home, and they’re all moving on, and they’ve got these wonderful new lives, and I—I want to go back in time, not forward.” She whispered, “I don’t think I want to be alive anymore, Kathy. And it’s a sin to think like that, isn’t it?”

  Kathy didn’t move. She bowed her head, and they were both silent as the choir shuffled out of the church. Martha listened as hard as she could. She tried to see if she could really hear something. What? David, wishing her well? But there was nothing.

  After a few moments Kathy said, “Sixty years, Martha. That’s someone’s life. How extraordinary that you made it to sixty years.”

  “He’s dead, Kathy.” Martha tried not to sound snappish.

  “But you’re not. You’re here. You’re here, right now. And your home and your family, they’re here, aren’t they? My father died when I was ten, did you know that?”

  “No,” said Martha. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t.”

  Kathy shrugged. “It’s okay. He’d been very ill for years, and it was like a shadow over everything, all the time. He was a vicar too, you see. We lived our lives around his calendar. People needed him—not just us, other people—even when he was ill. He still put others first, and that—it was really very hard. But still, that first Christmas without him . . . it was awful.” She smiled brightly. “Yes, it really was awful. For years I hated Christmas. It seemed like a slap in the face if you were on your own, or didn’t have a dad, or much money. It seemed like an excuse to point at people who weren’t a ‘normal’ family. Until I came to see we had it all wrong.”

  Martha wiped her nose, and turned just a little toward Kathy. “How do you mean?”

  “Well, how do I explain it? The trouble is, we see Christmas as a holiday for those who have everything, and it’s a false message. Those ads on TV—happy families walking through the snow, and all that. Whereas I see it as a holiday for those who are missing something, who want to remember that it is about a baby who was born with nothing. He was born with nothing at all, Martha, and he did great things.”

  Martha shifted in her seat. “I’m not sure I even believe in God these days, Kathy. I’m sorry.”

  Kathy shook her head and shrugged. “That’s fine.”

  “You’re not going to smite me and order me from the church?”

  “No,” she said, laughing. “We’d never do that. I want you to feel welcome here whenever you want. Just think of it as a fable. A baby with nothing, born in the cold to parents with nothing, who was the one person God chose to represent us on earth. I think that’s wonderful. So I think of Christmas now as a time for reflection, for remembering the small things, the ordinary people, people who are lonely and need help. That baby was one of them, and he represents them all. Just a story, if you like, but I love it.” She patted Martha’s arm. “Listen some more. Stay and enjoy the music. Don’t try to be anything—just listen. We never stop to listen. You’ll hear all sorts of things, if you do.”

  She put her arm around Martha and they were both silent, there in the echoing church. Martha listened again. The stillness, the warmth of Kathy’s arm squeezing her, the faint scent of hymn books and Christmas—it was all beautiful. She’d never realized it before.

  Martha’s Christmas Gingerbread

  Makes about 20

  1 stick of butter (130g)

  ½ cup (100g) dark muscovado or other dark brown sugar

  6 tbsps. golden syrup

  2 ¾ cups (350g) plain flour

  1 tsp. baking soda

  3 tsps. ground ginger

  ½ tsp. cinnamon

  ½ tsp. allspice

  1 ½ cups (175g) powdered sugar

  a little cold water

  silver balls and wrapping ribbon, to decorate

  Melt the butter, sugar, and golden syrup in a medium saucepan. Stir until the sugar has dissolved and leave to cool for a minute or two.

  Sift the flour into a bowl. Add the baking soda, ground ginger, cinnamon, and allspice. Mix into the flour.

  Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir so they form a dough. Roll into a ball. Put in the fridge wrapped in cling wrap for 20 minutes.

  Preheat the oven to350°F. Flour the kitchen table. Roll out the dough to ¼-inch thickness. Using a medium-size star-shaped cutter and other Christmas-appropriate shapes (nothing too small or they will burn), cut out shapes and place on greased or lined baking trays, not too close together. Cook for 10–12 minutes, but do check they don’t run together or burn. They should be golden brown. When still pliable and warm, pierce holes for ribbons using a skewer. Leave to cool.

  Sift the powdered sugar into a small bowl. Add a small amount of water to create icing the consistency of heavy cream. Keep adding and mixing till you get the right consistency. Pipe patterns onto the gingerbread. Decorate with silver balls on top. Thread with gold and silver wrapping ribbon and hang on the Christmas tree, on hooks in the kitchen, and anywhere in the house you like. Enjoy.

  Lucy

  December 21

  Outside, the rain was turning to driving sleet and the wind was picking up, but inside her East London flat Lucy Winter sat on the living-room floor, eyes alight with happiness. Three hundred and sixty-four days she’d waited for this moment. Fifty-one weeks and six days. Eleven months, three weeks and six—well, anyway, it was here, her favorite day of the year: Christmas present wrapping day.

  “Stage one,” she said aloud, and she donned the flashing reindeer antlers she’d bought in the pound shop on Kingsland High Street and which she had worn to the Country Matters Christmas party—she alone, amidst a sea of men in tweedy suits.

  “Stage two,” she said, pulling on her new M&S bed socks, to which she treated herself every year. The bed socks were immensely thick, cable-knitted, with fleecy lining. They had dangling pom-poms, and reindeer faces on the toes.

  “Stage three.” She turned on the Bluetooth speaker and—lo and behold!—on came Michael Bublé’s Christmas album, which was on a virtual loop in her flat from November 25 onward. (Lucy had strict rules about Christmas preparations—she was obsessive enough to know she couldn’t sustain this level of Christmas mania for longer than a month before the Big Day.) For a moment she tried to picture Orlando’s face, were he to walk in now.

  “ ‘It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,’ ” Lucy hummed. “Yeah, Michael, I know!” she said, pretending she was on an old-style chat show with Mickey Bubbles, the two of them leaning on the piano together indulging in high-level banter. “It sure is a wonderful time of year. How are you and your supermodel wife and baby fixed for
the holidays this year? Any plans? Hmm. Yeah, I know!” She took a photo of her feet on the carpet, surrounded by wrapping paper, Sellotape, carrier bags of presents, and the old cardboard box of Christmas decorations she’d inherited from her dad. She posted it on Instagram:

  #christmaspresentwrappingday #bestdayoftheyear

  “Final stage. Stage four.” Lucy leaned forward and removed the crystal glass with “Baileys at Christmas” from its cardboard box, then went over to the fridge to remove the pièce de résistance: the matching flashing ice cubes and the bottle of Baileys she’d been chilling for this very purpose.

  The wind howled along the deserted street as Lucy raised the bottle and then stopped. She shook it repeatedly.

  “Nooo,” said Lucy, softly at first, then louder: “Nooooo.” She peered inside. “Nooooooo!” The Baileys was all gone. “No!” Lucy’s eyes widened.

  This was a Christmas ritual, as set in stone as hanging a stocking and midnight Mass. She always wrapped her presents either to her Christmas Oldies playlist or, more recently, Mickey Bubbles’s Christmas album, while drinking a Baileys in her special Baileys glass with the flashing ice cubes.

  “Christmas is over!” groaned Lucy dramatically, staring around the room. It was 9 p.m. and the Sainsbury’s down the road would be shut. In any case, who wanted to go out in that weather? As she began wrapping the presents sadly, the front door opened, banging loudly against the wall with the force of the wind. Lucy jumped, emitting a short, low scream. “Orlando? That you?”

  “Yes. Hello, Lucy,” said Orlando.

  Orlando was one of the few people to actually know anything about the countryside on the staff of Country Matters, the glossy lifestyle magazine for people who longed to live in the country but more likely were happier just flicking through pictures of golden-stone manor houses, cream teas, and newborn lambs. He wrote the “Country Folk” column and came from a long line of farmers in Worcestershire, and was thus apt to chime in at editorial meetings with charming stories of owls eating their owlets or the sound a hen makes when a fox is tearing it to shreds. “It’s the reality of the countryside,” he’d say when the girls put their hands over their eyes and started telling him to shut up.

  Now he stood in the doorway by the coatrack and unwound his long, thin scarf.

  “How was your brother?”

  “Grim,” said Orlando.

  “Where did you go?”

  “Some pub near Charing Cross. Absolutely stuffed full of pissed people. And us two in Barbour weatherproof jackets. Robert had a hat on. We looked a bit out of place.”

  “You look out of place all the time and you live here,” Lucy pointed out. “You don’t have to wear wellies in Dalston, you know.”

  Orlando looked down in some surprise at his footwear. “But it’s wet. And who cares, as long as you don’t smell?”

  “Words to live by,” said Lucy. “I’m sorry, I was only teasing.”

  “I like it when you tease me,” said Orlando touchingly. “It makes me—oh well.” He rubbed his forehead. “Families, eh? You’re lucky, not having a brother or a sister. Trust me.”

  “Oh dear. What did he do?”

  “He’s—well, he’s a bit of a huge massive idiot.”

  “Do you think you’ll go back there for Christmas?”

  “He’s said they’re not really doing Christmas, they’ve got too much work on with the animals. But I bet that’s because his in-laws are coming instead.” Orlando pushed his glasses up his nose and shrugged. “To be honest, it was sort of awful last year, so it’s probably for the best. It’s just I miss my parents this time of year. We had beef, you know, not turkey. Dad always said it’d be rude to have anything else. Dad . . .” He trailed off, blinking hard. “Christmas at the farm used to be so jolly. But I suppose things come to an end, don’t they? I’m going to make a drink. Do you fancy something?”

  “Oh.” Lucy watched him. “Yes—I had some Baileys in the fridge, but it’s all gone. What do we have? I’m afraid we’re all out of wine.”

  Orlando put some butter in a pan. “I’m making hot buttered rum.” He poured what seemed to Lucy to be half a foot of rum into a jug. “Rum’s good when you’re feeling rubbish and you need warming up.”

  “So—what will you do for Christmas?” said Lucy softly. She wished she knew him better, that they’d lived together for years rather than just weeks so she knew the shorthand, knew what to say.

  “It’ll be fine, I’ll stay with my aunt. She’s in Stratford-upon-Avon.”

  “Is she your dad’s sister or—”

  “My mum’s. I haven’t seen her for a few years but she’s invited me and—oh, do you mind if we don’t talk about it anymore? I’m sorry, Lucy, it’s not your fault, it’s just Christmas always was awful after Mum died. But this year I sort of hoped my brother wouldn’t be a total arse. Hey-ho.”

  In the almost two months they’d lived together, this was the most he’d said about anything. She knew his mother had died when he was tiny and his father at the beginning of this year, but that was it. Mostly they talked rubbish a lot of the time. He made her laugh, and it was awful, seeing him sad; Lucy’s heart ached for him.

  “It’s the first year,” said Lucy. She put her arm around him. “Oh, Orlando. I’m so sorry.”

  Orlando added some soft brown sugar to the butter and stirred. “It’s fine.” He wrinkled his nose. “What were you up to, anyway?”

  “Wrapping presents,” Lucy said. “But I’d run out of Baileys. You can’t wrap Christmas presents without Baileys.”

  Orlando beat in the rum and the spices, fast, and then took out the tiny cut-crystal tankards Lucy had inherited from her mother’s mother. He poured the soft brown liquid, glinting with golden buttery flecks, into the two glasses and handed her one. “Yes, you can,” he said. He clinked his tankard against hers. “Cheers, Lucy. And—thanks. Have a wonderful, wonderful Christmas.”

  Then he leaned forward, and kissed her. On the lips.

  “Oh.” Lucy was taken aback. She could taste the butter and rum on his lips. She stared at him.

  “Sorry,” said Orlando immediately. “Misplaced. Should have aimed to the right. Bit worse for the beer, you know. Rum on top . . . disaster.” He put his hand on her arm. “Um . . . sorry.”

  “Hey, it’s Christmas,” said Lucy. “Season of goodwill to all men, eh?”

  “Yes,” said Orlando awkwardly, downing the rest of his drink. “Look, I didn’t—”

  “It’s fine.”

  There was a silence, filled only by “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” in the background.

  “Well, let me see,” said Orlando, surveying the scene as if for the first time. “What are you doing? Can I help?”

  “Sure,” said Lucy, slightly too loudly. “Sure! Let’s decorate the tree. There’s some old ornaments, some new ones. . . .” She crouched down by the damp and slightly worn cardboard box. “These ones have to go on first: the golden bird, and the little girl with the hat, and the dog.”

  “Why do you have a dog Christmas-tree ornament?”

  She smiled. “Dad bought one for Gran and Southpaw and one for us. He looked just like Wilbur. My grandparents’ dog.”

  Orlando nodded.

  Every ornament taken out was like saying hello to an old friend. The rum was going down extremely well, sliding like a trail of warmth into her stomach. She brushed Orlando on the arm, as if sweeping away any awkwardness. “It’s great you’re here to help. Why don’t we start with this lot, then do the lights. Oh, look!” she said with pleasure. “The plastic eyeball! And the sheep!”

  “These are the weirdest Christmas decorations I’ve ever seen,” complained Orlando, but he crouched down next to her. “Where are they from?”

  “My dad’s,” explained Lucy. “But he and Karen, my stepmother, they moved to Canada last year, so I got
them. It’s my first Christmas putting them up.” She crouched down again and stared at the box. “Strange, eh? How life changes every year, yet you cling to the old familiar things.”

  “I suppose we all want to feel normal at Christmas,” said Orlando. “But I never have. I always wonder what it’d be like if my mum was here. And I always think about, if you’re Jewish, or Muslim, how strange it must be.”

  “I think you can join in.”

  “Sure, but perhaps you feel a bit of an outsider to begin with—and it can’t help that.”

  “Maybe . . .” Lucy took another sip of her drink and then gingerly set it down; her head was spinning, and she wasn’t sure why. “Maybe it should just be a winter festival. If you want to celebrate Jesus being born, that’s great—but if you just want to celebrate the season and be with your family, that’s great too.”

  “Well, of course, that’s what Christmas was once,” said Orlando. “A Winter Feast of Fools. Nothing to do with baby Jesus—wasn’t he actually born in the summer? They’d have the Lord of Misrule and . . .” He trailed off. “Never mind.”

  “No, go on, it’s really interesting.”

  “You make me so nervous, that’s all.” Orlando sat back on his heels, looking at her. “I feel I have to do something when I’m around you, so I talk.”

  “Oh.” Lucy stopped rummaging in the box, a delicate ornament wrapped in paper and an elastic band in her hand. “That’s—oh!” Suddenly she wished she weren’t in her comfy onesie and bed socks. She put the ornament on the floor and moved her hand to her head, removing the flashing antlers.

  “I didn’t mean to make you feel awkward,” he said shortly. “Now I’ve made it worse. I’m doing really well tonight. Rejected by my own brother, making unwanted advances toward my flatmate . . . I like you, that’s all. I feel warm when you’re around. Like the hot buttered rum.”

  Lucy laughed, a genuine, snorting, happy laugh, and closed her eyes. Her head spun slightly.

  “Do you usually laugh like that?” he asked, delighted.