25: Ghosts of Christmases past

‘Your mail, sir.’

My eye was caught by something bright and shiny entering my periphery. ‘Oh, we like that, we like that a lot, where on earth did you get it?’ Charlie was brandishing a silver tray or platter of some description upon which was a single printed letter, three apparent items of junk mail and the latest edition of The Countrywoman in a plastic wrapper.

‘I found it in a charity shop, I’ve been buffing it up. I hadn’t realised how polishing could be made an exercise in mindfulness.’

‘Oh well! In that case, you’ll find my handmade shoes at the bottom of the wardrobe.’

‘That reminds me I must sort through your clothes, some will need discarding, but most just need altering so they hang properly on your new body. I’m looking forward to meeting your tailor, never met one before.’

‘Yes, I suppose it has to be faced. Edoardo is going to love you, you’ll both be on my case in seconds, I don’t stand a chance.’ Then a thought suddenly struck me. ‘You know, he’s a bit of a sportsman, if you to hit it off, and he appreciates what we’re about, he might have some ideas about how to dress you.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘In your role, to use Daphne’s expression, as my valette.’


Later, as I was concluding a brief perusal of the magazine I couldn’t help wondering what the advertising said about the readership. Inside the back cover the entire page was given over to ‘bespoke’ fencing for an authentic ‘heritage’ effect, supplied by Woodlast Woodcrafts Ltd of Wellingsfield. Well, if it pays the bills I thought.

‘Julia has asked me to become a guest columnist.’

‘Excellent.’ I replied.

‘I’m not sure. There is lots I could say, it’s just I’ve never done that kind of writing.’

‘I’d be more than happy to edit you.’

‘She says most of the magazine has become too old fashioned, but she’s afraid of losing the readers she’s got. Her editor says she wants me to write about wellbeing and ecotherapy, but without the naff language. She says the column needs a title. I can’t image what.’

I found a piece of scrap paper and scribbled “The Home Wood Spirit”. ‘Just off the top of my head, as a start, traditional and modern?’

‘How do you do that? Get started I mean. Creating stuff.’

‘By knowing that the first attempt won’t be great, but then it doesn’t need to be. It just has to get you started.’

‘So how do you know when you’re finished?’

‘Well most people have deadlines. But you should know something can never be perfect, so you stop when it’s good enough, for now!’


‘So what do you normally do for Christmas?’ She said it like she was dreading the answer.

‘Well, it’s always been a sort of back and forth movement between Aunts as you might imagine, just a little less so whenever I’ve been involved with someone. The last couple of years it’s been Checkley for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, then to Aunt Elisabeth’s for a Tea with the Book Club on Boxing Day.’

‘A book club on Boxing Day!’

‘Yes, it started life as an ordinary book club, hosted by a local library, but over the years it’s become all Auntie’s cronies, so they now tend to meet in each other’s houses.’

‘Literary, “tea and scandal”.’

‘Now that is good, but if you’re going to remember everything I say…’

‘Were they good Christmases when you were a child?’

‘Yes, and we do the dead a disservice if we don’t remember the good times. Wordsworth said it best, “Surprised by joy - impatient as the Wind ..Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind. But how could I forget thee? Through what power, Even for the least division of an hour…” His three-year-old daughter had died, he reproaches himself for letting the memory of her death, exclude his remembering the joyous moments of her life. Of course it also took me a while to appreciate that my aunts might be missing a brother and sister too. Sometimes it seems important to regress, to be the idiot child, they seem happier when I’m like that sometimes.’

‘My parents are alive and well, I see them about three times a year, but never at Christmas.’

‘There is some talk, that the Club Christmas lunch could be held on Christmas Eve itself. Quite a few of the members have no particular place to go. I could book one of the bedrooms for us?’

‘What about Checkley?’

‘Well they’d be honoured guests at the lunch.’

‘Yes, book a room. No surprises mind.’

‘The only surprise, if it goes ahead on the twenty-fourth, is that the Club has adopted the military tradition of officers waiting on other ranks.’


It was mid-afternoon about a week before Christmas that the apartment doorbell rang triggering the online imagery of two figures, Madam Concierge and our regular postie. Strange.

‘Personal delivery by hand sir, to be signed for’. I hesitated.

‘I found him in the building at an odd hour.’ Said the Dragon as some sort of justification for her presence.

‘I’m not expecting a parcel Barry, any idea what it is?’

‘Has the weight and feel of paper sir, like a mail order catalogue or a pack of printer paper.’

‘There’s no sender info apart from this code?’

‘No sir, they have to give their name and address to our computer though. It’s been scanned for security obviously. All I know is the first five digits there, tell you it’s our district, so a post office sometime after nine this morning.’

‘Thankyou Barry, most helpful, where do I sign?’

After closing the door I sat and fondled the parcel for a while. ‘Well! Open it.’ Charlie instructed.

‘Mm… The sender has clearly walked into one of our main post offices, grabbed stationary, had the counter help parcelling it up, and sent it, paying top whack.’

‘Oh for goodness sake, less of the Sherlock!’

I took my best scissors from the draw and began work. Charlie seemed agitated, rocking a little on her feet, it took me a moment to realise this was hovering - normally felt, not seen. ‘Well you could knock me down with a…’

‘I certainty could.’ She replied.

‘Ha! So much for “Recollections of a Long Life”, the sly old bugger, this is something else altogether, oh look - a note or missive. “Just a first draft you understand, sent it to Eddie, former County Librarian who will edit, thought you ought to see it if you are in this for the long haul.” Well, well. There appears to be a final chapter that is contemporary, but clearly a go at history, rather than gossip…’

‘What’s it called then?’

‘Brilliant, “Cattle Rustlers and Courtiers - a family history”.’


Uncle’s great work, over three hundred pages long, managed to grab our undivided attention in the days running up to Christmas. He wrote as he spoke, but that would be his editor’s problem, not ours. The story was more or less the Reformation to the present day, a gift of land by the Crown, for services rendered during Elisabeth I’s reign. The document screamed loyalty, continuity, community and a spirit of place.

‘He’s challenging you.’ Charlie said.

‘Yes, yes he is. And, despite the lack of a blood tie, offering numerous reasons to spend every last penny on the Park. This isn’t me making money for the Trust, this is Uncle’s mental takeover of another family’s Trust! And there was Julia, thinking it was some other kind of revenge.’

‘He has you snookered old boy!’