The Magic of Christmas

‘Seems appropriate,’ agreed the doctor, adding generously, ‘and the Water into Wine and Feeding of the Five Thousand too, if you like.’

‘I’ll see to the Last Supper, Judas, the Trial and Crucifixion myself this year – the Crucifixion’s always tricky, but you might want to take that on next year, Vicar – and then that leaves just the Resurrection, Ascension and Last Judgement.’

‘I’ll do those again,’ offered Annie.

‘We do the final dress rehearsals for the whole thing up at the Hall in a couple of sessions before Christmas,’ Marian helpfully explained to the vicar. ‘In random order, or it would be unlucky. But since at least two-thirds of the players will have done their parts before, it’s just a question of making sure the new ones know their lines and where to stand, that’s all.’

‘Oh, good,’ said poor Gareth weakly. He looked at his watch. ‘I’d better get back – I’ve got a funeral to prepare.’

‘Yes, our Moses – such a sad loss,’ Miss Pym said. ‘We will have to recast that part, too.’

Clive stuffed his papers and clipboard into a scuffed leather briefcase and then he and Marian started transforming the hall into a snooker parlour for the Youth Club, turning down my offer of help.

When I went out the vicar was already halfway across the green with Annie, heading in the direction of the church. I bet they were only talking about something totally mundane like Sunday school, though, and she hadn’t noticed at all that he fancied her.

Miss Pym climbed into her little red Smart car and vanished with a vroom, and Dr Patel wished me good night and got into his BMW.

I wended my way home to Perseverance Cottage, where I did not find my husband or, more importantly, my car, but did find a telephone message on the machine from Unks, asking me to ring him back. When I did, he told me that Mimi, his elderly sister who lived at the Hall with her long-suffering companion Juno, had been arrested by the police at the Southport Flower Show, having temporarily got away from Mrs Gumball, who’d volunteered to keep an eye on her. You can’t blame her, though, since Mimi is very spry for an octogenarian while Mrs Gumball is the human equivalent of a mastodon, so moves slowly and majestically.

Unfortunately, Mimi is a plant kleptomaniac: no one’s garden is safe from her little knife and plastic bags, and she really just can’t understand why anyone should take exception to her habits. Still, the police had merely cautioned and released her this time and, since the coach had by then set out on the return journey, drove her and Mrs Gumball home in a police car.

Roly said she was under the impression they had done it to give her a treat, and was hoping next year’s flower show would be as much fun.

Then he added, rather puzzlingly, ‘And I hope Tom told you that you can stop worrying about ever losing Perseverance Cottage, my dear, because after I’m gone, it’s yours and Tom’s. I would have said before, if I’d known it was on your mind.’

‘But I wasn’t worried, Unks! In fact, the thought never even entered my head,’ I assured him. Since I would have to leave soon, it was immaterial to me, but Tom had evidently used me as an excuse to find out how things had been left. How Machiavellian he’s becoming!

After this, I unpacked Annie’s candyfloss machine to distract myself from worrying until Jasper arrived safely home. The instructions absolutely forbade me to use any natural essences or colourings other than special granulated ones designed for the purpose, which was disappointing from the point of view of making Cornish Mist, until I discovered one of the tubs in the box was lemon.

Fascinating how the floss forms inside the bowl like ectoplasm, and you have to wind the near invisible threads onto wooden sticks. Fine, sugary filaments drifted everywhere, and the kitchen took on the hot, sweet, nostalgic smell of funfairs.

It was really messy but fun, which Jasper said was a good description of me, too, when he got home and saw what I’d been up to, though by then I was sitting among the debris, writing it all up for the Chronicle.

Maybe I’ll have ‘messy, but fun’ as my epitaph.

Chapter 6: Driven Off

I wonder if plastic bags of fluffy white candyfloss labelled ‘edible Santa beards’ would go down well with children at Christmas? I expect they would try them on and get terribly sticky, though.

The Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes

There was still no sign of my car next morning and, in a furious temper, I rang all of Tom’s friends that I knew about, or who I had mobile numbers for although trying to contact his surfing buddies down in Cornwall was always like waking the dead, and I got little sense out of them even when they did answer the phone.

The first time or two he went missing for a few days I also rang the local hospitals and the police, but after that I learned my lesson.

I woke Jasper early and saw him off by bike to the dig, then I called Annie to tell her I was without transport; but luckily she only wanted me to exercise the two Pekes and a Shitzu belonging to one of the more elderly members of the Cotton Common cast, Delphine Lake. She’d bought one of the expensive flats in part of the former Pharamond’s Butterflake Biscuit factory in the village and I’d walked her dogs several times before.

Uncle Roly sold the Pharamond brand name out to a big conglomerate years ago for cash, shares and a seat on the board, which was both a smart and lucrative deal; so now the factory has been converted to apartments, a café-bar called Butterflakes, and a museum of Mosses history.

Delphine’s dogs may be little, but they loved their walks, so it was late morning before I got back to the cottage and found a female police officer awaiting me on the doorstep. An adolescent colleague sat biting his fingernails behind the wheel of a panda car.

I immediately thought the worst, as you do. ‘Jasper?’ I cried. ‘Has something happened to Jasper?’

‘Mrs Elizabeth Pharamond?’ she queried solemnly.

‘Yes!’

‘I’m Constable Perkins and I’m afraid I have some very bad news for you.’

She paused, and I was just about to take her by the throat and shake her when she added,

‘About your husband.’

‘Oh – thank God!’ I gasped devoutly, then burst into tears of relief.

Wresting the keys from my nerveless fingers, she ushered me into my own home, where she broke the news that Tom had had a fatal accident. He’d driven off the road into a disused quarry, which was odd in itself, since there’s only one place within a radius of about fifty miles where he could have managed to perform that feat, and it’s up a little-used back lane.

While her colleague made me tea, she spoke to me with skilful sympathy, though my reactions clearly puzzled her. But all I was feeling was an overpowering sense of relief that it wasn’t Jasper.

And then I got to thinking that this was all so blatantly unreal anyway, that it couldn’t be true: it must be just some dreadful nightmare!

This was a very calming idea, since I knew I’d wake up sometime, so I agreed quite readily to go and identify Tom’s body. My head seemed to be this helium-filled thing bobbing about on a string – or that’s what it felt like, anyway – but there’s no accounting for dreams.

And Tom, apart from his thin, handsome face being a whiter shade of pale, looked absolutely fine. He was always one to land butter-side up …

‘Is this your husband?’ the policewoman asked formally.

‘Yes – Thomas Pharamond. Are you sure he’s dead? Only he looks just like he did when he was playing Lazarus.’

She gave me a strange look, but assured me that Tom had broken his neck in a very final manner. Then she offered me yet another cup of tea, which I didn’t want, and took me home again, sitting beside me in the back seat while the adolescent did the driving. He feasted on his fingernails at every red light and I don’t know why, but it suddenly reminded me of the stewed apple with little sharp crescents of core snippings that they used to give us at school for pudding.

The policewoman whiled away the journey by telling me that they thought the car (my car, which was now a write-off) had been at the bottom of the quarry for a few hours before it was found, and he must have died instantly, but I expect they say that every time. There would have to be a post-mortem examination, and probably an inquest. I think she said there would be an inquest. I wasn’t taking it all in, because of course it wasn’t real.

When we got to Perseverance Cottage, she asked if there was someone who could stay with me.

‘Oh, yes – I’ll phone the family right now,’ I assured her, suddenly desperate to get rid of her. ‘Thank you for … for – well, thank you, Officer. I’ll be fine.’

She looked a bit dubious, but drove off leaving me to it, and I thankfully closed the front door and leaned against it: that seemed solid enough. So did the cold quarry tiles beneath my feet when I kicked my sandals off …

It began slowly to dawn on me that this really was happening and Tom was actually dead! In which case, I could only be glad that Jasper was at his dig, since I’m sure he would have insisted on coming with me to identify Tom, though actually his face had looked peaceful enough, if vaguely surprised by the turn of events. I felt a sudden pang of guilt, remembering how glad I had been that it was Tom who had died and not Jasper.

But now I’d have to break the news to him about his father … and to Unks and Mimi and Tom’s mother out in Argentina …

Stiffening my trembling legs I tottered into the sitting room and dialled the Hall, getting Uncle Roly.

I don’t think I was the mistress of either tact or coherence by this stage, but he took the news well, if quietly, and offered to phone Tom’s mother and stepfather in Argentina himself, which was a huge relief. Then he said he would also try and contact Nick, still off touring the eateries of the rural North-West.

‘And Jasper?’ he asked. ‘I take it he is at the dig, and doesn’t know?’

‘Yes, and I think I’ll just wait for him to come home before I tell him,’ I decided, for why rush to give him the bad news? ‘Anyway, Tom was driving my car – his van broke down – so I haven’t got any transport.’

When I phoned Annie she was out and the message I left was probably unintelligible.

Roly thoughtfully called in later in the Daimler to say Joe Gumball was driving him over to the dig to collect Jasper and he could break the news to him on the way home, if I wanted.

‘Oh, Unks, you are kind!’ I said, gratefully. ‘But it must be just as hard for you. You don’t have to do it.’

‘My dear, having lived through the war, I’m inured to breaking bad news.’

I offered him some of the damson gin I’d been drinking to try to dispel that feeling of being underwater with my eardrums straining, but which had just seemed to make everything more unbelievably bizarre, and said anxiously, ‘I can’t believe Tom isn’t going to walk back in through that door at any moment, the way he always turned up after he’d been missing for a few days.’

He patted my hand. ‘There, there, my dear. Leave everything to me. I’ll be back with Jasper in no time.’

Mimi phoned me up just after he’d left, but halfway through offering me her condolences in a graciously formal manner, she completely lost the thread and said she was too busy to talk to me just now. Then she put the phone down.

But at least her call had jarred me into remembering to feed the poultry. It was a bit late, but when I called, ‘Myrtle, Myrtle, Myrtle – Honey, Honey, Honey!’ they all came running.

Round the side of the big greenhouse I came unexpectedly nose to bare (except for the camouflage paint) chest of Caz Naylor, who indicated with a nod of his head and a raised eyebrow that he would like to know what was happening.

‘Tom’s driven off the quarry road,’ I said. ‘In my car.’

‘Dead?’

‘So they say.’

‘Car?’

‘That’s a write-off, too.’

He grunted non-committally, then handed me a small blue plastic basket containing one slightly decayed mushroom. ‘Poison,’ he said, prodding it with a slightly grimy finger.

‘I know,’ I began, recognising it, but he turned and flitted off back through the shadows until he’d completely vanished into the woods.

That was the longest conversation I’d had with him for ages … and what was the significance of the poisonous fungi in a punnet that looked suspiciously like the one Polly Darke had brought me full of field mushrooms … was that only yesterday? Perhaps she’d inadvertently picked a poisonous one? After my previous experience of Polly’s way with foodstuffs, I should have been more cautious in accepting them anyway!

Or perhaps Caz had simply taken to giving brief nature lessons in his spare time.

Jasper was very quiet and pale when he came in, and though we shared a long hug, said he’d like to be alone for a bit and vanished up to his room. I thought it best to leave him to talk in his own time.

He did reappear when Annie arrived and seemed pretty composed by then, though he being the quiet stoical type it’s hard to tell, even for me.

I thought I was quite composed too, but as soon as Annie walked through the door I burst into tears, as though her arrival was some kind of absolute proof that it really wasn’t all a ghastly nightmare. I left a full set of grubby fingerprints up the back of her lavender Liberty cotton shirt.

She hugged Jasper too, something which he would normally go out of his way to avoid, even though he is fond of her. Then we all just sat around in a fuzzy cloud of disbelief and damson gin.

It was the sheer unreality: Tom had gone missing so many times, it was hard to believe he wouldn’t just walk through that door at any minute with the TV remote control in his hand (he secreted it away somewhere in his workshop when away), and sit watching endless films on Sky, which he’d had installed soon after he got the giant TV.

He’d always been supremely selfish. Even the Tom I fell in love with, charming though he’d been, really only thought about himself for at least ninety-five per cent of the time, which is why he always did exactly what he wanted and apologised afterwards.

‘Yes, I know,’ Annie agreed when I shared this gem with her, together with the rest of the bottle of gin, after Jasper had gone up to bed (or at least, back up to the Batcave). ‘But when he was around he seemed to cast a spell of charm, so people didn’t realise it until later. Or if they did, they didn’t mind, because they thought he wasn’t doing it intentionally to hurt anyone, it was just how he was.’

The gin might not have been such a good idea after all, for my past life seemed to take on a darkly ominous pattern. ‘Why?’ I demanded. ‘What have I done to deserve this? Why do I have to lose everyone? I know I didn’t love Tom any more, but I didn’t want any harm to come to him either!’

‘We all have to die,’ Annie pointed out soothingly, passing me the plate of ginger parkin she’d found in the fridge while looking for something to blot up the alcohol. I must have sliced and buttered it earlier, on automatic pilot.

‘Yes, but why don’t my loved ones die naturally of old age? Look at my parents! OK, Daddy was a diplomat, but of all the British Consulates in all the world, why did they have to be sent to that one? And having got there, why did they have to immediately sit in the wrong restaurant and get blown up? Couldn’t they have settled for baked beans on bagels at home, and then lived nice, peaceful lives and been more than a few faded snapshots and some stored furniture to their only daughter?’

‘But you had nothing to do with it – you’d just arrived for your first term at St Mattie’s,’ she pointed out. ‘You weren’t even in the same country. Stop imagining you’re some kind of Angel of Death! What would Daddy say if he could hear you?’

From past experience I could confidently predict that Annie’s father would go wandering off into a scholarly monologue on angels of death, the existence and symbolism of, which would be soothing, but not precisely helpful.

Annie gave me a hug. ‘It’s not your fault that Tom was killed and you did your best to save your marriage. I know what it’s been like the last few years, and you’re a saint to have stayed with him.’

‘I’m not a saint. I stayed for Jasper, really, and because we both loved living here.’ A tear rolled down my cheek and landed onto the half-eaten slice of parkin I was holding, though I didn’t remember taking a piece.

‘I’m sure for the first few years Tom did love and need you, Lizzy. He wandered off, but he always came back again.’

‘Perhaps, but there were always other women. I tried to shut my eyes to it, but it hurt, Annie.’ I swallowed hard. ‘But I think I’m grieving for the Tom I married, even if the man I thought he was never existed. And I still feel guilty for being so relieved that it was Tom, rather than Jasper.’

Annie comforted me as well as she could, and I have a vague recollection of her helping me up to bed, where I must have passed out.

When I staggered down next morning, feeling like Lady Lazarus, everything had been cleared and tidied and washed up.

There’s probably a Girl Guide badge for coping with a friend’s bereavement too, together with the Advanced Award for staying in control of your faculties while under the influence of damson gin.

Chapter 7: Loose Nuts

Candied citrus peel makes a good gift and although the traditional process is messy and time-consuming, there is a quick method, which I have used with some success. When candied, the pieces can be dipped in good dark chocolate for a tasty treat.

The Perseverance Chronicles: A Life in Recipes

‘Oh, my husband was really selfish,’ I said to PC Perkins, when she came back again later that day for what she called ‘a little background detail’. This, oddly enough, seemed to consist of asking me what Tom had been like, but I expect she’d been on some kind of Dealing with the Victims of Bereavement course, or something.

I’d finished quick-candying the orange peel left from yesterday and today’s breakfast juice, and was just writing the recipe up for the latest Perseverance Chronicle, so even the sitting room, when I led the way into it, still smelled enticingly of citrus and hot sugar.

I seemed to be going through the motions of normal life, but most of the time my brain was entirely absent, so I must have been doing it on automatic pilot.

Jasper, who had phoned up the dig earlier to explain his absence, followed us in and loomed about protectively. After the previous night’s hair-down, damson-gin-fuelled wake with Annie, I had given up trying to hide things from him. I don’t think it worked in the first place.

‘Oh, really?’ she said encouragingly, seating herself on the armchair Tom had favoured for his telly watching. I made a mental note to do something about that giant blank screen, which was like having a dead eye in the room …

I shuddered and she eyed me speculatively.

‘You don’t make your husband sound terribly attractive, Mrs Pharamond!’

‘Actually, he could be very charming, and when I fell in love with him I thought the way he used to vanish for days without a word was endearingly absent-minded and eccentric. But really, he was just too wrapped up in himself to bother doing anything he didn’t want to, a bit like a cat.’

‘But you can still love a cat,’ Jasper pointed out. ‘Most cat owners seem to think their cats love them back, too.’

‘He did seem fond of me, in his way, until the last few years – and of you, too, Jasper, when you were small,’ I assured him, wiping a runny tear away. ‘Some men just aren’t good with children.’

‘I expect we’d have got on better if I’d surfed, or was interested in weird folk-rock music and stuff – fitted into his interests,’ Jasper agreed. ‘History and archaeology bored him.’

‘Yes, and he wasn’t even interested in food, was he, except from the eating it point of view?’

The police officer, who’d been listening in a sort of fascinated silence, now broke in, notebook at the ready. She seemed to have an agenda of her own. ‘Just a couple of questions, Mrs Pharamond – and I’m sure you have a few you would like to ask me.’

She gave me a reassuring smile, though it contained no warmth. Yesterday she’d seemed so kind and sympathetic, so maybe she could switch a façade on and off at will, like Tom. She also had coral-pink lipstick on her front teeth and it was so not her colour.

‘Perhaps your son – Jasper, isn’t it? – could make some tea,’ she suggested.

‘I think I’ll stay here,’ Jasper said thoughtfully, settling down on the sofa next to me.

‘Can you tell me what time your husband left here on the Wednesday? You said you last saw him then, didn’t you?’

‘I don’t know when he left, because I went for a walk in the late morning – a long walk in the woods – and when I got back my car had gone.’

‘Did he often borrow your car?’

‘No, practically never, because I usually made sure he couldn’t find the keys. His van had broken down, that’s why he took mine.’

‘So you were surprised to find your car gone?’

‘Yes, and annoyed when he didn’t come back in time for me to go and collect Jasper from the dig … or at all. I needed my car.’

‘He would probably have come back in good time if the accident hadn’t happened, Mum. His mobile was in the workshop and I expect he’d have taken it with him if he hadn’t just popped out for something,’ Jasper said. ‘Wonder where he was going. I checked it for messages, but he’d wiped them, so that was no help.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said dubiously. ‘He probably just forgot his phone.’

‘Where do you think he might have been going, Mrs Pharamond?’

‘I’ve no idea. But he told me earlier he had to finish a surfboard to deliver this weekend, so I was surprised when he didn’t come back.’

‘Finish a surfboard?’

‘He customised surfboards for a living. You know – spray-painted designs on them? He was a keen surfer, too …’ I stopped, having a sudden vision of Tom freewheeling into space off the quarry road and wondering if he found the sensation exhilarating? I wouldn’t put it past him, and of course he’d never expect anything he did, however dangerous, to actually kill him.

‘And you were here all evening?’

‘Yes. After I got back from the Mystery Play Committee meeting in the village hall I was experimenting with candyfloss, so I was pretty busy.’

She gave me a strange look but didn’t follow that one up. Instead she turned her attention to Jasper.

‘And you were at this archaeological site all that day?’

He nodded. ‘Occasionally I cycle there in the mornings, but Mum usually picks me up in the evening. The narrow roads round the site have become a bit of a rat run since everyone got satnav and she thinks I’ll get knocked off the bike,’ he said tolerantly. ‘When I got home she’d been making lemon candyfloss. Yummy.’

‘Right,’ she said, scribbling away. I nearly asked her if she would like me to whip her up some Cornish Mist, but I could see she had no sense of humour.

‘So, Mrs Pharamond, you must have been angry about your husband taking the car?’

‘I was, and even more so when he didn’t come back. But I knew if I didn’t turn up at the dig, Jasper would cycle back, he really didn’t mind.’

I was starting to feel strangely worried, despite knowing I had nothing on my conscience other than guilt for that profound moment of relief I’d felt on hearing that it was Tom who’d had the accident and not Jasper.

‘Jasper, perhaps tea would be a good idea? Or coffee. Would you mind?’

He gave me a look, but rose to a gangling six foot and, stooping under the low beam, went to the kitchen, though he left the door ajar. This is not a cottage where you can have private conversations … or indeed, private much of anything.

‘Can you tell me how the accident happened yet? I thought he must have had a seizure, perhaps, or a heart attack, even though he seemed a bit young for that? Or perhaps the brakes failed, or something?’