Page 113 of The Christmas Invitation
‘It’s good to hear the sound of laughter,’ River said, beaming at us. ‘Meg, I rang Oshan before I came out, to warn him not to expect me yet, and then I went down the garden to talk to the bees and the hens.’
‘The bees are all fast asleep. Tottie told me,’ said Teddy, leaning on a child-sized red shovel.
‘Bees can absorb words even when they’re asleep,’ River assured him.
‘Did the hens say anything interesting?’ I asked, and he gave a puckish grin.
‘They said they were glad they lived in a vegetarian household.’
‘Except fer the fish,’ pointed out Den. ‘Come on, let’s finish this, before I die of the perishin’ cold.’
The snowball fight seemed somehow to have broken the ice between me and Lex. Though we still didn’t speak much to each other, at least now the silence was comfortable.
We thawed ourselves out with hot soup and then, when Lex was getting ready to take Henry and Clara to fetch Sybil, we heard the sound of a tractor and saw it slowly ploughing its way past the Red House and up towards the moors.
There was a Land Rover parked at the bottom of the drive, with bales of hay and two lively Border collies in the back, and Den went to find out what was happening. He reported that Billy was waiting to see how far up the tractor got.
‘That’s Billy Banks from Berry Edge Farm,’ Henry told me, then smiled. ‘What a lot of alliteration!’
‘Pete’s the one on the tractor and ’e’ll plough as far up as ’e can, won’t ’e?’ said Den. ‘Billy’ll follow ’im up and drop some ’ay off fer the sheep.’
‘Do they think Pete will be able to get all the way over the top?’ asked Clara. ‘Zelda will be getting a taxi from the station this afternoon and I hope it can make it through.’
‘Told ’em about Zelda,’ Den said. ‘They’ll do their best.’
‘Being Zelda, she’ll probably bat her eyelashes and someone will carry her over the drifts,’ Lex said cynically. ‘I think we’d better go and fetch Sybil now, while the road through the village is well gritted, don’t you?’
When they’d gone, Tottie agreed to sit for her portrait for an hour or so in the conservatory.
Den had vanished, probably to his flat, and River said he and Teddy were going to construct a Christmas collage to brighten up the hall.
In the conservatory, Tottie took up her pose and then became lost in thought, her expression rapt.
I stopped after a while – I was already laying paint on the face – and enquired what she was thinking about.
‘Spring bulbs,’ she said simply.
I asked her to hold the pose for another few minutes while I quickly blocked in the fruit and vegetables spilling out of the end of the cornucopia, so they could be returned to the kitchen. I’d put in the final details later, from the photos I’d taken.
Teddy came round a bend in the path and stopped under the large fan of a date palm.
‘You’ve been ages. We’ve finished our picture and put it up. Don’t you want to see it?’
‘Of course we do,’ I assured him. ‘Just let me clear up here and we’ll be there in a moment.’
We duly admired a panorama that featured a lot of dragons circling the Starstone, while tinfoil stars peppered the heavens.
‘Where’s River now?’ I asked.
‘In the kitchen with Den, baking,’ he said, and when we went to make coffee we found a caraway seed cake cooling on a rack. It was a favourite of River’s and he’d got Oshan to email the recipe over.
Tottie and I took our coffee into the drawing room and she put a match to the laid fire, which soon blazed up. Teddy had followed us and spread out his magic painting book on the coffee table, but he’d barely dipped his brush in the water pot when there was the sound of wheels crunching up the drive and then a horn beeped.
‘They must be back with Sybil,’ I said, going to the window to see. But instead of Clara’s car, I saw that the farmer’s Land Rover was pulling up, with two familiar Border collies jumping about in the open back. No hay this time, though.
Tottie looked over my shoulder as the driver got out and waved to us, then pointed at the cab.
‘That’s Billy Banks again, and I think he may have brought Zelda!’
