Page 26 of The Christmas Invitation
‘Quite a mouthful, for a baby.’
‘It is, but I call her Gladdie.’
I wondered how that went down with the child’s mother.
We were well past the last houses when a small lodge next to a pair of open gates appeared on our left. It looked habitable, if you were not claustrophobic. Maybe, I mused, Bilbo had a hobbit friend who lived there.
‘That’s the drive down to Underhill,’ Clara said, making one of her grand gestures. I wished she wouldn’t. ‘It used to be the rear entrance until the reservoir took away most of the land in front of the house. The gardener, Len Snowball, lives in thelodge. He’s a widower, a man of few words. His wife used to talk for both of them, so I expect he got out of the habit.’
The road ended at a wider turning place just beyond the lodge. Clara stopped to point out the farm gate that led to the road over the moors, which looked more like the shiny dark trail left by a giant snail.
‘And the track that vanishes behind the gorse over there leads up to the Starstone. It zigzags about a bit, so it’s not too steep a climb. You can even get a quad bike up it almost to the top.’
I peered upwards, but from this angle you could barely see the top of the joined stones.
Clara consulted a large wristwatch and started the engine again, turning round within inches of the ditch on one side. ‘Better get going: I rang Lex to tell him we were collecting Teddy, so he didn’t have to.’
The route down Grimlike Pass was hairy. I was glad we were on the left side of the road, hugging the cliff face, where rock scree had been steel-netted off to prevent landslides, for it was narrow with few passing places and the other side only bounded by a low stone wall. I noticed ominous light patches where it had been rebuilt, and below the ground fell sharply into a narrow valley beneath the dam.
‘You can still see the old lower road,’ Clara said, though I was happy to observe that she now kept both hands on the steering wheel. ‘But no one uses it much, because you don’t really want to drive up and picnic under a dam.’
‘No, you certainly wouldn’t!’
She whipped round the last few bends with panache and emerged at a T-junction with a slightly larger road.
‘Left takes you to Thorstane and right, where we’re heading now, to Teddy’s school, and then, if you carry on, to Terrapotter and the urban delights of Great Mumming. It’s thenearest place for shopping and metropolitan gaieties like cafés and wine bars.’
She turned in through a pair of stone gateposts too quickly for me to read the sign that was swinging in the stiff breeze and followed two more cars up a short drive to a large, ugly, foursquare late Victorian house.
‘Here we are. And there’s Teddy, just coming out with one of the Rigby sisters. There are three of them, all teachers and very good, but not really people persons, you know. Though they seem to communicate with the children all right, which is the main thing. Teddy is very bright, so we think he’ll get into the grammar school later.’
Once Teddy had been installed in his child seat in the back, we set off home. I was more than relieved to find that Clara went the long way, by Thorstane, where we made a brief stop for liquorice allsorts.
‘The Pike with Two Heads is an odd name, and especially for a pub up on the moors, isn’t it?’ I remarked, once we’d set off again and were passing it on the road that climbed up out of the village.
‘There’s a pike with two heads in the bar – I’ve seen it,’ Teddy announced. ‘It’s dead and it’s got stuffing in it.’
‘It’s a very old mutant pike from the river that ran through Starstone,’ Clara explained. ‘It was caught and used to hang on display in the village pub. Then when the reservoir came, the Golightlys bought this place – The Drover’s Rest, I think it was named then – and renamed it. But they’re very enterprising and have built a row of motel rooms at the back, as well as serving meals. They do quite well out of the locals in winter and the tourists in summer.’
‘Mummy says Starstone Edge is at the arse end of nowhere,’ confided Teddy.
‘Well, it suits us, doesn’t it?’ Clara said to him, unfazed, as she changed down the gears for the climb.
We crested the hill, and below us in the gathering gloom shone the bright lights of the Red House and the long sparse string of firefly flickers from the village.
We swooped down into the darkness, between thorn hedges, and emerged on to the bottom road.
‘Home is the hunter, home for his tea,’ misquoted Clara, pulling up outside the front door of the Red House in a scrunch of gravel, under the great glass lantern that shone above the porch. ‘We’re home!’
11
A Moveable Feast
Afternoon tea was ready in the drawing room when we got back, so I thought it must be an everyday thing, not just laid on for my arrival, though this was a more low-key offering than the previous day, with sultana scones and a biscuit barrel full of digestives. I suspected all this food was not only going to put back the rest of the weight I’d lost while I was ill, but speedily insert me into a permanent fat-suit.
Tottie carried Henry’s share and his cup of tea through to his study, since he was apparently still wrestling with an intransigent ode. Every so often you could faintly catch the staccato rattle of the typewriter keys.
Teddy had been sent to wash his hands and change out of his school uniform of black trousers and sweatshirt with ‘Gobelins’ across the front in swirling gold letters. I’d never seen a black school uniform before, but it suited Teddy, with his mop of dark curls and the aquiline nose so like his great-aunt’s …andhis uncle Lex’s. In fact, Lex must have looked very much like Teddy at this age.
