Page 96 of One More Christmas at the Castle
‘All right. I want to go up to the attics and see if I can find the frame for that Mistletoe Bough thing first, anyway.’
Before I began icing the cake, I chose my decorations from the tin – cute, tiny china snowbabies in hooded white all-in-onesuits. Some were sitting down, others lying propped up on one elbow, and two in the act of throwing snowballs.
Then I added an old-fashioned bright red postbox with a robin on top, completely out of scale.
I needn’t have bothered clearing away the first icing sugar snowstorm, because I whipped up another one while making the royal icing.
I spread it on thickly, smoothed the sides, then whipped up the top with a fork, before decorating it.
When I stood back to admire it, I was startled to hear the sound of applause.
Turning, I saw that Henry and Xan had sneaked quietly in and were watching me.
‘I had no idea you were there!’
‘We didn’t want to interrupt the artist at work,’ Xan said.
‘Well, it’s all done now, other than wrapping a paper band around it – and all the washing up.’
‘You can do that later and I’ll help,’ said Henry. ‘And look, I did find the Mistletoe Bough frame.’
He showed me a sort of circular wooden hoop, wound around with thin, brittle branches.
‘Great, now you won’t have to make one,’ I said. ‘Look, if one of you could carefully carry the cake into the larder, and then stack everything in the sink, I’ll go and put my jeans on and be down in five minutes.’
‘All right, and then I’ll bring the Land Rover round, because we’ll need too much greenery to carry,’ said Henry. ‘I noticed something with berries on up near the front gates, and I’m sure there’s a variegated ivy somewhere near the lake, so we’ll be up and down the drive anyway.’
‘Plum can come with us, then. I didn’t fancy carrying him back when he’s tired, as well as an armload of holly.’
Plum had flopped down on to the floor by his dinner bowl and closed his eyes and didn’t open them at the mention of his name.
‘He never looks anything else but tired,’ Henry said.
We gathered red-berried branches of what we thought might be rowan from a bush near the lodge. We were none of us gardeners enough to be sure. There was an abundance of dark ivy growing around one gatepost, too, so we cut a lot of that and piled it all in the back, under the canvas hood, before taking the track down through the woods on that side of the valley.
Henry drove slowly and we stopped whenever we spotted something we could use, like holly and the variegated ivy, with its golden-hearted leaves, which Henry had mentioned earlier. It was growing round a dead tree trunk near the bottom of the hill, not far from the Christmas tree plantation.
The ivy jogged my memory and I said, ‘You know, I’m sure I’ve seen a variated holly, too, somewhere.’ Then it came to me. ‘I know, it was near the lake, just behind the little temple.’
We added a few fir boughs to our collection and then drove on up the other side of the valley, stopping to get out and search for the holly.
Plum had entirely lost interest in the proceedings by now and stayed in the cab, grumbling when I moved him off my lap on to the seat.
The heap in the back of the Land Rover grew ever higher and we all had cold, prickled hands, before Henry was finally satisfied.
‘Now I only need a load of branches from the bay tree by the herb garden and that should do.’
‘I should think so, too!’ I said. ‘I’m sure you can’t possibly use all this!’
‘You’d be surprised. I’ll probably need to add some of the fake greenery and gilded fir cones I found in the attic to pad them out, too. There were coils of thick, silky green rope in the same box, which I imagine they used to pin the garlands to, when they looped it down the stair banisters.’
Our garden gleanings filled most of the downstairs cloakroom, where Henry usually did the flower arrangements. Luckily, it was a very large room and he borrowed a pasting table from Xan, which just fitted up the middle, with enough room to move around it.
‘I’ll bring it back as soon as I’ve finished,’ he promised.
‘No rush, though having a spare one is handy, now Dido’s piling the books from the shelves on to one as she cleans them,’ Xan said.
‘Speaking of which, Imighthave time to do a bit more of that before tea,’ I said. ‘But come on, let’s go in the kitchen and have a bit of late lunch, first. Welsh rarebit, anyone?’
