Page 138 of The Twelve Dates of Christmas
When the café was closed down and cleaned, Carla came out and helped Kate with the pinwheels while the shortbread baked. Matt nipped across to the shop to tell Evelyn about the two of them. He didn’t want her hear it on the Blexford grapevine. Evelyn already knew. Of course she did. She probably knew they were going to get together even before they did.
Matt came back full of admiration for Evelyn’s unparalleled powers of deduction and handed Kate her lost coat.
“Someone handed it in at the shop,” he said. “Evelyn knew it was yours. She’s washed it. Apparently it was covered in bird crap.”
“I think that’s supposed be lucky!” said Carla. She looked at Matt and then Kate and smiled. “I guess it worked.”
The church was a short walk from the green, just down the lane past Mac’s house. The candlelight from within lit the stained-glass windows without, so that the little church glowed like a beacon, welcoming the cold revelers.
The haunting sound of organ music drifted down the dark snowy lane as the villagers, Kate and Matt included, made their pilgrimage to the churchyard. As they got closer, they could hear voices accompanying the music.
They stood in the churchyard among the crumbling gravestones, some long forgotten, others adorned with fresh winter flowers and holly wreaths. Matt slipped his hand around Kate’s and she felt a thrillof excitement; this was a public declaration. It didn’t go unnoticed. Matt bent down and whispered in her ear.
“Let’s make this official,” he said.
He placed his finger under Kate’s chin and tilted her face to meet his, then kissed her softly on the lips.
A ripple ran through the little crowd. Lips were bitten in an effort to contain the excitement of fresh gossip; there would be a race to spill the beans.
The Christingle service ended and the big wooden double doors opened, flooding the little churchyard with light. The children skipped out clutching glow sticks and oranges studded with fondant sweets.
Evelyn emerged and, with the help of her fellow Knitting Sex Kittens, handed carol sheets out to the gathering. Kate was surprised to see her dad walk out of the church behind Evelyn, though not as surprised as the vicar must have been, Kate thought.
They started with “Little Donkey.” The first carol was always the quietest; people tended to hold back a little, because no one wanted to be the loudest voice in the procession. By the third song the group had found their confidence and their voices. And by the time they wended their way round the back of the Pear Tree Café, singing “Deck the Halls,” the sounds of their voices rang through the village loud as church bells.
Just as in years past, people left treats on garden walls and hanging from fence posts. Foil-wrapped tree chocolates and knitted finger puppets delighted the youngsters, for whom the caroling was as much about the treasure hunt as the singing.
The throng gathered not only momentum but numbers too. As the procession passed by, people came out of their houses to join in the caroling. Barry temporarily closed the pub and he and the punters joined the revelers as they passed over the green and into Potters Copse.
A hush fell across those at the front of the procession as they entered the copse, and it rolled backward through the carolers as more people entered, until an awed quiet, broken only by gasps of delight, filled the woodland.
Thousands of tiny lights glittered like fireflies around the copse. They crisscrossed above the carolers’ heads like dewy spiderwebs, and glinted through spiky holly leaves, and wrapped around spindly rowan tree branches. Every twig, branch, stump, and leaf was adorned with decorations that shone or twinkled.
The lower branches sagged under the weight of iced gingerbread angels and stars, which were deftly plucked and devoured by mittened children with round excited eyes.
Gnomes, stone foxes, rabbits, and ducks had joined the jolly Santa and his sleigh on the ground, while above, long-legged pixies and fairies sat in branches and dangled their pointed toes among the baubles. Knitted and embroidered stockings hung from the crowded hawthorn tree.
It was a place of magic. Kate had watched this enchanted woodland grow over the last few weeks, but for many people this was their first time. There was so much to see, so much to wonder at, everywhere you looked. Kate watched Matt’s face as he took it all in. He caught her watching him and pulled her close.
Evelyn called the group to attention and flapped her carol sheet. There in the little copse, surrounded by twinkling lights and loved ones, they sang “Silent Night,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” and “The Holly and the Ivy.”
As they began a rousing rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” Kate and Matt slipped quietly out of Potters Copse and opened the café, ready for the cold carolers to arrive. Barry followed them out and gave a wave as he headed back to the Duke’s Head.
Matt got the mulled wine heating and ran around turning on all the Christmas lights in the café. As Kate brought out the first tray of mince pies, the carolers were making their way across the green. She heard them before she saw them. They had reached “eleven pipers piping” and as the door burst open they had just begun “twelve drummers drumming.”
The noise was deafening as eighty people, including Matt and Kate, finished the song with an earsplitting
“AND A PARTRIDGE IN A PEAR TREE!”
The wine was drunk and the nibbles nibbled, and after an hour or so the numbers began to dwindle. The families with young children were the first to leave; they had to settle excited offspring and hang stockings and put out milk, mince pies, and carrots for Father Christmas and Rudolph.
Laura hugged Kate tightly.
“I’m so happy for you,” she said. “And I’m so pleased that you’re staying. Life wouldn’t have been half so much fun without you.”
“I’m pleased too,” said Kate. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
Ben shook Matt’s hand.
