Page 57 of A Perfect Devon Christmas
A knock at the door made them all start. Fred moved to answer it, and hearing Helen’s voice in the hallway, bright and early-morning cheerful, Ivy squeezed her eyes shut. What was Helen doing here so early? The sound of easy laughter drifted in from the hall.
‘Do you think I could borrow your accounting brain for a bit?’ Helen asked.
Fred laughed softly, sounding self-conscious. ‘Well ... I don’t want to get too involved, but I don’t mind helping this once. Did you bring what you want me to look at with you?’
‘I did. It’s some of the copy documents Hazim took.’
Ivy felt a strange flutter in her chest; a spark of awareness of how Fred agreed to help Helen but wouldn’t get involved when Ivy asked. And yet ... did it really matter? As long as he was helping, even if it wasn’t for her, that was enough. She swalloweddown the unpleasant taste at the back of her throat; she must not resent their rapport. Ivy turned to leave, almost knocking Omar’s duffle bag off the table, and put out a hand to steady it. ‘If I don’t go now, I’ll be late for the service,’ she said, not looking at Fred or waiting for Helen to enter the kitchen. Trying to comfort herself, she recited a few lines from one of her favourite Amy Levy poems, the words as soothing as a prayer:
Since that I may not have
Love on this side the grave,
Let me image Love.
Her tongue caught on the word “image” in the final line; when she’d first read the poem, she had assumed it was a misprint for “imagine.” But now, Ivy knew better. In Victorian English “to image” was a recognized verb meaning “to form a mental image of.” It carried a slightly different nuance from “imagine” – closer toenvision vividlyrather than simplysuppose or fancy.
Levy was asking God not just for the power toimaginelove in an abstract way, buttohold a mental picture of it– “the bliss without the woe.”
Omar’s eyes met hers as he said, ‘Rumi teaches us that love is not just a feeling, but a way of being, a bridge between two hearts.’
Ivy swallowed. She hadn’t meant to quote Levy aloud. ‘I have divine love.’
‘But that doesn’t mean you can’t have earthly love. Rumi sees it as a pathway to understanding divine love, not as an opposing force.’
‘For some people maybe,’ she said.
Sadly, not for me.
Nineteen
When Ivy took Jez out for his evening walk on Monday after a busy day at the café, the village slept under a pearl white moon, frost already crystallizing on its hedgerows. Jez’s paws crunched softly on the frozen ground. Ivy drew a breath that carved ice into her lungs, savouring the scent of winterwood smoke from chimneys. A few houses away, someone was playing ‘O Come, All Ye Faithful’ on a piano, the notes drifting through the evening stillness, pulling Ivy back to her decades of choir practice.
Jez tugged at his lead, straining to investigate the nocturnal smells, but gently, as if sensing her need for peace. The patches of white on his fur gleamed in the moonlight as Ivy matched his peaceful pace, letting the stress of her day slowly unwind.
Then she saw them: Helen’s distinctive fur-trimmed coat, Fred’s porch light creating a little halo around them both.
The light caught the teacher’s smile as she spoke ‘Hi, is Omar still up?’
Ivy hardly heard the words. The Christmas lights strung along the eaves of Fred’s cottage blurred slightly and she blinked hard, annoyed at the sting in her eyes. What a ridiculous fantasy she’d been nurturing, that Fred’s recent attentiveness meant something more than friendship.
Of course he’d be drawn to Helen – confident, professional Helen with her glossy blonde hair and easy laugh. She was a teacher like he used to be, not unemployed like Ivy, with her badly behaved dog and her demanding projects, who couldn’tremember when she last wore make-up. Fred’s recent warning about her friendship with Omar – ‘Be careful about younger men’ – rang hollow as she watched him lean closer to Helen. She must be at least twenty years his junior. Helen touched Fred’s arm, uninhibited, as if she’d known him for decades. Ivy picked up Jez, cradling him to her chest, but the comforting warmth did little to thaw the cold knot forming inside her, an emotion she didn’t want to identify.
On Tuesday afternoon, Ivy stood in the nave of the church, watching the chaos unfold inside St Peter’s. The interior was a magnificent blend of age and devotion, its ancient stone walls bearing the marks of centuries of worship. The vaulted ceiling arched high above, ribbed with time-darkened beams. Slender stained glass windows lined the nave, their colourful panes casting a mosaic of light onto the worn flagstone floor and illuminating the creamy stone columns that stood like monks in silent vigil. At the heart of the church, separating the nave from the chancel, stood the remains of the rood screen, a striking, ornate structure made from dark wood. Elaborately carved with intricate patterns of twisting vines, angels and saints, the screen was a testament to the skill of medieval craftsmen. Originally rising from the screen’s top beam would have been the ‘rood’, a large wooden cross bearing the figure of Christ, flanked by statues of Mary and John the Evangelist. Ivy had always assumed it had been torn down, like so many other Catholic decorations during Edward VI’s reign, by Protestant reformers who viewed such elaborate decoration as idolatrous.
Ivy put her hands on her hips, chuckling. These ancient stone walls had witnessed centuries of Christmas preparations, but never quite like this.
Victor, a six foot seven tangle of gangly limbs and enthusiasm, ducked under a wreath and flung open the crate of decorationsthat Fred had been storing in his shed. ‘Good news, ladies! Here are the compostable fairy lights!’
‘They look like damp spaghetti,’ Margaret muttered.
‘Theyaredamp spaghetti,’ Victor beamed. ‘Boiled and dyed with beetroot. Sustainable!’
He hurled a coil upward. It hit one of the overhead beams and fell back, landing with a splat on a wooden pew.
Margaret froze. ‘Victor.’
‘Yes, Margaret?’
