Page 20 of Christmas Ever After
‘Hard, butnotimpossible,’ he says with a laugh. ‘I can try to finish him off. Actually, if I finish him, can I buy him from you? My niece loves nutcrackers and he’s bigger than her, she wouldloveto find him standing beside the tree on Christmas morning.’
‘You can have him as a thank you,’ I say, not letting him get a word out when he goes to protest. It’s going to be months beforeIcan finish that nutcracker, and once upon a time, I was a little girl with a giant nutcracker who meant the world to me. If Raff’s got a young niece who would like that one, I can’t think of anywhere better for him to go.
The floor is covered in sawdust, and Raff kicks it aside with his foot. He sits on the bench seat in front of the lathe on the workbench, looking eager to learn, so I sit down beside him, desperately wishing I had full use of both hands. I keep going to do things like I’d normally do and knocking my splint againsteverything and crying out as pain flares through my hand, and yet, I never remember until it’s too late.
‘Right, this is the lathe.’ I pat the machine with my left hand. It consists of a metal bed with a headstock and a tailstock at opposite ends, spurs that hold the wood between them, and a tool rest to hold the chisel steady and do the shaving while the wood spins. ‘It rotates the wood, allowing us to use a stationary tool to shape each piece. Every part of a nutcracker starts off as a rectangular wooden block, the lathe spins it, and we use a tool against it while it’s in motion to take the sharp edges off, and then gradually shave it down until it becomes a smooth, cylindrical shape.’
I hold up the square-tipped cutting tool that I use for shaping, knowing he knows the basic concept behind woodturning anyway. ‘Once it’s a perfect cylinder, we use different tools to taper it, shape it, curve it, and create grooves in it. Each chisel has a different shaped tip that produces a different type of groove. The wood keeps spinning and you just keep shaving it down to create the shape you want.’
I move my hands in an hourglass formation, trying not to wince when even that small movement sends pain raging through my hand, and I see the way he bites his lip because I didn’t cover it well enough.
‘I don’t want to overwhelm you all at once. Ready to have a go?’
‘Always.’ He gives me a wink that was probably meant to be cheeky, but has the unintended side effect of actually being quite sexy too. There’s something about him. He’s much more easy-going than I’ve ever given him credit for, and he seems enthusiastic and like hewantsto be here, and that makes me glad he’s here too.
I get up and collect a wooden blank, and motion for him to follow me because I can’t load the wood in one-handed. I makesure he knows how to find the centre of the block, point out the spindle on the headstock and show him how to put in the spur on the tailstock so the wood is held safely in place at both ends but can turn freely. I line up the tool rest along one side and show him how to lock it in place. I give him a brief rundown of the different function of each cutting tool, but he’s adept enough to know that, like most things, there’s only so much you can learn in theory before you actually have to give it a go.
‘Right, hold one hand here.’ Each chisel has got a flat side that leans on the tool rest, and I take his hand and position it on the long metal part, and then walk round to his other side so I can position his other hand on the handle. ‘You always want to keep this parallel to the floor. You don’t need to apply too much pressure, but that’s something that will become instinctive with practice.’
I take him through the final safety checks, show him the power button, emergency stop, and how to adjust the speed, and make him put his goggles on and pull his face shield down, and I do the same because I’m not planning to go anywhere while he’s still learning and we’re both going to get covered in wood shavings.
Raff’s been scribbling down notes as I’ve been talking, and he seems genuinely interested and eager to get started, and he’s also managed a previously impossible feat – he even looks sexy in goggles and a face shield, and I try to ignore how much the sight of him wearing my gear makes me grin to myself.
‘Don’t actually try to make anything today,’ I tell him. ‘Just have a play around. Make shapes. You’re good at this sort of thing anyway. Start it on a slow speed and test out how things feel, try out the different chisel tips, and prepare yourself for finding sawdust in places you didn’t know you had.’
He laughs, clearly not realising that when he has a shower later, hewillfind sawdust in places he didn’t know it was possible for sawdust to get.
I sit beside him and watch as he starts slowly, the wood turning at minimum speed; the way he carefully touches the tip of the chisel to it, sending sawdust spraying out. He gains confidence as he starts shaving it down, and I can see him enjoying the rewarding feeling of watching wood shavings slip off the block, almost like peeling a coat off in one satisfying swoop. Wood shavings twizzle out in tendrils when he switches to a chisel with a sharper tip for parting grooves where you shave the wood down as thin as possible so it can be cut through easily. Ishouldbe watching what he’s doing, but I find that it’s impossible to look away from his lower lip, held between his teeth in concentration, and the way the muscles of his forearms move under the light coating of sawdust that’s settled over his skin. The skilful movements of his dexterous hands that leave me imagining them sculpting the clay he uses for his delicate snow globe figurines, the nimble fingers and light touch he must have to be able to do that, and my mind drifts to other things he might be able to do with those fingers and the room suddenly feels much warmer than it is.
When he stops, what’s left on the lathe is… well, an absolutely mangled bit of wood, but he takes it off, puts on another one and starts again, and I sit and watch.
There’s no point in speaking over the noise of the machine, other than to shout the occasional instruction, and I find that I don’t mind. It’s nice just toseehow much he’s enjoying himself. He’s concentrating so hard that he’s not even aware of thehugesmile that’s spreading across his face.
I haven’t felt like that when making nutcrackers for a while now, but seeing his smile makes me want to smile too. I used tolovethis. I used to love coming in to work, but recently, it’s felt like such a chore that I’ve forgotten I used to love it once.
Raff’s resulting creation is… another mangled bit of wood, but I can see him getting the hang of it. He’s already picked up how to tilt the chisel, how to press for a deeper groove, why and when you’d change to a chisel with a different shape of tip, his existing expertise at sculpting mini figures coming to the fore. He’s obviously used to shaping things, his hands competent at holding chisels and with a seemingly innate understanding of what to do and why.
He’s positively elated when he turns the lathe off and releases the second bit of wood, his hands shaking from the vibrations. ‘This is the most fun I’ve had in years. I’ve always loved nutcrackers. I can’t believe you’re actually letting me make them. I know I’ve got a long way to go, but… this is amazing.’
I hold my hand out for the surprisingly smooth mangled bit of wood and run my thumb over it. ‘You… like them? Why are you always slagging my shop off then?’
‘Because you’re always slagging off my shop and you hate snow globes!’
‘I love snow globes. I hate the completely false claim you make about finding love over a snow globe.’
‘Well, that makes two of us.’ He takes his face shield off and pulls the goggles up so they’re on his forehead, smooshing his brown hair up.
I’m surprised because it sounds like a sentence he didn’t intend to say aloud, and I go to question him, but he doesn’t let me get a word in. ‘Be careful, you’re getting dangerously close to suggesting we have something in common, and itmightbe against the rules of the universe to have anything in common with your arch-nemesis.’
Something in common with Raff Dardenne. A week ago, that would’ve seemed as unlikely as Daffy Duck landing from amoonrocket, but now it doesn’t seem like such an impossibility after all, nor like such a bad thing.
He takes the mangled wood from me and tosses it between his two hands. ‘Can I come again tomorrow?’
‘What about your shop?’
‘My brother-in-law’s just lost his job, he’d be glad of some shifts, and I’ – he lets out a fed-up sounding sigh, and when he catches the wood this time, he doesn’t toss it again – ‘have nothing left to give.’
I blink in surprise, wondering again if he intended to be that honest. I did not expectthatto be the ending of that sentence.
