Page 43 of The Christmas Retreat
Still, sometimes I like to put up my work on it so I can step back and consider it.
Once I’d put out the jars of paint brushes – fat bamboo ones and sable fine liners – pens, pencils, water jars, palettes … all the familiar accoutrements to my work, it looked very inviting, there in the window embrasure with a view over sloping grass towards the distant gleam of the sea.
There was one small bookshelf stocked with a random selection of novels to suit all tastes in bedtime reading, but also two other, larger, empty ones, which I now began to fill with the contents of the two big cartons that Tudor had brought up from the car the day before.
First, in year order, went my sketchbooks, fat with all the odd variety of things I’d stuffed between the pages: postcards and photos, cuttings from magazines and papers, recipes, nature notes, craft ideas … They bulged, all held together with elastic bands, some of which had shrivelled to look like desiccated worms.
I made a mental note to buy some more next time I had the opportunity … and maybe some new make-up wouldn’t come amiss. I decided I’d better start a list. I love lists; it’s so satisfying when you tick something off.
I’d soon crammed most of the other shelves with boxes of photographs of Wisteria Cottage and the old woods, and of course hundreds of Mrs Snowboots. I had one of her in a little silver frame, too, which I set on my bedside table.
Then there were several old-fashioned photograph albums, which held my best photographs, to pile on one bottom shelf.
Finally, I arranged on the empty top shelves of both bookcases the treasures I needed near me when I was working: a little splotchy brown and cream stone bear that Evie had once brought back from Canada for me; a twig with a beard of moss hanging from it; a huge leathery dark bronze oak leaf; a piece of special green stone from Ireland, and a few other odds and ends picked up on my way through life, as you do …
The little glass Christmas tree was the last thing to be unwrapped, very carefully, and set on the desk where the coloured glass parcels caught the light.
Now the room had become mine: I could work happily here, even if Iwasstill troubled by the thought of Evie, possibly even now planning on how to use her relationship with Nerys to force the latter to reveal details of the family history she might not want to. I couldn’t forget that look on Nerys’s face when Evie had told her we were related and her intention to find outmore about Arwen’s stay here and the connection with Cosmo Caradoc. It was … perhaps first startled, but quickly guarded and wary. I liked Nerys, and if there was any dirty linen to be laundered in the family history department, I didn’t see why she should be forced to reveal it.
But then, the expression could just have been dismay at realizing where the focus of my formable mother’s attention was going to lie.
That wasn’t the only thing on my mind either. I was finding sharing a house with Rhys Tarn totally unsettling. Of course, after our original meeting, once I’d found out he was married, I’d done my best to forget about him. That hadn’t always proved easy when his deep, mellow voice was so often on the radio, reading poetry or discussing literary fiction.
Still, I wasn’t going to make a fool of myself over him all over again. My guard was up and I’d treat him just the same as any other of the household.
Time had passed quickly and the late December day was rapidly growing dark. Remembering that there would be tea, coffee and cake in the refectory – my cake, which I have to say is the most delicious Christmas cake you will ever taste, however immodest that seems – and suddenly ravenous, I headed out of the door.
If my appetite carried on like this I’d be entirely spherical by the time I left, and someone would have to roll me out to the car like a giant snowball.
*
The air of Seren Bach must have had the same effect on the appetite of the others, for most of them were there before me. Cariad rushed in just after I arrived, her face pink from the cold.
She was followed by Rhys, whose craggy face, now he’d had his rest, looked younger and much less forbidding. One corner of his long mobile mouth quirked up in a smile when his amber eyes met mine, but I looked away quickly. While I still felt that tug of connection I’d instantly been aware of the first time we met, I wasn’t going to let myself be fooled into thinking it was mutual this time.
Snookums rushed up barking joyously to welcome his mistress and brought Cariad his red rubber ball, which she rolled for him over the wooden floor.
‘Go and wash your hands if you intend to eat cake,’ said Rhys.
‘Well, you too. You were patting the new pony. It’s sort of pink, but they call it strawberry roan,’ she explained to us. ‘It’s very placid and used to little children too, so Mel’s mum is really pleased with it.’
Clearly, she didn’t include herself among these lesser beings.
I’d just sat down with coffee and a slice of my own cake, having been almost elbowed out of the way by Kate, who seemed to be on her second slice, when Cariad, fixing me with a dark gaze, suddenly said: ‘Ginny, can you ride?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, surprised. ‘I went to a boarding school for a couple of years where it was on the curriculum and some of the girls had their own ponies with them.’
‘It’s a pity it’s winter, then, or we could have gone on a trek, but they only do them in the summer. Daddy comes sometimes.’
‘Really?’ I said, eyeing Rhys’s tall, muscular frame dubiously.
He grinned. ‘Believe it or not! Emma keeps a couple of large cobs with, I think, a bit of the carthorse in them, for her heavier customers.’
They went out to wash and came back just as everyone was complimenting me on my Christmas cake.
‘It’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted,’ Toby said.
‘You’re right,’ agreed Nerys. ‘Even Bronwen wants the recipe, Ginny. She’s offered to swap it for the wassail cake one, which she guards jealously, as long as you don’t share it with anyone else.’
