Page 63 of The Christmas Retreat
And there, in my natural habitat, pottering around the greenhouses and cold frames, I let my imagination wander up the garden path and into the watery world of the next Mrs Snowboots book, remembering how inspired I’d felt up in the old oak grove by the pool, both for the board book and the next Hedgehoppers.
There were lots of possibilities … It was all rather exciting!
*
I was so full of my new ideas that I didn’t really take much notice of the others at breakfast, and immediately afterwards went up to my room and, temporarily abandoning my WisteriaCottage book project, began sketching and then painting Mrs Snowboots in her new guise. I dressed her in big seaboots with turned-down tops, a blue jumper and with a red-and-white-spotted handkerchief tied around her neck.
Perhaps later there would be a storm and she’d have to wear bright yellow oilskins and a sou’wester.
I worked with photographs of my beloved old cat spread out around me, and finally came back to earth a couple of hours later, with sketches littering the table and two line and wash paintings on the easels.
I made a cup of coffee and thought the notes I’d jotted down for the text of the book had legs:sealegs.
There was just time to wrap up all the presents before lunch, and I amused myself allocating the various symbols on the stained-glass hangings to the others – a Christmas pudding for Bronwen, for instance, a bright-eyed robin for my mother and, after a hesitation, one of the mistletoe painted hangings for Rhys, after all. The rest I allotted randomly: Kate got a teddy bear, although cuddly she was not.
I made a label for Cariad’s toolbox saying, ‘Professional Archaeologist’s Excavation Kit’, and gift-wrapped the contents before putting them in. Trowels are surprisingly tricky to wrap neatly.
Luckily, I’d just piled all the presents back into the bottom of the wardrobe when Evie came in and plumped herself down on the velvet armchair, stretching out her long, slim, booted legs.
‘Well, Ginny, are you glad now that I persuaded you to come?’ she asked. ‘It was like prising a limpet off a rock to get you here.’
‘Yes,’ I admitted. ‘The moment I stepped into the house itjust felt so … sort of familiar and welcoming. It was a bit of a shock being surrounded by people all the time, after the last few years, but I like the family atmosphere, despite one or two of the other guests not being very congenial.’
‘That’s typical of any large family Christmas gathering anyway, I think,’ she said. ‘Of course,we’venever had a large family to celebrate Christmas with, even if I’d ever wanted to, soyousoak yourself in it while you’ve got the chance, darling.’
‘I mean to. I suspect I won’t get much more work done now till after Boxing Day.’
‘I’ll constantly be working, since my scavenging for information comes under that heading. Like a magpie, I pick up a sparkly bit here and there and carry them back to my nest,’ she said, her dark eyes bird bright. ‘And I hope you find little snippets of interest for me, too.’
‘I don’t think there’s much more about Arwen to find out, is there? I mean, now we know she was freed to leave Triskelion by her guardian’s fatal accident.’
‘There has to be a little more about how she spent her time here. I’ve finally begun researching the work of Cosmo Caradoc online, too, and it’s no wonder his work fell out of fashion because, although his later paintings loosened up a bit in style, he was hardly up there with the modern movements of his time. He carried on with the big landscapes and figurative set pieces he’d always produced.’
‘They don’t sound very interesting,’ I said, ‘and that painting of his in the library of a half-naked woman draped in a piece of rich fabric doesn’t do a lot for me. It’s sort of sumptuous nothingness.’
‘A very good description,’ she approved. ‘I find the changes to Lewis Madoc’s later works more interesting, since theyincreasingly show a way of dealing with light that is shared with the two paintings of Arwen’s I saw at Charlotte’s. I just wish I had them here now to study more closely! But perhaps the one from eBay will arrive soon, and it looked very similar.’
‘So, is your idea that she helped her father with his later work? She must have been very young, if so.’
‘I’m tending towards that conclusion, but I need more evidence. Perhaps Milly will have kept in her Memory Box some of the sketchbooks Arwen filled when she was staying here because there must be more than the ones in the trunk.’
‘It sounds as if your Christmas presents will be arriving late,’ I said.
‘It’s all in the anticipation,’ she replied vaguely, standing up. ‘Come on, let’s go and eat. Bronwen’s cooking’s so good we’ll all have put pounds on by the time we leave.’
‘Not Opal. She doesn’t eat enough for a bird.’
‘Depends on the bird – a sparrow, in her case, but a vulture in Kate’s.’
I laughed, but said, ‘That’s a bit mean. Verity nibbles tiny portions too, and even those take her ages. But Pearl seems to have found her appetite, doesn’t she?’
‘And a streak of rebellion. That close relationship with a dominant twin must be quite stifling to a creative person, and I suspect she might actually be the more original artist of the two, if left to her own devices.’
‘True, she was really interested in the pottery and said she’d wanted to carry on and study ceramics at college.’
‘Interesting,’ Evie said, then added vaguely as she headed out of the room, ‘With one mighty bound, she was free!’
*
