Page 65 of The Christmas Retreat
Kate was inclined to mutter about having already paid for all her food and drink for the retreat, but subsided when Rhys said he would be picking up the bill for the party at the end of our tea; they had an arrangement with the cafe.
It seemed they’d all had an interesting time. Verity was pleased that they stocked the complete range of household items printed with her work there and had also bought some dried gourds and interesting dried seedheads, which she thought would be good to paint.
Kate, it transpired, collected teddy bears and had bought a small Steiff one – who’d have thought it? It made her almost human when she started talking about antique bears in her collection and those modern ones she thought would be the antiques of the future!
I could tell by Evie’s complacent expression and her bulgingsack of a handbag that she too had had a successful time with the local history museum curator.
‘I managed to get a pair of those Chinese velvet Mary Jane shoes like yours for Cariad too, Ginny,’ she told me. ‘I got the smallest size, but she may have to pack the toes a little till she grows into them.’
Exploring the garden centre would have to wait for another time, because we had to head back home for an early dinner, ready to set out for our evening’s entertainment.
For someone whose social life had been nil for years, I now seemed to be cramming my days with new experiences.
20
Heavenly Choirs
We set off back to St Melangell after our early dinner, the minibus full, not only with all the retreat guests, but also Nerys, Timon, Noel, Bronwen and Tudor.
Nerys drove this time, negotiating the narrow steep lane up out of the little valley with the ease of long practice – and no barn owl swooped low out of the darkness to startle her.
The venue for the choir concert was the village hall, a much larger building than the one in Seren Bach. We found it already half full, and Cariad, who was sitting with her friend Mel and her family near the front, turned and waved at us.
‘There are two whole rows of Prynnes and their other halves,’ Rhys pointed out.
Indeed, as we slipped into the row on the other side of the aisle, I could see several lint-fair heads, ruddy broad faces and pairs of light blue eyes.
I don’t know what I’d expected from a Welsh male voice choir, and certainly when they all filed in and took their places at the front on the stage, they looked very ordinary – except for the smart, dark suits and snowy white shirts. Otherwise,they were a cross-section of any random selection of men you might find in the street.
But when an expectant hush fell on the audience and they began to sing, every thought was driven out of my mind by the sheer, combined power of their voices. It filled the hall and seemed to resonate thrillingly right through me.
In a mixture of Welsh and English, they sang Christmas songs, carols and traditional Welsh songs, including one beautiful one called ‘Myfanwy’, which was so sad that it made me cry – and I wasn’t the only one, either, for Pearl, sitting next to me, was also sniffling. I passed her a tissue.
At the end of the performance, the audience, me included, sat as if stunned before breaking into a storm of applause.
There were refreshments afterwards, and CDs of the choir for sale, too, so I had a splurge and bought one of traditional Welsh songs, and another of Christmas music.
Nerys told me she always played that Christmas one on Christmas morning, while the present unwrapping went on.
‘And then we putElfon the TV. It’s odd how these habits, individual family customs, develop.’
‘It’snearlyChristmas!’ said Cariad, bobbing up next to me clutching a chocolate Santa – all the children seemed to have been given one – her cheeks pink with excitement. ‘I’ll be back home tomorrow, but in the morning I’ve got to help Mel get Walter ready for the Nativity.’
‘Who’s Walter?’ asked Toby.
‘A very naughty donkey,’ she explained, and then her friend Mel, a stocky, fair Prynne in miniature, came to seize her hand and drag her off in the wake of her parents.
It had been an almost magical experience and most of us at least felt it, for we were quite silent on the dark journey back,except for Nerys, commenting that she was glad someone had gritted the lane because it was fast freezing over.
There were even a couple of lazy flakes of snow hitting the windscreen as we came down towards Seren Bach.
Rhys, sitting at the front next to Nerys, said he thought it was just a token gesture.
‘I hope so,’ said Timon, ‘because there’s still the church carol service tomorrow at eight. It used to be midnight, but now its earlier because of the children, and we don’t want the road blocked by a snowfall.’
‘You can always get through on foot by the cliff path, because most of that is sheltered,’ Nerys pointed out.
‘You can count me out of any late-night yomping,’ said Verity, and there was a murmur of agreement from Kate.
