I knew what he meant. I find the lead-up to Christmas so exhausting that it’s sometimes a struggle to preserve some energy for the holiday. Some of the stores on Oxford Street put their Christmas lights up two weeks before Hallowe’en. It’s ridiculous. I remembered the slanting glass toothpick-holder and shuddered, resolving that next year I really would do my shopping before Bonfire Night.
‘So, who’s going to be there when we arrive?’ Jess asked.
‘Mum will, because we’re staying at yours,’ Tom said. Kate lived in a cottage down the road from my parents.
‘And Mike’s definitely not coming?’ I asked.
‘Mum spoke to him a week ago. He’s obviously knackered, and he has to be back in the office on, like, the twenty-seventh to finish some deal.’
‘What if he’s just lying, doing an Uncle Mike joke?’ Jess said hopefully.
‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ Tom said. ‘He’s not coming, and that’s that.’
Mike was Dad’s eldest brother and everyone’s favourite. He’s the funniest man I’ve ever met. He did a lot of the work necessary to earn that title when I was about five years old and fairly easy to impress, but he somehow knows exactly what will please you most, or cheer you up when you need it. Who else would forget his godson Tom’s tenth birthday, then arrange, a week later, for a pair of remote-controlled toy cars, complete with flashing lights, proper gears and red enamelled bonnets to be delivered from Hamleys by a man in full livery? Who, for my thirteenth birthday, took charge of the party when Mum was ill with flu and escorted me, with ten of my friends, to the cinema, where we saw a ‘15’ film (A Fish Called Wanda) then went to Pizza Express where he let us all have a glass of wine and tipped the waiter to go and buy me a proper birthday cake from the patisserie next door? Mike.
Actually, more often than not he’s useless. He never turns up, he has no idea how old you are or what you’re doing, he’s late, he’s disorganized, and when he’s there he often has no idea what’s going on, but I suppose that’s part of what makes him so fab – you never know what he’s going to do next.
Mike is a high-powered lawyer, like Tom, and lives in New York where he works even harder than Tom does and has an infrequent succession of girlfriends. ‘The law is my mistress, Suzy,’ he’d say, in answer to Mum’s hopeful enquiries about his love life.
‘I don’t care who your mistress is, you stupid man,’ Mum would reply crossly. ‘Have you got a girlfriend?’
Tom negotiated the crossroads through the village. A Christmas tree covered with twinkling lights shone through a cottage window, and in another I could see the glow of a television. The rain had stopped, and the temperature had dropped sharply.
‘Mum told me yesterday that Chin’s bringing her new man,’ Jess said.
‘I didn’t know she was seeing someone.’ Tom was obviously nettled by this information.
‘Wait! It’s not that Australian guy…Gibbo? She’s bringing him?’
‘Apparently,’ said Jess. ‘It must be more serious than we thought.’
‘Must be, if she’s willing to expose him to Christmas at home,’ I said.
Chin was Dad’s youngest sibling by a mile, and more like a cousin to us than an aunt. She was a designer: some of her scarves had been sold in Liberty and she also made necklaces and little bags. She lived in London too, but I hadn’t seen her for a while, although she had a flat not too far from me, in Portobello Road. Even now she seemed the epitome of chic Bohemian glamour, without even trying; the kind of woman who could walk into a junk shop and say, ‘Wow, what a delightful eighteen-century French armoire for fifty p! I’ll take it please,’ while if I’d been in there three seconds earlier I’d only have spotted a rusty old baked bean tin for four hundred pounds.
She’d been seeing Gibbo for a few months now and all I knew about him was that he had long hair and wore flip-flops in November. Jess had bumped into them in Soho one evening, and Chin – who normally goes out with worldly Frenchmen or devastatingly handsome record executives who break her heart, rather than dishevelled young Australians who punch her jovially in the arm and say ‘Let’s get going, mate!’ – couldn’t get away fast enough.
‘That’s it, then,’ Jess said. ‘That’s everyone.’
‘You’ve forgotten your parents,’ said Tom. ‘Perhaps they don’t count, though. I mean, it’s their house. They’re always there.’
It was my parents’ house, but it felt like home to all of us. The home of the Walter family. It had been for over a hundred years, pretty amazing when you think about it. My great-great-grandfather, Sir Edwin Walter, had been a successful society artist who painted Victorian ladies who lunched. Elise was the dark-eyed eighteen-year-old daughter of a paper manufacturer. They had fallen in love when he painted her. He asked her father if he could marry her, and her father said no, that Edwin was a flaky London painter without roots, living in a shambolic studio in Hampstead, of all places.
So my great-great-grandfather, who until then had never thought about anyone but himself, went looking for somewhere to settle down, and found Keeper House. The owner had just died: his family had lived there since it was built in 1592, and he was the last of the line. Just one family, for three hundred years. It was small, dilapidated, unloved and scruffy, but my great-great-grandfather looked out over the valley, at the meadows, the fields and the stream, and up into the twinkling windows, and knew immediately he would live there with Elise. When he persuaded her father to bring her down to see it, family legend has it that all three stood in the hallway and toasted Elise and Edwin’s future happiness. I’ve always loved that story.
Keeper House is built in a mellow golden stone that gleams in summer and glows in winter. It’s L-shaped, with high, leaded windows whose casements jam in wet weather, long, rambling corridors with uneven floorboards, and evil hot-water pipes that rarely work and sound like the Edinburgh Tattoo when they do. It’s a beautiful house, and we were lucky to have grown up there. It is encircled by a wall, and at the front there is a terrace of flagstones, worn smooth with age, where tiny white flowers spring up in the cracks each spring. At the back there is a long lawn and a walled garden, where rows of lavender stretch from the kitchen door, punctuated by tumbling, sweet-smelling roses, mustardy lettuce and the tastiest potatoes.
In summer it’s the best place in the world to live. In winter, it can be a nightmare: freezing, draughty, prone to break-downs and temperamental behaviour, but we never mention this out of politeness to the house – at least, I don’t. I once found Mum hugging the ancient boiler and banging her head against its red-painted curves, moaning, ‘Why do you do this to me?’
Tom took the last corner and we veered left down the driveway. Jess and I craned our necks like a couple of five-year-olds. ‘There’s Chin, and that must be Gibbo,’ Jess said. I could see them all through the big leaded bay window as Tom brought the car to a halt – Mum, mug in hand, half standing, smiling, Dad beaming as he walked towards the front door, Chin and Gibbo following him, then Kate.
They filed out one by one. ‘Hello!’ we cried. ‘Hello!’ I hugged Dad, shook hands with Gibbo and kissed Chin.
‘Darlings, you’re here!’ My mother was holding a stodgy-looking piece of cake, which she waved at us. ‘Oh, I’m so glad to see you. You made good time, didn’t you?’ She kissed me and Jess, then Tom. ‘Come inside, we’re having a Bavarian stollen I’ve made.’
Jess