Page 24 of The Christmas Invitation
Clearly he hadn’t seen the shabby interior, which already smelled of wet earth and exotic herbs, with a slight overlay of linseed oil and turpentine.
‘Besides, it’s become another annual Red House Christmas tradition, ever since Lex came home from his travels abroad and settled down to run the pottery. We all go to choose the tree, and this time you must come with us, Meg.’
I returned his kind smile with an effort. I thought perhaps this might be the moment to confess that I used to know Lex when we were at art college, but then, to my surprise, Henry pre-empted me.
‘While I was talking to Lex on the phone, he said that he recognized you yesterday when he was driving off, Meg. Apparently you used to know each other slightly? Of course,’ he added, ‘Clara had told him she’d persuaded a portrait painter to come and spend a few weeks with us, but not who you were.’
‘I … yes,Irecognizedhim, too – I kept forgetting to mention it. He was at the same art college but he was a year ahead of me and studying ceramics, while I was doing Fine Art, so we moved in different circles.’
I didn’t mention that the circles occasionally overlapped, once with catastrophic results …
‘It’s a small world,’ said Clara. ‘The older you get, the more evident that becomes.’
‘Of course, he dropped out when I was about to start the first year of my MA and he the second of his and—’ I stopped dead, realizing where this was taking me.
‘Yes, poor boy, so tragic for him, but after Lisa’s diagnosis I can see that he felt it was the only thing to do. I suppose you know they married and he devoted himself to looking after her until she died?’ Clara asked me.
I nodded, dumbly as a tide of old guilt seeped in, making me feel less than a worm.
‘Afterwards … well, he simply couldn’t face going back to complete his postgraduate course,’ she finished.
‘We all knew about Lisa, of course, but … I’d no idea what happened to him afterwards.’
‘He went abroad: just roamed around the world for a couple of years,’ Henry said. ‘I did much the same myself in my twenties and early thirties, though of course I kept getting drawn back to wherever Clara was, like a moth to a flame.’
They exchanged fond smiles. ‘That was usually on some dig or other, for the first few years after I left Oxford,’ Clara said. ‘But we were like twins anyway: united even when apart.’
‘Lex did any kind of casual jobs he could get while he was globetrotting,’ Henry continued, ‘but eventually he settled down in a Greek village, where they still made those giant terracotta pots in the traditional way – hand-thrown, you know.’
I didn’t. I’d never really thought about it before.
‘When he did finally come home for good, he stayed with us,’ Clara said. ‘Then he had the idea of setting up a business making his own version of the huge terracotta pots, for the garden.’
‘And Terrapotter came into existence?’ I finished for her.
‘His old college friend, Alan, had been out to Greece to stay with him for a few weeks and learned the basics, and they decided to go into business together.’
My mouth opened and shut silently a couple of times like a dying fish, before I managed to utter, ‘Alan Lamb, would that be?’
‘That’s right. I expect you knew him slightly, too, Meg?’
I nodded, speechlessly.
‘Luckily, the Old Forge in Great Mumming came up for sale just then,’ Henry said. ‘It was a run-down cottage with a yard and a group of buildings behind it, including the smithy and what had been a brick kiln. Perfect, really. We staked him to buy it and then he and Alan became business partners. They’re making a big success of it.’
‘We’ll have to take you over,’ Clara suggested. ‘Alan and his wife, Tara, live in a nearby cottage and have two delightful children, just a little younger than Teddy. Tara is Lex’s late wife’s sister. It’s odd how things work out sometimes, isn’t it?’
It certainly was. Horror piled on horror, so that my blood was now running cold. I’d be avoiding Terrapotter and Great Mumming as if the Black Death had broken out there and buboes were rife. In fact, I was nowdesperateto leave … which was warring with my equal desperation to paint Clara and Henry. Ihadto paint them but I was definitely leaving, never to return, at the very first opportunity afterwards.
Lunch over, Henry, as was apparently his habit whatever the weather, set out with Lass for a walk.
‘I’m going to do a little work now,’ Clara said, ‘but if you want to pop in and draw a few sketches, or whatever preparatory work you do, I don’t mind in the least. I probably won’t even notice you’re there.’
‘That would be wonderful, thank you,’ I said, because the sooner I got to work on the portraits, the easier it would be to escape at the same time as River.
‘A little later we could drive up the Starstone Edge road, so you can get your bearings,’ she suggested.
‘Lovely,’ I agreed, because at least it was in the opposite direction to Great Mumming and Lex.
