This girl has no idea how much light she brings into my life. My Lucy. The best person I know. My December’s looking up now she’s in Wheaton, and hopefully, I can keep her here for a bit too, do us both good.
The Cotswolds really are at their gentle best at this time of year. Seeing it through Lucy’s eyes as we make our run in her car to the wholesaler is a good reminder of that.
Sure, in the summer everything is lush and blousey, and the miles and miles of fields as far as your eye can see are soft and rolling, and the cattle are dotted around picturesquely like the whole thing is staged. In July, it’s easy to feel like you’re living in some Arcadian idyll. Unfortunately, we have to share the summer months with ten million tourists and their noisy, stinky coaches.
But, on days like today, when everything is stripped back by the cold weather and short, dark days of winter, the locals are left with the real, raw Cotswolds, and it is breath-taking. We live amidst unspoiled countryside, so landlocked it’s hard to remember the sea even exists, right in the middle of what the lifestyle magazines call ‘the heart of England’.
Fluffy clouds and summer skies are all very well, but December’s glaring whiteout, hinting at snow waiting for its moment to fall, has an atmosphere all its own.
It’s especially nice to go out for a drive on days like this, more so with Lucy’s music playing and the heaters on. I take the wheel, letting Lucy rest, and we make our way extra slowly past the big duck pond on the green at Snowshill and take a long detour around Broadway where we keep our eyes trained on the tree line, looking for the resident herd of red deer, glimpsing only one peering back at us from a distance.
It’s possible to drive for miles and see nothing constructed more recently than the sixteen hundreds. Repairs are carried out with our own thatch and locally-quarried slate and butter-coloured soft stone, and because of that, there’s nowhere on the planet that looks quite like the Cotswolds. At Bourton-on-the-Water, I pull off the road and we nip into a cafe for a cream tea served with sweet cranberry jam as a nod to the season, and we gaze out at the wide, shallow river that runs right through the village, commenting to one another that we really ought to have brought some bread for the greedy mallards. Then it’s back in the car and on our way.
Leafless, the oaks and ashes dominate the landscape, stark against the bare fields, like one of Lucy’s pencil sketches before she adds the sweeping green watercolour foliage. It’s wonderful; I’d forgotten quite how wonderful.
It’s what Mum calls a ‘pocket day’, a few precious hours of warmth and comfort to be kept safely stored away in the memory for when you need it. I resist the urge to tell Lucy every ten minutes how glad I am that she’s here. She’s contemplative and quieter than usual, and I hope that means there’s some recuperation happening.
We manage to enjoy ourselves even when we hit the main roads and the industrial units with the big ugly cash and carry where we don’t forget to stock up on Christmas chocolates and wine for ourselves. This makes me hopeful Lucy’s not leaving any time soon, but I don’t pry.
Lucy takes over the driving on the way home as the sun sets, the boot loaded with plain flour and demerara.
We enter Wheaton, passing the church all in darkness and sidle alongside Scrimengor’s bakery which happens to be lit up. We have to slow to a crawl to squeeze past the ridiculousD0UGHBentley, but when Lucy spies the tractor coming towards us, we have to pull right into the side to let it pass, and we both say the obligatory ‘Rush hour?’ at the same time.
There’s someone in the bakery. They’re sweeping along the big glass frontage. Lucy stares in. ‘He doesn’t look like the misery guts you described,’ she says.
The sweeper isn’t stone-faced Scrimengor but a really rather handsome lad, probably in his mid-twenties, with the kind of cool, sculpted hair you’d see in a salon magazine.
‘No, that’s his grandson,’ I tell her. ‘Haven’t seen him in years. Thought he’d left Wheaton.’
Lucy’s still watching him, even now that the tractor’s gone and the road’s clear.
‘Feeling peckish?’ I joke. ‘Shall we pop in? Maybe an iced bun would be nice?’
‘Hmm?’ Lucy isn’t listening.
We watch as Scrimengor Junior – no idea what his name is, like I said, it’s been years – is joined by the lowering figure of his grandfather who hands him what looks like a blue hairnet. There’s a bit of an unheard altercation and the elder baker wins as the poor guy pulls the cover over his hair, looking less than impressed.
‘So, Scrimengor’s grumpy treatment extends even to his own grandson?’ I say. ‘No wonder that lad’s stayed away.’
‘Hm?’ Lucy turns her face to mine with a slightly glazed look.
I only smile knowingly and point to the clear road ahead.
‘Oh, right.’ She hurriedly slips into gear and we pull away. Not before, I notice, Lucy takes one last glance at the unfortunate guy miserably working his broom across the bakery floor.
Chapter Five
Sunday 3 December: Keys
‘What did you get this morning?’ Izz asks me. She’s bundled in so much wool the sight of her should really make me warmer than this. It’s tipping rain, and we’re sheltering beneath the stone lintel at the top of the village hall steps.
‘Hmm?’
‘Behind your advent door?’ she beams. ‘Mine was a gingerbread house. I took it as a good sign.’
We’re waiting for Mr Scrimengor to send over the keys so we can get into the hall and start cleaning. I’m dreading seeing the place after a few damp months locked up, but Izz is clutching a bottle of Dettol like it’s the answer to all our problems.
‘I didn’t bother with an advent calendar this year,’ I tell her, and of course, she’s horrified.
