There’s a huge box from a school in Edinburgh with a delicately wrapped gingerbread building representing a gold-domed Ukrainian church, according to their note, and the whole thing is absolutely covered in yellow and blue iced loveheart biscuits with a child’s name on each one.
This stops us in our tracks while we gaze at it and Patrick says there’s nothing stopping us putting it right at the end of Wheaton high street where our own little world ends, and so we do. And next to that, Fern places a wonderfully bonkers garden of gingerbread flowers with cat faces peeping out from green biscuit shrubberies that arrived with no letter or clue as to who sent it whatsoever.
‘I think a pretty jumble might be the way forward,’ Lucy agrees, as the tables begin to get full.
We’re all so high with the excitement of setting out our display by now, adding in Sully’s Wheaton Village Hall (complete with gaping hole in the ceiling), which ends up beside a windmill from Amsterdam with sails that actually spin.
Lolla had slipped out. I only realise when she comes bursting back in just after six o’clock with her husband. She’s carrying a crate of Coke cans, and he’s got a big, flat, dusty box under his arm and little Ben holding on to his dad’s trouser leg.
‘Train set,’ the landlord says, setting it on the stage by the grotto.
‘And vintage too, by the look of it,’ adds Fern happily.
‘Like the peppery bee caken, or however you say it?’ Lolla adds. ‘They had a train set in those pictures.’
Patrick’s on it like a shot, saying he’s got just the spot for it, and he and The Salutation lot unpack it and pretty soon there’s a steam train running smoothly around a big gingerbread Taj Mahal made by schoolkids in Small Heath.
Shell appears to point out that a Taj Mahal seems like a good nod to the ‘whole history of spices and colonialism’, and most of the workers stop and listen as she goes on to explain, ‘It’s not like you could ever have cute gingerbread houses all covered in snow here in England without bloody massacres and oppression overseas during Britain’s colonialist invasions and violent takeover of the spice routes.’ She stops for a big breath, looking very serious.
‘Uh, right,’ I say. ‘Yes, well, I suppose that’s true. I hadn’t thought about it quite like that. Er, well done.’
Fern is by Shell’s side and squeezes her arm proudly, and with everyone looking at our exhibit in a newer light, we fall back to work.
A small delegation turns to helping Patrick add the finishing touches to Santa’s grotto behind it’s big screens, placing the same old red velveteen drapes over a couple of chairs that we always use. Once some fairy lights are strung up in there, it’s not that bad, nothing like as pretty as the Dunham Gravey grotto, but then again, this isn’t the Dunham Gravey grotto; it’s unmistakeably a Wheaton effort.
Still, I whisper to Lucy to drive along to my cottage and bring the Christmas tree from the den and grabbing a can of cola, she leaves, kissing me on the cheek first.
I think she’s happy. This is what she’s good at. Being creative, being in a school, getting stuck into a project. Maybe it’ll be enough to encourage her back to work in January? I’ve no idea.
By the time we’ve taken a break to drink our sodas, Lucy’s back with the tree, a little more bedraggled now it’s been heaved in and out of the back of her little car, but Fern quickly fixes it up, and it looks wonderful peeping out of the grotto area.
Once the donated builds are positioned on the tables along with our Wheaton cottages there are only a few spaces left unfilled. I have a feeling we’ll be taking delivery of more gingerbread creations in the morning if today’s surprise arrivals are anything to go by. I fight back a tug at my heart that wants me to stop and have a little overwhelmed cry about all this. What a day!
There are volunteers all over the place, flopped on the floor wherever they’ve been working, saying they’re done in and ready for bed.
I see Fern and Izz talking quietly by the doors before Izz leaves for the night. I wonder if she’s giving Fern her cards for missing shifts and being late and generally airy-fairy in her approach to employment, but their conversation ends in a hug, so I think she’ll hang on to make another lot of fried breakfasts.
I smile at Izz’s soft-heartedness. Maybe the village is taking Fern to their hearts. She has, after all, mobilised all these people and all these bakers from across the planet, intent on keeping our gingerbread exhibit on the road.
As soon as Izz leaves, Fern’s on her phone again, but this time before she lifts her camera she makes sure to check no one has any objections to being filmed, and we’re all so tired we don’t object but let her pan around, talking into her camera as she updates our followers on what she’s calling the ‘installation’ so far.
I’m so tired I can hardly move the broom. The others left hours ago, once they were satisfied the very last gumdrop was iced down, and every roof that needed it was appropriately dusted with an icing sugar and edible glitter snow flurry. There’d been a brief moment of hysterics when the east wing of the Tower of London caved in, but Lucy bodged it back together with an icing ‘tree’ and to be fair, it wasn’t awful, and we were all too exhausted to do any more anyway, so it’ll have to do. They’ll all be asleep by now, I reckon.
It’s nearing twelve. I’m grubby, I’m hungry and close to overdosing on cinnamon and ginger – I swear, I’ve absorbed the stuff through my pores – and Patrick takes the broom from my hands, leans it out of sight under a black swag and asks, ‘Shall we see what it’s like with the candles lit?’
Wheaton church bells ring out for midnight as Patrick stations me right in the middle of the room, surrounded by exhibit tables, and tells me to close my eyes.
His jumper was discarded long ago and his brown shirtsleeves are rolled up, smudges of sugar and coloured icing up his arms. He’s tired too, hasn’t stopped all day, but he still looks handsome and put together in a way I’m sure I don’t.
I get my last glimpse of him under the gym’s harsh strip lights as the last bell chimes from the church tower and he flips a switch and plunges us into darkness.
There isn’t a crack of light in the place.
Nevertheless, he tells me to close my eyes again, and I listen as he makes his way around the room. I could keep my tired eyes closed like this forever, just knowing he’s nearby.
Soon a dawning awareness of his proximity reaches me, and his pinkie finger touches then curls around mine.
‘OK, have a look,’ he says, dropping my pinkie. I have a second to register how much I miss the touch of him before I open my eyes, instantly forgetting all the sad, tired, conflicted mess of the last few days.
