Excited, the children couldn’t wait to tumble from the car. Mats had time to heave out suitcases and bags from the luggage box before catching sight of his little blondies racing away over wet grass, quick and cute in shoes that wouldn’t keep their feet dry. ‘Astrid, Alvin,’ he called, hastily thrusting the luggage box keys at Ezz as he and Josefin ran to corral the excited children and usher them towards the granite steps.
‘I don’t remember this place,’ Astrid shouted, bouncing up the stone steps like a kangaroo.
‘I do,’ Alvin shouted back, having to climb the steps one at a time.
Mats laughed. ‘You can’t possibly, Alvin. You were tiny.’
‘I do,’ he maintained, but giggled at his own fibs, blue eyes dancing, and tiny white teeth flashing.
Heart full for his little boy, Mats swept him up and did kangaroo jumps up the steps like Astrid, who instantly began to kangaroo down again.
‘Wait for me, I can’t jump.’ Grete laughed, hurrying after them. Josefin grabbed the children’s bags and followed.
Mats felt a surge of excitement as the group poured across the lobby and into the private quarters. ‘What do you think, Astrid and Alvin?’ he asked, gazing around the lofty interior flooded with light, its white paintwork gleaming.
Astrid was already running for the big staircase, one arm out of her coat and her hat behind her on the hall floor. ‘I’m going to see my room,’ she cried. She paused. ‘Which is my room?’
Mats raced after her, hampered by Alvin in his arms. ‘Wait, Astrid. We’ll find your room together.’
‘Wait’, ‘stop’, ‘slow down’ were phrases to which Astrid was deaf and she was on the first floor, trying to get into his parents’ suite by the time Mats caught up with her.
‘Astrid.’ He injected calm reproach into his voice. ‘Wait.And donotuse your feet to open a door. That’s not your room. I’ll show you where you and Alvin will sleep. Let’s walk nicely.’
He took each of his children by their hands – stooping because three-year-old Alvin was still tiny – and escorted them decorously to the room beside the turret, which he’d agreed with Ezzie would be the children’s. It was painted the pale blue of a winter’s morning. Astrid gave a delighted shriek and threw herself on one of the single beds. Alvin emitted an ear-splitting yell of his own and took a run onto the same bed.
‘This is my bed,’ Astrid declared.
‘Nej, my bed,’ Alvin implored, eyes filling with tears as he gazed at Mats for support.
Mats encouraged them both off it. ‘I think I’m going to let Alvin choose his bed first, because you were a bit rude, weren’t you, Astrid? Which bed, Alvin?’
Alvin gazed around the tall, airy room with blue panels painted on the walls and blue curtains at the tall windows. The beds were identical. He glanced at Mats, then Astrid. Maybe out of contrariness or perhaps to appease his sister, he walked over to the other bed. ‘This one.’
‘That was nice of Alvin, wasn’t it Astrid?’ Mats asked gently.
‘Yes,’ she agreed, hurling herself back onto the bed she’d wanted all along.
Mats exchanged grins with Josefin, who’d followedwith the children’s bags. ‘This should be your room through here, Josefin.’ Politely, he opened a white-painted door that led into a similar room but decorated in shades of yellow. ‘There’s a bathroom for you and the children across the corridor.’
Then he glanced out of the window and saw the big grey car still at the foot of the steps.
Ezzie Wynter was perched on a stool heaving the last suitcase from the luggage box, blonde hair and black coat flying in the wind. The rest of the baggage was neatly lined up at the top of the steps. Guilt stabbed him. There was he trying to instil a gracious attitude in his daughter, yet he’d thrust the keys at a member of staff without a please or thank you and left her to struggle when his height would have allowed him to reach the suitcases easily. That he’d been trying to keep the children in check wasn’t much of an excuse. He’d only needed to say,Josefin, please take the children while I see to the luggage.
Gravity took the suitcase she was tugging, making her teeter backwards. He drew in a sharp breath, a vision of a split head flashing before his eyes. Then, regaining her balance, she calmly stepped down from the stool and then carried the suitcase up the steps to join the others.
With a word to Josefin to keep Alvin and Astrid with her, he raced back down the way he’d come. But when he opened the door to the reception lobby, he found the luggage already in a neat line of green and grey, and Ezzie nowhere to be seen. The sound of an engine suggested the car was on its way to the parking area behind the building, so he assumed her to be at the wheel.
Annoyed at his own lack of consideration, he began to take each suitcase inside.
Ezz, after an inner debate, had elected to work the day after the Larssons arrived, though, before learning of the current visit, Sunday and Monday had been her planned rest days. Tavish had made himself available to the family when they were in residence and taken accumulated days off after they’d gone. This time the family was here for two months though. By the time the new assistant manager came to take work off Ezz’s hands the Larssons should be back in Sweden.
So, Sunday morning, she made one of her first tasks to fetch a sack barrow from the mud room to wheel the boxes of Christmas decorations into the downstairs public room, parking it in the doorway. Her phone was in her pocket, and she also kept a keen ear out for any member of the Larsson family who might call her name.
She glanced appraisingly around the lofty, panelled room, graced with furniture and paintings from earlier centuries. Glass cases held exhibits of lace, sketches, journals and other artefacts that Rothach’s long-ago occupants had left behind in dusty, damaged attics. Her first task was to put up a stand utilised only at this time of year. Its information card read:
Although present-day Rothach Hall loves Christmas, the hall’s history encompasses the Scottish Reformation in 1560 under the protestant leadership of John Knox. In the following decades, Christmas celebrations became associated with Catholicism and increasingly frowned upon. Christmas was banned by Scottish parliament from 1640 to 1712, and not widely celebrated for a further couple of centuries.
However, Christmas Day was declared a Scottish public holiday in the 1950s, and so now we’re happy to welcome our winter visitors with festive decorations in the public areas – but elegant and low-key to respect our long and diverse history.
