And so, for the final part of this tragic tale of a cheerless Christmas…..The atmosphere in the breakfast room was getting ugly. It was also getting dark outside and although we had lighting, it was bitterly cold inside. Hendrik had been despatched to the woodshed and was busy preparing a fire in the cavernous drawing-room fireplace. Norwegians are good at that sort of thing, apparently. Dolores was barking orders at us all and had forbidden Tinkerbelle from opening any more packets of food. She was to sit quietly on a chair (well, two chairs) in the corner, and say nothing. Balls was ordered to go upstairs and to drag mattresses from the beds and to bring them downstairs for airing in front of the fire. I was charged with getting the Aga lighted. Luckily it was oil-fired and there seemed to be a residual supply in the tank, so it was soon warming up nicely.
Meanwhile, my great-aunt was opening tins and packets of food, and singing carols to herself in a voice that would scare away rats. Concetta, the Italian girl, was instructed to collect some bedding from upstairs and to bring that down for airing too. “I’ve been in worse messes than this, dear boy!’ she yelled over her shoulder. “I once spent Christmas in a mountain hut in the Hindukush after I’d escaped from a Nuristani tribal chief. He was planning to marry me, you see, but I was having none of it. Three days alone in that hut, with just a sack of potatoes, a leather bucket, a goat and four candles. I killed the goat, of course.”
She had announced that we would all sleep together in the drawing room. The collective warmth of our bodies would be good for us, she declared, and also nobody would be tempted to sneak away to the kitchen to steal what meagre food there might be left. The preparations for the ‘dorm’ were going well, but not so with the food. By the time Dolores had emptied the contents of almost everything into a huge cooking pot, there still didn’t seem enough to go round. A search of the outhouses produced a shout of joy from Hendrik when he discovered a large string of old onions hanging on a wall. Many were covered in mould, and several were shrivelled into something resembling a dog’s bollocks, but there were enough remaining that could be rescued into providing a bit more substance to the yuletide stew in the pot. Concetta was given the job of peeling and chopping them because she had already been weeping with despair for two hours, so Dolores figured that the onions would make no difference.
A little while later, after our hourly ration of a spoonful of brandy each, Balls made his most substantial contribution to the whole affair when he discovered - locked in a cupboard whose doors he had cajoled Tinkerbelle into wrenching open - several guns, complete with ammunition. “This is more like it,” he said, strolling back into the kitchen. Grabbing a flashlight, he beckoned to me and Hendrik to follow him out into the fields. I soon discovered that there are some compensations for being an upper-class twit after all, when Balls managed to shoot five rabbits and some random fowl within half an hour. With Concetta watching (now becoming hysterical) we soon had them skinned, plucked and gutted, and into the pot they went.
Okay, so perhaps it isn’t such traditional Christmas fare – a rabbit & fowl stew containing spam, prune syrup and genuine Chinese chilli sauce – but it sure as hell warmed our bellies. Even Tinkerbelle seemed satisfied and actually complained of feeling “a bit stuffed”. It wasn’t long after that when we heard the doorbell ring. By the time we opened the door there was nobody there of course, but on the doorstep there was a case of champagne with a note saying: “With His Lordship’s Compliments”. The absolute bastard. By midnight, we had guzzled the lot and the game of charades that we played in front of the roaring fire was somewhat haphazard, confused, and unsurprisingly, totally incomprehensible to Concetta.
As I lay down on my still fusty mattress next to Dolores on hers, she whispered to me. “Boy, we’ve got to get out of here. Tomorrow, we shall hitchhike to the nearest taxi rank and go home. This is absolute shit. That rotten cad Maugersbury has let us down badly, and I won’t have any more of it. Stuck here with that chinless wonder Balls and Fatso, the human jelly-mound, is not my idea of fun, I can tell you. We’re splitting, as you young people would say.”
At this, Tinkerbelle rose up from her mattress like the raising of the Titanic (she had obviously heard what was said – my great-aunt was never one for much discretion). “Hey lady,” the American drawled, “have you ever thought of going over Niagara Falls in a barrel? You should try it sometime.”
“With you as the barrel, I presume,” Dolores murmured dryly.
The next day was Christmas Day and we ‘split’ the hospitality of the good Earl for good. We were given a lift by a milk lorry and before long, were on our way to the bright lights of the City. Happy Christmas.
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