Christmas at the Falling-Down Guesthouse: Plus Michele Gorman's Christmas Carol Read online

  Danny bounds down the stairs just as we’re coming out of the dining room. ‘How’s it looking down here?’ he asks.

  ‘I think the ceiling may be coming down in the dining room, and there are mouse droppings in the kitchen sink. I’m afraid to ask what you’ve found upstairs.’

  He shakes his head. ‘Mushrooms are literally growing on the floorboards in the bedrooms, and mould up the walls.’

  ‘Mushrooms? I guess that makes them local produce. Maybe we can cook them for the fry-ups.’ When DIY gods give you mushrooms, make omelettes.

  As he pretends to think about it, I notice that he’s got lovely big hooded eyes. They remind me of those 1930s film stars photos of Marlene Dietrich.

  Though nobody would mistake Danny for a woman.

  ‘Hmm, home-grown mushroom poisoning,’ he says. ‘Maybe not. I think your Aunt was optimistic when she got all that paint. This place needs a lot more than a coat on the walls. It needs a structural engineer. And a roofer.’

  ‘Well, we’ve only got three days to do what we can and hope the place doesn’t fall down before the guests leave. At least the furniture is all right. There’s just too much of it. But yes, Aunt Kate is definitely a person who looks on the bright side.’

  She and Dad were opposites in a lot of ways. While he did the sensible thing – going to university, studying hard and gaining respectability in professorial circles, his little sister was travelling by campervan across Europe, trying to make a go of her operatic career. Whenever their parents told her she was nuts, she just laughed and hugged them. There wasn’t much that Aunt Kate couldn’t overcome with a giggle, a hug, a wing and a prayer.

  She did gain a bit of success as an opera singer, and got small parts performing around Europe.

  She was dreadful with money though. She didn’t mind being paid for her roles in clothes instead of cash so, Dad liked to say, her closets filled up instead of her bank account. But that was okay with her. ‘My life is rich and full,’ she said. ‘My purse doesn’t need to be.’

  Chapter Four

  ‘What are you doing?’ Danny asks the next morning, possibly wondering why I’m standing on the dining room table in my pyjamas holding my phone towards the crumbling ceiling.

  ‘Oh, you’re early.’ I pull Aunt Kate’s velvet robe around me. I’m sure she won’t mind me using it when it’s cold enough in here to see your breath.

  It was nearly midnight by the time he left last night. We’d worked straight through, but when I got up this morning it didn’t look like we’d made much difference.

  We did find all the sheets and towels at least, and there’s plenty of formal china and glassware for the guests. Today’s when the heavy work really starts.

  ‘I’m trying to get a signal,’ I tell him. ‘I’ll go outside in a minute, but I wanted to see what the reception was like inside the house. So far it’s a black hole.’

  The reviewer might not want to stand on the dining table to send a text.

  ‘Mine’s dead too,’ says Danny, checking his own phone. ‘You could try the conservatory.’

  Sure enough, my phone whistles with new emails as soon as I reach the ornate glasshouse.

  The noise startles one of the pigeons who’s been napping on the floor. He takes flight through a broken window while the rest of his cooing friends watch me have a minor heart attack.

  ‘Hey Danny?’ I call back inside. ‘You’re not a pigeon-whisperer, are you? It’s an aviary out here. If you can persuade them all to go outside then we can clean the poo off the floor.’ And cover that window to lock them out.

  It’s frigid, but with the wood-burning stove going in the middle of the room, and the addition of some sofas and chairs, it might pass for shabby chic instead of just shabby. At least there’s a phone signal.

  I scroll through my emails, clicking open the one from my boss. Just keep me updated, it reads, and let me know when you think you’ll be back. I hope your aunt is okay.

  Then I see on Bronwyn’s email. It’s only a few lines long, but at least it’s something.

  Dear Lottie, we’re at the airport and Bronwyn is typing this on her phone. I’m terribly sorry about your aunt and I do hope she’ll be well again soon. Our prayers are with her.

  Here’s what you need to know about the house:

  - Mingus’s food is under the sink. He likes fish instead of the chicken but he’ll eat whatever you put out when he gets hungry

  - Always!! wait five minutes to turn on the taps after flushing the loo

  - There’s coal in the cellar for the wood burners

  - I believe the reviewer is called Rupert Grey-Smythe

  - We have mice

  - Watch out for the 8.30 train

  - Don’t forget about the chickens

  Good luck!

  Chickens? If we’ve got chickens then Danny will have a fresh supply of eggs for breakfast. The morning is looking up already.

  I leave him in the kitchen to acquaint himself with the appliances while I check on Mabel.

  ‘Mummy?’ she calls as soon as I open the door.

  ‘Yes, sweetie. Did you sleep well?’

  ‘I’m still sleepy,’ she says. ‘But I’m too excited to stay in bed.’

  ‘Maybe a shower will wake you up. Let me just go in first to make sure it’s working, okay?’ I tuck the thick duvet around her. ‘Have another little rest and I’ll let you know when it’s ready.’

  I counted three bathrooms upstairs. That’s not bad for seven guest rooms. Considering how old the house is, you wouldn’t expect en-suites in every room. Though the reviewer can expect mould creeping up the walls in every room if we don’t find some way to get rid of it. A fungal pelt also covers the floor in two of the rooms, and part of the ceiling is caved in in another. That leaves four usable guest rooms, as long as we can cover up that mould. Hopefully the reviewer won’t ask to see the others.

  Aunt Kate has at least had some work done in the bathrooms. They’re wet rooms – tiled across their floors and halfway up the walls, with a drain in the middle of the slightly sloping floor. But other than the new tiles, they’re pure pre-war, which makes them so old that they’ve come all the way back around to retro.

  There’s a cistern high above the toilet and a claw-footed tub. The only concession to the last fifty years is the hand-held shower nozzle mounted on the wall.

  I run the hot-water tap, waiting for it to heat. So far, so good. Gratefully I peel off my pyjamas and set my shampoo in the little tray at the far end of the tub. The round shower rail is bare, so maybe I’ll see if Danny can find a plain curtain for it. Even with the door locked, I feel exposed without it.

  The shampoo spikes my hair up into foamy peaks. The water must be softer here than in London. Maybe it’s well water. Mmm. Lovely, clean Welsh well water. That could be a selling point to the guests, I suppose.

  Suddenly the wall behind the bath moans like the undead are bricked up in there. Then something starts knocking on the wall, slowly at first, getting faster and faster and faster until….

  ‘Jesus!’

  The water scalds me before I can jump away. Shampoo bubbles slide into my eyes as I feel for the edge of the tub.

  Ow ow ow ow.

  Then there’s a crash. Squinting through the stinging bubbles, I see the showerhead writhing on the floor beside the tub, soaking everything in its path.

  I make a desperate lunge for the tap handles with my eyes streaming from the soap.

  ‘Holy shit.’

  ‘Mummy?’ Mabel calls through the bathroom door. ‘Can I have my shower now? I’ve used the loo already.’

  Well, that explains the sudden change in water temperature. Our plumbing is going to poach our guests if we let them shower.

  ‘Hang on, honey, let me rinse off and I’ll draw you a bath instead.’

  Mabel has found Mingus, who turns out to be a very rough-looking calico cat. He was asleep in the dining room cabinet where Aunt Kate keeps the white linen tablecloths (n
ow covered in brown and black fur). She thinks Mingus loves her, just because he’ll purr if she strokes him long enough. He does seem perfectly happy to be her new best friend, and I’m glad she’s got the diversion. It’s not easy always being the only little person in a grown-up world.

  I stuff the tablecloths into the industrial size tumble dryer in the cellar. Hopefully most of the hair will come out in the filter. If not, we’ll have to convince the guests that mohair tablecloths are the latest thing in the Snowdonian countryside.

  I’m not fooling myself, by the way. Just so you know, I’m not delusional. We’ll never get everything cleaned/arranged/painted/fixed in time. We’ll have to prioritise. Starting with that mould. Aunt Kate must have planned for the rooms to be painted, so I send Danny to the guest bedrooms to see what he can do.

  Meanwhile, I make a start on the downstairs hall, which looks even worse now that the newly cleaned windows let in all the daylight. In some places, the walls are so pitted that they look like they’ve been used for target practice. Painting over them will only give us freshly painted pockmarked walls.

  Aunt Kate, what were you thinking, booking the reviewer in for Christmas? Did you really believe you’d get everything done in time for him to give you the rating you need?

  I know the answer, even as I ask the question. Of course she did. Aunt Kate believes she can do anything she puts her mind to.

  We’re talking about the woman who opened a home for retired opera singers in northern Wales.

  To be fair, that was Ivan’s idea and, at first, it was his investment, too. She and Ivan were great friends from their touring days in Europe in the seventies, and they’d do anything for each other. When he retired, he wanted to give something back to the art that gave him so much.

  Aunt Kate had always been a wandering soul, so why not move to Wales? They bought the house with some of his family money, and offered a home to ageing singers for nearly ten years. Tenants couldn’t usually pay them anything, but at first, they were able to make ends meet using what was left of Ivan’s savings, and then an equity release loan against the property.

  The money ran out around the same time that Ivan’s luck did. Aunt Kate nursed him through his final curtain call, and he left everything to her – the house, the land, and the unpaid equity release loan.

  Which explains why I’m sitting in a crumbling house looking at the holes in the walls.

  Danny shouts something from upstairs.

  ‘Be right up.’

  When I push open the bedroom door, it slams shut in my face.

  ‘Don’t come in!’

  ‘Sorry. Are you painting the door?’

  ‘Erm, yes? Oh, bugger.’

  ‘Danny, what’s going on? I’m coming in.’

  It looks like the world’s biggest seagull has taken aim at Danny. ‘Spilled a bit of paint, did you?’

  ‘A bit. Sorry. I’ll try to be more careful.’

  ‘Just see if you can get some on the walls, okay?’

  ‘I’m not exactly a painting pro,’ he says. ‘Which is ironic, since I went to art school.’

  ‘Did you really?’

  ‘You don’t have to sound so surprised. Yes, I did, really.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ I stare at the walls. ‘I guess I can see some Jackson Pollock influences in your work.’

  ‘I stick to sculpture now,’ he says. ‘If I scrub the mould off first and do just one coat, I should be able to finish the rooms by tomorrow. It will get mouldy again in a few weeks though if you don’t fix the damp.’

  ‘We just need to make everything hold together for a week. If we can pull this off then Aunt Kate can properly fix it later.’

  ‘You mean we can stick everything together with chewing gum,’ says Danny.

  ‘Yes, exactly.’ Hmm, chewing gum.

  ‘Danny? Could we fill the holes in the walls downstairs with gum?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Nice idea, but no, that won’t work. We tried it in our halls of residence to cover the nail holes we made in the plaster. It won’t stick. Toothpaste is what you want for that.’

  He goes back to his paintbrushes. I go to the bathroom to raid my sponge bag.

  An hour later, I survey my handiwork. The wall smells minty fresh but it’ll look okay with a coat of paint.

  I’m even beginning to enjoy myself. With a bit of ingenuity and a lot more hard work, I feel like I’ll honestly be able to tell Aunt Kate when I see her later that things are going to be all right.

  Chapter Five

  It’s after midnight again before I crawl into Aunt Kate’s bed with Mabel. I could move her into one of the other rooms once the stench of fresh paint wears off, but I’d rather keep her with me. I love reaching out in the night to stroke her soft hair and hear her rhythmic breathing on the pillow next to mine. I didn’t know I could love someone this fiercely until I had her.

  Aunt Kate always said she never wanted her own children (What would I do with my own that I can’t do with you, darling Lottie?), but that’s always made me a little sad. Then, after Mum and Dad died, selfishly I was glad. It meant that Mabel and I didn’t have to share Aunt Kate’s love with anyone else.

  She stayed on to look after Mabel when I got back from Australia. I climbed off that plane and slept for two straight days. Aunt Kate quietly and efficiently took care of all the funeral arrangements, calling the friends and making all the administrative changes that a death involves.

  After the funeral, as we sat together on the sofa, surrounded by Mum and Dad’s many friends, she quietly asked me if I wanted her to stay.

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘Lions couldn’t chase me away if you want me here.’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  She moved into Mum and Dad’s room, and in those six months when she put her life on hold to help us learn to live ours again, she became as close to me as my own parents had been.

  Now I’m going to do everything I can to help her.

  Danny is already in the kitchen when I come downstairs the next morning. ‘Day two,’ he says. ‘Do you want some tea?’

  ‘I could murder a cup, thanks.’ I wince at myself. At least Mabel-the-Mimic is still asleep. Being big sister to the cat is tiring work. I just hope she won’t want to take him home with us.

  Danny pours two large mugs and hands me one. As his hand brushes mine, he yanks it away like he’s touched a hot burner. ‘Sorry.’

  Oh, come on, I think. So I’ve missed a few beauty appointments. I’m not hideous enough for that kind of reaction. Jeez.

  But my frustration ebbs away with the first sips of hot milky tea as we sit across from each other at the long refectory table. I’ve got to say this for Aunt Kate. Her house might be falling down, but she hasn’t skimped on the décor. At least that gives us something to work with.

  ‘I’ve cleaned out all the cabinets,’ he tells me. ‘Those mice do get around.’

  ‘Uck. I thought cats were supposed to keep mice away. Yes, I’m talking about you, Mingus,’ I tell him as he watches me from one of the kitchen chairs. ‘You’re not doing your job.’

  He flicks his tail with a look of disdain on his whiskery face.

  ‘Do you have everything here that you’ll need for your cooking?’

  ‘Sure,’ Danny says. ‘I can just make pasta every night, right?’

  I laugh. ‘Right. Imagine serving spag bol to a B&B critic. I’ve been thinking about that, actually. Last night I ordered some food that should give us everything we need to impress them. It’s supposed to arrive by tomorrow lunchtime. You have no idea how hard it was to find a company that could deliver here.’

  I spent two hours in the conservatory with my teeth chattering before finding an online shop called Posh Food Fast that can FedEx their food to us. ‘We’re not exactly within the Waitrose delivery area.’

  ‘We’re probably not even within the Lidl delivery area,’ he says. ‘Will you need me to get anything from the shops today?’

  ‘I’ve
made a list that should cover us for their whole stay.’

  ‘Good, because everything will close tomorrow afternoon and probably won’t open until the 27th.’

  ‘That’s what I figured. Can you go into Rhyl today while Mabel and I visit Aunt Kate? You could do the shopping and then come back to collect us. I’ll cook for us tonight after we get back from the hospital. I’d like to say thank you for helping me.’

  Danny might be joking about the spag bol, but I’m not. Hopefully he likes pasta with Dolmio.

  He shrugs. ‘You’ve paid me a packet to do the cooking, but I’ll accept your thanks too. Is there much left to do today?’

  ‘Ha, what a naïve question. The answer is yes.’ I pull the list from my bathrobe pocket. Where to start?

  ‘I’m bored!’ Mabel whines as I’m pulling all the dead weeds and flowers from the beds at the front of the house. My back aches and my arm muscles are screaming.

  ‘Where’s Mingus? I’m sure he’d like some company.’

  ‘I can’t find him.’

  No surprise there. He lost his sense of humour when she tried combing his coat with her hairbrush.

  ‘Go see if you can help Danny.’

  ‘He sent me out here to help you.’

  I smirk into the bushes. He’s obviously dealt with children before. ‘Okay, let me think a minute, and I can give you a job to do, okay?’

  ‘A fun job?’

  ‘Absolutely. Is there any other kind?’

  Twenty minutes later, Mabel is surrounded by a sea of silver at the dining room table. There must be fifty pieces scattered around the house, from candlesticks and ornate candelabra to delicate mirrors, hairbrushes, sugar tongs and decorative boxes. You name it and someone covered it in silver and sold it to Aunt Kate.

  I feel a bit bad as I kiss my daughter’s forehead and leave her there with pots of silver polish. But someone will have to do it, and she does have those dexterous little fingers. Besides, it’s not exploiting child labour when you’ve given birth to the labourer.