Christmas at Greenoak (A Potting Shed Story) Read online

  Christmas at Greenoak

  A Potting Shed Story

  Marty Wingate

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Marty Wingate.

  Copyright © 2019 Marty Wingate

  All rights reserved.

  Designed by Sue Trowbridge, interbridge.com

  Door artwork by Andrea Kodýdková | Dreamstime.com

  Contents

  Books by Marty Wingate

  Christmas at Greenoak

  About the Author

  Books by Marty Wingate

  The First Edition Library Mysteries:

  The Bodies in the Library

  The Potting Shed Series:

  The Garden Plot

  The Red Book Of Primrose House

  Between A Rock And A Hard Place

  The Skeleton Garden

  The Bluebonnet Betrayal

  Best-Laid Plants

  Midsummer Mayhem

  The Birds of a Feather Series:

  The Rhyme Of The Magpie

  Empty Nest

  Every Trick In The Rook

  Farewell, My Cuckoo

  Not an inch of the massive Norway pine tabletop could be seen under the rows and rows of papers with titles such as “Preparing the Turkey,” “To Stuff or Not to Stuff,” “Bread Sauce Particulars,” “Don’t Overcook the Sprouts,” and “Gravy Without Lumps.” Pru stood at one end of the kitchen table, her heart tripping along, finding it difficult to focus on the magnitude of her duties. Evelyn Peachey stood at the other end, winter coat over her pinny, handbag on her arm, and a beret pulled down straight over her brown hair, leaving bristles of gray bursting from round her ears.

  “You’re ready,” she said. “I know you can do this.”

  “Yes,” Pru whispered. “Yes, I can.”

  “You won’t forget the mince pies,” the cook said. “They’re already in the freezer and ready to bake.”

  Thank God—at least the mince pies would be edible.

  Evelyn frowned. “We shouldn’t be going. And we wouldn’t do, but we promised Albert’s cousins.”

  That’s right—it wasn’t only that Pru would be cooking her first-ever proper English Christmas dinner from start to finish, it was also that Evelyn, dear friend and cook-housekeeper at Greenoak, and her husband, Peachey, were to spend the holiday away in the north with relatives they hadn’t seen in yonks. The rest of Pru and Christopher’s family and friends had scattered to the four winds, too, and so the number at the holiday table had dwindled to two.

  Pru would rather spend Christmas—or any other day of the year—with Christopher more than with anyone else in the world, and, having grown up an only child, you’d think she’d be used to a quiet holiday. But here at the age of fifty-something, she had learned to revel in a crowd of extended family and friends for the holidays. Only not this year.

  Just as well it would be only the two of them, Pru told herself, on this inaugural outing as cook of the most important holiday dinner of the year. Christopher would help, of course he would, but he knew to wait until asked. Pru had been through months of cooking lessons from Evelyn—in a sort of on-again, off-again fashion—and, showing her stubborn streak, had decided the time had come to screw her courage to the sticking-place and turn out a spectacular Christmas dinner.

  Evelyn handed over one final page—“Countdown to Christmas dinner: Pru Parke, chief cook.”

  “Everything will be fine,” Pru said, taking the instructions with a trembling hand and stifling the urge to salute her commanding officer. She pulled the spring clip out of her hair, combed it through, and reclipped. “I don’t want you to worry. After all, I have conquered the Christmas pudding.” Although that had been with a great deal of help from both Evelyn and a bottle of brandy.

  “The turkey will be delivered day after tomorrow,” Evelyn reminded her. “That’s there on your schedule—two days before Christmas.”

  “Yes, I’ll be ready. All sorted. Don’t worry.”

  “And the groceries will be delivered on Christmas Eve morning. You’ll be home?”

  Pru nodded.

  The crunch of gravel in the drive signaled Peachey’s arrival. Pru gave Evelyn a hug and hurried her out the door, waving and calling “Happy Christmas!” to the back of the gray van as it drove out of sight.

  Pru retreated to the kitchen, where she gathered all of Evelyn’s instructions, neatened the stack, and slipped it into a drawer of the Welsh dresser, after which she retrieved her decorating project from the mudroom, and settled down to work on the latest ever-lengthening red-and-green paper chain. Soon, the joined-up loops crisscrossed the table’s surface. She’d already finished the chain for the front entry—this one was destined for the library. After that, the dining room, and then their bedroom. It was no problem—Pru was a dab hand at paper chains.

  They were a tradition and a comfort. She remembered sitting with her mother at their kitchen table in Dallas cutting out the strips and gluing them together. Her dad would sit off in the corner with his cup of coffee, and both of them listening to her mother’s stories of Christmases growing up in England. Those scenes may have been decades ago, but to Pru, they were as yesterday.

  She pushed the growing length of loops out of her way, and the end spilled off the far corner of the table, the weight and momentum dragging the rest of the chain with it. As it slipped to the floor with increasing speed, Christopher walked in the mudroom.

  “Help, police!” Pru said, pointing. “Paper chain escape!”

  With one scoop, Dectective Inspector Christopher Pearse caught the mountainous mass and scooped them back onto the table.

  “They’ve all admired the one you made for the station,” Christopher said. “We hung it today.”

  Yes, she had festooned the Romsey police station, too. What else did she have to do with her time?

  “Polly told me about a new Christmas market near Farleigh Wallop,” Pru said at breakfast the next morning. “After I go over Evelyn’s notes—” her eyes darted to the Welsh dresser and away “—I thought I’d run up and see it. It isn’t far.” Reaching for the marmalade, she added, “There’s really nothing to do until the butcher delivers the turkey tomorrow.”

  The ten-kilo turkey from a local Hampshire farm had been ordered weeks ago before other plans took family and friends far away. It hadn’t seemed in keeping with the Christmas spirit to suddenly change their order from an enormous turkey to a little roasting chicken. But ten kilograms—Pru had worked that out to be twenty-two pounds.

  “We don’t need to have a full-blown Christmas dinner for the two of us,” her husband reminded her. “We could go into town to the White Horse.”

  “The White Horse has been booked up for ages,” Pru said, knowing it was true but wishing it weren’t. “And I want to cook the Christmas dinner.” Equally true, but coming, as it seemed, from a different part of her brain. She changed the subject. “Perhaps I’ll see if Bernadette wants to go up to the market with me—if she isn’t busy.”

  Reverend Bernadette, the vicar at St. Mary’s, was the only one of Pru’s friends left in the village. She had her hands quite full at this time of year, and was always looking for extra help, and so Pru strove to keep a low profile. She was happy to provide stems, twigs, and winter blooms for church flowers, but she drew the line at being collared to participate
in the living Nativity on Christmas Eve.

  Pru caught Bernadette pulling her coat on over a purple tunic and dog collar—on her way to visit two new families in the parish.

  “A Christmas market in Farleigh Wallop?” she asked. “That’ll be a tough sell, what with Winchester so close.”

  “It’s their second year—Polly went last year and said they’ve made a good start. Would you like to come along with me?”

  “I would do,” Bernadette said, “but I’m just off to look in on two new families in the parish. It’s a hard time to be in transition. Happy to say that even though they come from quite different circumstances, the mums have made friends with each other already. And, you’ll be happy to know when I visited one of them yesterday, she was digging weeds out from among the roses. I mentioned we had a gardener in the parish.” Bernadette shot Pru a look of mischief. “You never know what might entice someone.”

  “You should invite them for Christmas Eve morning when we decorate the church.”

  “Won’t you be busy with your dinner preparations?”

  Pru had no answer for that—she’d been too busy that morning tending to several flats of seedlings to look over Evelyn’s instructions—and sought to divert attention. “Speaking of dinner,” she said, “why don’t you stop in this evening?”

  On the map, Farleigh Wallop formed the third point of a lopsided triangle with Winchester and Salisbury—both legendary Christmas markets—and Pru thought the organizers bold to start their own event, as it meant they would vie for the best vendors. She remembered meeting a local crafter, a woman from Inkpen who made animal-shaped brooches out of buttons, but hoped that Farleigh Wallop drew a … different class of artist.

  The road to the market was well-signed—always a good omen. Pru drove her Mini through a farm gate into a makeshift car park and, in the next field over, spotted five or six rows of stalls casting long shadows in the low winter sun. She buttoned up her coat and set off.

  Each vendor had a small marquee as protection against what December weather might come. Strings of fairy lights outlined the opening and crisscrossed the inside ceiling of the tent until each stall shimmered in festive delight as the sky darkened. Pru took her time strolling up and down the aisles, but she bought little. There would be no one to give a gift to on Christmas morning except Christopher, and his, a new fishing rod he’d admired in a recent issue of The Field, lay hidden in the wardrobe of one of the guest bedrooms.

  But she admired the wares. Delicate lace and muslin baby clothes, mountains of tea cozies, watercolors of English woods, willow baskets, and a great deal of food—locally made jams, chutney, cheese, sausages, cider. Pru got hungrier the further along she went, until, making her way down the last aisle, she came across a stall frying up tiny doughnuts. She watched as the browned gems tumbled into a bank of cinnamon sugar before being scooped into a paper bag and sold. Pru went on her way with a bag of her own, holding the hot treasure in a gloved hand.

  She came to the end of the fairy lights and was met with darkness, and then she spotted one last stall set apart from the others. It had no marquee and instead of fairy lights, a single bulb hung above the vendor’s wares, spilling a pool of light onto … plants. She stuffed her bag of doughnuts into a pocket and drew near.

  Two shelves held a few pots of young evergreen shrubs. These were variegated varieties sure to light up the dark winter—creamy white edges on prickly holly that set off clusters of red berries and ivy leaves with gold hearts.

  Pru glanced round but didn’t see anyone working and returned to studying a smattering of pots on the ground. The selection wasn’t wide, but the plants were top notch—Tasmanian mountain pepper, winter’s bark. The vendor must be a fine plantsman. Or woman. A shrub in the corner, just out of reach of the light, caught her eye. Small, spoon-shaped leaves held upright and close to the stem. She squinted and drew closer.

  “Hiya.”

  “Ah!”

  A man emerged from the darkness. Pru coughed to cover her gasp, and said, “Hello, good afternoon. Or is it evening yet?”

  “Hard to tell in winter, innit?” He grinned. He had dark hair that lay close to his head, the tips of his ears sticking out. His cheeks were rosy from the cold, and his eyes, how they twinkled. The reflection of the fairy lights, of course. “Sorry,” he said, dusting soil off his long sheepskin coat, “I stepped away for a wee minute, and I dinnae know you were here.”

  Pru did not have a finely tuned ear when it came to British accents, and could really pick up on only a few general qualities, but that “dinnae” had given him away—he was Scottish.

  “I couldn’t resist taking a look at what you have,” she said. “Everything’s lovely. I’ll like to take three each of that holly and the gold-hearted ivy. But, I don’t want to deplete your stock.”

  “It would be a pleasure to sell out.”

  “Great. We have an enormous dining table, and I can use them for a centerpiece on Christmas Day running down the center. After that, I’ll plant them out in the garden.”

  “Sounds like quite a do, your Christmas dinner,” he said.

  Pru flashed on a scene that could’ve been from any period British movie—a forlorn picture of two people at either end of the world’s longest dining table. Except, Pru’s image contained a dried-out turkey and mushy brussels sprouts.

  “They’ve put you quite far out here, haven’t they?” she asked, glancing back at the end of the last aisle of stalls, a good hundred feet away.

  “Oh, it suits me to be apart, it isn’t a bother,” he replied, but not with a rolling Scottish R sound. Instead, he landed in a broad and hard way on the R. Pru had heard that in Gloucestershire. Right, not Scottish, English.

  “Do you have a nursery of your own?” she asked.

  “Not at the moment, but I’m fixin’ to open one. Soon as I iron out a few details. In the meantime, I’ve been working at a small place down the road near Stoke Charity.”

  Pru thought she had visited every plant center and specialty nursery in Hampshire, but apparently not. “I’m Pru Parke,” she said.

  “Oh, eh … Alf,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “I live at Greenoak in Ratley,” she explained. “We’re not far from Romsey. My brother and I tend the garden, and we’re always happy to come across a new source for good plants. Now I can tell him I’ve found one.”

  “That’s very kind of you to say.” A gong sounded in the distance. “Closing time,” he said, and began to shift nursery pots into cartons.

  That evening after dinner, Pru drew her bath, added oil, and slowly sank in, the fragrant steam rising round her. In a few minutes, Christopher came in with two brandies and sat on a low chair against the wall, stretching his legs out in front of him.

  “You haven’t told me about the market,” he said.

  She swirled her hands in the water, causing a wake. “I enjoyed it. In fact, I need to go back tomorrow to solve a puzzle. It’s like this—you know how you can see a plant out of context and not recognize it?”

  He cocked his head slightly, and she laughed. “All right then, when you see a person out of context and you have trouble remembering who it is. For a gardener, it can be the same with plants. There was a stall at the market where I bought a few pots of variegated holly and ivy. The fellow had larger pots in the corner, and one looked familiar, but … I’m not sure. I need to get a second look.”

  “Is he local?”

  Pru sipped her brandy. “I’m not sure. He’s a young man, and said he’s been working at a place near Stoke Charity, and that he was fixing to open his own nursery.”

  “He was ‘fixing to’?” Christopher asked with a smile.

  Pru laughed at being caught out “talking Texan,” as her brother called it. To her, the verb to fix covered a lot of ground. On Saturdays, friends stopped in when they knew she would be fixing biscuits—American biscuits, that is. Invariably, someone would ask her who broke the biscuits in the first place.
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  “No, he couldn’t have said that, could he?” she asked. “ ‘Getting ready to open a nursery,’ that’s what he must’ve said.”

  Christopher drank the last of his brandy and breathed in the steam. “That’s a good scent—what is it?”

  “My new bath oil I bought at the market,” Pru said, setting a foot on the edge of the tub and wiggling her toes. “It’s called Christmas Pudding.”

  Pru went out to the kitchen garden the next morning and looked at the row of sprouts waiting to be harvested—they’d planted so many they would be eating them until April. The leeks stood ready, waiting to be harvested one or two at a time as needed. The same with the carrots, safely tucked up in the soil. You need a winter just cold enough for in-the-ground storage, she thought, dropping her secateurs back into her pocket. And that’s what they had this year at Greenoak.

  She heard crunching in the drive and went out to meet the butcher’s van carrying what looked like the prize turkey from A Christmas Carol.

  “You’ve a good crowd coming,” the driver observed, grunting as he carried the bird in.

  “Mmm,” Pru replied.

  She had him stow it in the extra fridge in the mudroom—set on its tail end, it took up every available inch, although she might be able to fill the vacant corners with bags of bread crumbs. When the driver left, Pru considered looking over Evelyn’s timetable, but then Bernadette rang and asked her to the Robber Blackbird, their local pub, for a coffee. Pru motored over directly.

  Bernadette was not alone—she had two women with her. They were the new arrivals, Matty and El, who looked weary to say the least, and not a little grateful to be able to sit down with coffees and a slice of cake while their myriad of children spent the morning at a Christmas art workshop. Bernadette made the introductions, and then Ursula Whycher, mother of publican Dick, sauntered over to their table, patting down her hair, a cheerful tangerine hue.