A Proper Family Christmas (4 page)

‘Money clearly doesn’t buy manners,’ Sophie hissed through the closed bedroom door.

Sophie’s little brother Jack had been working hard at being good. Apart from when he thought about touching the suit of armour on the way up the stairs, he had kept his hands by his sides at all times, just as he always did when he was following his mum through the tableware department of John Lewis in Solihull. Whenever they had to go through the glass displays, Jack would actually cross his arms in front of himself and tuck his hands into his armpits to ensure his safe passage. Sometimes, he would even hold his breath. Who knew if those crystal glasses would withstand a hearty sigh? It only became a problem if his mum wanted to take a closer look at something. Once, when she was looking for a wedding anniversary present for Grandma and Granddad, Ronnie did stop to look at a glass fruit bowl and Jack had to hold his breath for so long that he started to feel faint. Eventually, he had to take an enormous gasp that made everybody turn and stare.

‘What are you doing?’ Ronnie asked him.

Jack explained his stringent safety measures.

‘You doughnut,’ said Ronnie, ruffling his hair. ‘You can’t
blow
anything over. I just don’t want you to touch anything.’

Family legend had it that Sophie had once touched a glass paperweight shaped like a bird. She knocked it off a shelf, it broke, and Ronnie had to buy the shattered thing. It cost fifty pounds. Fifty pounds! The whole family had to eat toast for a month.

So Jack was extra careful at the Great House. But the armour was so tempting. Jack’s imagination was well and truly fired up. Had that suit of armour gone into battle on the back of a brave prince? The size of the suit was particularly intriguing. It was so small. Jack imagined himself inside it.

Meanwhile, the lady of the house was bringing them back down the stairs very slowly. She was talking about the staircase itself, this time, explaining that it had been carved from solid oak and incorporated the emblems of the family who had the house built. Some of the emblems hinted at a dark past, of a fortune made in battle. But there were touches of humour in there too.

‘Perhaps,’ said the lady, ‘one of you children will be the first to spot the tiny mouse, modelled on the beloved pet mouse of the little girl of the house.’ She gestured back up the stairs to a portrait of a sickly-looking young miss, who held a small white mouse in her hand. ‘Come on. First person to spot it is the winner.’

Jack was more interested in the armour. And what luck! Somehow, just by following his mother, he had come to find himself right next to the ancient knight again. While the other children in the tour group dutifully sought out the rodent in the bannisters, Jack’s focus was entirely behind them. He examined the sword that hung from the armoured dummy’s belt. Was it a real sword? Had it ever been used to run someone through?

As the other children looked for the mouse, Jack suddenly had the idea that he was standing in front of his best chance to get the sort of supernatural powers that made Doctor Who so unbeatable. If he could touch the tip of his sonic screwdriver to the tip of the sword, then surely there would be a transfer of energy. He would be invincible. Thomas, the boy at school who had made much of Jack’s second year there a misery, would never be able to bully him again.

Slowly, silently, Jack drew his sonic screwdriver from his pocket. His parents and grandmother were focused on the bannisters. Jack lifted the plastic screwdriver towards the sword. His little heart beat wildly, as though a bolt of lightning might jump between sword and screwdriver and send him flying through the air. This was a dangerous enterprise. A Hollywood-style voiceover started to play in Jack’s head.
No one knew this was the moment when Jack Benson-Edwards would be transformed from ordinary boy to super space knight.

Jack jabbed his sonic screwdriver towards the pommel of the sword, but he missed and instead his jab hit the body of the dummy.

Crash.

The mannequin plunged forward, sending the closest members of the tour group jumping out of the way in horror. Jack narrowly missed being flattened.

‘Jack!’

His mother didn’t even have to look.

‘Heavens!’ said Annabel Buchanan.

‘For crying out loud!’ Ronnie wailed.

Jack cowered by the toppled dummy with his fingers in his mouth as Ronnie knelt down to inspect him.

‘Is anybody hurt?’ asked Annabel, though it was clear from the strained tone of her voice that what she really wanted to ask was ‘Is anything broken?’.

Mark and Jacqui joined Ronnie and between them they set the mannequin upright. Jack’s eyes were wide with fear. Was he going to be in trouble? Was that dent in the chest-piece a new one? How much was it going to cost them to replace the precious antique? If a glass bird cost fifty pounds, then a suit of armour must be four hundred million pounds at least! Jack wouldn’t get any Christmas or birthday presents for the next twenty years.

Ronnie grabbed him by the top of the arm and held him tightly to keep him from causing any more damage.

‘What the hell were you doing?’ she hissed.

Jack had no time to explain.

Annabel Buchanan reached them and smiled.

‘No harm done,’ she said. ‘The errant knight will live to ride again. I’m sure he must have suffered much worse on the battlefield.’

‘Will I have to pay for it?’ Jack asked.

‘Goodness, no,’ said Annabel. ‘Nothing has been broken. And accidents will happen.’

Jack felt a sudden rush of love towards the kindly lady.

‘Is this your family armour?’ Ronnie asked.

‘If only. It’s from a
brocante
in Provence,’ said Annabel. ‘My husband’s idea. A little
blague
.’

Ronnie and Jack were none the wiser.

‘As long as your little boy is OK.’

‘He’s fine,’ said Ronnie. ‘And he’s going to hang on to my hand from now on, aren’t you, Jack?’

Jack nodded. He still couldn’t quite believe he’d got away with it. Maybe the armour had worked some magic after all.

Just a few minutes later, the Bensons regrouped outside the Great House’s back door. Sophie couldn’t wait to get outside. Not only had that brush with the girl who lived in the house upset her, Jack had managed to embarrass the family in front of everybody. Again.

After the accident with the armour, Annabel Buchanan seemed as keen to see them go as the Bensons were to leave. The rest of the tour was definitely rushed. They seemed to skip most of the rooms on the ground floor and there was no dungeon viewing. Once her guests had filed out, Annabel stood in the doorway with her hands on the frame, as though physically barring re-entry. She didn’t even take her hands off the frame to wave them off. She just shouted, ‘Goodbye everybody. It’s been an absolute pleasure to meet you all.’

She could not have sounded less sincere.

Sophie and Jack led the sprint to the beer tent, where Dave and Bill were helping to double the fete’s takings by buying up the last few bottles of Spitfire.

‘Has Dave been looking after you, Bill?’ Jacqui asked.

‘He’s been wonderful. I’ve had a packet of crisps and three bottles of Spitfire. I’ve won the bloody lottery.’

Jack climbed on to Bill’s knees and started to tell the story of the suit of armour. Bill assured him that he had actually been wearing a suit of armour when he landed on the Normandy beaches.

‘No, you didn’t,’ said Jack. ‘They didn’t have armour in
your
war.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong. It was an invisible suit,’ said Bill. ‘None of those Nazi bullets got me, did they?’

Jack forgot all about the armour in the Great House as Granddad Bill reprised the story of his experience of the Second World War, in which he had apparently fought underage. It was an interesting story – a true hero’s tale – but on the thousandth hearing it lost some of its charm and the ever-changing details made some people wonder if it was even true. The adults quickly returned to talking about the present day.

‘Nice house?’ Dave asked his wife and daughter.

‘Lovely. But I wouldn’t want to live there,’ said Jacqui. ‘Imagine all that dusting.’

‘I don’t suppose for one moment that woman does her own dusting,’ said Ronnie.

‘No. I suppose you’re right,’ Jacqui agreed. ‘Lucky for some. Oh look, the sun’s come out again. Shall we go and have another look round the fete while Dave and Bill finish their pints?’

‘Can’t we just go home now?’ Sophie asked.

‘But I didn’t get to see the dungeon!’ Jack cried. ‘Can we go back and ask the lady to let us see it now?’

Jacqui and Ronnie shared a look.

‘I don’t suppose Lady Muck will ever want to have us lot back in her house again.’

‘You behaved appallingly today,’ Annabel shouted when Izzy came back downstairs. ‘You were supposed to be helping me to make people welcome, instead you couldn’t have been more surly if you’d tried. Everybody noticed it.’

‘When you say “everybody”, you mean your stupid friends from the WI. Just because you want to climb your way up the social ladder, doesn’t mean that I have to help you. This is my home too. You let complete strangers into my room. What if something had been stolen?’

‘Nothing was stolen.’

‘There was a girl hanging around after you showed them the princes’ graffiti. She looked like she was going to steal something.’

‘Do you realise what you’re saying? That’s a very serious accusation to make.’

‘Yes. And it’s true. It was stupid of you to open the house up. If we get burgled in the next few weeks, you’ll know exactly why.’

‘You’re being unbearable,’ said Annabel. ‘You’ve been lucky enough to have everything a person could want your whole life. I don’t suppose that girl you’re accusing of being a thief has had half the privileges that you have.’

‘Sure, Mum. I could see the way you looked at those people. You were thinking exactly the same as me. You’re such a hypocrite.’

‘I most certainly am not,’ Annabel protested.

‘You’re as glad to see the back of those people as I am.’

‘I know I am,’ said Richard, as he emerged from an afternoon in front of the washing machine.

After supper, Izzy was only too happy to go back to her room. She took the dress from the wardrobe door and checked it for dirty fingermarks. She couldn’t see any but she shuddered at the thought of that strange girl actually touching it. Before she got into bed, Izzy checked her room over one more time. There was a chewing-gum wrapper on the floor by the window. Izzy was about to march downstairs and present it to her mother as evidence of the kind of behaviour she had allowed into the house when she remembered that it was her own. She’d discarded it herself. Somehow that made her even angrier. She scrunched the wrapper up and pitched it at the bin, missing it by a metre.

Izzy loved her parents but if there was one thing that drove her completely nuts, it was the way her mother was so concerned with appearances while at the same time denying she was a snob. As far as Izzy was concerned, if you had class, which she was certain she did, you didn’t have to be any particular way. You were just yourself. Trying too hard was what made people look naff.

Izzy was determined that she would never, ever toady up to anyone like her mother did. Opening the house to the general public was the final straw. Why did she have to do that? Why did she feel the need to show off? Sometimes it was as though her mum didn’t think she was good enough. It was weird.

But Izzy wasn’t in the business of worrying too much about her mother’s mental health. Instead she went online to give her best friends, Jessica, Chloe and Gina, the complete low-down on the dreadful day.

Jessica and Chloe were already in virtual conversation.

We
’ve got to go to a festival
, Jessica wrote.
To celebrate the end of our GCSEs. Either SummerBox or Glastonbury. Chloe’s parents have already agreed and mine are bound to say yes once I’ve told them yours are OK with everything too.

I wouldn’t hold your breath. God knows what my parents will say
, replied Izzy.
I’m in trouble for being surly in front of the WI.

Ha! It will be fine. Here’s how it works,
Jessica explained.
You tell them that my parents have already said ‘yes’ and I’ll tell mine that yours have done the same. It doesn’t have to be true. But then they’ll both say ‘yes’ and it will be sorted anyway. Genius, eh? We’re going to a festival. It’s going to be awesome.

Brilliant,
Izzy had to agree.

Back in Coventry, Sophie Benson-Edwards (though her parents weren’t married, they had double-barrelled her name) sat in her bedroom, looking at the sheaf of paperwork that school had sent home regarding that term’s big trip. The German class trip to Berlin. Sophie liked German. Her German teacher was gentle and kind. But that wasn’t the real reason she wanted to go on the school trip. The real reason was that her boyfriend, Harrison Collerick, would be going.

Sophie had been ‘going out’ with Harrison Collerick since the start of year ten. Not that they had ever really ‘gone out’. Going out consisted of walking home from school together and spending the weekends hanging out in a gang in the centre of town, with a bunch of other kids from their year. All Sophie wanted was some time with her boyfriend when she knew her parents couldn’t suddenly appear.

The trip to Germany was the talk of the class. Students who had attended on previous occasions claimed that it was the wildest school excursion you could go on. Everyone knew that the German teachers – single Miss Johannson and very-married Mr Stott – were in love with each other and used the trip as a sort of clandestine mini-break. While they were busy canoodling, the schoolkids could run wild. Alcohol was easy to come by. German shopkeepers never asked for ID. Two kids from the previous year even claimed to have got into a bondage club.

But Sophie’s parents said she couldn’t go. They didn’t have the money.