Ghosts of Norman Christmases Past

This extract is taken from a piece published by the Selcouth Station Press in 2020

There are horses moving in the dark. I know because I can hear them, hear the somnambulant scrapings of their hooves and their weary sighs. Their breath rises white in the blackness and the cough of a fox from across the field sends a tepid wash of adrenaline from my stomach to my throat. Under my hands the metal of the gate begins to warm. It is midnight in late December and I have crossed the sea again to stand in an old part of the world and exhale the fumes of the year.

White and black poplars line the drive that leads to the farm, a sharp right turn off a country lane, abrupt and delightful, like an old friend pulling you to one side at a party. In summer the farmhouse announces itself to you, bathed in the clear golden light of an August afternoon. You progress past the hibiscus and the rusting carcass of a plough, past a willow sighing at its own beauty. All is open, all expansive. But in winter you arrive in the dark and the windows of the farmhouse blaze out, a lighthouse in a rural sea. In, in, in. In, to comfort, to warmth, to be out of the night and the rain and the car which almost didn’t make it off the ferry. In, to light the fire, to chill the wine, to change out of travelling clothes and into slippers, to put on Radio 4 (for you can still receive it here, just) in time for the shipping forecast. To draw the curtains on windows faces look in at. On one particularly wild night the shutters on the upstairs bedroom window fly open in the wind, crashing crazily into the stone walls. I lean out into the dark and the lashing rain to re-secure them, fumbling at the catches, listening for wing beats amidst the howl of the gale. Owls live here and bats, and possibly other things.

On the morning of New Year’s Eve, I leave the farm early and alone, armed with gloves and a pair of secateurs. I am bringing in the green. For luck, for the joy of it, for the beauty of things that are still green and growing at this time of year and the beauty of things which are already dead and gorgeous in their deadness. I gather fern fronds, seed heads, twigs furry with grey and cream growths, elegant oval rosehips tapering to a point, livid against the green. We are full of life, full of potential, they murmur, their mouths full of seeds. Let us grow grow grow. There is mistletoe in abundance. I climb up into the hedgerow to gather some and contemplate its odd life cycle, its paradoxical associations with love and death, poison and fertility. I walk home draped in bracken, half a hedgerow in my arms. A Green Woman. On the verges small clumps of pale tan mushrooms sit, monk-like, thoughtful. I step over them with Emily Dickinson in my head.  ‘This morning I slew a mushroom’. I arrange my bounty in a yellow glazed ceramic jug and feel content in the knowledge that this strange winter bouquet has given me something of itself, if not protection then a promise of renewal and a commemoration of the year about to pass. I place it on the outside picnic table and contemplate it through the steam rising from my mug.

From the main house, the sound of furniture being re-arranged and a few bars of dance music, cut off abruptly. In the depths of the Norman winter, the beat is stirring. Later in the afternoon W calls me out to assist with the setting up of a number of squat black boxes, aimed squarely at the farmhouse – when darkness falls they pebble dash the ancient walls with tiny dancing pinpoints of coloured light and turn us into a pointillist disco masterpiece. In the kitchen vats of chilli are being prepared for the crowds who are to come and the house smells of spice and steam and rustles with good natured chaos. From the rafters gilded allium seed heads hang and catch the light from a disco ball. Guests arrive, cars are abandoned on lawns and the house fills with tumbling laughter and conversation like bubbles growing in a running bath. Outside the dew comes down on the grass, lit by the moon, and from the kitchen door I watch a hare, running fast, then frozen at the boundary of the garden. She is all angles and tension and then she is gone into the night like smoke and I think that she is the old year leaving. Midnight arrives, as it always does, slowly and then all at once, as select guests armed with champagne scramble through the crowd spilling wine over everyone and we call our friends in England where it is still last year and tell them we love them.