Lucy Gordon - A Mistletoe Proposal

She planted a kiss on the tips of her fingers and laid them against the photograph of her grandparents. Then she stepped back. The movement brought something into the extreme edge of her vision and she turned quickly to see a man watching her. Or it might be more exact to say staring at her with the disapproval of one who couldn’t understand such wacky behaviour. Wryly, she supposed she must look a little odd, and wondered how long he’d been there.

He was tall with a lean face that was firm almost to the point of grimness. Fortyish, she thought, but perhaps older with that unyielding look.

She gave him a polite smile and moved off. There was something about him that made her want to escape. She made her way to a place where there were other family graves.

It was strangely pleasant in these surroundings. Although part of a London suburb, the cemetery had a country air, with tall trees in which birds and squirrels made their homes. As the winter day faded, the red sun seemed to be sliding down between the tree trunks, accompanied by soft whistles and scampering among the leaves. Pippa had always enjoyed coming here, for its beauty almost as much as because it was now the home of people she had loved.

Just ahead were Dee’s parents, Joe and Helen, their daughter Sylvia and her infant son Joey, and the baby Polly. She had never known any of them, yet she’d been raised in a climate of strong family unity and they were as mysteriously real to her as her living relatives.

She paused for a moment at Sylvia’s grave, remembering her mother’s words about the likeness. It was a physical likeness, Pippa knew, having seen old snapshots of Great-Aunt Sylvia. As a young woman in the nineteen-thirties she’d been a noted beauty, living an adventurous life, skipping from romance to romance. Everyone thought she would marry the dashing Mark Sellon, but she’d left him to run off with a married man just before the war broke out. He died at Dunkirk and she died in the Blitz.

Something of Sylvia’s beauty had reappeared in Pippa. But the real likeness lay elsewhere, in the sparkling eyes and readiness to seek new horizons.

‘In the genes,’ Lilian had judged, perhaps correctly. ‘Born to be a good time girl.’

‘Nothing wrong with having a good time,’ Pippa had often replied chirpily.

‘There is if you don’t think of anything else,’ Lilian pointed out.

Pippa was indignant. ‘I think of plenty else. I work like a slave at my job. It’s just that now and then I like to enjoy myself.’

It sounded a rational answer, but they both knew that it was actually no answer at all. Pippa’s flirtations were many but superficial. And there was a reason for it, one that few people knew.

Gran Dee had known. She’d been a close-up witness of Pippa’s relationship with Jack Sothern, had seen how deeply the young girl was in love with him, how brilliantly happy when they became engaged, how devastated when he’d abandoned her a few weeks before Christmas.

That time still stood out fiercely in Pippa’s mind. Jack had left town for a couple of days, which hadn’t made her suspicious, as she now realised it should have. Wedding preparations, she’d thought; matters to be settled at work before he was free to go on their honeymoon. The idea of another woman had never crossed her mind.

When he returned she paid an unexpected visit to his apartment, heralding her arrival by singing a Christmas carol outside his door.

‘ New day, new hope, new life, ’ she yodelled merrily.

When he opened the door she flew into his arms, hoping to draw him into a kiss, but he moved stiffly away.

Then he dumped her.

For a while she’d been knocked sideways. Instead of the splendid career that should have been hers, she’d taken a job serving in the local supermarket, justifying this by saying that her grandparents, both in their eighties and frail, needed her. For the last two years of their lives she’d lived with them, watching over them, giving them every moment because, as she declared, she had no use for boyfriends.

It was then that the innocent beauty of her face had begun to be haunted with a look of determination so fierce as to be sometimes alarming. It would vanish quickly, driven away by her natural warmth, but it was still there, half hidden in the shadows, ready to return.

‘Don’t give in to it,’ Dee had begged in her last year of life. ‘I know you were treated cruelly, but don’t become bitter, whatever you do.’

‘Gran, honestly, you’ve got it all wrong. So a man let me down! So what? We rise above that these days!’

Dee had looked unconvinced, so Pippa brightened her smile, hoping to fool her, not very successfully, she knew.

Only after her death had Dee been able to put the situation right with a modest legacy, conditional on Pippa training for a proper career.

Pippa had changed from the quiet girl struggling to recover from heartbreak. Going back out into the world, starting a new life, had brought out a side she hadn’t known she had. Her looks won her many admirers, and she’d gone to meet them, arms open but heart closed. Life was fun if you didn’t expect too much, and she’d brought that down to a fine art.

‘Aunt Sylvia would have been proud of you,’ her mother told her, half critical, half admiring. ‘Not that I knew her, she died before I was born, but the way she carried on was a family legend and you’re heading in the same direction. Look at the way you’re dressed!’

‘I like to dress properly,’ Pippa observed, looking down at the short skirt that revealed her stunning legs, and the closely cut top that emphasised her delicate curves.

‘That’s not properly, that’s improperly,’ Lilian replied.

‘They can be the same thing,’ Pippa teased. ‘Oh, Mum, don’t look so shocked. I’m sure Aunt Sylvia would have said exactly that.’

‘Very likely, from all I’ve heard. But you’re supposed to be a lawyer.’

‘What do you mean, “supposed”? I passed my exams with honours and they were fighting to hire me, so my boss said.’

‘And doesn’t he mind you floating about his office looking like a sexy siren?’ Lilian demanded. Pippa giggled.

‘No, I guess he doesn’t,’ Lilian conceded. ‘Well, I suppose if you’ve got the exam results to back you up you’ll be all right.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Pippa murmured. ‘I’ll be all right.’

One man, speaking from the depths of his injured feelings, had called her a tease, but he did her an injustice. She embarked on a relationship in all honesty, always wondering if this one would be different. But it never was. When she backed off it was from fear, not heartlessness. The memory of her misery over Jack was still there in her heart. The time that had passed since had dimmed that misery, but nothing could ever free her from its shadow, and she was never going to let it happen again.

‘I reckon you’d have understood that,’ she told Sylvia. ‘The things I’ve heard about you-I really wish we could have met. I bet you were fun.’

The thought of that fun made a smile break over her face. Sometimes she seemed to smile as she breathed.

But the smile faded as she turned to leave and saw the man she’d seen before, frowning at her.

Well, I suppose I must look pretty crazy, she thought wryly. His generation probably thinks you should never smile in a graveyard. But why not, if you’re fond of the people you come to see? And I’m very fond of Sylvia, even though we never met. So there!

Her mood of cheerful defiance lasted until she reached her car, parked just outside the gate. Then it faded into exasperation.

‘Oh, no, not again!’ she breathed as the engine made futile noises. ‘I’ll take you to the garage tomorrow, but start just this once, please !’