In 2007, shortly after The Shifting Fog had been published worldwide as The House at Riverton, the Australian Women’s Weekly asked me to contribute a short story to their Christmas edition. I decided to write about a real life Christmas that my family and I had shared, which had already begun to take on fairy-tale proportions in my memory, and which we still talk about now. Some memories gain their burnish over time, but that morning in the medieval churchyard, as the snow fell thick around us, and bells pealed in the cold air, was one of those rare moments in life for which one does not need the lens of hindsight to recognise it as fine and precious, a true shared joy.
The White Christmas
All week it had been bitterly cold. Rugged up Londoners scurried along the Kings Road, children disappeared inside mufflers and knitted hats, and queues for hot chocolates snaked through café doors toward the cold, grey street. Eager weather forecasters, cheeks aglow in their centrally heated TV studios, first hinted at, then promised, snow before year’s end. For a bunch of Australians intent on a fairy-tale white Christmas, the anticipation was almost too much to bear.
It was December 2005 and my entire family—parents, sisters, brother-in-law, husband and two-year-old son, Oliver—was in the UK. The trip had been a year in the planning, the logistics of co-ordinating so many people with disparate lives and responsibilities no mean feat. It had been a year of highs and lows, and the holiday had been in jeopardy several times, but here we were. After a fortnight in London, we were ready to pack ourselves into a hire car and embrace the English country Christmas we’d so long sought.
The village had been chosen through a process of exhaustive (and exhausting) dreaming. After much spirited debate, the Cotswolds, the Lake District, and Yorkshire had all been abandoned in favour of Lavenham in south-west Suffolk. It was a medieval wool town, the brochure said, and glossy pictures boasted half-timbered houses that sagged together as they had done for hundreds of years, unspoiled meadows that unrolled towards the horizon, and a French restaurant that we were told folks travelled from far and wide to dine at.
So it was, on Christmas Eve, we waved London goodbye and motored east through the stark, wintry countryside. Two hours later, as the lingering dusk sighed upon the hilltops, we left the arterial road and followed increasingly humble signs into Lavenham.
The village was that of a thousand rural fantasies. We threaded through narrow cobbled lanes, across the medieval marketplace, until finally, we reached a pair or whitewashed cottages. They had been waiting for us, fruit-laden wreaths blushing on their shiny doors. Timber-beamed bedroom lofts were claimed, fires were set, the complimentary basket of pantry goodies exclaimed over, before finally, we decided there was sufficient light left in the day to explore the village.
As evening fell and Christmas lights began to twinkle, the village was aflutter with whispers of snow on the breeze. Old-timers, who surely knew such things, nodded sagely and declared there’d be a dusting before night was out. We crossed our cold fingers, but didn’t dare hope we’d be so lucky. Yet still we watched with anticipation as the clouds gathered.
That night, after hymns in the fifteenth-century church, hot chocolates by the fire, and plenty of surreptitious glances through the window, we hung a stocking for Oliver (who was full of concerned questions as to how Santa would find him when he wasn’t at home) and headed to bed. As we snuggled beneath thick down doonas and frost scribbled lacy patterns on the glass outside, each of us listened hopefully for the gentle sound of flakes kissing the glass panes.
Oliver woke us next morning, clambering across the bedclothes, waving the letter Santa had left in place of rum and a mince pie. It was still dark outside, he added as an afterthought, but everything was all white. We raced to the window and threw back the curtains. In the pre-dawn glow, I could just make out the fine veil of snow cloaking the village. It was magical.
Of course, we pulled on coats and leaped outside to toss snowballs, snap photos of the frozen Manor House lake, and fashion ourselves a snowman. So intent were we, that no one noticed the wind change. It was instant. One moment the air was clear, the next, all was obscured by white—snow like none we’d seen before or since. Great tissue-torn flakes, tossed from on high, coating the meadow sheep and catching on our hair, our gloves, our noses. Within minutes, the land was blanketed.
We hurried on, into the churchyard. The bells began to ring, carols drifted from the service within and we all stood, cheeks red with frost, beaming at one another. There were no words necessary. My entire family, happy and healthy, together for Christmas, my little boy gazing wondrously at the snowflakes, the peal of ancient bells and the promise of a hot festive lunch. What more could we wish?
Kate Morton, Brisbane, 2007