Christmas Is All Around

Chapter Nine

CHAPTER NINE

I hate rich people.”

“Doesn’t your dad work in Hollywood? Feels a bit pot-kettle.”

“I don’t think you want to go down that road with me, Country Estate Man.” Charlotte looked darkly at the Maserati idling directly opposite the bench she was settling onto in Sloane Square. “My point is more that they buy such stupid things with all their piles of money.” She gestured at the car before her, which had probably cost an amount that would make her cry.

“Lane, that is an objectively beautiful car.”

“And yet you’re driving around in a banged-up Mini Cooper.”

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I currently can’t afford a new roof, so I sure as hell can’t afford a Maserati.”

She eyed him skeptically; he looked a bit posher than usual today, wearing wool trousers and an oxford shirt underneath a crisp gray coat. She guessed this was what he looked like in his regular life, when he was going to his fancy job every day, and it was strange to think of him in that context, which felt very removed from worries about a leaky roof and escorting her on these outings around London and the surrounding countryside.

“But when you bought that Mini Cooper, you could have afforded something nicer,” she said on a sudden hunch, and the slight reddening of the tips of his ears informed her that she’d guessed right.

“I will grant you that I’m not a spend-a-couple-of-years’-salary-on-a-car type of man,” he admitted.

“Ha! Which returns us to my original point: rich people suck.” She opened her sketchbook to a blank page. “Which my investigation into this particular movie already convinced me of, by the way.”

Charlotte, having done some Wikipedia research that morning, was genuinely appalled by the fact that this movie—titled, ridiculously, A London Home for Christmas —even existed.

Graham shifted on the bench, looking a bit guilty. “I don’t know much about it.”

Charlotte, who had begun to sketch in rough strokes, glanced up at him, frowning. “You said you’d seen all of the movies with your sisters.”

“ Most of them,” he corrected. “I fell asleep ten minutes into this one. I recognize the building, and Eloise has given me strict instructions on the angle you’re supposed to capture, but otherwise I couldn’t tell you a thing about it.”

“How fortunate for you that I can enlighten you,” Charlotte said smugly, her eyes on the mansard roof of the redbrick mansion block before her. Apparently the building had been converted into a hotel several years earlier, so she carefully omitted the hotel signs and ostentatiously waving flags from her sketch.

“You? Charlotte I have never seen a Christmas film Lane?”

“A fun fact about me is that I do know how to use the internet,” she said. “And I went on an absolutely fascinating Wikipedia journey this morning. First of all, you didn’t mention that this movie is basically the British equivalent of a Hallmark movie.”

“A what?” He sounded genuinely confused, and Charlotte experienced a moment of overpowering envy. What she wouldn’t give to be similarly unwise to the ways of the Hallmark Christmas universe.

She waved the hand holding her pencil. “You know. Big-city woman with an impressive career heads back to her charming, rural hometown for Christmas, where she falls in love with a Christmas tree farmer who makes her realize that professional success means nothing and that all she really needs is marriage and the bonds of community.”

He stared at her, appalled. “That’s nightmarish.”

“You have no idea. There are also ones that involve strangers trying to travel in the middle of a snowstorm and being forced to string together a series of unconventional transportation options to reach their destination, and an entire subgenre involving royalty, and this series where Vanessa Hudgens plays, like, three different characters—”

“Please stop.”

“Happily.” She heaved a world-weary sigh. “I thought they were an American phenomenon, but it sounds like this one was a one-off hit that took the internet by storm about ten years ago. I don’t know how I’ve never heard of it before.”

“Too busy sitting in a cold cave wearing all black and blocking the word ‘Christmas’ in all of your social media settings,” he said, and she could tell without looking at him that he was smiling.

She rolled her eyes, suppressing her own urge to smile. “Anyway. Would you like to know the plot?”

“I have a feeling you’re going to tell me regardless.”

“Correct.” She flipped to a new page in her sketchbook and began working on a detailed sketch of one of the dormer windows. “Our tale begins with a plucky girl from bumblefuck nowhere—”

“Meaning?”

Charlotte paused, wracking her brain. “Wales, maybe? There was definitely some sort of attempt at a colorful accent in the one clip I watched.”

“Noted. Please continue.”

“Anyway, she was, like, a dairy maid—”

“I’m sorry—was this historical?”

“Nope. She was a modern dairy maid.”

“I’m starting to regret having slept through this.”

“Just wait. She found out that she was the only heiress to a distant relative, and she inherited his house on Sloane Square—”

“Was her distant relative a duke?”

“No. Just a humble man of mystery with some sort of wealth that was probably gained through investing in Russian oil companies or something. Wholesome stuff.”

“So she inherited his house,” Graham prompted, and Charlotte knew she had him.

“But there was a codicil in the will that meant that she had to spend the entire month of December in the house every year or she’d forfeit her inheritance, because the distant relative had had no family and desperately wanted his house to experience the magic of the Christmas season again.”

“Please tell me that was a direct quote.”

“It was. I googled it. Anyway,” she said, as he choked on a laugh, “she moves into her mansion, charms the entire staff that works there, Beauty and the Beast –style—to put it in parlance that you’d understand—”

“Fuck off.”

“And then she falls in love with the house’s caretaker, who turns out to be a European prince in disguise —”

“From which country?” he asked, nonplussed.

She waved her hand. “One of the fake ones they make up for Hallmark movies, which always seem to be some sort of French/Swiss/ Austrian/Italian mash-up, and are named, like, Grimovia or something.”

“Why is he in disguise as a caretaker in a square in Belgravia?”

“To escape his royal destiny.”

“But how did he end up in this specific house?”

“Don’t worry about it. The first rule of Hallmark movies is not to ask too many questions; the entire thing cracks like an egg under the slightest bit of scrutiny. Anyway , the climactic scene is when she realizes that he’s a prince and not a humble caretaker, and she declares that she cannot be with him , not because he lied to her, but because of her unfailing loyalty to her own royal family—”

“And this girl’s from Wales? ” he asked with an incredulous snort. “Didn’t realize there were so many ardent millennial royalists in Wales.”

“Did you not just hear me? You don’t question the internal logic of a Hallmark movie! So she flees from the mansion in tears, and he chases her through the streets of London—”

“On foot?”

“Yes. They’re running the entire time. She’s apparently half a block ahead at all times—I found an entire Reddit thread dedicated to discussion of her footwear in this scene—and they make it to Trafalgar Square—”

“From Belgravia? That’s got to be two miles.”

“Well, they’re very fit, clearly, from all the stairs in the mansion. And he catches up to her in front of the Christmas tree, and he tells her that he’s going to renounce his claim to the throne so that they can get married and stay in London. And eventually, he’ll get British citizenship.”

“Is this pro-Brexit propaganda?” he asked suspiciously.

“Unclear. If you squint, you could almost call it a heartwarming tale of immigration and assimilation.”

“Christ almighty. I cannot believe Eloise wanted this film to be included in this series.”

“From what I can tell, it was wildly popular.” She reached into her pouch of drawing pencils for a fresh one; glancing up, she saw that Graham, sitting next to her on the bench they’d claimed, looked horrified. “It’s nice to see that Americans don’t have a monopoly on movies like this,” she said, feeling suddenly quite cheerful.

“Can we please acknowledge how disturbing it is that you are describing this god-awful piece of media so gleefully? I like Christmas, but feel offended on behalf of the holiday just listening to this.”

“It’s part of my evil plan to make you realize that this holiday is a nightmare invented by capitalism.”

“Might need to check with some religious scholars on that one, Lane,” he said dryly, and as she turned her attention back to her sketch, she couldn’t prevent the smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

“So this is what hell looks like.”

“That’s the spirit. Very charming. Have I mentioned what a radiant font of holiday joy you are?”

“I’m sorry that not all of us were born with some sort of deranged need to charm the pants off every person we meet.”

“Have I charmed your pants off?”

“I do seem to be wearing them, if you hadn’t noticed.”

“I think you’ve forgotten that ‘pants’ means something different in Britain than it does in America.”

“If you discuss my underwear again, I am going to shove you into that fountain.”

“Noted.”

They were in Trafalgar Square, which was a truly harrowing place this time of year, particularly for someone who had not the slightest desire to elbow her way through the teeming hordes of tourists solely to get a photo of a Christmas tree.

They’d wandered this way once she’d finished her sketches and taken enough photos of the mansion block that she felt confident she could re-create it in detail later on; Graham, meanwhile, had vanished into the hotel, pausing to chat with the doorman for a couple of minutes on the way in. He’d returned about ten minutes later, looking exceedingly grim, and reported that the hotel seemed to “have no concerns for their dignity,” because there was a photo opportunity by one of the lobby Christmas trees, in which visitors could take photos with cardboard cutouts of the movie characters. This had made Charlotte laugh for about a minute straight, while Graham had sat next to her on the bench, looking pained.

“Do not mention this to Eloise; I don’t want to give her any ideas,” he said darkly.

“You are trying to figure out how to capitalize on your Christmas, Truly fame,” she said, once she’d stopped laughing. “This could be the way!”

“I’m trying to work out how to do it in a non-horrifying way, if you recall,” he said repressively. “And I don’t think you’ll be laughing if you end up as one of the cardboard cutouts,” he added, which was enough to shut Charlotte up in a hurry.

By the time they’d arrived in Trafalgar Square after nearly forty-five minutes of walking, she had to admit that Graham was right, and the notion of running that route in heeled boots was, frankly, insane.

“Please remove me from this terrifying nightmare,” she said, eyeing the ridiculous lines of people at the various food stalls at the Christmas market that had been erected in the square. Even Graham was looking a bit harried by this point, so they took refuge in the National Gallery. “At least it’s warm in here,” she said as they left their coats at coat check and set off at a slow, meandering pace. Compared to the crowds outside, taking selfies in front of the Christmas tree and browsing the stalls at the pop-up market, the museum, crowded as it was, felt like something of an oasis of calm.

“Do you have anything you wanted to see?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not particularly—if you don’t mind just wandering? I haven’t been here in a few years.”

“I don’t think I have, either,” he confessed as they set off. “When I was at my previous job, I never had time.”

“Financial accounting,” she said vaguely, recalling their previous conversation and trying not to sound too bored at the thought. Charlotte had never had a proper desk job—had left school and immediately used her savings (thank you, Christmas, Truly ) to launch her business and keep herself afloat those first few years—but she was pretty confident that there were lots (and lots) of traditional nine-to-five jobs that would be more interesting than whatever Graham had done, until recently, for work.

“Yeah, with a consulting firm in the City. Long hours, late nights, pretty much what you’d expect. And on the weekends, my girlfriend never wanted to come back into central London—not when we spent so much time here during the week already.” He paused, then cleared his throat. “My ex -girlfriend,” he added quietly, and something within Charlotte loosened.

“Did you… like it?” she asked, in part because she didn’t want to address the ex-girlfriend question head-on, in part because she was actually curious.

“It was fine.” He sighed, running a hand through his neatly combed hair. There were dark smudges beneath his eyes, as if he’d had several late nights recently. She wondered precisely how serious the financial situation at Eden Priory was, for him to look like this.

Unless—the thought suddenly occurred to her—the late nights that his face offered proof of were not from work or worry at all, but from something more fun. He might have spent a couple of days with Charlotte, but she had no idea how he was spending his nights—and his comment about his ex-girlfriend really hadn’t done anything to clarify that question.

And it was definitely, definitely none of her business.

“I was always good at maths, so it wasn’t as though I wasn’t suited to the work—I wanted a career that would allow me to save enough to serve as a cushion for Eden Priory, like my dad did; we’d be in a lot worse trouble right now if he’d not worked in corporate law. And I—well. I didn’t want my sisters to have to worry about that, when it came time for them to decide what to study. I wanted them to be able to do something they loved.”

She hesitated, then asked, “If you could do any job, what would it be? If you didn’t have the house—if you didn’t need to worry.”

He was silent for long enough that she wondered if he was going to reply at all; they passed a large group of French tourists and found themselves before a Turner painting of a ship listing in a turbulent sea. Turner had never been her favorite, personally—too many ships; too many ocean scenes in general—but pretty much anything seemed impressive when you slapped a large gilt frame on it and hung it in a setting as spectacular as this one.

“I’d like to work for… a nonprofit, some sort of charity,” he said softly, at last. “I’m good at what I do, but it would be nice to use those skills for something that felt a bit more worthwhile.” He hesitated, and Charlotte remained silent, hoping that, if she didn’t say anything, he wouldn’t realize she was there, gaining this rare insight into his head—his heart. “A friend of mine from uni works at a firm that specializes in nonprofit accounting,” he said quietly. “He tried to recruit me, a couple of years ago—right around the time when my dad got sick. But it would have been a pretty big pay cut, and with my dad having to step back from his job around that time… it felt irresponsible.”

She stared determinedly at the painting before her, the brushstrokes that created the foaming, angry sea. “You deserve to have a job that you love—or at least one that you care about,” she said softly, and she felt his eyes slide away from the painting and toward her face, even as she didn’t turn to meet his gaze. For the briefest moment, she considered reaching out to brush his hand—but just as quickly jerked her hand back. She didn’t think he’d noticed.

She started to wander toward the next painting, and he walked quietly beside her, his hands in his pockets. She risked a glance at him, and saw that his brow was slightly furrowed. “Maybe, if we can somehow make the house turn a profit consistently…” He trailed off, gave a small shake of the head, as if to dismiss the thought. Charlotte bit her lip, but didn’t say anything as they strolled into the next room, a bit quieter, full of Victorian art. Her gaze landed on a painting at random, and she approached it, her eyes widening when they snagged on the name. “Oh—this is a Christian Calloway piece!”

She turned to see him standing behind her, regarding the painting in question with the dispassionate eye of an expert. “I always forget that he has a few in here from the end of his career.”

Charlotte vaguely knew—in the way she vaguely knew the history of a number of artists, but didn’t actually have an art history degree, so couldn’t speak with expertise on any of them—that Christian Calloway’s work had started out incredibly commercial (book illustrations, textiles and wallpaper, home goods), and then, in later life, once he was financially secure, he’d turned to less sellable works that had earned him great critical acclaim. Eden Priory featured more examples of his early work, since there was much more of it, and also because the National Gallery, she recalled now, owned the most famous pieces from his late-career renaissance.

The one they were now standing before was a landscape; Charlotte wasn’t familiar enough with the subtleties of the various English counties to tell if this was Hampshire, somewhere near Eden Priory, or somewhere else farther afield; the informational placard merely stated that it depicted a farmer at work, and that it was intended to be some sort of commentary on the class system in England. Calloway had, she recalled, been an early socialist, though she couldn’t help but wonder precisely how deep his socialist tendencies had run, given, again, the literal mansion that he’d inherited from his father.

She considered it for a moment, tilting her head to the side. After several seconds had passed, she realized that Graham was not looking at the painting, but at her.

“What?” she asked, a bit defensively.

“What do you think of it?” he asked. There was nothing in his tone to indicate that this was intended to be a test, but it was undeniably a bit weird to be asked your opinion on a piece of artwork by a relative of the artist himself.

“I don’t know,” she said cautiously. She considered it again; it was dark in tone, and despite its rural setting, there were none of the rolling green hills that you might expect from an English pastoral painting. The sky was ominous, the fields golden and brown—clearly harvest time, as the depiction of the many laborers in the field implied. “It’s a bit… grim. I think…” She hesitated, then decided that there was no point in starting to lie to him now. She’d hardly made an effort to charm him thus far. “I think I prefer his commercial art.”

His mouth twitched. “So do I.”

She glanced at him, startled. “You do?”

He nodded. “He’s most famous for it for a reason.”

“Because it was more available to an everyday person and not hidden away in a museum,” she pointed out, for the sake of playing devil’s advocate.

“Fair enough,” he agreed. “But also… it’s better.”

“It is.” She glanced at him, and saw that he was smiling faintly; she liked his smile. She liked when he smiled at her , as if they had a private joke.

“Have you ever thought about your art being in a museum someday?” he asked a few minutes later; they were in a room full of Cézanne and Renoir, and Charlotte had paused for a moment upon entering, soaking in the sight of this many spectacular pieces of art in such a confined space.

“About what?” she asked, distracted by the sight of a child running in circles around his parents, cackling maniacally. She was extremely grateful that Alice couldn’t walk yet, and also extremely disturbed by the prospect of what her future Christmases might look like.

“This.” He waved his hand around, encompassing the entire room. “Your art. On display in a gallery.”

Charlotte shook her head. “My art is really commercial—very clearly the sort of thing you’d sell in a shop, not hang in a gallery.”

“Is that always what you envisioned making?”

Charlotte paused, considering; usually, when asked about how she became an artist, she merely mentioned her love of painting, of creating something from a blank page—which was true. But she rarely thought about—or discussed—why she made the specific type of art that she did, the memories that drove her. She said, after another few seconds, “When I was a kid, I loved picture books—all kids do, obviously. But even as I got older, I kept looking at them, kept looking at all the illustrations. The way they made me feel—the world they depicted… it felt so warm and safe. I started making art that made me feel the same way. When I go to fancy gallery openings, or museum exhibits about… I don’t know, Important Art, I can appreciate the skill of the artist, I can even feel the emotions they’re trying to invoke, but it doesn’t make me feel the way that I want my art to make people feel.”

She broke off, a bit startled; she hadn’t meant to lecture him about her artistic vision—hadn’t meant to share this much of something that felt so personal to her, for all that it was how she made a living.

Graham, however, was smiling faintly. “That seems like as good a reason as I’ve ever heard, for anyone to do anything.”

She sighed, her mouth flattening. “I wish my parents had been that easily convinced.”

“You’re doing something you love, that you’re incredibly good at,” he objected, frowning slightly.

She shrugged. “But it’s not the thing that they’re good at, so they don’t understand it. Sometimes I wonder…” She trailed off, hesitating.

“What?” He sounded genuinely curious—he always did, when he spoke to her. In all their conversations, it felt as though her answers really mattered to him, no matter how trivial the topic. It made her feel seen in a way that she hadn’t realized she’d been craving.

She sighed. “Sometimes I wonder, if I did make highbrow art that made it to museums, or was exhibited in fancy galleries, if they’d be more impressed. If they’d care more.”

Graham’s frown deepened, his lips pressed into a thin line. “If they don’t care, that says nothing about you, Lane—and everything about them. Because your art is brilliant.” He said it casually, as if he’d not said anything important at all—anything that mattered. But it mattered to her—and this felt dangerous, for reasons that she couldn’t quite explain.

But it occupied her thoughts as they continued their slow progress through the museum, paying a visit to one of Charlotte’s favorite rooms, full of Dutch flower paintings. She’d spent the past four years turning herself into someone no one needed to be concerned about, after the disastrous end of her last relationship. Padma, her friends from college, her friends in the city—they’d been worried about her, then, but once the dust had settled and she felt like herself again, she was determined to never let herself feel that way again. Never cause anyone to worry over her again. She was just Charlotte—steady, unemotional, unneedy. Not someone who required any concern, any reassurance.

But she’d allowed Graham this peek at her—at the touchy, vulnerable side of herself that she kept carefully hidden—and he’d not even hesitated for a moment before coming to her defense. Before making it clear that what her parents—or anyone else—thought about her was irrelevant to what he did.

And Charlotte, who had tried her hardest not to care what anyone thought of her for a very, very long time, was beginning to wonder, as they made their way back to the entrance to retrieve their coats and then step into the December chill, if she might care, just a tiny bit, about Graham Calloway’s opinion.