Clive Podmore sat on his veranda with his sundowner, Orpheus, his rescue cat, and Bella, the dog, snoozing beside him. ‘Love Came Down at Christmas’. How strange that singing almost had him in tears. How could he have forgotten its poignancy?
In his final year at university they’d had a candlelit Christmas carol service in the courtyard at the hall of residence. The rector had decided to invite guests to dinner afterwards. There was to be a ball later in the week and Clive had yet to find a partner. In those days there were few women students in his law department when the ratio of men to women was about seven to one.
The guys in the music department brought in some sopranos from the women’s hall down the road, and the girls huddled together, unsure of their bearings in that very male college. Clive noticed her straight away. She had a golden ponytail and a dress that shimmered in the candlelight. She looked neat and contained, singing with a serious look on her face, as if the words had a special meaning for her. ‘Love Came Down at Christmas’.
Then she’d glanced up and caught his eye. He’d felt a strange rush of sensation. He couldn’t wait for the service to finish. He had to know who she was and suddenly had an inner certainty that he had found his partner for the ball. But how to be introduced?
He needn’t have worried because she walked up to him, smiling. ‘Hi, I’m Lucy. Did you enjoy the service?’
‘I’m Clive, studying law,’ he muttered. ‘I thought you all sang splendidly.’
‘Good! Is there supper? I’m starving.’
He escorted her to the buffet, clinging like a limpet to her side. They sat together and she told him she was studying chemistry, with a view to doing research. He noticed the freckles across her nose and that her eyes were almost leaf green.
‘Would you like to come to the end-of-term ball – or have you already got a partner?’ he asked, expecting to be turned down.
She grabbed his hand. ‘I’d be delighted. When? Where? But I’ll have to borrow a dress. I’m afraid I’m a bit skint. Lucy in the sky without diamonds.’ She laughed.
She’d sparkled at the ball in a deep crimson full-length gown that kept slipping off her shoulders, because it was a size too big. Clive had had a few girlfriends before but Lucy was like no one else he’d ever met.
They danced and he managed some moves, laughing as they clung together. Two weeks later she crept into his room, locked the door and they made love as if there was no tomorrow. After Christmas she invited him down to meet her family. Clive lived in Sheffield and she in Dorset, but distance means nothing when you’re in love. Her father was a well-known actor, who welcomed him into their country retreat as if he was a long-lost son. Her mother lived in London with her new lover.
He had never met a divorced couple before. His parents ran a paper shop and were strict Baptists. He wondered what they would make of Lucy, but when she arrived, clutching flowers and chocolates, they were charmed. What did she see in him? He felt such a dullard.
‘Shall we get a flat together?’ she asked, at the beginning of term.
Clive was taken aback. ‘But my fees are paid for this term.’
‘Next term, then?’
‘I’m not sure my parents would really like…’
‘What’s it got to do with them?’
‘It’s just that…’ He hesitated.
‘Oh, don’t be a prude. I’m on the pill. You don’t have to worry on that score.’
But it had overwhelmed him, the rush to be intimate, to be half of a couple ‘living in sin’, as his mother would say. He’d love to spend days and nights with her but he stalled. ‘It’s too soon,’ he said, and instantly regretted it.
‘Suit yourself.’ She smiled and that was the last he saw of her for weeks. She just disappeared from his life and he knew he had lost something precious: her spontaneity, her ability to seize the moment and take control. She was unpredictable, quick to make decisions, in a way that terrified his narrow homespun soul.
Clive struggled on as finals loomed. He searched the library in case she was there, hung about the chemistry department, hoping to find her in the refectory of the student union, but she was nowhere to be seen. He wrote an abject letter but got no reply. It was affecting his work. He couldn’t study or revise.
How could a girl get so under his skin? He was sure she’d met someone else. It was making him sick. Then, one night, he found himself in agonising pain and was rushed into the infirmary for an emergency appendectomy. When he woke up, his parents were waiting by his bed, clearly anxious. ‘Are you all right, son?’
I’m sick, I’m heartbroken and I’m going to fail my exams.
‘You’ve got a visitor.’ His mum smiled, turning to the door, and then Lucy was looking down at him.
‘Honestly I can’t leave you five minutes before you go to pot. Thank goodness your mother told me where you were.’
‘You’ve been in touch?’ He didn’t understand what was going on.
‘We’ll leave you two lovebirds together,’ said his parents, creeping away. ‘You have a lot of catching up to do.’
‘I’ve missed you so much,’ said Clive.
Lucy smiled. ‘I hoped you might, so I gave you some space to sort yourself out.’
‘Will you marry me?’ he said, ‘After finals, straight away.’
‘Of course.’ She bent down to kiss him. ‘Perhaps nearer Christmas on St Lucy’s Day, my birthday. Then we can have that special hymn again. “Love Came Down at Christmas”.’
Clive woke from his reverie. The sun had gone. Lucy was his sun, moon and stars, but now there was only darkness in his life because she was no more. How could he carry on without her light? How could he face another Christmas without her?