Certainly, they both wanted children, but they had agreed that they were too young for them as yet. Luc wanted to wait until he had finished his studies, and from the tone of his conversation Belle had guessed that he would want her to give up her own job once they did have a family. She was not so sure that was something she would want to do, but there was plenty of time for her to talk Luc round to her point of view.
It was a pity that the bed had been so expensive, otherwise she might have been able to treat them to a visit to the January sales…
They desperately needed a decent sofa, and Belle rather liked the idea of them having two instead of the traditional one and a couple of armchairs. The cottage had a good-sized sitting room-cum-family room, as well as its large kitchen-cum-dining room, and on the other side of the entrance hall there was, much to her delight, a very respectably sized and pretty drawing room which ran the full length of the house. Plenty of scope for her home-making talents there. And the fact that the previous owners had been elderly meant that none of the attractive original features had been removed.
‘You’re looking very pleased with yourself,’ Luc commented as he bent to kiss the top of her head and reach past her for the coffee pot.
‘Mmm…’ she agreed lazily, arching her neck and inviting him without a word to nuzzle the soft warm skin there.
‘What have you got me for Christmas? I hope it’s something very special,’ she teased him, knowing full well that the only thing she really wanted from him, the gift she valued above everything else, was the one she already had: the gift of his love for her, his commitment to her.
‘Well, I might just…’ he began, and then stopped theatrically, his eyes sparkling with love and happiness as he teased her back. ‘No guessing, though. You’re just going to have to wait until tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow.’ Belle pouted. ‘But I thought we’d… I’m going to give you my present today. Tomorrow we’re going to your parents…’
‘Not until lunchtime,’ Luc reminded her.
‘It’s going to be a very busy time,’ Belle sighed. ‘First dinner with your family, and then we’re going to my parents on Boxing Day.’
The two families, who had not known one another before Luc and Belle had met, had become firm friends, and they lived close enough to make visiting one another quite easy, often sharing their homes with each other’s families at special times like Christmas. On Christmas Day night Belle’s parents, her elder sister and her husband and their two young children were joining Luc’s parents and other members of his family. As a country vicar, Luc’s father lived in a vicarage more than large enough to house everyone overnight, even if his small stipend meant that he could never afford to comfortably heat the vast Victorian church property.
Belle liked Luc’s family, even if she sometimes found them a trifle unworldly compared with the people she mixed with in her working life. Certainly their values and beliefs were very much in tune with those of her own parents, and she particularly liked Luc’s uncle and his wife, and their thirteen-year-old son who shared so much of a family resemblance with Luc that Belle had not been surprised when Luc’s mother had told her that Andy looked just the same as Luc had done at his age.
Luc’s father had studied theology at Cambridge, and there was a tradition in the family of its male members being Cambridge men.
Because they were spending so much time away from home over Christmas, Luc and Belle had agreed that it would be a waste to have a real Christmas tree, and one of Belle’s clients had presented her with an artistic and very expensive Christmas arrangement from one of London’s top florists, made up of bare twigs and glass baubles, which had caused Luc to raise his eyebrows a little.
‘Don’t you like it?’ Belle had asked him.
‘It’s…it’s very artistic,’ Luc had replied cautiously, and then had added a rueful admission, ‘At home we always have a huge tree loaded with masses of stuff. Not very arty, I suppose, but it always seems…right. Vicars’ wives always have to recycle everything, and Ma used to encourage me to make my own decorations when I was small… Not very aesthetic, I know, but for me the real spirit of Christmas is the thought behind the gift, not its material value.’
He was right, of course, and Belle knew it, shared his sentiments, but somehow he had made her feel that her values were glossy and worthless and even, in some belittling way, that she was glossy and worthless too.
Today, though, was Christmas Eve, and very soon their own special Christmas present was going to arrive. And every Christmas from now on, when they woke up in their special bed, when they made love in it, they would remember this, their first Christmas in their new home. Belle couldn’t wait to see the bed with its special headboard in situ, to polish and admire it.
It was almost lunchtime when the van finally arrived in the narrow country lane outside their house.
‘What’s this?’ Luc frowned as the driver got out. ‘They must be looking for somewhere else. We haven’t ordered anything…’
‘Yes, we have,’ Belle corrected him excitedly, craning her neck so that she could see out of the window as the men went to the rear of the van. ‘Well, I have. It’s our Christmas present…well, mine to you…to us…to the house. It’s the bed, Luc, the one I told you about…with the wonderful headboard,’ she hurried on.
‘The one we agreed we wouldn’t have because it was too expensive?’ Luc asked her quietly.
But Belle was oblivious to the cold undertone to his voice, too busy watching what was going on outside the window to be aware of the hurt look in his eyes as she agreed flippantly, ‘That’s the one.’
‘You went ahead and bought it without telling me, despite what we’d agreed…’
Now Belle did look at him, alerted to his feelings by the ominous tone of his voice.
‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ she told him. ‘It’s a present…a surprise. Luc…what is it? Where are you going?’ she demanded frantically as he turned his back on her and started to walk towards the back door.
‘Luc, come back,’ she pleaded, but it was too late, and she couldn’t run after him because the delivery men were already coming up the path with their new bed.
* * *
Luc would come round when he saw how wonderful their bedroom looked with the bed and its headboard proudly adorning it, Belle decided two hours later, when the men had gone and she was standing in the doorway of their bedroom admiring her new acquisition. They would need to get some different bedding now, she acknowledged, frowning a little as she studied the pretty floral set they had been given as a wedding present. Somehow it just didn’t do the new bed justice.
Luc had sanded and polished the old floorboards shortly after they had moved in, and they certainly set the bed off perfectly. It was, she knew, the kind of bed that demanded heavy Irish linen sheets scented with lavender, old-fashioned bed linen, all the traditional touches.
Luc would love that, waking up smelling of lavender… Luc…where was he? He had been gone a long time. She hoped he’d…
It was almost half an hour later when another van pulled up outside the house, a much shabbier, older one than the one which had delivered their new bed and its accoutrements, and, to her astonishment, she saw Luc climbing out of the driver’s door.
‘Luc.’ She went to the front door and opened it, calling out anxiously to him. ‘Where have you been?’
‘To get your Christmas present,’ he told her grimly.
Her Christmas present. In that old van… What on earth…? Warily she walked to the front gate and opened it, staring into the back of the van as Luc unlocked and raised the shutter door.
‘What is it? What have you got in there?’ she asked him uncertainly.
‘I’ve already told you. Your Christmas present.’
As the last of the fading daylight filled the van and she saw inside it Belle’s heart gave a shocked bound. There, in pieces, inside the van, was an old-fashioned bedframe, an obviously newly bought mattress
and, tucked along one side of it, covered in a piece of old sheeting was the unmistakable shape of a wooden headboard.
‘Luc…what have you done—’ she began, and then stopped as he turned round and she saw his face.
She had never seen him look so bleak…so distant…so alien from her and to her.
‘Very much the same as you’ve done. I’ve bought us a Christmas present. A new bed. For us…for you…’ he told her in a voice that was icily polite and icily distant.
‘That isn’t new…the frame’s old…’ Belle began defensively. ‘It looks…’
‘It looks what?’ Luc challenged her. ‘It looks as though your colleagues…and your clients…would laugh at it, turn their materialistic designer noses up at it. Well, for your information, this bed belonged to my grandparents. They slept in it…cherished it…cared for it and valued it, just as my parents have done.’
‘It’s… It’s…’ Belle just didn’t know what to say, and then, as Luc climbed into the van, the sheeting slipped off the headboard and the colour left her face completely, Unlike the frame itself, the headboard was quite plainly new. She could tell that because of the pretty carving on it, entwining their initials and the date of their marriage.
‘Luc… You bought…’ she began, but Luc was already shaking his head.
‘I bought nothing apart from the mattress,’ he told her grimly. ‘The wood, good solid English oak, belonged to the father of one of my pupils. He gave it to me in exchange for his son’s tuition. I did the carving myself. It isn’t as fancy nor, I dare say, as desirable as the one you’ve bought, but…’
‘You carved it…’ Belle stopped him. ‘You carved it…’
‘Yes.’ Luc told her curtly, pushing the cloth back over it. ‘But of course I realise that it won’t come anywhere near to matching the one you‘ve bought. The one I couldn’t afford to buy you. It doesn’t matter what I do or what I say, what I give you…how much I love you. The fact remains that you’re the one who’s supporting us both, financing us both…’