Christmas at the Island Hotel - Jenny Colgan Page 0,75
He absolutely loved it. Isla had been walking beside him, making small talk, occasionally sneaking glances at him from underneath her Fair Isle bonnet. Once their gloves brushed in the cold air and she had flinched, and he hadn’t been able to tell if it was the good kind of flinch or the bad one.
Now, seeing all the children there, he ran up, more or less like an overgrown child himself.
“Do you like it?” he called out confidently.
Isla smiled; he wasn’t the least bit nervous talking to anyone. Of course she had no idea how many trips he’d had to make with his father to children’s hospitals and schools.
“Now, in Norway we have a song we sing going round the Christmas tree,” he said. “It is called ‘Jeg Er Så Glad Hver Julekveld.’ Do you know it?”
The children all laughed and shouted, “Noooo!”
“Oh,” said Konstantin. “Is there a song you know that would be good for running round a Christmas tree?”
“There’s ‘O Christmas Tree,’” said Effie-Jane, flouncing out her petticoats. Although she was only five she thought that Konstantin looked like the prince in Frozen. Okay, that prince had turned out to be bad, but he was still a prince, so she had decided to like him anyway.
“That’s a really stupid idea,” came an angel’s voice from somewhere nearby, but rather more people were agreeing.
“Okay then,” said Konstantin, keeping a weather eye on the grown-ups. He knew exactly what they were trying to do and it was very much in his interests to stop this happening, and showing them how much the children loved it could surely only help.
“Now if my glamorous assistant will join me . . .”
He meant Isla and held out his hand. She could barely believe it, but stepped forward and took his hand, and then the hand of the child next to her until everyone had linked hands all the way around the great sculpture. The adults were either pushed out of the way or reluctantly made to join in. Konstantin smiled like it was all a coincidence.
“Okay then!” He whispered to Isla: “I do not know this song. Please quickly help me with this song.”
Isla smiled prettily. “Okay! O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree . . .”
She sounded a little tremulous at first, but the sweetness of her voice at the old melody soon broke through and sounded clear as a bell in the white afternoon, and it wasn’t long before the children joined in.
“How lovely are your branches . . .”
“Oh!” said Konstantin in delight. “I know this!” and instantly joined in in a lovely German baritone: “Wie treu sind deine blätter!”
The children immediately laughed at him and he winked and they all carried on:
“O Christmas tree . . .”
“O Tannenbaum . . .”
Two of the older ladies with grandchildren in the show arrived and joined in loudly and querulously:
“O chraobh na Nollaige!”
And now they really had a party. Once they got to the end of the verse they started going round the tree, and nobody apart from Isla really knew the second verse anyway, so they just did the first one again and then again, as they got faster and faster, until they were whizzing round and round the brilliantly lit statue, singing faster and faster at the top of their lungs, and finally collapsed, all of them, giggling in the snow.
Which more or less started a snowball fight, which Konstantin and Isla got out of the way of as quickly as possible.
“I thought you would be good in a snowball fight,” observed Isla as they marched down the hill, leaving it to the parents to intervene or join in, depending on the personality.
“I am,” said Konstantin gravely. “Too good. I would kill every single one of those children.”
Isla started laughing, she couldn’t help it, as they trudged up the stony lane toward the MacKenzie farm. The van was already parked there, and Gaspard was looking at them crossly for not being there on time to help set up.
“Venez, venez, the lovebirds, come on,” he grumbled, and suddenly neither of them could look at the other.
Chapter 51
The village descended on the scones and cakes and sandwiches like a plague of happy locusts. Hot mulled cider sat in pots on the oven, and people opened bottles and passed around whisky while the children ran riot over the farm, barely disturbing the beautiful sleepy cows, who eyed them without interest and went back to nosing about the snowy grass.