A Perfect Christmas (3 page)

She blustered, ‘I . . . I was hoping you were going to lead me to somewhere safe to spend the night.’

He stared at her, curious to know why the likes of her needed to sleep out for the night, but his years of living amongst types who held little regard for their fellow human beings had taught him that the less you knew about others, and the less they knew about you, the better. There were those who would happily slit your throat to get that knowledge out of you so as to use it to their own advantage. He told her, ‘I travel alone. It’s hard enough on the streets without being responsible for anyone else.’

He made to turn away then and continue on his way but Jan pleaded, ‘Oh, please don’t leave me on my own. I’m not asking you to be responsible for me but I’m scared. At least let me travel with you until we get out of this area.’

He frowned suspiciously at her. ‘I’ve seen the way you look at me. You’re seriously willing to be seen in public with the likes of me?’

To be honest, she wasn’t. The thought that anyone might class her as a street person like him was excruciatingly embarrassing to Jan. But this man was the nearest she had to an ally in this alien world she found herself in. He knew how to get by here when she didn’t have a clue. So she lied to him. ‘I haven’t a problem with it at all.’

He knew she was being far from truthful but, if he were honest with himself, his conscience wouldn’t allow him to walk away from a vulnerable female while she was in a potentially dangerous environment. He said grudgingly, ‘It’s a free country. I can’t stop you walking where you want to.’

Jan was almost grateful the weather was as bitter as it was. The other pedestrians they encountered were far more interested in getting home to pay much attention to the filthy vagrant and the dishevelled woman they passed on the street. Regardless, when Jan saw someone approaching, she hunched her shoulders and lowered her head. They hadn’t spoken a word since they had set off. Several times she began to say something, merely to break the silence, but sensed her companion might become irritated by any female chit-chat and demand they part ways, and that was the last thing Jan wanted. She hadn’t a clue where they were heading.

The grim back streets they were travelling down were completely unknown to her. Jan hadn’t come from the most salubrious area, far from it, but hers was a far cry from here. She vehemently hoped this wasn’t where her newfound friend was planning to spend the night, in some rat-infested derelict building or such like, as she doubted the people who lived around here were any more reliable than those who inhabited the arches. She was pleased when it became clear that their surroundings were improving, leaving weed-infested cobbles and red-brick back-to-back terraces for tree-lined streets with gabled houses set back from the road behind large neat gardens. Hopefully there was somewhere around here that he knew of where they could rest. But still they continued walking.

It seemed to Jan that they had been walking for miles. She had hardly had any sleep the night before, staying in a miserable guest house on a flat lumpy mattress, trying to shut out the noises the other guests were making. The landlady had had the cheek to charge her ten shillings for her night’s lodging, all the money she’d had left in the world. Now she was struggling to put one foot in front of the other. Never before in all her life had she craved a cup of hot tea and a place to rest her aching body. She was following Glen across a crossroads when, on the opposite corner, she saw a church, light shining through its stained-glass windows. God had played a large part in the situation she found herself in now and she felt that she was finished with religion, but the church itself, a quiet place, seemed to be beckoning to her to take sanctuary.

‘Mister! Excuse me, Mister!’ she called out to Glen, who was several yards ahead of her.

It took him a few seconds to register who his companion was addressing. He hadn’t been called ‘Mister’ by anyone for such a long time now. He stopped and turned to look back at her.

‘We’ve walked for miles and I’m just about fit to drop. Could we stop and rest for a minute in that church over there?’

He glanced across at it before turning his attention back to her. There was a sharp edge to his voice when he said, ‘We’ve barely walked one mile, let alone miles. You’ll have to get used to walking long distances if you’re going to survive on the streets. I want to get where I’m heading before anyone else beats us to it.’ Then he saw the tiredness in her eyes, the weary stoop of her shoulders, and grudgingly relented. ‘All right, I suppose five minutes’ rest won’t hurt. But no more than five or I’ll be off without you. Come on.’

It could hardly be classed as warm inside the thick stone walls but at least they afforded a reprieve from the biting wind. Jan was far too grateful to be resting her aching body to notice she had sat down on a pew close beside her unsavoury-looking companion. It wasn’t until she had slipped off her shoes and lifted one leg so she could massage some life back into her foot that she noticed a gathering of people at the top of the aisle. From the way they were acting it was apparent that a wedding rehearsal was in progress. A moment or two’s observation told her that the bride-to-be would have been a very attractive young woman, had she not been scowling in frustration as she ordered everyone else about. Most of the party looked mortally fed up with her and none more so than the prospective bridegroom. The elderly vicar, a middle-aged, kindly-looking man, was doing his best to calm the situation.

Suddenly the bride-to-be seemed to sense the presence of others. She turned and looked down the aisle at Glen and Jan, resting in the top pew. On seeing the calibre of the new arrivals, her expression turned to one of absolute horror and she loudly exclaimed, ‘What are
those
people doing here?’

The vicar looked down the aisle before telling her, ‘This is a church. Everyone is welcome here.’

The soon-to-be bridegroom looked severely embarrassed and said to his fiancée, ‘They aren’t doing any harm, love. It’s bitter outside, they’re just having a warm.’

She blurted out, ‘Yes, yes, I can appreciate that, but there are other churches they can choose to shelter in. It doesn’t have to be this one, and certainly not during my wedding rehearsal.’ She eyed the vicar imploringly. ‘My parents could arrive at any minute. My father suffers from bad health, and if my mother thought for one second he was at risk of catching anything she would whip him straight back home, rehearsal or no rehearsal. My parents are all the family I’ve got and if that happened I’d have no one to give me away. Surely in the circumstances you can ban the likes of them from coming in here, just while my rehearsal is taking place tonight.’ She fixed her eyes on her fiancé. ‘Can’t we give them some money and tell them to go and have something to eat . . . a bath even, as I can smell them from here? Please, Neil, you have to get rid of them before my parents arrive.’

Despite the distance between them, Jan had heard every word the young woman said and had never felt so humiliated in all her life. She didn’t know where to hide her face. She felt a hand touch her arm, turned and saw Glen telling her with the look in his eyes that it was time for them to go. Her shoe was back on her foot and she was out of the church door and hurrying down the path back to the crossroads before he had even managed to ease himself out of the pew.

Joining her outside, Glen said matter-of-factly, ‘You’re going to have to grow yourself a thicker skin if you want to survive on the streets. That was mild compared to some of the abuse I’ve had to deal with. Wait until the drunks start spilling out of the pubs. There are always more of them towards Christmas.’ Then he turned in the direction they had been heading and continued walking.

Jan looked after him, horrified. It seemed to her nothing could be worse than what she had just endured. The thought of going through that ever again, or worse, was unthinkable. She had to get herself out of this living hell in which she found herself. But how she would manage that without any means at her disposal was as insoluble problem.

CHAPTER THREE

B
ack inside the church, Neil Graham, a tall boyish-faced nineteen year old with a short back and sides haircut and a hint of a quiff in front, was looking very pensive. His fiancée, a pretty girl of around eighteen dressed in the height of fashion, in a full red skirt with layers of netting underneath, a wide black belt around her trim waist and a short-sleeved Peter Pan-collared blouse under a pink cardigan with embroidered black flowers down the front, stood deep in conversation with the frustrated-looking vicar, intent on checking that every minute detail of the forthcoming wedding service was dealt with to her satisfaction. Neil gave a deep sigh, a grave expression settling over his face. There was something he had to do, something he should have done a long time ago . . . but each time he thought he had built up the courage, at the last minute it had failed him.

Taking a deep breath, he cupped his fiancée’s elbow and said to her, ‘I need to talk to you, Cait. Now, please.’ Suddenly remembering his manners, he said to the vicar, ‘I do apologise for the interruption.’

The clergyman looked relieved rather than offended, and indicated that there was no problem.

Tossing back her mane of long blond hair, Caitlyn Thomas responded, ‘Can’t it wait, Neil? I still have a few details I need to discuss with Reverend Harper and . . .’

He said evenly, ‘Cait, you’ve given your instructions to the Reverend on several previous occasions to my knowledge. I’m sure you don’t need to keep going over them with him. Now I do need to speak to you.’ He then asked the clergyman, ‘Is there somewhere private we can go, please?’

‘You’re quite welcome to use the Vestry,’ Reverend Harper told him. Then he took a quick glance at his watch. ‘Er . . . will this take long, Mr Graham? Only we’re already over-running and I have sick parishioners to visit yet.’

Neil assured him, ‘I’ll be as quick as I can.’

The rest of the gathering looked on perplexed as he guided a bemused Cait into the Vestry. Once inside, Neil shut the door behind them.

She stared at him expectantly for a moment. When he stared back at her, seemingly tongue-tied, her impatience got the better of her and she snapped, ‘Neil, you said what you had to say to me was urgent, so please get on with it. I have a mountain of things still to do and the wedding is only seven days away.’

He had been experiencing feelings of dread, afraid that yet again he was going to back down and not tell her what he knew he needed to, but Cait’s reminding him that their wedding was only a few days away hardened his resolve. He blurted out, ‘I can’t do this any more, Cait.’

She stared at him, utterly shocked, before smiling brightly and telling him, ‘Oh, goodness, for a moment there I thought you were telling me you didn’t want to marry me! But you mean you can’t do any more of this rehearsal tonight as you’ve arranged to meet your mates in the pub. Surely they’ll understand why you’re late, though, considering the circumstances. It’s not like it’s your stag night, is it? That’s not until next Friday. And while we’re on the subject, Neil, please make sure those mates of yours don’t let you drink too . . .’

He sharply interjected, ‘Cait! Will you for once let me finish what I want to say without assuming you know what it is?’

Her mouth snapped shut and her eyes widened in shock. Neil had never used this tone of voice to her before.

Taking advantage of the silence, he told her, ‘When I said I can’t go on with this any more you were right to think I meant with the wedding.’

Her jaw dropped and she stared at him for several seconds before she whispered, ‘You do want to call the wedding off?’

Without hesitation, he nodded. ‘Yes, I do. I’m sorry, Cait, I really am.’

She gazed at him a while longer before she gave a knowing laugh, patted him affectionately on the arm and told him, ‘Oh, sweetheart, you’re just suffering from wedding nerves, that’s all. All grooms suffer from them.’

She turned away from him and made to head for the door but he grabbed her arm. When she was facing him again, he said to her, ‘I’m not suffering from wedding nerves, Cait. I . . . I . . . well, there’s no easy way of putting this, but the truth is that I don’t want to marry you. I can’t see a happy future for me with you, Cait, it’s as simple as that.’

It was evident that this announcement had stunned her rigid. She stared open-mouthed at him again before she blustered, ‘Then why did you ask me to spend the rest of my life with you?’

He sighed heavily, raking one hand through his hair. ‘I didn’t ask you to, Cait.’

She looked stupefied. ‘Yes, you did. In the Chinese restaurant that Saturday night.’

He shook his head. ‘No, I didn’t. On the table near us a man proposed to his girlfriend, which we couldn’t help but overhear, and you said that you’d like to get married, which I took to mean one day, so I said that I would too, and have a couple of children, and you assumed from what I’d just said that I was proposing to you . . .’

Her mouth was opening and closing fish-like and she seemed dazed. ‘So . . . so why didn’t you put me right about my mistake?’

Neil was feeling mortally uncomfortable with the way this was going but knew he owed it to himself not to get cold feet now. ‘You never gave me the chance to. Next thing I knew you’d got the waiter to fetch a bottle of sparkling wine and were arranging for us to visit jewellery shops to buy an engagement ring – and you wouldn’t allow me a word in edgeways. It was like a roller-coaster after that. Everyone knew and the wedding was being planned and I didn’t know how to stop it!’

‘Well, we were in love. I didn’t see any point in waiting.’

He sighed heavily, hanging his head. He hadn’t the heart to hurt Cait further by telling her exactly how he felt about her. How claustrophobic it made him feel, the way she clung to him like a limpet whenever they were out together, as though afraid that if she let go of him he’d run off and leave her. He disliked the way she always thought she knew what he wanted better than he did; the way she strove constantly to please him, from the clothes she wore to the way she acted; how she hung on his every word. No matter how much affection he showed her, it never seemed to be enough for her and she constantly demanded more.