Last Christmas (12 page)

‘Oh God,’ said Marianne as she watched Diana Carew, bursting with self-importance, march down the aisle of the church to the altar to where her reception class were perched precariously, clutching their Easter bonnets, ready to burst into ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ when the vicar gave the nod. ‘I didn’t realise Diana ran the Easter Bonnet Parade too.’

Pippa, who had helped walk the children up from the school, grimaced. ‘Hadn’t you worked out by now that Diana runs
everything
in Hope Christmas? Without her the place would fall apart. Don’t worry, she doesn’t get her hands on this service the way she does the Nativity. You won’t be seeing any elves and mice today.’

Marianne stifled a giggle. The memory of last year’s Nativity in all its awfulness was still imprinted on her brain.

‘Are you sure she doesn’t want one of the children to dress up as the Easter Bunny?’ grinned Marianne.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ warned Pippa. ‘I swear she’s telepathic. She’ll probably suggest it at the next Parish Council.’

But it turned out that Diana wasn’t interested in talking about the Easter service that the Hope Christmas primary school always put on in the last week of the Easter term.

‘Ah, Marianne, Philippa, I’m glad to get you two together,
I just wanted to check that you were still all right for the Post Office trip next Wednesday? You weren’t at the last meeting so I wanted to make sure.’

Marianne and Pippa both muttered excuses. Diana was incredibly good at wrong-footing people but, ignoring their discomfort, she went on, ‘We’re going to picket the main sorting office in London and then go on to Downing Street. Dear Ralph Nicholas has found us a TV journalist who’s going to film the whole thing. It should be terribly jolly. I do hope we’ll be seeing you both?’

‘School finishes on Tuesday,’ said Marianne, ‘so I should be able to get there. I’m going down south to visit my parents anyway.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ said Pippa. ‘It just depends on the children.’

‘Oh, bring them too,’ said Diana. ‘The more the merrier. Besides, children are
such
good PR!’

She bustled off in a self-important manner to accost Miss Woods, who had hobbled her way down the church aisle and was grumpily looking for a seat, leaving Marianne and Pippa in fits of giggles, which they had to repress quickly as the reception class was getting restive.

Marianne calmed them down and went through once more with the two eldest members of the class what they were going to say, while reassuring the youngest member, who was having the collywobbles. She turned to face the front as the organ started to play and the vicar came forward to welcome the congregation, mainly made up of parents, grandparents and siblings.

She caught sight of Gabriel, who slipped in from the back and squashed his way onto the end of a pew. She smiled and he gave her a small nod of recognition, which filled her with an immediate warmth. She hadn’t seen him since the day they’d delivered the lamb together, but she
was pleased to see him now. Seeing him in action on the hilltop had given her an increased respect for him. She was glad that they were becoming friends. In fact, for a moment on the hillside, when he’d hugged her after the lamb was born, she’d experienced a slight fluttering feeling as if their friendship could develop into something else. But she hadn’t heard from him since, so maybe she’d been imagining things…

‘Hi, Mum, I was just checking you’re still all right for Friday.’ Cat was in the kitchen leaning against a worktop and idly flicking through the calendar. Noel had been invited to a charity do at a posh hotel in London through work. He hadn’t been all that keen to go, but Cat, whose life of late seemed to alternate between working and picking up children from school, was determined she wasn’t going to miss out on the one chance she’d had in ages to wear a glamorous frock.

‘Friday?’ her mother sounded a little put out. ‘What’s happening on Friday?’

‘You’re babysitting for us,’ Cat said. ‘Remember? Noel and I are going to a charity ball.’

‘You are?’her mother sounded quite dumbfounded.‘Well, I’m sorry, darling, but I won’t be able to babysit on Friday. You know it’s my bridge evening.’

‘I thought that was next week,’ said Cat in exasperation.

‘No, it’s this week,’ said Mum firmly. ‘I know I told you.’

‘Like you knew you had to pick the kids up,’ muttered Cat crossly.

‘Did you say something?’

‘Nothing important,’ Cat lied, feeling immediately guilty. Cat was aware they relied on her mother to a huge degree. She couldn’t help it if she’d double-booked. Maybe it was Cat who’d got the day muddled up. She had so many balls to
juggle, what with work, the kids’ activities and Noel’s increasingly frequent business trips to deal with the eco town in Shropshire, it was no wonder she dropped one occasionally.

‘Well, I’m sorry I can’t help, dear,’ continued her mother. ‘I could do next Friday though.’

‘It’s all right, Mum, I expect I can get Magda to babysit,’ said Cat, trying to repress the irritated thought that there was no bloody use her mum babysitting next Friday when the ball was this week.

At that point Magda came in, sulkily bearing a pile of washing. She made a great show of pushing past Cat as she went to load the washing machine. As always when Cat was working at home she felt like a stranger in her own house. Magda had the knack of making it seem like she, Cat, was the intruder, and a martyred air that said,
If you can find time to talk on the phone, surely you can find time to pick the children up.
She’d been keeping up the sulks ever since Cat and Noel had dictated that under no circumstances was Sergei to move in with them.

Cat put the phone down and offered Magda a placatory cup of coffee. Maybe that, and the offer of some extra cash in hand, would be enough to persuade her to babysit on Friday. Maybe.

Gabriel squeezed into his pew with a sigh of relief. He’d just made it in time. The ewe he’d been lambing had conveniently delivered ten minutes before he was due to leave, and Sam, a local farmer, had offered to keep an eye on mother and baby while Gabriel went to Stephen’s Easter service. Stephen’s class were deemed too old for Easter bonnets, which was just as well as he’d reacted in horror when teased about it, but he’d been asked to sing a solo after the sermon so Gabriel, who felt ambivalent about going to church at the best of times, had felt duty-bound to turn up.

The service commenced and proved to be Hope Christmas’ usual mix of the homely (the reception class duly made everyone go ‘aah’ when they got up and recited a prayer of their own—Gabriel grinned and gave Marianne the thumbs up when they sat down), the bizarre (Diana Carew bounding in as though she had allegedly nothing to do with proceedings and exhorting everyone to join with her in prayers for the mission in Africa where her sister was currently working—the vicar looked slightly startled, but covered it up admirably), and the dull. The vicar couldn’t help having a monotone, Gabriel supposed, but it was damn hard keeping awake when you’d been up all night lambing. And he couldn’t help suppressing the odd yawn as Richard (he never wanted you to call him anything else) earnestly exhorted him not to forget the importance of the Paschal season and the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. Gabriel smiled wryly to himself—everything seemed to be about lambs at the moment.

Gabriel was counting down the minutes till Stephen’s party piece. He’d been surprised when Miss Peterson had sent a note home to say that Stephen had a solo, having had no idea that his son was even vaguely musical, but one of the very nice, if occasionally misguided things about the village school, was their belief that every child had a talent that should be encouraged. Having witnessed the humiliation of footballers with two left feet, and actors who could barely deliver a line, Gabriel wasn’t always sure of the wisdom of this approach. He just hoped Stephen wasn’t going to get too upset. He’d been in bits on Mother’s Day and refused to do a reading in assembly.

Gabriel suddenly jerked awake, hoping no one had noticed him dozing off in the dying moments of Richard’s sermon, and realised that his son had made his way to the microphone at the front of the church. He swallowed nervously, but smiled encouragingly at Stephen, who
stared past him in steely determination as if he couldn’t focus on anything but the back of the church. Stephen stood with his hands in his pockets looking as if he were about to do anything but sing. Gabriel longed to tell him not to slouch. He hoped this wasn’t going to be too dreadful. Marianne, meanwhile, had moved to the piano by the side of the altar and played a single note.

Stephen took his hands out of his pockets, pulled himself straight, and launched into a hymn that Gabriel half remembered from childhood.

‘Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain,’ Stephen sang. Gabriel was aware his jaw had dropped to the floor. His son had the voice of an angel. How was it that he had never known? The purity of the notes he was hitting was astonishing. Gabriel listened with a lump in his throat, as his son sang poignantly of the wheat that lay in the dark earth and the love that springeth green. The courage of his boy. The joy of him. How could Eve have walked away from that? The hymn was religious, Gabriel knew, but all it reminded him of was the death of his marriage, and the pain his wife had caused them. Tears prickled his eyes as the hymn came to an end.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,

Thy touch can call us back to life again;

Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:

Love is come again, like wheat that springeth green.

Stephen sang with a pathos to break the hardest of hearts. There was absolute silence when he’d finished. Gabriel smiled at his son through his tears. He watched Marianne putting her arm around Stephen and giving him a hug as she walked him back to his seat. Maybe hope and love could after all come again.

Noel stood gloomily at the bar, wishing he were anywhere but here. At least Cat was with him at a work do for once. The only reason he’d come at all was because it had been made patently clear to him that everyone who was anyone at GRB was expected to go to the charity ball to raise money for eco towns in The Gambia. (‘It’s a global village,’ had become Gerry Cowley’s mantra recently.) Noel suspected it was because if they didn’t go en masse, the very lucrative contract that House the World were offering might get snapped up by one of their rivals.

Since his trip to Shropshire, Noel had been expecting to be given his marching orders but, while no one had paid any attention to his suggestion that the site of the eco town was completely wrong, neither had anyone given him a hard time about it. Noel was half convinced that Matt was keeping Noel’s feelings about the project under wraps so Noel could do the donkey work on the calculations. It was becoming rapidly clear to Noel that Matt was a shit engineer who flew close to the wind at every available opportunity. But presumably even he had to get the calculations right, so now Noel was feeling even more disempowered as he realised that he had simply become Matt’s whipping boy. Was there no end to this downward spiral of humiliation?

Apparently not. As he approached their table with the drinks, he was mortified to see that Matt was cosying up to Cat, who seemed to be lapping up his every word. Noel sat down moodily and sipped his pint. Cat barely seemed to notice his return, though she quickly tucked into the wine he’d bought her.

‘Hi, darling,’ she said. ‘Have you heard this outrageous joke Matt’s just told me?’

‘No,’ muttered Noel ungraciously, but Cat barely seemed to notice, leaning forward to laugh at the next thing Matt said, and drinking far more quickly than she normally did.

‘Do you have to drink quite so much?’ he hissed in her ear, as she stumbled up to go to the loo.

‘Don’t be such a killjoy,’ said Cat. ‘Come on, after the next course they’ve promised dancing. We haven’t been out together in ages, let’s have some fun.’

But Noel wasn’t in the mood for fun. He hated these charity dos. The endless phoniness of people outdoing each other in their outrageous bids for bits of celebrity tat, the excessive amount of money spent on food and booze, when, particularly in this case, half the money spent on the event could probably build an eco town in The Gambia. Maybe it was time he moved on. Did something else. Got away from all these people he was beginning to hate. Yes, but then what?

‘Come on, big boy.’ Julie was standing before him, looking resplendent in a far too tight little black number. Little being the operative word. ‘You owe me a dance from the Christmas do.’

‘I do?’ Noel glanced over to where Cat and Matt were still in full flow. She barely seemed to know he was there. Well, two could play at that game.

‘Sure do,’ said Julie, and dragged him on the dance floor, where she proceeded to throw both of them around wildly. Next thing he knew, Cat was next to him with Matt.

‘What are you playing at?’ she snapped at him. ‘You look ridiculous. She’s young enough to be your daughter.’

‘No more ridiculous than you with your toyboy,’ Noel spat back.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Cat sighed. ‘It may have escaped your notice but Matt has just disappeared into a corner with one of your secretaries.’

Noel looked over to where Cat was pointing and saw Matt all over a buxom girl from Accounts. He felt wrong-footed but wasn’t going to admit it.

Meanwhile, Julie seemed to have sensed she wasn’t welcome and had disappeared, leaving Cat and Noel glaring at each other. Bryan Ferry was just admonishing them to stick together, when Cat said, ‘I’ve had enough of this. You’ve been like a bear with a sore head all evening. I want to go home.’

‘Good,’ said Noel. ‘I’ll call us a taxi.’

Ten minutes later they were speeding home, neither of them speaking, the atmosphere feeling as poisonous as Noel could ever remember. Why had he ruined a perfectly good evening? He and Cat hadn’t been out together for ages. They’d spent a fortune and had a rotten time.

They arrived home in silence and were shocked by the sound of music playing at top volume from their lounge.