The Christmas Angel (12 page)

‘Oh? Why? I haven’t seen him, as far as I know, but why should Jack suspect him?’

‘You know these people. They can smell fraud or inconsistency from miles away. They’re not deceived by name-dropping, and Jack says he doesn’t behave like an historian. He’s met a few of those in his time and he says there’s something wrong. Mr Caine doesn’t ring true. I thought I’d mention it in case he turns up here.’

She laughs. ‘Well, we have nothing here at Chi-Muir that a con man could want. But thanks for the warning.’

There are children on the beach, and two dogs. Janna watches them chasing a ball across the sand and then turns away, beginning to climb the cliff path from the village. Thrift is flowering in the shelter of the dry-stone wall that skirts the great cliff-top fields and she bends to touch the pink fuzzy-headed blooms: on the way home she will pick some to put into her little silver vase. Crouching lower she sees that there are hundreds of snails, piled together. Yellow and grey and striped, they cling like limpets to the rough, pitted granite.

Out on the cliff she braces herself against the strong, warm westerly, laughing with the sheer joy of it, looking away to Trevose Head, washed in brilliant golden sunshine and dazzling white sea-spray. Gulls tilt and balance on the wind, falling and rising beyond the cliff-edge, screaming in disharmony. She walks quickly, the sun in her eyes, her arms wrapped about herself as if to resist the plucking and pulling of the wind. Her heart is light, her spirits high. She has survived her first real ordeal at Chi-Meur, and now she is free to come out into these great wild spaces and be answerable to nobody.

Suddenly she longs to be travelling again; sitting up high, watching the countryside drifting by and not knowing where the journey might end. And yet she loves it at Chi-Meur with her little family: Mother, Father, Sisters, and Clem and Jakey. She loves her little caravan – her own cosy private space – yet there are memories tugging and pulling at her heart; a voice whispering restlessly in her ears: something to do with freedom, new horizons, change.

She guesses now that this is how her father felt: the sizzle of excitement in the blood at the prospect of independence and adventure, battling with the twist of terror in his gut when he realized that he had all the responsibility of fatherhood pressing in on him. On days like these she is able to forgive him – or, at the very least, understand him. This is better than resentment, and it takes the sting out of the knowledge that he didn’t want her.

‘After all,’ Father Pascal pointed out, ‘he didn’t know you. The idea of an unborn baby is very different from the real person. He didn’t give himself time to know you. That’s his loss.’

The turf is soft and springy. She leans into the wind breathlessly, hurrying forward, whilst the sea surges and booms through empty caverns far beneath her feet and tugs and roars at the steep cliff-face so that the sound of its clamour is all around her. As she approaches Roundhole Point she sinks down into the shelter of the stone archway near the gateway to Porthmissen. It is here, when Clem and Jakey are with her, that they stop for their picnic. Jakey likes to climb on the stones and squeeze through the arch but, all the while, he’ll be waiting for the moment when they’ll walk together to the edge of the blowhole and, Clem and Janna holding his hands, he can lean forward and peer down into
that
great space; looking right through the cliff to the black rocks far, far below where the tide surges hungrily through a low archway in the cliff, licking the steep sides, and the spray is flung high into the air. She loves to feel the clutch of his hand as he leans perilously forward; his whole trust in her and Clem as he stares into the echoing abyss with wide, serious eyes.

She sits in the sunshine with her back to the rock, sheltered from the wind, and brings out her own small picnic: some nuts and raisins and a piece of chocolate. Clem carries a small rucksack with juice and a sandwich for Jakey and a flask of hot coffee to share with her, and perhaps some delicious treat that Dossie has made. Their picnics are celebrations.

Looking north to Gunver Head, watching the gulls soaring and diving, she thinks: How easy it would be if only I could fall in love with Clem.

She does love him; but she loves him as she loves Nat: as a sister might love an elder brother, yet with none of the sibling rivalries and jealousies. Her love for Clem is uncomplicated and precious. Like Nat, whose preoccupation was with his sexuality, so Clem’s thoughts are fixed on his vocation: whether he should train for ordination and whether his belief in his vocation is a true one. Her love for Clem, and for Jakey, carries no weighty responsibilities: they have Dossie and Mo and Pa – and Father Pascal and the Sisters.

Janna finishes her chocolate, licking her fingers, thinking about them all. The Sisters, however, are rather different from Clem and Jakey. Without Penny, their dependence now rests upon her. Tough and self-contained though they are, yet they need her. Or, she argues with herself, they need someone. It need not necessarily be her. Yet she loves them too, and it will not be easy to walk away when the time comes.

She stands up and at once the wind buffets her and beats upon her as she moves beyond the shelter of the rocks. For a moment she stares longingly westwards towards Mother Ivey’s Bay and Trevose Head, but knows that she should go back. She turns, and immediately the wind ceases to be a force to fight against and instead it lifts and hurries her along so that she leans back against it and allows it to carry her across the cliffs to Chi-Meur.

Mr Caine watches her pass and then moves out of the shelter of the rock. He takes out his phone, presses keys.

‘Yeah, it’s me,’ he says. ‘Look. Problems. We should’ve set up a website before I started on this writing-a-book stuff. Some clever little worzel’s only gone and checked me out, hasn’t he? “Can’t find you on Google,” he says, all cocky like, with his mates all staring at me, jostling and barging all round me. Scary. I tell you, it’s seriously weird here. Anyway, I bluffed him. Told him I wrote under another name. “Don’t tell me,” he says. “You’re J. K. Rowling in disguise,” and they all yell with laughter. I pretended to laugh, too, and got out quick. But it’s gotta be sorted straight away … No, I know we thought it might be all over by now but it isn’t, is it? Let me know when you’ve got something up and running.’

He put his phone back in his pocket, stares out to sea. He’s beginning to get a bad feeling about this one.

‘He’s right, of course,’ Pa says gloomily. ‘We need to bring our wills up to date, but I’m damned if I’ll have Adam telling me how to do it.’

They walk slowly in the lane, the dogs running ahead with Jakey, who zigzags back and forth on his bicycle. Mo waves encouragingly to Jakey, who stops to look back at them.

‘I know it’s very wrong of me,’ she says, ‘but I simply cannot bear the thought of all our hard work being used in the end to support Natasha and those girls. And it
was
our hard work that kept The Court going. Without your pension and all the B and B-ers we’d have had to sell up years ago. And we could have done that, and lived very comfortably on the proceeds.’

‘But we chose to do it,’ he points out fairly. ‘Nobody asked us to.’

He pauses to stare through a gateway, and Mo waits with him. She knows that these little halts along the way are simply an excuse to catch his breath and steady himself, but he would hate to admit it. Jakey comes cycling back.

‘There was a labbit,’ he calls excitedly, ‘and Wolfie chased it and it went down a hole.’

‘Good for the rabbit,’ answers Mo. ‘See if you can spot another one.’

He waves and pedals away, talking furiously to himself and to the dogs.

‘Labbit!’ says Pa. ‘Should he still be having difficulty with his speech?’

‘He’s not five yet,’ Mo answers defensively. ‘And it’s only with the “R”s and only then usually when they’re at the beginning of a word, though there are a few words he can’t quite manage, like “surprise” where the second “r” is quite strongly stressed. We’ve noticed that with some words. When he says “Stripey Bunny”, for instance, he hardly pronounces the “r” at all. It’s quite odd. We don’t want him to get a hang-up about it but we’re working on it.’

‘He’s a good little chap,’ says Pa. ‘Bright as a button, and very good manners. Clem’s done well with him.’

‘He
has
done well,’ agrees Mo warmly; always ready to
respond
to any praise of her beloved grandson. ‘And that’s the whole thing, Pa. Why should Natasha and those girls just waltz in and claim half of everything? Clem’s got very little and he works so hard, not to mention how much Dossie does for us. I know we gave her and Clem a home, and Dossie’s never had to find a place to live—’

‘As Adam was so ready to point out to us,’ mutters Pa.

‘I know.’ Mo walks for a while in silence. ‘How horrid it is,’ she says at last. ‘I love Adam – of course I do – but …’

‘But he’s our son,’ says Pa. ‘And we have to be fair. Look, if I die everything comes to you, and if you die everything comes to me. That bit’s easy. But if we pop off together …’

She takes his arm and they pause again to watch a pair of bullfinches flitting in and out of the hedge: the flash of a carmine breast and the flirt of a white and black barred tail.

‘Bet they’ve got a nest here somewhere,’ he murmurs, and then Jakey is back again.

‘Is it time for our picnic, Mo?’ he asks hopefully.

‘Picnic?’ repeats Pa. ‘We’ve only been out five minutes. What’s all this about picnics?’

Jakey watches him, eyes bright: ‘You’ve got it in your pocket,’ he says, jigging up and down on his saddle. ‘I saw you put it in.’

‘What?’ Pa pats his jacket, frowning, shaking his head. ‘No, nothing there.’

Jakey drops his bicycle and flings himself at Pa, reaching inside his coat to the big poacher’s pocket and wrestling out the bag.

‘Good grief!’ says Pa, amazed. ‘Look at that. Whatever can it be?’

‘It’s the picnic,’ shouts Jakey jubilantly. ‘Is there chocolate, Mo?’

‘There’s a biscuit,’ Mo says, opening the bag. ‘It might even be a chocolate biscuit. Here come the dogs. Now they’ll want something too.’

They gather in a field gateway. Jakey perches on the top rung of the gate, while the dogs munch the biscuits that Pa always keeps in his pockets for them. Mo passes Pa a Kit-Kat.

‘We could divide it into parts,’ murmurs Pa, unwrapping it. ‘No, not the biscuit. The estate. So many parts for Dossie, so many for Clem and Jakey, and so on. Doesn’t have to be straight down the middle, does it? It could be split into four parts, if it came to that.’

‘Oh!’ She looks at him. ‘Yes, I see. That’s a good idea, Pa.’

He is staring over the field and he smiles suddenly, his face filled with joy. ‘Look!’ he says. ‘See it?’

She turns and stares in the direction of his upraised arm. Skimming the new green shoots, swooping low over the field, there is no mistaking those long tail streamers, the gleaming bluish black feathers and pale breast. It is the first swallow of the summer.

Dossie is in Wadebridge. She’s already finished her shopping and now she sits in the café, her mobile on the table beside her, waiting. She is allowing Rupert to be proactive, restraining herself from being pushy or keen, but she keeps her mobile close to hand these days: he is very good at sending quick, friendly texts.

This morning he texts that he’s just been to Bodmin to collect some supplies – is she anywhere around, by any chance?

In Wadebridge
, she texts.
Shopping. Having coffee in Relish in Foundry Square later
.

C u in 20 mins
, he answers – and so here she is: waiting. Of course, she wasn’t going to have coffee at all – she was thinking about getting back home to Mo and Pa and Jakey – but the opportunity is too good to miss. She’s put the shopping bags into the car and then dashed round to Relish, and into the loo to tidy up a bit. And now she sits with her latte, pretending that this was what she meant to do all the time. And it is good, actually, to sit for a minute quite alone. The weekend was stressful: Natasha was friendly enough but the girls behaved as if they were there on sufferance so that there was a certain tension, and Jakey’s exuberant presence wasn’t helpful. Adam implied, privately, that Mo and Pa were too old to be looking after their great-grandson and she was rather sharp with him.

‘I’m here most of the time,’ she said. ‘Or he comes with me. And he’s nearly five. He’s not a baby.’

‘It occurs to me,’ he said, very smooth, very barbed, ‘that Clem should never have taken a job that puts so much pressure on Mo and Pa. At his age he should be self-sufficient.’

She stared at him. ‘Now I wonder why you’ve never mentioned that before,’ she said lightly. ‘Can someone else have put the thought into your mind, I wonder?’

He flushed angrily. He blushed easily and as a boy it had always embarrassed him and made him cross. Later he realized that it could be used to good purpose. The fair fine skin flooded with bright blood; the light, rather frosty blue eyes: the whole effect was rather frightening. Dossie was not frightened, however. She continued to watch him.

‘It’s not a new idea,’ he said. ‘You know my feelings perfectly well. Things are becoming too much for them.’

‘Pa and Mo love having Jakey, just as they loved having Clem. After all, they’re only going to have the one grandson
and
great-grandson, aren’t they? At least, that was the impression Natasha gave me.’

‘Are you thinking,’ he asked softly, ‘that you can go on living in The Court even after Mo and Pa die? Do you think that you can keep it as a home for Clem and Jakey, perhaps? Is that your plan? It won’t work, Dossie. Not unless you can afford to buy me out. Can you? After all, you’ve never had to pay your own rent or your own mortgage, have you? You’ve just coasted along, using Mo and Pa as a support team, and that’s what you want for Clem, isn’t it?’

Jakey and the dogs came in then, and Adam turned away and went out of the room.

Now, Dossie glances at her mobile and then puts it away in her bag, and when she looks up Rupert is there. Her heart does some odd little jumps but she smiles quite casually and she doesn’t speak until he’s ordered coffee.