The Christmas Angel (2 page)

Once again she waited: she would not question him or ask how he’d manage with Jakey while he was working.

‘I’ll have to find out about childcare,’ he was saying. ‘It’ll be easier when he starts school, of course, but there should be a nursery in Padstow. And you’re not far away.’

‘Half an hour at the most, I should say. We can all help till you’re settled.’

‘OK.’ He sounded excited; hopeful. ‘If they give me an interview we could stay at The Court for a few days. That’d be OK, wouldn’t it?’

She laughed then. ‘Of course it would. Let me know what happens.’

‘“Ch’Muir?”’ Clem repeated thoughtfully. ‘Is that how you pronounce it?’

‘More or less,’ she replied. ‘It’s Cornish for “the big house”. Something like that.’

‘Sounds good. There was suddenly a wistful longing in his voice.

Dossie saw in her mind’s eye his tall, lean form; the silvery-gilt blond hair, the same colour as her own, cropped close to his head. She remembered how happy he’d been in the discovery of his vocation, in the love of his pretty French wife and the prospect of their baby, and her heart ached for him. No point in asking if he found his present work empty; she knew the answer.

‘If it’s right then it will happen,’ she said, suddenly cheerful; some sixth sense prompting her to confidence.

And it had happened. The Sisters of Christ the King at Chi-Meur Convent and their chaplain and warden, Father Pascal, had taken Clem and Jakey to their hearts and Clem was offered the post and the sturdy little lodge house with it.

Now, as Dossie turns into the lane towards Peneglos, her heart is glad with gratitude. Clem is healing, and Jakey is growing – and they are happy. She passes in through the convent gates and there is the Lodge, light streaming out across the drive, and Jakey at the window, waiting for her.

‘I was wondering,’ says Clem, watching as Dossie puts the remains of the cake back into its Raymond Briggs Father Christmas tin, ‘whether to leave the decorations until he’s gone to bed. You know? Do them when he’s asleep.’

They had tea in the big, square, cheerful kitchen and now Jakey is next door in the sitting-room watching a DVD:
Shaun the Sheep
. With Stripey Bunny curled under his arm he is engrossed by the flock of amiable sheep and the antics of the idiotic sheepdog.

‘No, no.’ Dossie is very firm. ‘He’ll enjoy it in an odd kind of way. It’s important, isn’t it, to learn to finish things as well as to begin them? It’d be a terrible anticlimax for him to wake up to find it all packed away. It’s like grieving. It has its own pace and its own rituals. He was too little last year to do much but this year he can be helpful. He’ll like that.’ She glances at Clem. ‘Am I being bossy, darling? You must do what you think is best.’

‘I expect you’re right.’

He turns away and stands for a moment, leaning against the sink, staring out into the darkness. The convent lights shine out between the bare branches of the trees but Dossie knows that he is thinking of Madeleine; of how Jakey’s
mother
might have dealt with the situation. She reflects that there isn’t much that Clem doesn’t know about grieving.

‘He can pack up Auntie Gabriel,’ Dossie says cheerfully, hiding her own anguish. ‘He loves Auntie Gabriel. And the Holy Family. He can be responsible for them. And afterwards he can have his present and we’ll play with the trains before he has his bath. What d’you think?’

Clem turns back and smiles at her. His smile frightens her; there is an empty quality about it, a determined stoicism. She wants to put her arms round him but she knows that her desire to comfort will merely be a burden to him; he’d be obliged to bury his pain more deeply in order not to worry her.

Jakey comes into the kitchen with Stripey Bunny still under his arm.

‘
Shaun
’s finished,’ he says. ‘Are we going to take the decolations down now?’

He is still slightly reluctant to abandon his air of sadness, which has so far earned him a big slice of cake and the present to come, and Dossie watches him, amused. Showing great restraint, he hasn’t asked about his Twelfth Night present but clearly he guesses that it is contingent upon the decorations being packed away and is now quite ready for this next step. She raises her eyebrows at Clem, who nods.

‘Could you deal with Auntie Gabriel? And the Holy Family? The tree takes a bit of time so it would be a great help if you could manage them.’

Jakey’s eyes open wide with importance; he grows visibly. He nods. ‘But I can’t leach Auntie Gabriel unless I stand on a chair.’

‘I’ll come and help,’ says Dossie. ‘I’ll do the tree and then Daddy can take it out.’

They go together into the sitting-room and she opens the heavy bottom drawer of the merchant’s chest. Out come the empty boxes and bags and she puts them on the sofa. Jakey seizes the linen shoebag and studies the name-tape with its red stitched letters: C PARDOE. He knows that the letters spell Daddy’s name and his own name, and that the shoebag belonged to Daddy when he was little and at school. He opens the neck of the bag as wide as he can and carries it over to the low table beside the tree.

Which to take first? He puts the cow in, and then the donkey, laying them right down into the bottom of the bag, and then peeps in at them to see if they are all right. They look quite happy, resting in the slightly musty interior. Next come the kneeling shepherd, arms stretched wide, and the Wise Men: one, two, three. Once again he peers into the bag where they all loll together.

‘They’re having a lest,’ he tells Dossie. ‘They like it.’

‘Of course they do. They’ve been standing or kneeling there for twelve days. You’d need a rest if you’d stood up for twelve days.’

Jakey reaches for the second shepherd and Joseph, feeling happier. Joseph settles comfortably at the bottom of the bag, and he puts Mary beside him. The angel Gabriel, staring loftily at nothing, wings unfurled, halo broken, goes in next and, last of all, the little crib and the Holy Child. He puts the manger in but continues to hold the sleeping baby.

‘Baby Jesus doesn’t need a lest,’ he says, almost to himself. ‘He’s been lesting all the time.’

‘But he wants to be with his family,’ answers Dossie. ‘He’d miss them otherwise.’

Briefly he wonders whether to make a little fuss, to argue,
but
then he thinks about the present to come and decides not to. ‘OK,’ he says cheerfully.

He puts the Holy Child into the shoebag, takes one last look at them all, and with some difficulty pulls the drawstring tight.

‘Well done,’ says Dossie. ‘We’ll put the stable in the drawer separately. Now can you pack up Auntie Gabriel?’

She takes the large bulky figure from the bookcase and props her against the cushions on the sofa beside the soft wrappings. Jakey studies her regretfully: he’ll miss her smile and the comforting feeling that she is watching over him. A memory of a dream he’s had several times flickers in his mind: the still, silent figure, wrapped in pale shawls, standing amongst the trees across the drive from the Lodge, watching. Jakey can’t remember now whether he’s actually climbed out of bed and seen the figure from his window, or merely dreamed it. He fingers the heavy blocks on Auntie Gabriel’s feet and the soft padded wings, and touches the red satin heart, which she holds between her pudgy hands.

‘Don’t forget to take her crown off,’ says Dossie, ‘and wrap it separately. Poor old Auntie Gabriel. Now she
really
needs a rest. She’ll be all ready, then, to come out again next Christmas.’

Reverently, Jakey takes the gold wire crown from the thick string hair; he bends forward so that his mouth is close to the silk thread of a smile.

‘See you next Chlistmas,’ he whispers. ‘Have a good lest.’

He lays her on the soft piece of material and wraps her in it as if it were a shawl. He doesn’t want to cover her face so that she can’t breathe. He puts her very carefully into the big carrier bag and then wraps some tissue paper round
the
crown and puts it in after her. All at once the sadness overcomes him again: he hates to see Auntie Gabriel hidden in a bag as if she were some ordinary old shopping. Before he can speak, however, Dossie is talking to him.

‘Could you help me, darling?’ she says. ‘I’ve been so silly. I’ve taken these things down and I can’t find the box they go in. Is it there on the sofa? Oh, yes. That’s the one. Come and see these little figures, Jakey. Daddy loved these when he was your age.’

And he goes to look at the little carved wooden figures – a drummer boy, a snowman and a small boy with a lantern – and helps Dossie to put them into their little green box; she shows him the fragile glass baubles, an owl, and a clock and a bell, and the moment passes.

That night he has the dream again of the figure, wrapped in pale clothing, standing amongst the trees, watching. But he isn’t afraid: he knows now that it is Auntie Gabriel.

The drive passes in front of the house, with its stone-mullioned windows and stout oaken door, and curves round to the open-fronted stables, which are used as a garage, and to the Coach House. This has been converted to a guesthouse for those small groups of retreatants who prefer to cater for themselves, rather than stay in the house and eat in the guests’ dining-room, and who like to walk the coastal footpath and visit Padstow, as well as attending some of the Daily Offices in the chapel. It’s an attractive building looking north-west across the Atlantic coast to the sea and south-east towards the orchard where the caravan stands amongst the apple trees.

Once the caravan was a hermit nun’s refuge: now it is Janna’s home. She comes down the steps, tying a bright
silk
scarf over her lion’s-mane hair, bracing herself against the cold air. Inside, with the low winter sun streaming in through the caravan’s windows, it’s cosily warm; the dazzling light shining on her few precious belongings, glinting on the little silver vase that Clem and Jakey gave her for Christmas. She’s found some pale, green-veined snowdrops under the trees to put into it and she looks at the fragile blooms with pleasure when she sits at the small table each morning to eat her breakfast.

The vase is real silver, and she was both shocked and gratified by this expensive token of their affection for her. She opened the present carefully, aware of Jakey’s excitement and Clem’s faint anxiety. Her delight pleased them both and they exchanged a man-to-man look of relief, which amused her.

‘I love it,’ she said. ‘’Tis really beautiful,’ and she stood it on the table, tracing the swirling chasings with a finger, and then hugged Jakey. She didn’t hug Clem: Clem isn’t the sort of person you could hug just casually; not like his mum, Dossie, or like Sister Emily, for instance. Clem is very tall, for one thing, and very lean, and there is an austerity about him – Dossie said that once, used that word: ‘Old Clem’s a touch austere, isn’t he?’ – which is rather like Father Pascal. She loves Father Pascal because he never questions her or judges her, and so, after a while, she’s told him things: things like her dad disappearing before she was born and her mum being barely more than a child herself. About being on the road, and then, later, being fostered because her mum drank too much and how she’d kept running away from her foster homes trying to find her mum.

‘We missed the travelling,’ she told him. ‘Always being on the move. Going places. She couldn’t bear it at the end when
she
was in a wheelchair. I’m the same. “Trains and Boats and Planes …”’ She hummed the tune. ‘Don’t know why.’

‘We’re all pilgrims,’ Father Pascal said thoughtfully. ‘One way and another, aren’t we? Always searching for something.’

Janna finishes tying the scarf at the nape of her neck and pauses to do homage to the large pot of winter pansies that stands beside the steps: creamy white and gold and purple, they turn their pretty silken faces to the wintry sunshine. She shivers, wrapping her warm woollen jacket more closely round her. Dossie gave her the jacket. It is almost knee length, soft damson-coloured wool, and elegant, but oh! so warm. This time, when she opened her present, she was unable to hide her emotion, and she and Dossie hugged each other, and Dossie’s eyes shone too, with tears. It was what she calls ‘having a moment’; but Dossie has many such moments: having chocolate cake with your coffee might be having a moment: or dashing into Padstow for an hour in the sunshine and then eating fish and chips by the sea wall: ‘I think we need a moment, darling.’ She celebrates life with these moments and Janna accepts them with joy: she understands this. She, too, has a passion for picnics, for impromptu meals and sudden journeys.

Her Christmas gifts to them were much more simple: a
Thomas the Tank Engine
colouring book for Jakey; two spotted handkerchiefs for Clem; a piece of pretty china from the market for Dossie. Janna’s work is not highly paid, though her caravan is rent-free, but she eats well in the convent kitchen and counts herself lucky: much better than working the pubs in the summer season and taking anything she can find during the winter months. She heard about this job when she was working down in Padstow at the end of the season and she wandered up from Trevone
one
windy afternoon, leaving the surfers she was hanging out with down on the beach, walking over the cliffs in the late September sunshine. She came by the cliff path with the gulls screaming above the ebbing tide and the wind at her back.

‘Blown in on a westerly,’ Sister Emily says, beaming, ‘and what a wonderful day for us it was.’

It’s odd, thinks Janna, how quickly she felt at home. Even as she walked between the two great granite pillars, passing the little lodge house and wandering along the drive, she was aware of a sense of homecoming. The granite manor, set amongst its fields, looking away to the west, with its gardens and orchard surrounding it, was so beautiful, so peaceful. Yet even with the warm welcome she had, and that strange sense of belonging, nevertheless she chose the caravan in the orchard rather than the comfortable bed-sitting-room in the house that they offered her. The caravan is separate; it offers privacy and independence.

‘It reminds me of when I was a kid,’ she told the kindly Sisters, eager to welcome her and to make her feel at home, ‘when we were on the road.’