The Christmas Angel (24 page)

She wonders how they will manage once Chi-Meur has become a retreat house; whether it will make a great deal of difference. Jakey will continue to spend most of his holidays with her and with Pa and Mo and, in between, he will grow used to the changes.

‘It won’t be very different,’ Clem said. ‘Some retreat houses
are
run by young couples with families and the guests enjoy having children around. Of course, there will be certain rules but Jakey’s already used to that. We shall stay in the Lodge so we’ve got the garden for him to run around in and, between us all, we shall make certain that he’s looked after. I shall start training this autumn but I shall do most of the course work at home, though I shall have to go away for a few weekends. Father Pascal will still be the chaplain here until after I’ve been ordained, and we’re hoping that I can do my curacy here in the parish but I shall be heavily involved with it all, of course.’

He was so excited that she didn’t raise any negatives; Jakey is happy to be at The Court and now, with her new plan for B and B-ing, she will soon be able to be there for him whenever necessary. And she will have more time to spend with Rupert. She thinks about Rupert and is energized and excited by the joy of having him in her life. She slightly wishes that he’d be a bit more ready to talk about the future, but she can wait. There’s so much to plan for; so much to enjoy.

‘I think that Stripey Bunny should have a birthday party when he’s two,’ Jakey says unexpectedly.

Dossie smiles. Jakey enjoyed his own birthday party enormously – a boat trip with three small friends, followed by fish and chips in Padstow – and is clearly angling for a replay.

‘That’s a good idea,’ she agrees. ‘Where would he like it, d’you think?’

‘In Janna’s caravan,’ he answers, surprising her. ‘To cheer her up.’

Dossie frowns, peering at him again in the mirror. ‘Why does she need cheering up?’

He shakes his head, puts his thumb back in, and Dossie,
worried
now, turns into the narrow lane and drives between feathery tamarisk and trailing blackberry down to the gates to the convent.

‘The whole difficulty about loving,’ Father Pascal is saying, ‘is that it opens us up to the pain of rejection, and the fear of losing someone – or something – we value.’

‘I feel I can’t win,’ Janna says wretchedly. ‘’Tisn’t that I want to be difficult, but I can’t see myself in that Coach House with the Sisters. I shall feel like a prisoner. And then I shan’t be any use to anyone, however much I love them.’

He watches her, praying silently for guidance, thinking of a very similar conversation with Sister Ruth.

‘Janna doesn’t know our ways,’ she said. ‘That’s not her fault. Why should she? But to live enclosed with us is very different from the way we manage now.’

‘The important thing,’ Father Pascal said gently, ‘is to try to do what we can to continue to embrace all of you at Chi-Meur. There must be compromises; changes. Janna is a very unusual girl. She doesn’t want to give parties nor have friends round. She is by nature solitary; she loves the wild empty silent places. You could say – in fact, Sister Emily
does
say – that she is heaven-sent.’

He saw by the tightening of Sister Ruth’s lips that it was unwise to mention this.

‘Sister Emily has always been avant-garde,’ she murmured. ‘It was she who introduced the Taizé courses. I suppose there will be a great deal of that kind of thing with this new retreat house idea.’

‘Probably.’ He refused to be drawn into this long-held argument. ‘The fact is, Sister, that you will need someone with you in the Coach House to care for you all. Why not Janna?’

She was unable to answer without displaying her prejudices: that Janna was not an educated girl, that she was not even a Christian.

‘Janna lives Christ,’ Sister Emily said firmly when this charge was levelled against Janna at one of the Chapter meetings. ‘She is loving, giving, kind, and she has the great gift of humility. She is not asking to become a postulant; only to serve us.’

Now, looking at Janna’s face, Father Pascal is filled with frustration.

‘I can see why the caravan wouldn’t work for much longer,’ she is saying. ‘They need someone close at hand in case there’s an emergency. They’re all so frail, aren’t they, and that’s not going to get any better? But wouldn’t it be better to have someone qualified, like a nurse or something? I mean, what do I know, if anyone is taken ill.’

‘The crucial thing is love,’ he says, ‘and trust. They feel safe with you. We can always call an ambulance or find a carer or a qualified nurse, if that should be necessary. They love you.’

‘Sister Ruth doesn’t,’ she says bluntly, and then suddenly she laughs. ‘Sorry, Father,’ she says contritely. ‘I don’t mean to keep coming down here and droning on at you, honestly. It’s just I can’t see how it’s going to work out between her and me. Can you?’

‘No,’ he answers honestly. ‘I can’t. The initiative is with God. I shall continue to pray for an answer.’

She looks at him, still smiling. ‘It’s a big ask.’

He smiles too. ‘He’s used to that,’ he says cheerfully.

Stripey Bunny’s birthday party is held a few days before Jakey goes back to school. The wet, dreary August has given
way
to a warm blowy September; gold and red nasturtiums tumble across the grass at the bottom of the caravan steps, and Janna’s silver vase is full of late sweet peas.

Dossie mooted the party to Janna, who responded with enthusiasm.

‘Jakey says he thinks you’re sad,’ she said in her usual direct way. ‘Not Sister Ruth getting you down, I hope?’

‘Sort of.’ Janna shrugged. ‘But it’s not her fault. It’s me, too. I can’t quite see myself as part of this new set-up. That’s all. Never mind that.’ She changed the subject. ‘How’s it going with Rupert, then … ?’

Now, as she puts out plates of tiny salmon sandwiches and sausage rolls on the rug outside the caravan, Dossie is still worrying about Janna.

‘Father Pascal’s on the case,’ Clem said. ‘We all are. She’s promised me that she won’t do a runner.’

The mere thought of Janna doing a runner shocked Dossie and filled her with a kind of dread. By now she knows a little of Janna’s dysfunctional past, her fear of commitment battling with her need to belong. As she goes about her own work and begins to prepare to open The Court again to B and B-ers, Dossie has a growing horror of Janna disappearing; of being set adrift again. Even more worrying is Janna’s refusal to be drawn on the subject; to be open. Lately she’s begun to turn aside all discussions about her own feelings and Dossie fears that she is already moving apart.

She’s relieved by Janna’s ready agreement to use the caravan as the venue for the birthday party. One thing has not changed: Janna’s love for Jakey.

‘There, my lover,’ she is saying to him. ‘I’ve brought Stripey Bunny a present. D’you want to open it for him?’

Jakey takes the package, surprised into silence. He hasn’t
thought
of actually giving Stripey Bunny a present. Janna winks at Dossie above the gilt-blond head, and Dossie smiles at her with love and appreciation. Janna is wearing a T-shirt printed with the words ‘Jesus loves you but I’m his favourite’. Sister Emily has said, smiling, that it’s probably true. Dossie wonders how any of them will manage now without Janna.

‘You’d better wait for the rest of the guests to turn up,’ Dossie tells Jakey. ‘Look, here come Sister Emily and Father Pascal. Oh, how lovely. Sister Nichola is with them.’

Janna looks round quickly, almost fearfully, but Sister Ruth is not with the little group who are advancing beneath the boughs of the ancient apple trees.

‘Apple-picking soon,’ cries Sister Emily gleefully, who is passionate about any kind of gleaning. ‘What fun. You’ll be able to help, Jakey. Sister Nichola has come with us. Is there a chair for her?’

She is helped into one of the deck chairs that Dossie has set around the rug and she sits smiling happily. Jakey goes up close and stares into her eyes. He knows Sister Nichola quite well, though mostly at a distance, but seems struck by something new in her peaceful, sweet old face.

‘Did you bring Stripey Bunny a plesent?’ he asks her.

She looks at him as if he delights her, but doesn’t answer.

‘We have brought nothing but ourselves,’ says Sister Emily regretfully, and Father Pascal shakes his head sorrowfully.

‘But we’ve made him a lovely tea,’ says Dossie quickly. ‘Look at his cake.’

The cake indeed is a masterpiece: rabbit-shaped and striped with coloured icing, red, blue, green and yellow. Everyone exclaims with delight; even Sister Nichola stares at it with puzzled pleasure.

Jakey is tearing the paper from Janna’s present: a truck to go with his train set.

‘I know how much Stripey Bunny likes playing trains,’ she says, smiling at Jakey’s glowing face. ‘You’ll have to help him with it, though.’

He places the truck carefully on the rug before Stripey Bunny, who sits with his plate in front of him as well as the Peter Rabbit mug, which he’s been allowed as guest of honour. Sandwiches are passed around and Dossie pours tea. A game of I-spy is started which the birthday boy is allowed to win, with Jakey speaking for him. The strong warm wind blows the wrapping paper from the rug and bowls it away between the trees with Jakey in pursuit. Sister Nichola smiles and shivers a little, and Janna gets up from the top step and goes inside. She brings out her precious Indian shawl, pale silk with frayed gold threads, and puts it around the old nun’s shoulders. It is faded and thin, but Sister Nichola strokes it softly and draws the long silky fringe through her fingers.

Jakey comes panting back with the wrapping paper. ‘Is it time for the cake?’ he cries. ‘Can we light the candles?’

The two candles are lit, and Jakey helps Stripey Bunny blow them out, and the whole party sings ‘Happy Birthday to You’.

It is only much later, when the party is over and Janna is alone again, that she realizes that Sister Nichola has taken the shawl away with her.

Clem finds her at dusk, sitting on the steps, listening to the robin, with the banties pecking round her feet. He sits down in one of the chairs and smiles at her.

‘Funny, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘The birds seem to stop singing
in
July and August and now they’ve started again. You always think of birds singing in the summer, don’t you? I’ve never noticed it before.’

‘I think it’s because they moult,’ he says. ‘They disappear into hedgerows because they can’t fly so quickly. And they’re not defending territories any more because their babies have flown. Something like that. I hear the party was a great success. Dossie’s bathing Jakey so I thought I’d dash down and say thanks. He had a great time.’

‘Jakey or Stripey Bunny?’

Clem grins. ‘Both of them.’

They sit in a companionable silence for a moment, listening to the robin. Clem reflects on the vulnerability behind Janna’s happy-go-lucky façade: her need to be loved, to be part of a family, and the fear that drives her from just such a commitment as soon as it begins to make demands upon her. He is working up his courage to suggest a solution to her fear.

Janna draws up her feet and laces her fingers around her knees. ‘Want a cuppa?’

He shakes his head. ‘I wanted to show you something, actually, over in the Coach House. There’s nobody around and it won’t take long. Come on, before I shut the banties up for the night.’

She gets up slowly, reluctantly, and goes with him through the orchard and round to the front door of the Coach House. He leads her along the hall and up the stairs, branching left at the top, away from the main bedrooms, and passing along a short corridor to a room in its own wing at the end. He opens the door and lets her go ahead of him. She goes in slowly, looking around at the large, light room that was once full of lumber. It has a big window looking west across the
fields
and the village out to sea, and a roof-light facing north. She goes at once to the big window.

‘I’ve never been in here,’ she says. ‘’Twas never used for guests, was it?’

‘It’s never been needed,’ he says, trying to hide his eagerness. ‘There’s so much space here, isn’t there? We thought, Father Pascal and I and the Sisters, whether you might like it as your own room … if you were to move in here.’

She stands at the window, staring out, and he can feel her unwillingness to be persuaded or coerced into any immediate decision.

‘It’s just an idea,’ he says quickly. ‘It’s on its own here at the end, and there’s a room below it that’s been used as a bed-sitting-room by visiting priests on silent retreats, which you could have as a living-room. It’s got a tiny kitchen and a door out into a little courtyard so you could have your own outside entrance and, when the other alterations are being done, we thought that we could put in a spiral staircase from the corner over there directly down to it. That way you’d have doors connecting you to the rest of the house but you could move freely within your own quarters.’

Clem waits whilst she turns and looks around the room and finally at him. He raises his eyebrows hopefully and she smiles rather doubtfully.

‘Just think about it, that’s all,’ he says. ‘Now, come and have a look downstairs.’

‘Phil?’ Mr Caine is on the cliff path, looking down on the beach where a few of the locals are playing football in the dusk. ‘Have you heard the latest? … Thought you hadn’t. Listen. His Serene Bloody Highness is only over the moon, that’s all … I know, I know. We thought it was all over and
then
the solicitor boyfriend says that if it’s a retreat house then it isn’t a convent. And even better, the nuns, so I hear, are moving out of the house and into the Coach House so even more ammunition … Yeah, that’s why I’m still here, well, some of the time. You never know what crumb you might pick up in the pub or in the shop … He’s well pleased, I can tell you … So you’re back in the frame, mate. He wants you to get a letter from the old duck in charge … Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I know you’ve had one already but that was just mooting the possibility of the retreat house. He wants you to write asking her if she’s really certain about these plans and if she’d like to reconsider your offer. We’re hoping she’ll come back with something really positive this time. It might not be necessary in the long run but it might speed things up a bit. See? … Get on with it then, and I’ll tell him it’s all in hand. Might get a bonus for this one, mate.’