The Christmas Angel (25 page)

He’s reached the bottom of the path and suddenly he’s surrounded by yelling, shouting boys, who jostle and push him so that he has to duck and dive and fold his arms around his head to protect himself. It seems that they are trying to snatch his mobile and he shouts then, gripping it tightly in his hand, lashing out with the other. And just as suddenly they are gone again, racing across the sand with their ball, screaming harshly like the gulls above them.

‘Bloody lunatics,’ he shouts, heart pounding, and then glances round quickly to see if he is being watched. His cover is wearing thin, he knows that, but he must keep up appearances a little longer. He walks quickly through the village to where he has left his car, and climbs in and sits still for a minute, regaining his poise before he drives back to the farm.

* * *

‘I’m sorry, sweetie,’ Rupert says, ‘but you know how it is, don’t you? There’s simply nothing I can do about it. I’ll definitely be up the following weekend. Look, the plumber’s just arrived. I’ll phone again this evening. Must dash.’

Kitty slams her mobile down on the table. Sally, who has popped in to bring Mummy some flowers, raises an eyebrow.

‘Problems?’ she asks sympathetically; hopefully.

‘No, not really,’ snaps Kitty. She would like to scream with frustration but she won’t let Sally see any cracks in her relationship with Rupert. There is something about Sally’s watchfulness that is wearing her down, but she can’t bring herself to let off steam or to voice her tiny fear that Rupert is less keen to get home these days. She doesn’t want to see the flash of triumph in Sally’s eyes; to hear the satisfied note in her voice. Sally has always resented the fact that her best friend escaped the round of ordinary married life by disappearing to Cornwall and living an almost gypsy existence with a deeply desirable man and having a really good time, while her contemporaries were juggling with jobs and babies and childcare.

Sally has always predicted that payback time will come for the evasion of such responsibilities, and now she asks, ‘So he isn’t coming home this weekend?’

‘No,’ answers Kitty brightly. ‘No. Crucial things are happening and the plumber’s booked in for Saturday. He’ll be up for Mummy’s birthday, though.’

‘Why don’t you pop down to see him?’ suggests Sally. ‘Take him by surprise.’

Kitty stares at her. ‘I can’t leave Mummy,’ she begins uncertainly.

Sally smiles. ‘I can look after your mum,’ she says. ‘Or you can get that nice carer in. You went before, ages ago, when
the
weather turned nasty and you got snowed in. And once or twice since, just for the day. This time you could just dash down unexpectedly. Give him a nice surprise.’

They look at each other.

‘Go on, lovey,’ says Sally softly. ‘It might do you both good. After all, he’s always on your territory here, isn’t he? Much more romantic down there, I should think, in all this wonderful sunshine and no dear old Mummy down the corridor. Why don’t you give it a whirl?’

‘I might,’ says Kitty uncertainly, wondering why her stomach clenches with anxiety at the thought. ‘I just might do that.’

‘Just imagine how he’d feel if you were driving up this minute and getting out of the car and he’s working away like mad at whatever and suddenly sees you. Imagine how thrilled he’d be.’

‘I’ll definitely think about it,’ says Kitty. ‘Are you staying to lunch?’

‘This weather is amazing,’ Dossie is saying to Rupert, sitting at the picnic table with the remains of a shared lunch between them: pâté and fresh rolls and cheese. They’ve just made love and she feels energized and relaxed all at once. ‘After all that dreary rain it’s so wonderful to feel the sun on my back again. I feel I can manage anything if the sun is shining.’

She is so happy; so full of hope. She’s got The Court a listing on the West Country Tourist Board website, and Pa and Mo have sent emails to some of their special old B and B-ers. Already they’ve had delighted answers back from couples who loved to walk the coastal paths and explore the beaches and the pubs, booking up for the spring and summer. The Court is back in business.

‘And what about you?’ she asks Rupert, having told him all her good news. ‘What will you do when you’ve finished here? What a shame that you couldn’t get your offer accepted on that cottage we saw.’

This is the one little flaw in her happiness: that Rupert won’t be nearby working on another cottage. He’s frowning a little, pursing his lips regretfully.

‘They keep telling us that it’s a buyers’ market but it’s not true,’ he says. ‘It was way over price but the old devil wasn’t giving an inch and I simply couldn’t risk it.’ He shakes his head, shrugs. ‘Something else will come along. It always does.’

‘And meanwhile you’ll stay here?’

‘Through this winter, probably. I shall finish it and then I might let it on a short-hold tenancy next spring. It hasn’t been a brilliant summer for holiday letting and I’m thinking that this might be the way to go forward.’

She nods. ‘It’s probably crazy going back into B and B-ing after a terrible summer like this but we’re lucky that we’ve got a long list of people who will be happy to come back to us. At least, that’s the theory.’

‘I feel absolutely certain you’ve made the right decision,’ he tells her. He smiles his sexy smile and grips her wrist for a moment and gives it a little encouraging shake. ‘I can just see you all. You and Mo and Pa. Sounds magic.’

‘You must come and meet them,’ she says lightly, heart knocking in her ribs. She’s made a little plan to move things along a bit and now she broaches it.

‘It’s Pa’s birthday at the end of the month,’ she says. ‘We’re having a tea party so that Jakey can come, and Sister Emily thought she’d rather like a little outing. There will be some of Pa’s friends too, and Clem, I hope. Perhaps you’d like to come along?’

He nods. ‘Sounds great.’

She is so relieved she feels quite faint. ‘Good. That’s good.’

They both turn at the sound of an engine: a van comes slowly down the lane and pulls into the verge. Rupert gets to his feet, a hand raised in greeting.

‘Damn. It’s the plumber,’ he says to Dossie. ‘Bloody awful timing. Sorry, love. I’m going to have to get on.’

‘It’s fine.’ She stands up, picking up her bag. ‘I ought be on my way. See you soon.’

‘Very soon, I hope. I’ll text you.’

She wonders if he might kiss her and he does, holding her tightly, though briefly. Then he is away across the little lawn to meet the man who’s climbing out of his van. Dossie hesitates and then calls, ‘’Bye then,’ and goes to her car. She drives away with a cheerful little hoot on the horn but Rupert is deep in conversation with the plumber and doesn’t seem to hear it.

Sister Emily and Janna are blackberry picking in the meadow below the house. Wasps crawl, heavy and slow, on the ripe fruit, drunk on the sweetness; thorny brambles trail over the grass, catching at the skirts of Sister Emily’s blue working habit. As they reach cautiously for the blackberries, stretching up as high as they can, other luscious globes dislodge and fall just beyond their grasp. Each time this happens Sister Emily cries out, vexed at losing even a single delicious berry.

Janna groans in sympathy. ‘Why are the best ones always out of reach? Look at those whopping great big ones up there on that bramble. Look, pull him down with your stick; easy now, nearly got them. Ooooh …’

And they cry out together in frustration as the blackberries drop into the thicket of thorn hedge. Picking up
their
big plastic containers, they move a little further along the hedge where clouded indigo-blue sloes ripen in the September sunshine.

‘Sloe gin?’ Janna suggests. ‘What d’you think?’

Sister Emily pauses, her eyes sparkling with the prospect of more gleaning.

‘But will you be here to share it with us?’ she wonders, and Janna turns quickly away as if she’s been stung by a sleepy wasp or pricked by one of the sharp thorns.

‘It’s going to be so exciting.’ Sister Emily drags a particularly clinging bramble from her skirt; the blue cloth is already snagged, threads pulled, from other past excursions. ‘Courses, workshops, Ignatian retreats. We’re getting feedback from other retreat houses now and there’s so much to learn and look forward to. We shall all be very busy. Is it being needed that frightens you?’

Janna is silent, trying to define her own feelings, and then speaks honestly.

‘I s’pose it does a bit. But it’s more than that. Sister Ruth and I just don’t get on and I can’t see it working at such close quarters.’

‘And have you always got on with the people you’ve worked with? If so you’ve been very lucky. Of course, there’s no place like a community for generating misunderstandings and quarrels but that’s simply a symbol of the general failing of one human person to understand another. Is it really all to do with Sister Ruth? I have seen great changes in you, Janna; a growth of confidence.’

‘Have you?’ She is pleased – and puzzled. ‘I’m not sure
I
feel it.’

‘Didn’t I see Sister Nichola wearing the shawl your mother gave you?’

‘Oh, that.’ Janna picks a few more berries. ‘Well, I wrapped it round her at that party we had for Stripey Bunny and she sort of went off with it. I haven’t had the heart to ask her for it back. She seems to wear it rather a lot.’

They both smile at the incongruity of the faded Indian shawl, with its glittering gold threads, wrapped about Sister Nichola’s ample shoulders over her sober habit.

‘But once,’ hazards Sister Emily, ‘I think that you’d have wanted it back, wouldn’t you? You cherished it and needed it. It was an important symbol.’

Janna does not answer immediately but continues to pick the fruit. The slanting afternoon sun is hot. Velvet-winged butterflies – meadow browns and tortoiseshells – flit and settle on the fruit, whilst shimmering clouds of midges dance in the still air; above them a pilgrimage of swallows cluster on the telephone wire, discussing routes in high sweet voices.

‘She seems to get some sort of comfort from it,’ Janna admits unwillingly at last. ‘Just now she needs it more than I do, that’s all.’

‘We all draw comfort from you, with the possible exception of Sister Ruth,’ says Sister Emily softly. ‘Commitment is hard, isn’t it? Commitment to God in a community can mean that
we
might be crucified by proximity or by loneliness, and so it is not to be undertaken lightly. But
you
need make no such undertaking.
You
can still walk away whenever you feel like it.’

‘I don’t
want
to walk away,’ Janna cries. ‘I love it here. If only we could have gone on as we were.’

‘What is the difference?’

Janna hesitates: what
is
the difference in living in the caravan or in the rooms Clem has shown her? Slowly she fumbles towards the truth.

‘When I first came to Chi-Meur you had Penny taking most of the responsibility for the cooking and that. I was happy just doing what was needed round the outside and helping her out, and then, when she was ill, it was like an emergency. You step in, don’t you? You cope somehow and then you find you’re OK with it. I’m used to that. Turning up for a job, filling in, helping out, moving on. That’s what I do. Now,’ she takes a breath, ‘
now
it’s got to be deliberate. There’s all these new ideas, new plans. And I’m part of it. I’ve got to take a proper role from the beginning. So, yeah, like it’s a total commitment to the future here and I don’t want to think that I can walk out on it. That’s not what it’s about, that I can go if I don’t like it. I’ve got to really want to do it, haven’t I? ’Tis like you said just now about being crucified. You chose that. You took a vow. Now, it’s like
I’ve
got to take a vow somewhere inside me and I don’t know if it’s right or if it’s what I want. I just don’t
know
!’

She looks suddenly as if she might cry, and Sister Emily puts an arm about her shoulders.

‘It’s never clear,’ she murmurs. ‘Sometimes it has to be a leap of faith. And it is never easy or perfect, just the best we can do at the time. But we are vouchsafed people on the journey to sustain and encourage us. We value you and feel that you have a special role here with us so we are reluctant to let you go simply because, just at the moment, you can’t see clearly. That’s all.’

There is a cry, a shout of greeting, the wild ringing of a bell, and they see Jakey wobbling over the meadow on his bicycle with Stripey Bunny in the basket on the back and Clem striding behind. Janna swipes away the tears from her eyes and waves back.

Sister Emily chuckles. ‘Saved by the bell,’ she says.

SISTER NICHOLA SQUEEZES THROUGH
the half-open door and waits for a moment. If she were to sit here, right at the back, just inside the door, nobody will see her. She likes to do this; slipping into the chapel just as Compline begins and watching the Sisters at Night Prayer. The sanctuary light glimmers in its stone niche, and candles have been lit in the terracotta bowl at the feet of the statue of Our Lady.

Mother speaks the familiar opening words: ‘“The Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.”’

There are owls calling and the faint scent of Michaelmas daisies mingles with the traces of incense. Sister Nichola breathes deeply, happily. How pure and sweet is the face of that young novice in her stall beside Our Lady, half hidden in the gathering shadows: how happy she looks and how clear the voices are as they begin to sing the evening hymn together.

‘Before the ending of the day, Creator of the world we pray,

That you with steadfast love would keep Your watch around us while we sleep.’

Sister Nichola closes her eyes and her thoughts drift. Memories shift like smoke: ‘I would never make a nun! I’m far too passionate, too greedy, too intolerant. But I should like to live in the little stone lodge by the gates at the end of the drive, working in the big, walled garden and helping in the kitchen. Simply living on the edge of the community: I might manage that much and, perhaps, some touch of grace would rub off on me. I could slip into the chapel, like this; sitting just inside the door, joining in with the psalm.’