The Christmas Angel Read online

  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 pa
th 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.’

  If they were surprised they showed no sign of it. Warmly, courteously, they gave her the freedom of the caravan and outlined her duties, which are simple: to keep the house clean and the washing and ironing done; and, if necessary, to sit with Sister Nichola who, at ninety-two, is failing.

  ‘We used to be completely self-sufficient,’ Mother Magda told Janna rather sadly. ‘Inside and out. But there were many more of us then, and we were young. We always had a couple in the Lodge that helped us, but the husband died and his wife went to live with her daughter. Now we have Clem, who is a true blessing.’

  ‘And Jakey,’ Sister Emily added, twinkling.

  ‘I’m not certain,’ Sister Ruth said, rather coolly, ‘that Jakey is a great help to us.’

  ‘He makes us feel young again.’ Mother Magda spoke firmly. ‘And he understands reverence.’

  Now, Janna passes beneath the apple trees and crosses the yard, the pretty little bantams, soft grey and warm gold, scattering and running before her. The Coach House is empty; no guests this week. She is glad. It is good just to be themselves. She loves it when they are just family; the family for which she’s always longed. Mother Magda, Father Pascal, Sisters Emily, Ruth and Nichola; and Clem and Jakey and Dossie. How strange it is to find them here, unexpectedly, in this high, tiny valley that tips and tumbles its way down to the sea. She goes in through the back door and into the kitchen.

  In the chapel the Sisters are at Morning Prayer. Sister Nichola sits with her eyes fixed on the mullioned window and the bare, frost-rimed branches of the lilac tree beyond it. Her thoughts are not always clear and she fancies that if she were to breathe in she might smell the heady scent of the lilac blossom drifting in through the open window; and she will hear the blackbird’s song as he perches amongst its branches. This morning the window is closed against the winter’s chill and the spring is yet some way off. Beside her, Sister Ruth stands up to go out to the lectern; Sister Nichola watches the tall, spare figure, trying to remember her name. She looks around the chapel, seeing long-gone faces and quiet, attentive forms sitting in the empty stalls, observing Mother Magda’s thin, fine-drawn face and serene blue eyes, and Sister Emily’s intelligent, direct look and her half-smiling mouth. They are watching Sister Ruth – yes; that’s her name; Sister Nichola gives a delighted little nod as she remembers it – who is now opening the Bible and is beginning to read.

  ‘“Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.”’

  Isaiah: Epiphany. The familiarity of the Church year, turning and turning in its endless dance, comforts Sister Nichola. This remains whilst so many other things fall away from her. Her head droops a little but she does not sleep.

  Clem arrives in the kitchen before Janna, emptying some vegetables from a basket onto a newspaper on the big, scrubbed table. A pan containing stock simmers on the Aga but there is no sign of Penny, who comes up from the village to cook. Janna and Clem smile at one another. In the few months that she’s been at the convent Janna has learned to move softly, to speak very quietly: the nuns value silence although here, in the kitchen, quiet conversation is allowed. To Clem silence comes naturally. She and Penny, however, often have to muffle cries of irritation or bursts of laughter as they prepare and cook food, getting in each other’s way, burning a saucepan or dropping a plate. Often Sister Emily, gliding in behind them, smiles but Sister Ruth is less sympathetic to such outbursts. Her pale, level glance restores them to order very quickly, whilst Emily’s dark eyes crinkle with fellow feeling.

  On her afternoons off, Sister Emily often makes her way through the orchard to the caravan for a cup of tea. Janna loves these ‘moments’; for they are of that order of celebration of which Dossie approves. Sister Emily has a passion for life that, at eighty-two, is unexpected: her brown eyes sparkling at the sight of a special cake or at the variety of Janna’s fruit teas.

  ‘Echinacea and raspberry,’ she murmurs. ‘Camomile and lemon and mint. How delicious. Now which shall I choose?’

  For the first time for years Janna is living among women who own even less than she does: she no longer needs to justify her lack of belongings. It even seems to be a virtue. She showed Sister Emily her small store of treasures: the Peter Rabbit mug and the Roger Hargreaves Little Miss Sunshine book, and the threadbare Indian silk shawl.

  ‘My mum gave them to me when I was little,’ she said almost defensively. ‘She loved me, see, even if she had to give me up. She bought me stuff; called me her Little Miss Sunshine. She didn’t want to let me go but she was really ill.’

  The older woman looked at the treasures, nodding her understanding, her eyes thoughtful. Then she smiled at Janna.

  ‘When you no longer need them, then you will be free,’ she said. She said it encouragingly, almost exultantly, as if it were towards this exciting and rewarding goal that Janna must naturally be working, and the words took her by surprise. She was used to people being gently consoling, telling her they could believe how important these symbols were, but Sister Emily seems to be travelling a different road. Janna thinks about it quite often. Sister Emily’s responses are often unexpected.

  Clem is drawing her attention to a small piece of paper lying on the bread board. A note. Janna smiles involuntarily: the Sisters use notes to communicate so many things. Small hoarded pieces of paper torn from letters, backs of used envelopes, receipts; nothing is wasted: folded messages pushed under doors, left on beds and in stalls in the chapel. They read the note together, Clem peering over her shoulder.

  ‘Penny is unwell,’ is written in Mother Magda’s scrawling handwriting. ‘I have started the soup. Can you possibly manage, Janna dear?’

  It must be hard, reflects Janna, to be so dependent where once they were so self-sufficient.

  ‘Vegetable soup?’ murmurs Clem in her ear, nodding towards his offerings: carrots, onions, potatoes, some leeks.

  She nods, smiling her thanks, and he goes back to his work whilst she carries the vegetables to the sink and begins to wash them under the tap.

  A week later, out in the Western Approaches, heavy grey clouds begin to pile and mass. Towering and spilling, they race in towards the coast, driven by wild winds that batter the peninsula. Ice melts, turns to water and begins to drip. The sun grows pale, a lemon disc behind the advancing veils of thin cloud, and is quenched at last. Deeply rutted tracks, which have been hard as concrete, quickly soften into thick, heavy mud; rivers and streams fill, roaring and rushing in their rocky beds.

  The windows of the Lodge rattle in the gale and the trees creak and toss, bending bare wintry branches above its chimneypots. Jakey, eating his tea at the kitchen table, looks out into the dark, drenched garden. The curtains are not yet drawn and the bright scene within is reflected in the streaming black glass. He feels safe and warm, here in the kitchen, with Daddy sitting at the other end of the table with his laptop open.

  Jakey carefully balances some more baked beans onto his fork and puts them into his mouth: Stripey Bunny sits beside his plate in attendance. Sometimes Daddy raises his head and says, ‘OK,
Jakes?’ and he nods; he likes these times when Daddy is with him but busy with something else, and Stripey Bunny is just within reach. He feels safe but free, too; free to think about things and to listen to the sounds. There are lots of sounds: long fingers of rain drumming on the window; the low hum of the laptop; the droning of the fridge; the gurgle in the radiator.

  In a minute Daddy will stand up and take the plates to put in the dishwasher. He’ll open the big heavy door and the dishwasher’s bad breath will belch out into the kitchen. Dossie says that Daddy ought to rinse the plates first, especially if they’re fishy, and Daddy says that if he were to do that, then having a dishwasher would be utterly pointless. Then Dossie rolls her eyes and gives a big sigh and Daddy simply carries on with what he is doing with a particular look on his face. Jakey picks up a piece of toast and wipes it round his plate in the beans’ thick tomatoey juice, thinking about that look. It’s the look Daddy has sometimes when he, Jakey, is being naughty and Daddy says, ‘Don’t push it, Jakes,’ and then it’s best to stop being silly. Jakey eats his toast happily, wondering what he might be allowed as a pudding if he eats everything on his plate.

  Clem closes his laptop.

  ‘All finished?’ he asks. ‘Well done.’ He takes Jakey’s plate and puts it in the dishwasher. ‘Now what about a Petits Filous? Would you like one of those? Or some grapes?’

  ‘Petits Filous and glapes,’ Jakey says firmly. ‘And a biscuit.’

  ‘We’ll see about the biscuit,’ says Clem. Dossie, and the nanny who looked after Jakey in London, have trained him well in the matter of his small son’s diet though sometimes he allows the rules to be bent a little. He reaches across the sink to draw the curtains. Janna has bought pots of cyclamen, which stand on the white-painted sill. Unobtrusively she introduces pretty, quirky, gentler things into their masculine world and Clem is grateful for it. He and she have quickly fallen into an easy, undemanding relationship; her naturalness infiltrates and warms his austerity. She makes him laugh, and Jakey loves her.