The Christmas Angel Page 4

  ‘Are they crazy?’ Adam demands, when Pa and Mo adopt a Norfolk terrier as a companion to their old black Labrador. ‘How old is it? They’re far too tottery to be having puppies around.’

  ‘Wolfie is six,’ Dossie answers. ‘He’s not a puppy. His owner died very suddenly. He was one of Pa’s old mining friends. Wolfie’s an utter sweetie and no trouble at all, and John the Baptist loves having him around. He lets Wolfie share his basket and he’s got a new lease of life.’

  ‘And if they have to go into a home? Pa and Mo, I mean. Are you going to be able to afford a place where you can have two dogs and keep working? Especially an elderly lab with a predilection to submerge himself in any kind of water at every opportunity. Try to think ahead, for God’s sake!’

  ‘Is it permissible to dislike one’s brother?’ she asked Clem furiously, later that afternoon at the Lodge. ‘He is just so bloody selfish! He’s so afraid that I might think that I can stay on at The Court when Pa and Mo have to leave it.’

  She didn’t want to use the word ‘die’ but she saw that Clem understood her. His half-smiling, half-frowning expression was a familiar one: compassion mixed with an instinctive need to keep a balance, which was oddly comforting. If he’d raged with her she’d have contrarily felt obliged to be reasonable. Clem’s calm but sympathetic response always gives her full scope for her fury when she feels like it: he is on her side.

  ‘It’s not just Adam, is it?’ he answered. ‘Natasha eggs him on. She sees The Court as a nice little pension plan for them both. After all, Adam didn’t have much left after his divorce, did he? It was Maryanne who brought the money with her, and the flat, wasn’t it?’ He hesitated a little. ‘If it came to it, you and the dogs could always come here. You could cook for the Sisters. Think what a treat it would be for them. We’d manage somehow.’

  She wanted to cry, then. Instead she put her arms round him and hugged him tightly; and he patted her shoulder blades comfortingly, which is as close as Clem comes to the act of hugging.

  Now, Dossie thinks about the recent phone call. A party of people coming down for a week to one of the self-catering cottages at Penharrow, near Port Isaac, have asked her if she would prepare some meals for them to put into the freezer. This is her new project. Friends and clients with holiday cottages are recommending her in their brochures and on their websites to self-catering holiday-makers who can’t afford to eat out all the time but don’t want the bother of cooking for themselves; it’s picking up very well. She sits down, studies the notes she’s made about possible menus and begins to make lists. The telephone rings.

  ‘Hello?’ A man’s voice. ‘I wonder if I could speak to Dossie Pardoe?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Oh, great. You don’t know me at all but I’ve been given your number by the people who own the holiday complex at Port Isaac …’

  Dossie begins to laugh. ‘What a coincidence. I’ve just been asked to supply a week’s meals for one of their visitors.’

  ‘Oh, well now.’ His voice is eager. ‘That’s exactly it. It’s an absolutely brilliant scheme and I wonder if I can join it. I’ve got quite a few holiday properties, though they’re more to the south – on the Roseland Peninsula around St Mawes – but I’d like to offer a freezer full of food as an added attraction, if you’re prepared to travel that far.’

  ‘I can’t see why not.’ She likes the sound of him. ‘I’m used to driving all over Cornwall.’

  ‘Fantastic. So I can sign up for it, then? How do I start?’

  ‘It’s not particularly complicated but I usually like to check up a bit first.’

  ‘Well, of course. How does it work? You could look at my website …’ A hesitation. ‘Or perhaps we could meet … ?’

  ‘We could.’ She tries not to sound too keen. ‘Look, give me your website details and then I’ll phone you.’

  ‘Fine. And you can check with Chris at Penharrow. I don’t want to mislead you; he isn’t a friend. I just know him slightly through the trade, but it’s a reference of a kind.’

  ‘I’ll do that.’

  ‘Right. Got a pencil … ?’

  As Dossie puts the phone down, Mo comes into the kitchen, a big black Labrador shouldering ahead of her. For once, John the Baptist is quite dry, and Dossie bends to caress him, murmuring approvingly to him.

  ‘The rain has stopped at last,’ Mo says. ‘We’ve had a lovely walk across the fields. Pa’s getting his boots off and giving Wolfie a good towelling. He found a badger’s sett. You’re looking very cheerful, darling.’

  ‘I feel very cheerful. Looks like I’ve got a new contact, as well as an order for a week’s meals at Penharrow.’

  ‘That’s wonderful.’ Mo’s ashy fair hair fluffs up like feathers around her head as she pulls off her fleecy hat. Even in her middle seventies she is a force; there is strength and determination in her small figure. She warms her hands on the closed lid of the range and smiles over her shoulder at her daughter. ‘I think Jonno deserves a biscuit, don’t you? He’s been such a good fellow. He’s resisted all sorts of watery temptation, haven’t you, Jonno? I think he’s feeling his age, and getting soaked to the skin doesn’t appeal quite so much any more.’

  The old dog presses close against her, settling down beside the range, and Dossie brings him a few biscuits, which he crunches gratefully. Wolfie bustles in importantly and hurries to see what goodies are being given out. Pa follows him. Hardly taller than Mo, upright, though slightly less brisk since the stroke, he sits down at the table looking rather strained and tired. Nobody except his doctor ever refers to the stroke. ‘Don’t mention the s-word’ has become the family’s motto.

  ‘Dossie’s got a new client,’ Mo tells him. ‘And another Fill the Freezer order. Isn’t it great?’

  They’ve dubbed Dossie’s newest idea ‘Fill the Freezer’ although, as well as the week’s food, she nearly always makes up a separate meal to be eaten on arrival: soup, a casserole, fresh rolls and fruit and cheese, depending on the client’s requirements.

  Pa beams his delight. ‘It’s a brilliant scheme. Just the thing now, with the credit crunch. Visitors can’t afford to eat out all the time, and takeaways can be almost as expensive. You’re onto a good thing, Doss.’

  As usual, she is warmed by their response and encouragement. She knows that some of her friends find it extraordinary that she continues to stay with Pa and Mo, especially now Clem has grown up, but then she’s never known an ordinary family life. Pa’s expertise as a mining engineer meant that in the early years of her childhood they moved from one country to another, and then, after Pa’s widowed mother died and they settled at The Court, there was the continual stream of ‘B and B-ers’. She managed to have quite enough privacy, quite enough scope, to live her life very happily; and it was much better for Clem to be amongst this kind of extended family than in some tiny flat alone with her whilst she strived to earn their living. In an odd kind of way, Clem is repeating the pattern with Jakey, surrounded by the Sisters and Janna and Father Pascal.

  Dossie knows that Pa and Mo miss the B and B-ers and she sometimes wonders how they’d manage if she ever decided to move away. Up until now, she’s never met anyone about whom she’s felt strongly enough to make the question a serious one. For some reason she finds herself thinking about the man who telephoned earlier. She picks up her laptop.

  ‘I’ve got some work to do,’ she tells them. ‘I need to check out this new client. See you later.’ And she goes out into the hall and up the stairs into her little study, and closes the door behind her.

  CANDLEMAS

  IT IS SISTER Emily’s first thought on waking: Candlemas! Goody! I wonder what we shall have for lunch! Her Novice Mistress taught her to say the Gloria first thing each morning but Feast Days are special occasions and the words ‘Glory be to the Father …’ are more heartfelt when prayed after the goose, say, at Michaelmas, or a delicious rack of lamb on Easter Sunday. And anyway, these days, the waking thought is more likely to b
e, Oh dear. Here we go again …

  Pulling off her nightgown, running water into her wash basin, she wonders whether Janna is capable of producing a special feast. After all, she hasn’t come here to be a cook. Since Penny has not yet recovered from her bad attack of shingles, poor Janna has been cast unceremoniously into the role and is struggling to cope with the extra work. Well, they are all struggling.

  She glances at her little bedside clock. Eighteen minutes past six. At this moment, Ruth – the youngest of them all at a mere sixty-eight – will be washing Nichola and then helping her into the chair, where she spends most of her time, whilst Magda makes tea and coffee and Nichola’s breakfast in the little kitchen at the end of their corridor. These days they all have a hot, comforting drink before Morning Prayer, which has been moved from seven o’clock to half-past to give them all a chance to get ready and finish their early morning tasks. Sister Emily sighs: she could remember the days when she’d risen at dawn for Lauds, and even earlier for the long night vigil of Matins: but now they are too frail to test their small stores of strength.

  As sacristan it is her job to set up in the chapel and prepare for the Daily Office, and as she begins to dress she considers the familiar routine of the day ahead: Morning Prayer and then Terce after breakfast at a quarter to nine – and then Father Pascal will arrive to celebrate the Eucharist at midday. Although he is their chaplain, there is a small group of priests who share the rota with him. He’ll stay to lunch today, and so will Clem and Janna. She pauses, sitting on the edge of the bed to put on her shoes, to give thanks for Janna and Clem: how could they manage without them? Chi-Meur has many good friends, as well as alongsiders and oblates, who help in many different ways, but Clem and Janna are part of the bones and blood of the place now. They work and strive alongside the community; and each is on a particular path of discovery.

  Pilgrims, she thinks. We are all pilgrims.

  She senses Janna’s inward struggle between her need to belong and her fear of commitment; soon, very soon, she might be required to face up to this conflict more directly. Clem’s is a different pilgrimage. Clem responded to a call, to a vocation to serve God as a priest, but has swerved aside from it. He’s questioning that decision now, whilst yet being unable to contain the resentful thought that his bereavement forced it upon him. Meanwhile Chi-Meur embraces them both, and little Jakey, and holds them in safety and in love. But for how much longer? In Chapter, Mother Magda talked about the difficulty in continuing to sustain their life at Chi-Meur: the financial commitments, their vulnerability. She’d been approached, she told them, by someone who was very ready to buy the estate. He’d asked if there were a sister community somewhere that they might join with; he was prepared to be generous.

  ‘Sell? Sell Chi-Meur? Are we allowed to sell it?’ The Sisters looked at one another anxiously.

  ‘I think we are allowed to sell. We are all trustees, after all, and are allowed to dispose of its assets. Chi-Meur belongs to the Society of Christ the King, and I imagine the money simply goes into the Society’s bank or towards our support in another House,’ answered Magda.

  ‘But to leave Chi-Meur.’ Emily was shocked. ‘I have been here for more than sixty years. You, too, Magda.’

  ‘I know that none of us wants to do this,’ Magda said almost desperately, ‘but things are very hard now. Even with Clem and Janna we are barely managing, and if any of us should become seriously ill …’

  None of them looked at Nichola who sat smiling, gazing at nothing. Ruth made sure that she was fresh and clean but it was hard graft keeping an eye on her, and what if one of the others should fail? Fear crept like a chill miasma between them, and she, Emily, had drawn a little closer to the fire.

  ‘Where might we go?’ she asked bravely.

  ‘There are the Sisters at Hereford,’ Ruth suggested. ‘They are a small community, but larger than us and with a very good support network.’

  ‘That’s true,’ agreed Magda, ‘though I know that they have their share of sick and elderly Sisters. They might not feel that they can manage Nichola.’

  Ruth instinctively stretched a protective hand to the immobile form beside her; her care for Nichola had brought a special love with it, such as a mother might care for a weak child. Tenderness came late to her, and she remains sharp-tongued and touchy, but Nichola’s helplessness, her gentleness and gratitude, have touched Ruth’s jealous, fearful heart.

  ‘Shall we pray about it? But please say nothing about it to anyone else.’ Magda closed the meeting and they got up, feeling frightened; Ruth helping Nichola, shuffling slowly with the aid of her stick, and the rest of them going back to their tasks.

  Now, Sister Emily stands up and pulls back the curtains: it is still dark outside. The long wing in which the community lives faces south, across the kitchen garden, and she can just glimpse a light in the caravan in the corner of the orchard. Janna is already awake. Perhaps she is planning lunch. Sister Emily arranges her veil, smiling to herself, and goes out into the corridor.

  Janna is propped in her bunk, wrapped in a shawl, drinking tea and brooding on the day ahead.

  ‘We’ll do this together,’ Dossie promised, when Janna admitted her fears. ‘And while we’re at it, we’ll fill the freezer. You need some meals to fall back on if you’re going to have to cope with cooking as well as everything else. You can tell me your budget and we’ll go shopping together. It’s not a problem. I expect they don’t eat much, do they?’

  ‘Sister Nichola and Sister Emily love their food, though Sister Nichola doesn’t really have a clue what’s she’s eating,’ Janna told her. ‘Mother Magda is diabetic and Sister Ruth is picky because she’s got a bit of a tricky tummy.’

  ‘So it’s hardly a big lunch, then. Just the four of them.’

  ‘Father Pascal will stay on after the Eucharist. And they invite me and Clem to share with them on Feast Days in the refectory.’

  ‘OK. Who does the actual shopping?’

  ‘Mother Magda used to but she’s been quite happy to let me do it for them lately. I pick up their pensions and prescriptions and stuff like that. She makes a list for me. Of course, Clem grows most of the veggie stuff and we’ve got eggs from the banties.’

  ‘OK,’ Dossie said again.

  Janna watched Dossie, head bent, calculating what menus she might prepare, and she thought how much Dossie was like Clem and Jakey: the silvery-gilt blond hair; the narrow dark blue eyes that sometimes looked brown; smiling eyes but a serious mouth. Mo looked like that too.

  ‘Why do you have such funny names?’ she asked Dossie. ‘Mo, Pa, Dossie. Even Jakey and Clem use them. Not Mum, or Grandma or Grandpa. I’ve got a friend who always calls his dad by his name because he hated the way his mother used to refer to him as “your father” but they were divorced. Yours are all such funny names.’

  ‘I was called Theodosia after my granny, who died very young,’ she answered. ‘But I’ve always been Dossie, even at school and college, and then Clem just picked up on it when he was little because it was what the B and B-ers called me. Mo is Mollie and Pa is Patrick. Pa trained at the Camborne School of Mines; he’s a mining engineer. They married very young, when Pa was still at Camborne, and they had a little flat in the town. It was a kind of tease by Pa’s friends, as if he and Mo were more responsible and grown up because they were married. His friends would go round for supper and treat it like home and they just became Pa and Mo. It was just a joke to begin with but it caught on. We rather like it, though some people think it’s a bit odd. Perhaps we’re just natural nickname people.’

  Janna finishes her tea and climbs out of her bunk, shivering. It is very cold, the wind in the north-east. Even with her little gas fire full on, the caravan suddenly feels rather flimsy. She dresses quickly: thermal underwear, a long thick cord skirt the colour of crushed raspberries, several jerseys. Dossie has made a delicious concoction with duck breasts and a rich sauce for the Candlemas feast; all quite ready for Janna to pop into the oven
. She’ll roast potatoes and parsnips, and Clem has promised broccoli; Pa donated a case of wine at Christmas. Should it be white or red with duck? She’ll have to ask Clem.

  Clem has already lit the fire in the library where the Sisters hold their Chapter meetings and have tea in the cold winter afternoons with any visitors who venture out to see them. The big room on the north-west corner of the house takes a long time to warm up and at present, with no guests to consider, Mother Magda refuses to waste the precious central heating oil. She is a worrier; her brow permanently creased, her slight frame tensed against criticism, braced for disaster. Jakey can make her laugh, though, so that the worry lines seem to disappear into a wide delighted smile and her still beautiful dark blue eyes shine with joy.

  Clem’s allayed any anxiety about logs. His predecessor left a barn full of them, chopped up and piled there over a period of years, unused because the Sisters consider log fires a luxury. He didn’t ask permission the first time but simply lit it one Friday morning before their Chapter meeting. He saw their instinctive delighted reaction – their looks of pleasure and surprise – though Sister Ruth bridled at his temerity and Mother Magda quickly began to look anxious.

  ‘Just while the weather is so cold,’ he explained quickly. ‘And the room needs airing, especially with all these books. It would be a pity if they got damp and musty and we’ve got so many logs.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Mother Magda was relieved at this rational explanation. ‘And Sister Nichola might like to sit here for a while after lunch,’ she suggested placatingly to Sister Ruth, sensing her indignation. ‘Just for a change.’

  Clem could see that Sister Ruth was torn between wanting to voice her disapproval and acknowledging the pleasure the fire would give. Sister Nichola was already advancing towards it with little murmurs of delight.

  ‘Just while the weather is so cold,’ Sister Ruth agreed reluctantly.