The Christmas Angel Page 6

  ‘We know him,’ he says, resigned. ‘And it’s no good trying to change him at this late date. He’ll probably crash down with another stroke, just like he did before, and it might be worse next time, but can you honestly imagine him sitting quietly on the sofa with a tea cosy on his head? Might as well let him get on with it, Mo. I know it’s hard for you …’

  And it is hard. At first she watched anxiously as he bellowed down the telephone at an unknown voice trying to sell him double glazing – ‘Can’t you understand what I’m saying? This is a grade-one-listed property. We can’t put in double glazing. Why don’t you check your facts before you waste people’s time?’ – or she’d keep an eye on the clock whilst he spent an hour digging a trench for the runner beans, popping down the garden at intervals to make sure that he hadn’t collapsed again. Gradually she built up a defence against the fear, knowing that her anxiety added to his awareness of his vulnerability and weakness, and by degrees they’d fallen back into their old cheerful ways.

  ‘If you could get the ride-on mower out of the barn somehow,’ she says now, ‘you could fix something on the back and make a path through the snow to the lane. They’ll have the tractors out soon, so as to get to the stock. The dogs will enjoy it. Wolfie can ride on the mower with you.’

  She can see by the alert tilt to his head that he is thinking about it. She stretches her hand to Wolfie, curled on the quilt by her knees and, at the bottom of the bed, John the Baptist beats his tail on the rug. He’s always been sensitive to Pa’s occasional outbursts – ears flattened, an eye rolled backwards to glance at his master whilst he laid a conciliatory head on Pa’s knee – and even in his most fiery moments Pa’s hand is tender on the black head, gently pulling an ear, smoothing the soft coat. John the Baptist understands all about barks being worse than their bites and he adores Pa.

  Mo finishes her tea. She watches Pa’s shoulders shrugging inside his disgraceful old dressing gown, his fingers clenching and unclenching, as he plots and plans and works things out.

  ‘If I can get it out,’ he says, with a kind of gloomy relish, ‘I suppose it might work. The snow’s drifted across the barn doors again. It’ll be hell’s own delight shifting it.’ But when he turns to look at her, his face is bright with intent; concentrated with purpose. ‘All right, Mo?’ he asks – and she smiles as she nods her ‘yes’ to the old familiar question. He’s asked it all their lives together: speeding along in his Austin Healey Sprite; racing before the wind in sailing boats; walking on the cliffs; lying on beaches in the sun. At all the crucial moments, birth and death and celebration, there has been the look and the question: ‘All right, Mo?’ like an arm around the shoulder, an embrace.

  John the Baptist gets up and goes to him, tail wagging, and she looks at them both with love and sudden gut-wrenching panic: how would she possibly manage without them? She pushes the quilt aside and swings her legs rather painfully over the side of the bed.

  ‘Well, dress up warmly,’ she says. ‘Is Dossie up yet?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Lucky we’ve got plenty of supplies in. Good old Dossie. She’d have made a first-rate purser. She can sleep in and I’ll cook the breakfast.’

  But Dossie is not asleep. For once the snow has not had its usual effect upon her. She is neither delighted by its magical transforming qualities nor excited in a childish way by the white stuff. She is quite simply irritated by it: she will not now be able to keep her lunch date. She’s exchanged several emails with the amusing Rupert French, whose holiday properties are mainly to the south of Truro, and it seems a natural progression to meet him for lunch.

  ‘I buy a run-down old cottage or a barn with planning permission,’ he told her, ‘and live in it or in a caravan while I do it up. Then I move on to the next one. My wife and I used to do it together but now … well, now I’m working on my own.’

  His voice changed when he said that. He sounded rather bleak and she didn’t like to ask him whether his wife had died or whether they were divorced.

  Chris at Penharrow is pretty certain that she died. ‘I heard some rumour that she was very ill and that she went upcountry for treatment. Bristol, I think it was. It was a while ago now. I really don’t know him all that well, only through the trade. He’s based more on the south coast. But he sounded quite cheerful when he phoned to ask about your new scheme.’

  Huddled in her duvet, Dossie wonders why she feels so disappointed that they won’t be able to meet up as they’ve planned. After all, a phone call and a few emails are nothing to go by, though she knows that he’s rather dishy. There is a photograph of him on his website with some of his clients outside one of his cottages and she’s studied it closely. He is laughing into the camera and he looks quite tough and rather fun. In one of the emails he wrote:

  I’m not that far away from you at the moment, working on a little cottage up near the edge of the moor. The first one I’ve bought outside my usual area and it’s still in a bit of a state. A cross between a builders’ merchant’s and a squat! I haven’t had the telephone connected yet and I have to go up to the village hall to send emails. We must meet up some time and talk all this through. I’ve got a lot of clients I know will be really keen to try it out. How about a pub lunch?

  And so it was arranged and they exchanged the numbers of their mobiles in case of some emergency, though he warned her that the signal was very patchy. Dossie wonders how he is faring, up on Bodmin Moor, and reaches for her mobile phone on the bedside table: no message. She’ll get up and check her emails. Sitting up, pulling the duvet higher, she texts quickly to Clem: Snowed in. Hope u r ok? xx

  Clem and Jakey will be quite safe at Chi-Meur: they are so self-sufficient and she knows that the freezer is well stocked up. Pulling on her dressing gown, she slips next door into her study and switches on her laptop: no emails. She glances at her watch: barely eight o’clock. It is much too early; he’ll hardly manage to get up to the village hall before breakfast. Meanwhile, she can smell bacon frying. Mo puts her head in at the door.

  ‘So you are up. Pa thought you were still asleep. He’s got a little plan to dig us out but he might need some help.’

  ‘I know what that means.’ Dossie comes out of the study and closes the door behind her. ‘It means lots of hard labour on my part and a great deal of shouting on his.’

  Mo chuckles. ‘It’s my fault, darling, I’m afraid. I suggested it. He gets so fretful if he can’t be doing. You know what he’s like.’

  ‘Don’t I, though.’ Dossie looks resigned. ‘OK. I’ll get dressed but tell him to save me some bacon.’

  Back in her room she checks her mobile again. There was a message from Rupert: Cant get car out. Gutted. How about u?

  She texts back: Same here – and then hesitates. Is he asking if she is gutted or merely snowed in? She doesn’t want to sound too keen but she feels pleased that he is gutted. However, she wipes her message and starts again. No luck today. B in touch, and leaves it at that. But his message has cheered her. She feels excited, on the brink of something, and is almost glad that the meeting is postponed so that the expectation can continue to grow for a little while longer. He is disappointed: gutted. She hugs the sense of excitement to her and looks out upon the pastoral scene with equanimity now.

  Perhaps he’ll send another text; perhaps she’ll email him later on, just something casual. Dossie begins to dress, humming beneath her breath.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Rupert slides the mobile into a small compartment in his briefcase and zips it shut.

  ‘Just checking messages,’ he calls. ‘This snow is going to be causing lots of problems. I shan’t be able to get out this morning. And you won’t be able to get home.’

  She comes carefully down the steep narrow staircase wrapped in a thick long dressing gown, huddling the collar up around her neck. Her morning face is slightly shiny and pallid, her brow creased into an expression of faint dissatisfaction: Kitty has never been a morning person.

  �
��Lucky I kept the wood-burner going overnight,’ he says. ‘I should go into the sitting-room if I were you. It’s cosy in there. I’ll bring some coffee in.’

  She gives a little unsmiling nod and he goes back into the kitchen, slightly irritated that she’s taken it into her head to pay this flying visit, but far too experienced to show it. The important thing is to keep the mood light. Kitty has a sixth sense where other women are concerned and there must be no hint of his lunch date with Dossie. Yet he can’t quite keep himself from smiling as he finds the percolator and makes coffee: Dossie sounds rather fun and he is looking forward to meeting her. But not today.

  Kitty turns her head as he carries in the coffee. ‘I still think it’s crazy that you bought this place,’ she says. ‘Honestly, it’s miles off the beaten track.’

  He passes her the mug of strong, black coffee. ‘You know why I bought it,’ he answers, perching on the chair opposite. ‘I bought it because the owner was in trouble and needed to offload it quickly. I got it very cheap and I should be able to turn it round and sell it on and make a nice little profit.’

  ‘In this market?’

  ‘OK,’ he says easily, smiling at her, ‘then I’ll rent it out until the market improves.’

  She sits back in the corner of the shabby armchair, drawing her long legs up beneath her, folding her thin elegant hands around the mug. He sees that she is pulling herself together, shaking off the grumpy early morning mood that reflects the uncomfortable night on the second-hand bed. He wonders why she’s made the sudden dash down to see him and hopes it isn’t going to become a habit. After all, he gets up to Bristol twice a week. The truth is that he’s begun to enjoy his semi-bachelor existence, though he won’t let her guess this.

  She makes a little face at him. ‘It’s just so silly to be so far apart. After all, we don’t need to be, do we? There’s plenty of room at the flat and Mummy would love to have you there.’

  She’s wheedling now, regretting her grumpiness. He watches her, still smiling, thinking, as he always does, how ridiculous it sounds to hear a grown woman calling her mother ‘Mummy’. One day soon Mummy will leave her darling daughter a beautiful ground-floor flat in Sneyd Park in Bristol, some very valuable ‘pieces’ and a comfortable bank balance. Not that it matters: he has plenty of money of his own, though most of it is tied up in property. Still, it’s a comforting prospect. One can always do with extra security. The cottage has been a bit of a bolt hole from the restrictions of the flat: a good excuse to get away from the invalid atmosphere.

  ‘It’s serving a turn,’ he shrugs. ‘You don’t really want me in the flat in Bristol all the time while you’re looking after your mother and it’s keeping me busy.’

  She glances around the small room, at the temporary shabby furniture, and he almost laughs aloud at her expression of distaste.

  ‘Come on, love,’ he says. ‘I warned you what it was like here. Anyway, you know perfectly well how uncomfortable renovating a house can be in the early stages. We’ve done it often enough.’

  ‘It’s different now,’ she argues. ‘I’ve got used to the comfort of the flat.’

  He shrugs, bored with this increasingly familiar argument which leads nowhere. He might point out that if she were with him they would have made the cottage much more comfortable but some instinct tells him to stay cool; not to press her. Her determination to visit despite his attempts to discourage it has surprised him – and slightly unnerved him.

  ‘I have to finish the cottage,’ he points out reasonably. ‘It’s my job. It’s what I do.’

  She sits with her head bent, watching the flames through the glass door of the stove.

  ‘Well, you don’t have to do it for much longer,’ she says. ‘It’s time we relaxed a bit and enjoyed ourselves.’

  He feels a thrill of fear at the prospect of being joined at the hip to Kitty in the Bristol flat with her elderly mother, who suffers from aortic stenosis, and no work to which he can escape, no excuses of meetings. He’s done very well since he came out of the army and started his restoration company. It owns a great deal of property, including five cottages down on the Roseland Peninsula. Her father respected him, no doubt about that, though he was always slightly cautious about his, Rupert’s, background: good schools, good regiment, yes, but there was something indefinable that unnerved that unimaginative old stalwart of Bristol’s merchant aristocracy. He’d been wary of this ex-army officer’s approaches to his little princess: he’d glimpsed that odd, passionate, creative streak that made Rupert a perfectionist in his work and meant that a beautifully finished product was much more important than simple profit.

  Rupert grins to himself, remembering the predictable old fellow who was so anxious for his precious daughter’s financial wellbeing. His wife – whose life was full of good works, charity lunches and photographs in Country Life – was an easier prospect. Flustered and flattered by compliments, charmed into approval of this young man’s absolute need to create something beautiful, she’d added her persuasions to Kitty’s passionate appeals and they’d carried the day.

  ‘What are you grinning at?’

  He laughs aloud. ‘I was just thinking about your dear old dad. He didn’t get it, did he? My theory that each old house has a soul that has to be consulted before you can start work on it? It made him nervous. He never really reckoned me, did he?’

  ‘Of course he did,’ she says quickly. ‘Don’t be silly.’ But she smiles too, remembering those earlier days and the excitement of slowly drawing out the character of each cottage, and he sees the pretty, sexy Kitty with whom he’d fallen in love back then. With her short bed-rumpled hair and the glow of the firelight on her pale skin she suddenly looks younger, more vulnerable, and he is pricked by affection and desire.

  He stands up, still laughing. ‘We’d better get some clothes on …’ He hesitates, eyebrow quirked. ‘Unless you have any better ideas?’

  She hesitates but glances at the window. ‘I thought you said the farmer might come down to see how you’re coping.’

  He shrugs. An untimely visit from the farmer wouldn’t faze him but Kitty is already clasping her dressing gown around her and standing up.

  ‘I think we ought to get dressed,’ she says firmly. ‘Thank God you’ve got the shower working. I’ll go first.’

  ‘OK,’ he says lightly, and follows her up the stairs.

  The narrow alleyways are full of streaming golden sunlight. It gleams on old wet cobbles, slants across slate-hung walls, slides into a secret corner where a tub of pansies shelters beside a cottage door. Janna passes like a shadow down the steep hill; beneath a tiny, pointed slate roof with a crooked chimney; past uneven whitewashed granite walls; below the slits of windows peering slyly down. Far beyond the uneven, lichen-painted roof-scapes, seen in glimpses between angles of jutting walls, the sea rocks placidly, its back turned to the land as if sleeping between the rise and fall of tides.

  Janna slips into a passage that leads uphill again towards gorse-covered cliffs and the small Norman church perched halfway up on a grassy plateau. Father Pascal’s cottage is the last in a row of tinners’ cottages, next to the churchyard wall, and kept by the Church as a ‘house for duty’. He moved into it from his parish rectory near Padstow when he retired, and he takes services in the little church next door – which is now served by a team ministry – and anywhere else where he might be needed.

  From his upstairs study window, Father Pascal watches Janna appear from between two cottages and begin to climb the stony lane. He likes it here in Peneglos amongst the odd mix of villagers: locals, who try to wrest a living from the hostile countryside or the sea; incomers, who come looking for a quieter, more peaceful existence, and the second-homers, who appear and disappear like small bands of swallows, following the sun. He walks between them all, maintaining a delicate balance, smoothing ruffled feelings, softening antagonisms, diluting prejudices. He loves them, and despairs of them, and supports them. A Breton by birth, with an English
mother, he feels at home on this rocky, turbulent coast where every other village honours a saint: a misty land, where the borders between myth and legend and reality are not distinct.

  When his father, fighting with the French Resistance, was killed at the end of the war, he and his mother returned to England to live with her family between Penzance and Zennor and, ever since, he’s had a deep passion for his mother’s birthplace. Named for the great French mathematician and moralist, he was quite at home amongst the children of fishermen and miners, who called him ‘Frenchy’ but accepted him as one of their own. His black eyes, and blacker hair, were not remarkable amongst these Celtic people who lived for centuries at the mercy of Spanish invaders, smugglers and seafarers.

  Now, he sets aside the homily he’s been preparing and descends the narrow, steep staircase. He opens the door into his little parlour and hastens to put another log into the small wood-burning stove. The cottage has no heating, apart from this stove and the old Cornish range in the living-room-kitchen across the passage, but he is content. Between them they warm the two rooms above – his study and his bedroom – though the bathroom built over the scullery extension at the back of the house is generally freezing.

  Here, close to the sea, the snow has disappeared, though there are still problems upcountry. The gullys and alleyways have been awash with snow-melt, the rivers flooding on their descent from the high moors to the sea, but now the paths are clear at last and he smiles with pleasure at Janna, as though he has been separated from his friends at the convent for many months instead of little more than a week.

  As usual, she has an offering for him: a small posy of snowdrops and jonquils. He takes them with delight as she slips past him into the warmth of the parlour. He shares with her a deep joy in the wild things the countryside shelters and they spend happy moments together checking a rare flower or some small bird against one of his many reference books. He takes the posy into the kitchen, finds the little vase he uses for such a tiny bunch and brings it back to the parlour.