The Christmas Angel Page 7

  Janna is standing before the fire, looking round her. For once the narrow shoulders are relaxed, her face peaceful. She’s told him many things in this room: about Nat, her very dear friend, who is gay and who has now found a partner so that she is a little less able to be so completely at home in his cottage as she was once. She misses Nat and the special friendship they had, though she still stays in touch and visits him and his partner. She’s explained about her upbringing as a traveller; how her father abandoned her mother before she, Janna, was born, and how her mother became addicted to alcohol and drugs. He knows all about the years of being fostered and how she ran away over and over again to try to find her mother, and how her family are so scattered now that since her mother’s death she’s been quite alone. It was then that Janna started travelling again and came by strange ways to Chi-Meur. And now she is happier than she’s ever been before.

  It was he who suggested that her father might be Cornish, that she belonged here just as he did, and that it explained her love for the place and this odd feeling that she’d come home. She shook her head uncertainly. Her mother was from around Plymouth way, or so she’d been told, but it might be possible …

  Perhaps, he said on another occasion, perhaps her father hadn’t known her mother was pregnant; that he might not have gone if he’d realized. Or perhaps he’d panicked at the prospect of such responsibility. After all, they’d both been so very young and he’d probably been a wild, free spirit looking for adventure abroad and he’d had a terror of commitment. This struck a chord with Janna, just as he knew it would, and removed a little of the pain. She began to imagine her father rather differently from the heartless philanderer that had always been her concept of him, and was allowing a small area of doubt to creep around and soften that idea of him. But it would be a long and painful process.

  As Father Pascal places the flowers on the small bureau he makes a little prayer for wisdom, for guidance, and turns to smile at her and gestures to one of the wooden-framed armchairs.

  Janna sits down quickly, still clutching her long woollen coat around her. She loves this room: the bookcase reaching from ceiling to floor filled with the warm, glowing bindings of the books; the paintings and drawings that are fixed to every spare inch of the cream-washed walls. Everywhere she looks is colour and warmth: gold-leaf on soft brown leather, and the crimsons, greens and blues in the bookcase, where the books turn their colourful backs on the room; delicate watercolours and charcoal sketches and bold splashes of thick oil paint. Yet there is peace too.

  She looks at Father Pascal with a kind of relief: his presence here all among his paintings and books is necessary to her. There is security here, but the sense of security comes from the man himself; from something he carries within himself. As usual he is all in black: a black roll-neck jersey and old jeans, and thick woollen socks on his feet. He looks like an artist or a jazz musician, yet there is this natural air of authority and of confidence.

  ‘I’ve moved back into the caravan this morning,’ she tells him triumphantly. ‘I slept in the house when the snow came because Mother Magda was worried about me being outside but we’ve got guests arriving later on today so I’ve gone outside again.’

  She smiles a little, remembering how she panicked at the thought of being all amongst the guests, bumping into them on the landing or queuing for the bathroom. She would have felt out of place. Much better to be back in her van, hidden in the trees in the orchard, slipping quietly to and fro. So as soon as she wakened she packed up her things into her tote bag, stripped the bed, took the sheets and towels down to the utility room and put them in the washing machine. Then she let herself out into the cold, bright morning. There was still snow lying under the trees in the orchard, and the van felt chill, so she lit her small gas fire and left it to warm up a bit whilst she went to prepare breakfast. She felt an odd sense of freedom, of lightness, and it was because of that she’d picked the snowdrops and the early jonquils and decided to run down to the village to see Father Pascal as soon as breakfast was cleared away.

  ‘How will you manage without Penny?’ he is asking. ‘She’s still very poorly.’

  ‘’Tis difficult,’ Janna admitted. ‘Mother Magda has had to ask guests to bring their own sheets and towels in future. She hates it, of course, but we simply couldn’t cope otherwise. There’s just too much to do. ’Tis a big house, isn’t it? It felt quite creepy at night being there all on my own with the Sisters shut away in their bit. Luckily there’re only two people coming today so that shouldn’t be too hard. Dossie’s been great, though. She’s made up all sorts of meals that I can just get out of the freezer. But I don’t know how we’d do it with a lot of guests all at once.’

  ‘No,’ he agrees thoughtfully. ‘So many people have come to depend on Chi-Meur and the Sisters have so little strength now. We must pray that some solution soon presents itself.’

  He looks rather sad and she feels the stirrings of anxiety. Old fears touch her heart and she frowns at him anxiously.

  ‘But what could happen?’ she asks. ‘What sort of solution?’

  He shakes his head as if to dismiss his thoughts and her fears. ‘Can I make you coffee?’ he asks. ‘Or tea?’

  ‘No, I must get back.’ She rises to her feet in one quick graceful movement. ‘I only dashed down because I could.’ She laughs. ‘I’ve felt a prisoner up there with all that snow.’

  He laughs too. ‘A prisoner?’ he teases her. ‘At Chi-Meur? But I know what you mean. We hate to have restrictions placed upon us, don’t we? Physical or emotional. Blaise Pascal wrote: “All the misfortunes of men derive from one single thing, which is their inability to be at ease in a room.”’

  She stares at him. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that we might be more content if we were to seek interior freedom rather than physical escape. We can reach into ourselves and find our own freedom without having to rely on other people or external stimulation. That is true freedom.’ He stands up too. ‘Thank you for my flowers. I shall see you on Sunday unless the Sisters need me before that. I know Father John is looking after them this week.’

  Janna hurries away, thinking about what he’s said; confused. Is it wrong, then, to want to run out into the wind and the sunlight and to gulp down great salty breaths of sea-laden air? Or is he hinting at her need to escape responsibility, to panic each time she attains the security she craves because it brings with it the chains of loving and caring and obligations? Perhaps this is how her father felt. Oddly, this thought makes her feel strangely happy, almost hopeful. She no longer feels that she should despise him.

  Janna toils back up the hill to Chi-Meur, her heart light and full of love.

  LENT

  LATE MARCH SUNLIGHT fills the little room, shining on the simple furniture and white walls. Sister Emily puts down a book, picks up her pen again and begins to write. Her small table set beneath the window is covered with sheets of paper: letters from people whom she has been spiritually mentoring over long periods of time, some relationships stretching back for nearly fifty years. She spends a great deal of time – thinking, praying, reading – before she answers any letter, and her correspondence is liable to mount rather alarmingly. Nevertheless, each letter is given its allotted time: nothing is allowed to hurry the process. This afternoon she’s spent some considerable time looking for references, for certain passages that have slipped into her mind, interrupting the progress of the letter. The writer is a middle-aged man who, with his wife, started to come to Chi-Meur some ten years ago. They stayed in the Coach House, self-catering; coming into the chapel for some of the services but also walking and exploring the surrounding countryside and visiting Padstow: what she and the other Sisters call Holy Holidays. Recently his wife died and he’s begun to come alone, staying in the big house on silent retreats to which she has been assigned as his mentor.

  He is a good man, finding silence difficult, needing to talk. Sometimes, however, the talk becomes a block to rea
l spiritual growth and she has to stop him as gently as she can. ‘Too many words,’ she says firmly, smiling at him, rising to go. He writes to her often and she’s brooded long on his most recent letter regarding another lately bereaved friend whom he, in his turn, is attempting to advise and counsel. Now, she believes, she can see her way forward.

  I quite understand your longing to be able to enter into your friend’s painful experience, especially as you have suffered the very similar pain of loss. However, it isn’t necessary to keep telling him your story. In fact, to enter properly into solidarity with him, it is far better to remain silent: your gift to him is merely to listen in silence. Total concentration is what is required; not that half state of listening we so often adopt when we are mentally deciding how we might introduce our own pain or preparing our next piece of advice ready for the minute the other person stops speaking.

  There is a tentative tapping at the door. Emily puts down her pen, irritated.

  ‘Come,’ she calls, and turns on her chair to face the door. It is Janna, her face alarmed, contrite and guilty all at once. Emily rises quickly and Janna, still holding the door, begins to speak quietly but with great haste.

  ‘’Tis Sister Nichola. She was with me in the kitchen, sitting at the table, so that Sister Ruth could have a bit of a quiet moment on her own, and I was making her a cup of tea and chatting away to her and when I turned round she’d gone. I ran out in the garden but there’s no sign of her …’

  Emily goes to the door; she smiles reassuringly into the anxious face. ‘Shh, now, shh. Sister Nichola has an independent streak and she likes to go off on little expeditions. She never goes very far, though. Have you looked in the chapel?’

  ‘The chapel?’ Janna’s face is blank. ‘But it isn’t time for Vespers yet.’

  ‘No, no, but Nichola loves the chapel. It’s always been her favourite place and it’s where she always went whenever she had any free time. People think that nuns spend all their time in chapel or at prayer, or dwelling on their faults and failings, but the truth is that we have very little time for such luxuries. I was telling a very intense young woman who was here on retreat quite recently that if she treasured her prayer life then it was best not to even think of becoming a nun.’

  All the while she is talking she is leading the way along the corridor towards the ante-room outside the chapel. Gently she looks through the half-open heavy oaken door into the chapel, beckons to Janna, and they stand together in silence. Sister Nichola is sitting in her stall. Her round pale face glows with some internal joy; her hands are open to receive the gift, one palm cupped within the other. She seems to be listening to something that ordinary ears cannot hear and Emily’s heart constricts in a spasm of delight and envy: Nichola has always been one of those few blessed souls who live in the light. She steps back, drawing Janna with her.

  ‘I will watch with her for a short while,’ she murmurs, ‘and then I’ll bring her back to you in the kitchen. Go along. All is well.’

  Janna slips away and Emily goes quietly into the chapel and sits in the nearest seat by the door. She does not look at Nichola but is simply aware of her. Her own thoughts run on rather formlessly. She has never been as fortunate as Nichola; she has only ever seen the back of God.

  God is that great absence

  In our lives, the empty silence

  Within, the place where we go

  Seeking …

  She can hear the words in her head and she broods on the paradox: that the awareness of that emptiness is the beginning of fullness. Her thoughts become a contemplative form of prayer and presently Nichola stirs and glances around. Emily rises up and goes to her. Nichola smiles and Emily nods reassuringly and encourages her to her feet. She picks up the stick and puts it into Nichola’s hand. Quietly, slowly, they make their way to the door which, unless the Office or the Eucharist is being said or Silent Prayer is in progress, is always slightly ajar. Nichola pauses, turns aside to dip her fingers into the stoup of holy water and crosses herself; then stretches her wet fingers with a smile to Emily, who receives the drops of water as if they are a special blessing. Together they pass through the back of the house and into the kitchen where Janna is ironing.

  ‘I think Nichola would like a cup of tea,’ Emily says cheerfully. ‘Would you, Nichola?’

  ‘Yes.’ The word is barely a breath. ‘Yes, please. Penny … ?’ She looks at Janna, puzzled, fumbling with the chair that Emily has pulled out for her.

  ‘This is Janna,’ Emily reminds her, helping her into the chair. ‘Janna. Penny isn’t very well and Janna is doing all her work as well as her own. Will you stay with her?’

  Nichola nods, quite happy again, and Janna goes to reheat the kettle, exchanging a relieved glance with Emily who hurries quietly away, back to her room and her abandoned letter.

  Dossie, driving along the lane to St Endellion, is fizzing with a wild joy. She’d forgotten what it is like to feel so madly happy. And these early days of a Cornish spring are utterly in accordance with her mood: the hot sun, the clear sky, the light north-easterly breeze tingling with energy. In the twisting, sunken, secret lanes the banks and ditches are lit with glowing pools of rich gold and pale, luminous yellow: celandines, daffodils, cowslips and primroses, all flowering in abundance. On bare black thorny branches white-tipped blackthorn buds are just beginning to show and there is a flutter of wings and a flash of bright feathers in the hedgerows.

  Just round corner at farm shop. Any chance of buying u a cream t?

  His text has taken her by surprise: her gut churns and she laughs at her reaction, mocking herself, as if it might make it seem less important. She feels like a girl, slipping out to meet an undesirable boyfriend; fooling Pa and Mo.

  ‘Just dashing off to meet up with a client,’ she calls to Mo, who is pruning fuchsias. Well, it’s true: Rupert is a client. She waves to Pa mounted on his sit-on mower with Wolfie perched beside him, making the first cut of the year, but he hasn’t heard a word and simply waves back cheerfully. ‘Might be an hour, maybe longer,’ she shouts, and Mo nods, smiling, and goes back to her ruthless cutting back of the dead wood. Dossie unlocks her car door, relieved not to be questioned, but the dogs come running after her and she bends to ruffle Wolfie’s ears and to rest her forehead, just for a moment, on John the Baptist’s wise, domed head.

  ‘I know what you’re up to,’ his glance seems to say, and she laughs silently, secretly to herself as she kisses him lightly between his ears.

  Hopping into her little car, whizzing out into the lane, she takes a deep gasping breath. Rupert mustn’t see her excitement. She speaks sternly to herself: ‘You’ve only met him once. You hardly know him. Act your age.’

  But she simply can’t. That one meeting in the pub near Bodmin was amazing. He was standing at the bar and turned suddenly as she came in blinking from the bright sunny day, into the gloom of the dark interior. She recognized him at once from the photograph on his website. He isn’t particularly tall – not as tall as Clem – but he has a presence. His personality dominated that crowded bar and he waved at her, laughing, and the man behind the bar laughed with him as if he too had been waiting for this moment. She hesitated and Rupert came towards her, looking at her intently with brown eyes and holding out his hand, and she said, rather foolishly: ‘How did you know it was me?’ and she took his hand, and shook it, and dropped it very quickly.

  ‘Chris described you,’ he answered with a little private smile, still with that intent look, and she knew that, against her will, her lips were curling upwards too, smiling with him, acknowledging that something special was happening.

  And that’s the trouble, she warns herself, as she hurries along the lane listening to Joni Mitchell singing ‘Comes Love’; she’d been too eager. It was if she’d known him for ever, yet there is this tingling excitement still fizzing along her veins so that her heart hammers and she feels breathless.

  He asked her questions about her work, her achievements; intelligent quest
ions from someone who knew the business, and who clearly respected what she did. They chuckled together about the whims of clients and the precariousness of being self-employed and working alone without a back-up team.

  ‘Though I’ve got Pa and Mo,’ she said, and then regretted it, not wanting to bring in all the freight and baggage of their private lives just yet.

  He raised his eyebrows but he didn’t press it, and somehow she found herself explaining about Mo and Pa and the B and B-ers, and about her early widowhood, and Clem and Jakey. It all came out rather suddenly and unexpectedly, and he listened – really listened – to her, and she waited for the slight withdrawal of interest which had happened so often before when she talked about how she still lived with her parents. But Rupert was fascinated, asking more questions – roaring with laughter when she explained about John the Baptist as a puppy diving headfirst into his drinking-bowl – not in the least fazed by her unusual family set-up.

  When she tentatively invited him to talk about his own situation he merely shook his head.

  ‘I’m on my own at the moment,’ he said.

  His expression was an odd one – a mix of bleakness? a determination not to become emotional? – and she decided to respect it; not to pry, or to persuade him that he would be quite safe with her if he wanted to let it all hang out. She was used to Clem’s need for emotional privacy. She’d seen how he’d dealt with Madeleine’s death in this same way, and she was determined not to make Rupert uncomfortable. Carefully she led the conversation back into its former lines and soon they were laughing again. And there was a new sense of freedom between them, as if by getting all the baggage out into the open they were free to go forward.