The Christmas Angel Read Free Page A

‘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