The Christmas Angel (34 page)

She glances at her watch, wondering where Rupert might be. She will make some tea and sit by the fire, waiting for him and planning her reception.

When he pulls in, much later, he is alarmed to see the small Golf parked in the lane and lights on in the cottage. He peers at the car in the darkness, his stomach somersaulting with apprehension, trying to remember whether Dossie’s car is this dark colour. The front door swings open as he reaches the porch and with a shock that is part horror and part relief he stares at Kitty.

‘Good God!’ he says, trying to laugh. ‘Are you trying to give me a heart attack or something? I wondered who the hell had broken in.’

She smiles briefly, stepping back and opening the door wider, but he knows at once that something is wrong. This ought to be a moment of excitement on her part; she should be enjoying his surprise. Instead he sees the brittle quality of her smile and feels the tension in her shoulders as he embraces her.

‘Happy birthday,’ she says coolly. ‘I thought I’d come and celebrate with you.’

‘That’s wonderful.’ His mind leaps to and fro, wondering if there has been anything she’s seen to make her suspicious. ‘I just wish you’d told me. Terry phoned at lunchtime and I had to dash down to see him. It was to do with that claim.
If
I’d known you were coming I’d have tried to put him off somehow.’ He thinks guiltily of Dossie; he would have put her off, too, if he’d known.

‘I wondered why you were so late.’ She goes ahead of him into the kitchen. ‘Let’s have a drink.’

He silently gasps a breath, still recovering from the shock. ‘Thanks.’ He takes the glass of wine she gives him. ‘And thanks for coming down.’

She raises her own glass and says again, almost ironically, ‘Happy birthday.’

He is puzzled by her contained, cool behaviour. ‘What a great present.’ He sips, sets the glass down and puts his arms out to her. ‘And I thought you said you were keeping it until I got home.’

She moves into his arms, still holding her own glass, and he knows that something is very wrong. He kisses her, but she draws away quickly, still on edge and smiling the same brittle smile.

‘I brought some supper with me,’ she says. ‘I hope you’re hungry. Or were you planning to go out?’

‘No,’ he answers. ‘I’d probably have made myself a sandwich. I had lunch at the pub.’

‘Oh?’ she says quickly. ‘I thought you were lunching with the new tenants?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘That’s it. At the pub. And then Terry phoned. What time did you arrive?’

‘About three o’clock. Earlier than I’d allowed. There was a woman here.’

‘
What
?’

His reaction is too extreme and she looks at him, eyes wary, chin raised. ‘A pretty blonde woman. She was looking for you.’

His heartbeat almost stifles him. Dossie, here, looking for him when they’d only just separated and she knew he was on his way to St Mawes? He shrugs, manages a little chuckle.

‘Really? Well, lucky old me. Pity I missed her. Who was she?’ He takes another sip from his glass, trying to look indifferent. His brain clicks busily from one possible scenario to another.

‘Her name is Dossie Pardoe. She said she’d been trying get in touch with you.’

‘What about?’

‘The Fill the Freezer thing.’ A pause. ‘Or so she said.’

He knows at once that Kitty’s instinct has gone straight to the truth of the matter and it is with great control that he frowns slightly and says, ‘Dossie Pardoe? But why on earth would she come out here? She phones or emails usually.’

He sees that his calmness has thrown her just a little, cast a tiny doubtful shadow on the searching beam of that infallible instinct of hers, and he makes haste to build on it. ‘She came out here once, way back in the spring,’ he says. ‘We had coffee on the lawn and she showed me her menus. She’s been quite useful, actually. The punters love it.’ He drinks some more wine, makes a face, half puzzled, half indifferent. ‘Wonder what she wanted.’

‘She said that she was stopping it – the Fill the Freezer thing. She said she’d tried to get in touch and couldn’t, and that she didn’t want to let you down over Christmas.’

‘My email was down for a bit,’ he says idly, hiding his relief. ‘It might have been that. But it was good of her to come over in that case. We
have
got some people in for the New Year who were asking about it, and it could have been embarrassing.’

His brain seethes: what on earth has Dossie been doing? And what if she comes back?

‘It just seems odd,’ Kitty is saying, arms crossed over her breast, glass held up in one hand, ‘for her to come here.’

‘It’s a pity she’s giving up,’ he muses, trying to deflect her. ‘I expect those batty old parents of hers have persuaded her back to the B and B-ing.’ He laughs. ‘I’ve never met them but Dossie’s parents are one of those old Cornish families who have lived for ever on the peninsula and they’ve been running a bed and breakfast, which they had to stop when they got a bit creaky. And they’re always trying to persuade Dossie to give up her own catering thing and run it again. She lives with them, apparently, in this big old house over Padstow way. She’s a widow.’ He pauses. ‘Her son’s a local priest,’ he adds casually, ‘widowed very young too, and there’s a grandson. Goodness, it’s like some soap opera. They all sound mad as hatters.’

‘You seem to know a lot about her from just one meeting.’

‘Oh, I’ve met her a few times, obviously, when she’s taken things down to St Mawes. She’s a great favourite with Terry, actually, but I’ve seen her there a few times and she’s talked about her family.’

‘But you’ve never told her about yours?’

‘What?’ He is taken aback. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘She said she thought I was dead.’

For a moment he cannot speak. He feels the blood beating in his cheeks, his chest is constricted, and he knows – absolutely knows – that he has given himself away. Kitty’s eyes are bright and cold, but her mouth shows that she is in pain.

‘So you
did
tell her that?’ Her voice is corrosive with contempt, her look tells him that he disgusts her, but still she cannot disguise the pain.

‘No,’ he cries. He sets down his glass and holds out his arms, but she steps back from him with a gesture of rejection.

‘You’ve been having an affair with her.’

‘Look,’ he says, dropping his arms. ‘Wait.’ Desperately he tries to muster some measure of control. ‘It’s exactly like I said, honestly, only Dossie’s one of those women who enjoys a bit of a flirtation with their work and well, you know what it’s like, love.’ He spreads his hands, puts on his naughty-boy expression; a ‘how can I help it if women fancy me?’ look that expects understanding, forgiveness.

She stares at him. ‘So you told her I was dead.’

‘No,’ he shouts. ‘No. I
told
you …’

‘OK. You allowed her to believe it.’

‘No. How do I know what she believed? We never talked about it.’

‘Have you been to bed with her?’

‘What? Oh, for God’s sake …’ His blustering isn’t working. She turns away, picks up her bag. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m going back to Bristol. I can’t bear the sight of you another moment.’

He bars her way. ‘Don’t be so silly, darling. This is crazy. Please, just listen for a moment.’

‘I don’t want to hear any more. You disgust me. And I don’t want you at the flat.’

He stares at her, shocked. ‘What are you saying? For God’s sake, Kitty. I’m telling you that nothing happened. There was nothing except one of those silly flirtations that often spring up when you work with a member of the opposite sex. Ask anyone. I flirt with Sally and you don’t mind that.’

She hesitates just for a moment, and he knows that he’s
touched
a nerve. What will she say to Sally? How will she explain this to her best friend?

‘Look,’ he says rapidly, ‘just don’t get this out of proportion. I can see it’s a shock, Dossie turning up here. But I promise you that she means less than nothing to me. You can’t destroy our marriage on the strength of a silly flirtation.’

‘I’m not destroying anything,’ she says. ‘You are the destroyer. I’m going now and I don’t want you following me.’

She slams out and he hears the engine start up and the car draw away. He stands still, knowing that it would be foolish to follow her and to force another confrontation. He must give her time to cool down, to get over it. He has admitted nothing and, clearly, neither has Dossie. His gratitude is tinged with shame and he wonders what she is thinking and what she will do.

He goes back into the kitchen and refills his glass: ‘Happy bloody birthday,’ he mutters. ‘What the hell happens now?’

Dossie can’t stop crying. It is shock, she tells herself, rubbing her cheeks with tissues, doubling up again with the pain. Shock and humiliation and disappointment squeeze her heart, forcing the tears into her eyes.

Pa and Mo are out with the dogs when she arrives home and she simply shuts herself in her room, still shivering with shock and reaction and, sitting down on her bed, she begins to cry. It is so demoralizing to know that he’s simply been treating her as a kind of stop-gap, a comfort break, while he is away from his wife. From Kitty. She speaks the name silently, bitterly in her head. Kitty.

So he was married all the time and he’d allowed her to believe that his wife was dead. Liar, she thinks fiercely.
Cheating
, lying bastard. She is suffused with shame and humiliation, burning with this overwhelming sense of being betrayed. He knows – of course he knows – that she loves him, and he’s just played her along and then gone back to Kitty at weekends. How he must have laughed up his sleeve at her readiness to accept the position of waiting and hoping; how he must have congratulated himself on her willingness to take what she was given and not ask for more.

She weeps again with loss and fury. And now there is nowhere to go – and nothing to look forward to any more. No more dates and meetings; no more plans and picnics and unexpected texts. The future stretches emptily ahead.

Exhausted, Dossie pushes her hair back from her wet cheeks. Still slumped on the edge of the bed, she hears the car returning and Pa and Mo getting out, releasing the dogs and coming into the house. Hastily she gets up and goes to the little basin in the corner of the room. She turns on the cold tap and, bending over, she splashes water onto her hot cheeks. She is filled with resentment that she is not to be allowed even an hour’s grace to recover; that she must pull herself together so as to face them. Fresh anger seizes her, but the moment passes.

Raising her head, she stares at herself in the glass above the basin. She’s been here before and she knows the score. Deep in her heart she is glad that there was someone to go downstairs to; people to talk to, for whom she must make an effort to cast off the pain and the self-pity. Mo and Pa will ask no questions; they are too wise for that. They will simply be there.

She picks up a towel, blots away the signs of weeping and begins to repair the damage. There is a little scratching at the door. She stands quite still for a moment, and then goes
to
open it. John the Baptist is waiting for her, tail wagging very slightly and ears flattened, as if guessing her mood and doubtful of his welcome. She strokes his head gratefully, swallowing back more tears, and allows him to escort her downstairs.

On a bright cold morning a few days later, Mother Magda is checking through the articles for the
Advent Newsletter
before they are sent down to the village, where a kind friend who organizes the parish magazine will assemble the contributions into a coherent whole and print it off. The most important news, of course, is the plan for the retreat house. She and Father Pascal have collaborated over this and she is very pleased with the final result. Clem has contributed a piece about his new training, and Sister Emily has been very conscientious over creating a diary of the events that have taken place at Chi-Meur over the past year. There is a charming photograph of Janna’s caravan garden at its prettiest to be included, and another of a group of oblates taken in the orchard during the special oblates’ weekend in October, and a copy of Father Pascal’s uplifting and thought-provoking homily for the Feast of Christ the King.

Mother Magda shuffles the pieces of paper into the right order and then writes a last important note for inclusion on the back page:

Although we are very appreciative of your kindness at this season we would like to remind any of you who are thinking of sending chocolates, biscuits or sweets to the community that we now number only four, one of whom is diabetic!

‘Don’t,’ warns Sister Emily, ‘discourage the delightful fellow who sends the case of claret each year. That Château Labat was very, very good. Father Pascal really appreciated it. And so did Bishop Freddie.’

Mother Magda chuckles to herself, remembering: Sister Emily had appreciated it too. She pushes all the pieces of paper into a large envelope and goes out to find Janna, who will probably enjoy a walk down to the village on this sunny winter morning. She finds her in the kitchen with Sister Nichola who, wrapped about with Janna’s shawl, is sitting at the table carefully cutting up old Christmas cards – nothing is wasted at Chi-Meur – and pasting the pictures on to plain white cards on which the sisters will write their own greetings. She works painstakingly, and very slowly, and Mother Magda suffers a little pang as she remembers the beautiful little pots and bowls and candle-holders the older nun used to make, and how deft and clever she was.

Janna, who is making a fish pie, smiles a welcome, points questioningly at the coffee jar. Mother Magda hesitates – it is rather luxurious to be stopping to drink coffee when there is so much to be done – but she gives a little sigh of acceptance and relaxes into a chair at the table. She watches Janna moving about and wonders if she has any idea how much they all value her youth and strength and cheerfulness. Today she is wearing an apron on which is printed: ‘Hard work never killed anyone but why take the chance?’

Mother Magda sits peacefully, drinking her coffee, watching Sister Nichola cutting and pasting, making Christmas cards that will be sent out to the community’s vast number of friends and supporters. Presently she holds up the big brown envelope.