The Christmas Surprise Read online

  A huge group of laughing children were hogging the camera, waving, showing off their new toy, making faces in front of it. A loud ‘CHUT,’ could be heard off camera, from Faustine, and all the children settled down, except one little girl with tight braids, who came forward very slowly and said, with a heavy French accent, ‘We would like to send our love to our brother Apostil and all our brothers and sisters in Lipton.’

  Then Stephen raised his arm, and suddenly, from Africa, and from the chilly, snow-covered church, all the children’s voices rose as one.

  Sama raka modou, sama raka modou

  Yéwougham, Yéwougham

  Gnoundé yayou diné gnoundé yayou diné

  Ding dang dong, ding dang dong

  Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques,

  Dormez vous? Dormez Vous?

  Sonnez le matin, sonnez le matin

  Ding dang dong, ding dang dong.

  Then the music changed to something slower, and the voices raised.

  Douce nuit, sainte nuit!

  Dans les cieux! L’astre luit.

  Le mystère annoncé s’accomplit.

  Cet enfant sur la paille endormit,

  C’est l’amour infini,

  C’est l’amour infini!

  Silent night, holy night

  All is calm all is bright

  Round yon virgin mother and child

  Holy infant so tender and mild

  Sleep in heavenly peace

  Sleep in heavenly peace.

  The sound was glorious, filling the entire nave. The children sang the lilting African lullaby first in Swahili, then in French, then the last time round in a charming, halting English, Stephen conducting madly the entire time.

  Rosie held Apostil very tight, the tears rolling off her chin and dripping on his head. Tina whispered how she was going to kill Stephen for ruining her mascara. The church sat rapt, then, when the final voices had died away, erupted in a massive storm of clapping and cheering. It took a while to calm everybody down, and they were in the process of saying goodbye to the children in Kduli when the line collapsed and froze, and contact was lost.

  ‘That was our surprise, Miss Rosie.’ Edison’s voice rang out from the choristers.

  ‘Well it certainly was,’ said Rosie through her tears. ‘It was a very good one.’

  ‘If we can finally get on,’ said the vicar peevishly. ‘I welcome thee, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, Apostil Akibo Edward Lakeman.’

  Then it was Lilian’s turn to gasp.

  It was freezing outside the church, but nobody noticed, and nobody minded. People kept coming over to congratulate Tina and Jake, and cuddle Apostil, and hug everyone else, and the photographer grew increasingly exasperated and warned them that they’d have no formal pics at all, and Tina – Tina, the devotee of the perfect wedding, Tina who had planned everything down to the nth degree, Tina with her magazines and colour-coded folders and Post-its – tossed her head and said those pictures were absolutely crap anyway, and superboring, and please, just to take pictures of their day as it actually was.

  The sun shone on the icicles lining the church walls, and followed them as they all crunched their way on foot up towards the hut – everyone except Tina, who was borne away triumphantly by her new husband on a shiny tractor lent to them by Peter Isitt, which had been decorated with flowers and holly and lined with blankets. They threw sweets as they went, to Lilian’s horror, and the schoolchildren, already hyped up from the massive success of their concert, and the pressure of having to stay incredibly well-behaved for over an hour, went completely crazy for them. Holes were made in the knees of new trousers; icy mud was spattered across pretty dresses and smocks; shoes were trampled into oblivion. But today, nobody seemed to mind too much. Tina’s ushers, in another surprise for Rosie, were all shaking buckets for the African fund, and people were donating with a will.

  Amid all the excitement, a rather shell-shocked Moshe announced that if it was always like this, he thought he might convert. Lilian told him to come and talk to her first. She had adopted him without a second thought, and he was pleased to be invited to take her free arm; the other one of course was being held by Moray.

  ‘You are SUCH a coquette,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Always,’ returned Lilian serenely.

  To give credit to Henrietta, she did come over, with a slight stiffness in her gait and a set to her shoulders, to where the little family was standing.

  ‘Quaint,’ she said, peering at Apostil, who was democratically beaming at everyone while also desperately trying to pull off his lace robe, which was scratching at his neck. ‘Hello,’ she said formally. ‘I’m your grandmother, remember?’

  Apostil stared at her with his big round eyes and blew a spit bubble.

  ‘Have you seen Pamela?’ Henrietta asked. Rosie suspected she’d already gone ahead to the scout hut – the party to which Hetty was not invited – but didn’t say. Stephen stood, stony-faced.

  Rosie couldn’t help it.

  ‘Would you like to come on? To the party? I mean, everybody else is …’

  Hetty sniffed.

  ‘I dislike doing things everybody else is doing.’

  ‘We know that,’ said Stephen.

  Hetty pulled herself up.

  ‘No. I want to check the gardener has spliced up the winter garden properly. There’s always plenty to be getting on with in the house.’

  ‘If you have a house,’ said Stephen sotto voce as she turned and walked away, the sole figure heading back up towards town, where her Land Rover was parked. Rosie clasped his arm.

  ‘Don’t you dare start to say anything about us being better off,’ said Stephen, tightly.

  ‘I shan’t,’ said Rosie, then reached up and kissed him lightly on the ear. ‘But we—’

  ‘Ssssh! I don’t want to hear it!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I’ve just agreed to spend the rest of my life waiting at bus stops and shopping at Poundingtons.’

  ‘You can get amazing stuff at Poundingtons!’

  ‘I’m going to have to go through a metal detector to get to work every day!’

  ‘I’ll fancy you even more for your extraordinary bravery.’

  He squeezed her hand.

  ‘You’d better,’ he said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  They were nearly the last to arrive at the hut. Outside, a huge bonfire had been set up in a great circle of stones in the forest clearing, and the children were running around it, shouting and hollering like wild things. Awkward teenagers were handing out champagne in plastic glasses, while Roy was eyeing it carefully. Many people had brought bottles too, which were cheerfully added to the makeshift bar inside. Outside, Tina and Jake, Kent and Emily and Roy and Pamela made up a slightly peculiar receiving line, and, with good grace, Rosie and Stephen joined it too, so everyone could have a cuddle of Apostil, who was showing signs of getting hungry. Rosie sipped from a glass of champagne, and found time to say hello to everyone who was there; from Hye right down to Edison, who shook hands very gravely and seriously.

  Pamela was all over Roy, who people were nodding at pleasantly enough.

  ‘So that’s going well?’ said Rosie politely, trying not to betray her vast sense of surprise. They were as unlikely a couple as could be imagined.

  Pamela downed her drink as they all politely shook hands with Mrs Pettigrew who lived in the old row of cottages that had only got electricity in the nineties, and the Johnson family, six enormous boys who ran the vast dairy farm on the other side of the peaks, all of them looking identical, pink-faced and very cheerful in ill-fitting suits and slip-on shoes. They were some of Rosie’s best customers, but she couldn’t tell them apart any more than anyone else could, since they worked, ate, lived, played rugby and socialised together. Two of them were apparently married, but nobody knew which two. Moray also insisted that one of them was gay, but could never remember which one either.

  ‘You have to realise,’ Pam
ela said, nudging Roy to get her a refill. ‘The men in New York, they’re all totally unavailable. They’d never show vulnerability like he has, they never open up.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Rosie.

  ‘And you know, I’m ready to settle down. Nobody in New York is; they’re all trying to make another million. I mean, I’ve got my house here now, my roots are here, Roy’s made his money.’

  ‘He certainly has,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Maybe this is my time to get out of the rat race, you know? Slow it down a bit. Stop being the incredibly successful and popular party girl. You know what that’s like.’

  Rosie thought it best to keep staring straight ahead at this point.

  ‘I can settle down … make jam.’

  ‘You don’t eat sugar.’

  Pamela ignored this.

  ‘Keep chickens.’

  ‘You’re vegetarian.’

  ‘Get my home photographed for Vogue Living. I can see the profile now … “After years at the sharp end of the hurly-burly, the Right Honourable Dr Mrs Pamela Blaine-Lipton has formed an exquisite haven for herself and her dental surgeon husband …”’

  ‘You certainly have this worked out well for someone you’ve only known for five days,’ said Rosie, smiling stiffly at Tina’s nice out-of-town cousins.

  ‘Yes, but I’m done looking,’ said Pamela. ‘I’m done dating broke screenwriters who are actually rubbish, evil bankers who would kill someone for three bucks forty, commitment-phobes and guys who steal from you. I’m done, Rosie. I’m ready. I want what you have … except I want my own baby, obviously.’

  Rosie summoned up all her reserves of cheer to greet Jake’s Irish grandmother, who was being helped along the line.

  ‘Obviously,’ she said through gritted teeth.

  Pamela turned to Roy and ran her carefully manicured hand up his jacket.

  ‘Sweetie, you are looking so good,’ she murmured, and Roy went pink to the tips of his ears. Rosie shook her head.

  When they finally got inside the hut, the noise levels were unbelievable. Even Stephen was impressed by the decor; the massive layering of decorations and the endless fairy lights had turned the place into a magical grotto. The band had started playing by the strawbales at one end. They had banjos and fiddles and were making a fabulous traditional racket that involved lots of yelling and banging of clogs on the floor. Several children had already started dancing. The old folks who’d come from the home in a minibus were seated at tables, watching cheerfully with great brimming pints of cider in front of them. The farmers and Rodge the vet were lined up against the makeshift bar, drinking pints – no champagne for them – and discussing livestock as if they were in the bar at the Red Lion, which, Rosie was pleased to note, they practically were, because the pub’s droopy-moustached barman was serving here too.

  ‘I thought you’d been invited,’ she said to him cheerily.

  ‘I was,’ he said, his usual lugubrious, unsmiling manner not faltering. ‘I just thought this would make a nice wedding gift.’

  Rosie looked at him, blinking.

  ‘You know, it does,’ she said. ‘It really does.’

  The band were magnificent, and had the effect of turning what was supposed to be a formal wedding breakfast (in Tina’s original, sophisticated dreams) into what already felt more like a night-time affair. Nonetheless, Apostil absolutely could not keep his eyes open – he’d been up very early, as had Rosie, and had had a lot of wriggling and excitement since then. He was visibly drooping. Rosie found a spot near the musicians – they were making quite a lot of noise, but there were no amps or wires, and behind the great strawbales it was actually quite quiet – and sat down and fed him with the bottle she’d been carrying in her jacket to keep it warm.

  She picked up the car seat Stephen had brought in and put it in the cosy straw, then she slipped Apostil out of his scratchy christening dress and into a comfy fleece-lined sleepsuit covered in little blue fish, and wrapped him in his favourite blanket with the spots on. He was so sleepy he obediently closed his eyes as soon as he saw it, and she laid him down gently in his seat, buckled loosely. Then, because it was funny, she plumped up the hay so it covered the plastic of the seat and made him look like they actually had laid him down in a barn. His little hand that had been gripping the bottle fell, and he tumbled elegantly into sleep, the way babies do, taking a little step from one state of consciousness to another.

  Rosie sat watching him for a long time, engrossed, as ever, in the rise and fall of his tiny chest; the long eyelashes shaded on the roundness of his plump cheeks; the way his eyes flickered under his eyelids, looking at those things only dreaming babies can see. Then, smiling at a nearby table of older people, she asked them to keep an eye on him, and they were happy to oblige. Cathryn, busying around too much to even get herself a glass of champagne, nodded at Rosie and told her she’d add him to her rounds, and Rosie went back to the party.

  There were piles of gifts everywhere. Although they had tried not to infringe too much on Tina and Jake’s big day, and although they’d already received so many things, for some reason people had once again been incredibly generous, and heaps of small pale blue parcels had been added beneath the tree to those for the happy couple, who were rushing about the wedding in a whirl of happiness. Every so often they would pass each other in the room, and kiss and hold one another in a way that made the old folk sigh, the middle-aged roll their eyes and Rosie grin to herself about how nice it was to see her friend so happy.

  After a while the scent of fish and chips got too much for her and she realised she’d been up for hours and was absolutely starving. She went to see if Lilian wanted to eat too.

  ‘Go away,’ said Lilian, with her mouth full. ‘You’re not having any of my chips.’

  She was holding court at a large table full of other residents of the home. Ida Delia was stoically ploughing through what was clearly a second or third helping. Her startlingly blonde hair was tied up with a bright red ribbon like Emily’s. Rosie rather liked it.

  ‘Mam, you’re to stop that, you’re getting fat,’ the similarly well-upholstered Dorothy Isitt was scolding her from the next table.

  ‘Shut up,’ said Ida Delia. ‘Don’t tell me what to do.’

  ‘Hello, Ida Delia,’ said Rosie. ‘You look nice.’

  ‘Tarty, more like,’ said Lilian. ‘And have you seen how much she eats?’

  ‘Stop with the torture,’ said Rosie severely. ‘I’ve told you before.’

  ‘I’m just trying to be ladylike,’ said Lilian serenely. ‘And stay away from my chips!’

  ‘And I was just trying to be helpful,’ said Rosie.

  ‘If you want to be helpful,’ said Lilian, ‘you can bring us more champagne. Matron keeps making remarks about peeing the bed, and we think just for one night and one big celebration we should all be allowed to wet our beds.’

  ‘Hear hear!’ chorused the table, raising their glasses in unison.

  ‘I’ll just go and see to it,’ said Rosie hurriedly, backing away.

  Outside, the light was already failing, even though it was only early afternoon. December the twenty-first, Rosie thought, the shortest day of the year. After this, everything would get lighter again. It would. This festival, with the great bonfire crackling, its heat so intense that snow was melting off the branches all around, was fighting off the powers of darkness; the forces that had, at times, threatened to close over her head, so hard had this year seemed. She found Stephen, who was idly chatting with Moshe, drinking cider and leaning on his stick; she took his hand and rested her head on his shoulder. Without missing a beat, he moved his arm around her, held her close, kissed the top of her head, as if he could tell what she was thinking without her having to mention it. He leaned over to whisper something in her ear.

  ‘Have you lost that baby again?’

  Oh well, maybe he wasn’t quite that psychic.

  ‘No! He’s fine, he’s asleep in the straw.’

  ‘You C
hristians are amazing,’ said Moshe, shaking his head.

  ‘And you came out to fill your face?’ said Stephen.

  ‘Actually,’ said Rosie, ‘I was being all romantic and contemplative.’

  Stephen smiled.

  ‘Can’t you be those things and fill your face at the same time?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Want me to get you some?’

  ‘No. If I go, I get the crispy bits.’

  ‘Now you see why she’s my girl,’ said Stephen to Moshe, with pride.

  The fish and chip van was proving the more popular of the two, and Rosie queued happily for the silken-fleshed haddock and the extra-crispy chips, golden and steaming, wrapped in specially printed paper that said ‘Tina & Jake, 21 December 2014’. Rosie smiled. Tina always did think of everything.

  She got some Fanta too and went back to stand with Stephen and Moshe, smiling cheerfully at even the twelfth person who passed and said, ‘You two next.’

  Everyone was rather well oiled and jolly by the time they got to the speeches.

  Jake’s had been so sincere and nice about Tina – and short; he obviously couldn’t bear public speaking, and had turned brick red – and he was patently relieved when the attention turned to Rosie and Stephen. Even the children, who had been running wild building snowmen in the woods and hurling themselves about the dance floor, sat up to watch with expectant faces. Jake held the microphone out to them insistently.

  ‘Oh Lord,’ said Stephen.

  ‘You spend ALL DAY standing up and talking to people,’ said Rosie.

  ‘Small people,’ said Stephen.

  ‘Everyone’s small to you.’

  Finally, realising that he had no choice, Stephen got up, reluctantly, to good-humoured applause.

  ‘Um,’ he said. As he stood up, he realised he was a bit drunk. Actually, really quite drunk. He hadn’t been paying attention out round the bonfire with everyone in such a good mood, instead letting his glass be refilled by a teenager with a crush on him.