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Those Who Serve | Thea’s Parrot | The Courtyard | The Dipper | Hattie’s Mill | Starting Over | Second Time Around | Looking Forward  Holding On | Winning Through | A Week in Winter | Forgotten Laughter | The Children’s Hour | The Birdcage | The Golden Cup
 Echoes of the Dance | Memories of the Storm | The Way We Were | The Prodigal Wife | The Summer House | The Christmas Angel
The Christmas Angel
Marcia, well wrapped up against a bitterly cold wind, on the north coast of Cornwall between Padstow and Trevone.  This book is set in a fictional village a couple of miles from here.

 ‘We’re all pilgrims,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘One way or another, aren’t we? Always searching for something.’

Twelfth night - time to put away the Christmas angel. A new year dawns, and everything seems to be falling into place for Dossie. Her son Clem and his adorable five-year-old son Jakey have moved to Cornwall to be closer to her. She runs her own successful catering business. All she needs now is some better luck in her romantic life.

Complementing Dossie’s rather unconventional family set-up is the wonderfully eccentric Janna: a warm-hearted, generous woman who looks after the quirky nuns of the local convent – and little Jakey. With humour, kindness and the support of friendship, they form a tight bond.

But the Sisters’ life as they know it is thrown into doubt when an avaricious property developer starts prowling around their beautiful, historic home. Will this close-knit unit who so depend on each other still be together next Christmas? And what will they have learnt about the true meaning of family, and about having somewhere you really belong?
This opening in the wall is about four feet high. The air here is so pure that all sorts of lichens grow on the stonework.
Trevone beach - one of the many surfing beaches in this area.
A wild coastline alive with sea birds.
The Holy Family live in an old linen shoebag. The bag is dark brown, with a name-tape sewn just below its gathered neck where a stout cord pulls it tight, and each year on Christmas Eve the bag is opened and the Family, along with its attendant Wise Men, shepherds, an angel with a broken halo and various animals, are set out on a table beside the Christmas tree. They have their own stable, a wooden, open-fronted building, which has once been part of a smart toy farm, and they fit perfectly into it: the golden angel standing devoutly behind the small manger in which the tiny Holy Child lies, swaddled in white. His mother, all in blue, kneels at the head, opposite a shepherd who has fallen to his knees at the foot of the crib, his arms stretched wide in joyful worship. Joseph, in his red cloak, with a second shepherd – carrying a lamb around his neck as if it were a fur collar –  stand slightly to one side, watching. A black and white cow is curled sleepily in one corner near to the grey donkey which stands with its head slightly bowed. And here, just outside this homely scene, come the Wise Men in gaudy flowing robes, pacing in file, reverentially bearing gifts: gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Jakey stands close to the table, gazing at the figures, his eyes just level with them. Occasionally he might pick up one of the figures in order to study it more closely: the angel’s broken halo; the lamb curled so peacefully around the shepherd’s neck; the tiny caskets carried by the Wise Men. Once he’d dropped the Holy Child, who rolled under the sofa. Oh, the terror of that moment: lying flat on his face, scrabbling beneath the heavy chair, hot with the frustration of being unable to move it – and the huge relief when his fingers had closed over the little figure, and he’d drawn out the Baby unharmed and placed Him back in His blue-lined crib.
Now, as he stands by the crib, Jakey grows slowly aware of the sounds around him: the clock ticking weightily, its pendulum a crossly wagging finger; the sigh and rustle of ashy logs collapsing together in the grate; his father talking on the telephone next door in the kitchen and the monotonous quacking of the radio turned down low. Today the decorations must be taken down because it is Twelfth Night: the last day of Christmas.
Jakey begins to sing softly to himself: ‘“Five go-hold lings. Fo-our calling birds, thlee Flench hens, two-hoo turtle doves, and a partdlige in a pear tlee.”’
He feels restless; sad that the tiny, sparkling lights and the pretty tree will no longer be there to brighten the short dark winter days. Still singing just below his breath, he climbs onto the sofa and tries to balance on his head on the cushions, his legs propped against its back, until he falls sideways and tips slowly onto the floor. He lies with his feet still on the sofa, his head turned sideways on the rug, and regards Auntie Gabriel who stands on the bookcase presiding over the Christmas festivities. The angel is nearly two foot tall with clumsy wooden shoes, a white papier- mâché dress and golden padded wings. Her hair is made of string but her scarlet, uptilted thread of a smile is compassionate; joyful. The clumpy feet might be set square and firm on the ground but when the golden wire crown is placed upon the tow-coloured head then there is something unearthly about her. Held lightly between her hands is a red satin heart: a symbol of love, perhaps?
There are several other, smaller, angels strung from convenient hooks about the room; but none has the status of Auntie Gabriel. Not as fierce and cold and glorious as the Archangel himself, flying in from heaven in all his power and majesty and trailing clouds of glory; she is, nevertheless, a distant relation: the human, fallible face of love.
With a mighty heave, Jakey rolls head over heels and stands up. He goes over to the bookcase and stares up at Auntie Gabriel, who beams sweetly at him with her lop-sided silk-thread smile. He doesn’t want her to be packed away in the soft roll of material that protects her fragile dress and padded wings, her gold crown wrapped separately, before they are all put into a large carrier bag and tucked into the drawer in the old merchant's chest. He doesn’t want Christmas to be over. Jakey is utterly miserable. Deliberately he kicks out and stubs his toe in its soft leather slipper against the corner of the bookcase, hurting himself, and his mouth turns down at the corners. He decides to let himself cry; he’s just going to, even though he knows that he’s a big boy now; that next birthday he will be five. He experiments with a sob, listens to it with interest, and squeezes his eyes shut to force out a tear.