Chapter 18
Everyone but Tim was in the lounge in the ‘Liberty’ car when Roo went back through.
They had kept the fire fed with logs and someone had fetched the radio which was perched on a small occasional table.
Vincent had been up to the stores on the hunt for batteries and found some so there was no chance of ‘the real BBC’ Brian running out of voice, which was good because he was presently their only bridge with the outside world.
Roo arrived just in time to hear the last few bars of ‘Blue Christmas’, but not the Elvis version that she recognised.
It was certainly a blue Christmas for her all right – so blue it was almost black.
‘Well, that was Doye O’Dell singing “Blue Christmas”,’ Brian commented when the song was finished. ‘He’s a particular favourite of my wife, Cath. Though what she’d do with him if he landed in her Christmas stocking, I just don’t know.’
‘I bet he could hazard a guess if he put his mind to it,’ Frank said.
‘I feel a bit sorry for all the kiddies expecting to go to church today for their Christingle services because it’s not going to happen for them, is it?
They’re going to miss out on their oranges and sweets, aren’t they, thanks to this weather?
And there’s no let up, is there? Not yet anyway.
In fact, the meaty-logical office is telling us to be prepared for even more.
I don’t think we will get to Midnight Mass tonight either, sadly.
We live very close to the church but I don’t think the vicar is going to open up just for us two. ’
Roo’s sharp intake of breath resulted in a gurgling noise in her throat which she coughed away.
‘Do you think all the churches will be shut today?’ she asked to no one in particular.
‘If the rest of the UK is like this, I can’t see many being open, Roo,’ Frank answered her.
‘It must be awful for those who had a funeral or christening planned. What would they do?’ said Jane.
‘Or their wedding,’ added Grace.
‘Must be really awful for them, what a shame,’ Roo commented, though it had to be said, without much conviction. Then she clapped her hands as if she meant business. ‘Right now, I really am going to try and find some decorations to tart up the lounge,’ she said, her tone artificially bright.
Down in ‘Maria Gloriosa’, Tim was ensconced in a large armchair that seemed to have been made for his substantial frame, reading a book he had chosen for its relevant title: Great Bells of the World.
The owner really was running with a theme on his toy.
It was a grand tome with yellowing pages and a comforting old book smell.
There were accompanying black and white photos and drawn illustrations and though he’d expected to flick through it with cursory interest, he’d quickly become engrossed.
Tim liked to read. He’d been brought up in a house where there were always books around because his mum was an avid reader and encouraged him to find pleasure in books.
He had so many memories of her reading to him at bedtime, special times between a parent and a child, and yet not enough memories of him reading to Fleur.
He cut off thoughts of his daughter abruptly and carried on with the chapter that had most caught his eye: ‘The Bell that was Executed’.
Roo found some trimmings in the store cupboard next to where the linen was kept in ‘Yongle’.
There were bags of garlands and ornament clusters, enough to decorate the whole train twice over by the look of it.
It wasn’t as light in this carriage, or as warm, and had an oddly different feel to the rest of the train, but then up at this end the luxurious gave way to the practical, the functional.
She loaded two hessian sacks full; she’d have to come back later for the big box of tree decorations.
There were luckily plenty of lamps and hooks and racks and rails to wrap the leafy, glittery garlands round in the ‘Liberty’ carriage, although she had to enlist the help of Vincent because she was too short to reach them, but he was more than willing to be Roo’s servant.
At over six foot, Vincent was tall enough to do the job.
Tim would have been taller still but he was AWOL (good) and she wouldn’t ask him anything ever again.
Jane watched Vincent being micro-directed by Roo and smiled fondly.
They reminded her of herself and Clifford fancying-up the rectory together.
The ceilings were high there and he’d been up and down stepladders, obeying her every command.
He wouldn’t have thanked her for cautioning him to be careful at his age and he’d been fit as a flea until the first day of February.
He’d left her quickly, too quickly, no chance to prepare, no warning.
It was the smallest of blessings because he would have made a terrible patient; he wasn’t built for infirmity.
The heart op he’d had years before, and his temporarily ‘crossing over’ had given him a new lease of life, mentally as well as physically; in fact, he’d become titanium.
Last January in the sales she had replaced lots of their older, tattier things with new shiny ones for this Christmas, but she’d donated them to charity, their packaging unopened.
She hadn’t the heart to put them up, not without him there.
When he’d gone, the rectory felt cavernous, even though it had been the perfect size for them both.
She didn’t want to live in it without him, it had been the right thing to sell it.
But still, the prospect of moving into a ‘granny flat’ wasn’t thrilling her one bit.
‘That was the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing “Joy to the World”,’ said toothless Brian from the radio.
‘I’ve always thought what a funny word Tabernacle is.
Tabernacle apparently means a place of worship, for those of you who didn’t know, and also a very large box for putting the communion artefacts in. ’
‘He’s very educational, isn’t he, old Brian?’ said Frank. ‘I reckon we could learn a lot listening to him.’
‘I shall miss the Christingle service though today, myself and Mrs Cosgrove do love that at our local church. It won’t be the same not bringing home our orange with the candle in the top. It’s not just the kiddies who’ll be disappointed.’
‘What actually is Christingle?’ asked Roo, attaching a garland to the mantelpiece of the fireplace. ‘I’ve heard the name but I don’t know anything about it.’
Brian’s next words seemed to answer her question, as if he’d been listening in.
‘It’s our favourite of the Christmas services.
The kiddies love making the Christingles, although I suspect that’s more to do with the sweeties and I’d like to bet they eat more than they put onto the little sticks.
For those of you not familiar with Christingle, the orange represents the world.
The red ribbon around the middle is the blood of our Christ, the four skewers are the four corners of the world – or the four seasons, or maybe both.
The sweeties and the raisins on them are all the food God provides and what do you think the candle in the top means? ’
‘I’m guessing light, Brian,’ said Roo.
‘That’s right, the light of the world, our Lord Jesus saviour.’
‘He can definitely hear us,’ Vince nodded pointedly towards the radio.
‘It’s the tradition in our church that we light the candles in the dark and sing “Away in a Manger”. It gets me every time.’
Away in a manger. Billy dressed as a shepherd with a chequered tea towel on his head secured with parcel string, holding his Christingle to present to the old Tiny Tears doll in the makeshift manger.
His face split into a grin as he spotted his mum in church and she’d smiled and cried at the same time.
The image was too much; Grace got up, strode down the carriage, muttering something about going to the bathroom, but Frank’s eyes followed her, guessing where her thoughts were as Bing Crosby started to sing the carol.
It got him every time he heard it too, but he was better at covering it up.
The clock on the wall began to whirr and Roo looked at its face to see both hands together at the top.
The lady appeared with her bell, the man with his hammer to announce the mid-day.
Would the marriage of Aaron Andrew Arsehole Ewerin and Amber Hope Bitch Booth be cancelled or would it somehow have gone ahead?
Amber wanted to be married before the baby was showing too much; Aaron had filled her in on that choice detail.
And Roo had asked if that was because she wanted to appear respectable, because if so it was a bit late for that with her shagging her best mate’s fiancé.
Would snowflakes fall like nature’s confetti on them as they emerged from the church as husband and wife?
She imagined them laughing about it, figuring it would make a story to tell their grandchildren one day.
‘It looks very festive in here now, thanks to you, Roo,’ said Jane, diverting Roo’s thoughts from the allotted hour. ‘And Vincent, of course.’
The last chime of the twelve sounded.
‘I’m going to fetch the box of tree decorations,’ said Roo, hurrying out of the carriage before her face gave way to the turmoil going on behind it.
She had never been one for public emotional displays: she’d learned over the years to shove her feelings behind a facade, out of public view – give or take chucking that trophy at Cockface.
There were only disadvantages to exposing your underbelly.
‘Hark! Hark, the angels sing. Today the Christ is born…’ trilled Roo as she strutted down the coaches, dragging her thoughts away from where they wanted to take her.
It was just as well there was no internet coverage because she knew she wouldn’t have been able to resist dipping onto Insta to torture herself.
She could just about hold it together when there were people around, forcing her to keep her upper lip stiff, but up here in this part of the train she was completely alone and her hurt tore its way out.
Tears started spurting out of her eyes as if there was an industrial pump behind them.
‘Let the bells ring out on this first Christmas Day…’ she made herself carry on, her voice jelly-wobbly, in the hope that singing words – even these wrong ones – would drive away the image of the man she adored, who told her – totally out of the blue – that he didn’t want to marry her any more.
Not only that but that he was going to marry someone else – and quickly.
She thought he was joking, because he was a convincing winder-upper.
‘We didn’t plan it, it just happened.’ Then he told her who the other person in that ‘we’ bracket was. ‘We didn’t mean to do it.’
‘Yeah, I get it, I’m always just opening my legs when I don’t mean to,’ she’d replied. And she couldn’t even talk it over with her best mate, because Amber Booth, the woman Aaron had impregnated, had been that best mate.
Roo pushed open the door to ‘Yongle’ and crossed over to the cupboard where she’d seen the tree decorations earlier.
‘Hark! Hark, let wise men come, the star will light their way or maybe not, maybe it just can’t be bothered because Christmas is a total pile of shit’ – her brain was gone now.
This was her favourite carol, all folky and rustic, and she couldn’t even remember the next line but she needed to sing because while her mouth was moving, it helped to stop the reel of perfect pictures in her head of the love of her life in a slick suit slipping a wedding band on the finger of the glowing pregnant bride dressed in virginal (ha!) white.
She dashed the tears away from her eyes, told herself to get a grip and picked up the box of baubles.
It was as she was about to head back that her attention was grabbed by a movement in the corner of the car.
She saw a boot and not only that, a boot attached to a foot, attached to a leg and whoever the whole assembly belonged to was hiding behind the tall towel cabinet, because she saw that leg retract slowly to join the rest of its body.
Roo went as cold as if someone had just tipped a bucket of icy water down the back of her neck.
Don’t panic and keep singing, said a voice within.
‘Hark! Hark,’ she hung onto the tune, ‘all hail to God on high.’ She turned, trying to look as unbothered as someone going through customs with absolutely nothing to declare, but her feet were getting faster and faster towards the door and as soon as she was through it, she dumped the box and ran.