Chapter 30 Jacob
Jacob
‘The stage will be here,’ said Tom Reynolds, Sycamore Park’s burly caretaker and a part-time actor at the theatre, pointing at a line of yellow tape strung between two traffic cones.
‘We’re thinking about lining the stalls along the approach between the Oak Leaf Café and Big Gerry’s Plaza. Does everyone have a provisional plan?’
Jacob glanced at the photocopied sheet of paper.
It was a crude drawing, each stall indicated with a box and a scribbled memo.
The tearoom’s stand would be between a shooting gallery and a stall selling handmade Christmas ornaments.
He looked up at the other members of the festival committee, among them Pete Markham, Madeline Fellow from the Oak Leaf Café, the park’s elderly nightwatchman Daniel Rathbone, and sour-faced local councillor Regina Clover, who looked utterly bored by everything, but kept casting surreptitious glances at Tom whenever he spoke.
As the group began to disperse, Jacob wandered over to Tom.
‘Ah, Tom … I was just wondering, who is doing Father Christmas this year?’
Tom grinned and lifted a hand. ‘Guilty. We’ve managed to rent a sleigh from a reindeer farm over Exeter way.
Two professional drivers will be dressing as elves, so I’ll only be ceremonially holding the reins.
The plan is to come in through the south plaza and up around to the festival, bang on eight o’clock. ’
‘All right. I was just wondering.’ Jacob started to walk away, but Tom called him back.
‘I can send you a memo if you like. I got asked for one this morning.’
‘Who by?’
‘That guy who’s doing the special guest slot at six p.m. The magician.’
‘James Steamblack?’
‘Yeah. He wanted to know all kinds of details. The exact course the sleigh will take, timings down to the minute. It was a little odd, to be honest. His spot is scheduled to finish at half past six, followed by the local children’s chorus and then the church choir, so I don’t know quite why he needs to know the details about Father Christmas. ’
Jacob shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’
Tom frowned. ‘Forgive me for being intrusive, but I heard that you’re related to him or something?’
Jacob grimaced. ‘You could say that. He’s my stepbrother, but we don’t get along. I hadn’t seen or spoken to him in ten years, until he showed up back in Brentwell a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘I’m a little nervous about his performance, to be honest. I’m not sure that he’s doing it for purely selfless reasons, if you get what I mean.’
‘Oh, well I hope things work out. His theatre shows are getting great reviews. I did see one last weekend, after we’d finished rehearsals for the Hamlet show starting in January. I thought it was a little … sinister, but it was certainly exciting.’
‘I’m sure there will be no problems,’ Jacob said, forcing a smile, feeling anything but happy.
James had something planned; he could sense it.
And it wasn’t going to be good. James wasn’t the kind of person to let any slight go, and since his car had pulled up outside the tearoom, both Jacob and Charlotte had been on edge.
With only a week to go until the Christmas festival, they had both been busy: Charlotte with her class, and Jacob both at the tearoom and the children’s home.
They spoke on the phone most days, and had met a couple of times for dinner, but while their relationship was closer than ever, there was a black cloud hanging over it, refusing to let it blossom.
Charlotte was suffering from a terrible guilt trip that she had somehow led James on.
Jacob didn’t like to talk badly about people, even James, but he had tried to convince her that James was someone who lived by a different set of rules to everyone else.
He walked back to the tearoom to help Aunt Marjorie with the lunchtime rush.
Clarice, flitting between tables, looked like the happiest person in the world, and for a moment Jacob forgot all about his concerns over his stepbrother.
Charlotte had called him last night to say that Billy had shown up to school in a new pair of shoes.
They were only a chain supermarket brand, but that didn’t matter; they didn’t have holes in the soles, laces frayed and repaired with kitchen string.
The boy’s smile was back, his schoolwork had immediately picked up, and the other kids had begun to open up their groups to him, to allow him back into their circles.
Jacob had heard Charlotte crying on the phone when she told him it was the little things that made a difference.
He had shrugged it off; Aunt Marjorie needed a new member of staff, and Clarice had been right for the job.
Nevertheless, he was glad things were working out.
On the way home, he walked back through Sycamore Park.
With Christmas less than two weeks away, the tearoom had been packed all afternoon.
The snow—which seemed to have been stockpiled over the town: Exeter, just twenty minutes away by train, had none—had received attention in the national press.
Hastily arranged bus tours of retired people had started pulling up in the Sycamore Park car park and the town square outside the church, and all the town’s cafés, tearooms and restaurants were full.
In the theatre car park, in the spaces reserved for staff and performers, he saw James’s huge Mercedes.
He paused for a moment, about to walk past, then changed his mind and headed for the theatre.
It was a closed day, meaning performers might be in rehearsals in one of the back rooms or even in the theatre itself.
He didn’t want to see James, but he couldn’t suppress a suspicion that James had something big and dramatic planned.
He found an unlocked side entrance, and slipped inside.
Long ago, he had come on a school trip here, and a guide had shown them all the backstage areas, the dressing rooms, make-up rooms, great halls filled with props.
Now, he tried to recall that trip as he sneaked down one gloomy corridor after another, trying to find where James might be rehearsing.
And then, standing outside a half-open door, he heard a familiar voice.
‘Hmmm. That doesn’t work well, does it? How about, “Dear Mother …” No.
“Dear Stepmother …?” Oh, God, anything but that.
We’ll go with “Dear Julie …” Yes, that’s best. “Dear Julie … I’m sorry for everything.
I was young and impetuous and blinkered …
and very, very stupid. It would be my honour for you to be in the front row at my Christmas festival performance.
It is a whimsical little thing that I have planned, a simple sky display of shooting stars set against Christmas music.
I couldn’t bear to upstage the children that will sing after me.
And of course, the arrival of Father Christmas should be the centrepiece …
but I would like you to be there anyway.
And I would like … to seek … your forgiveness. ”’
Jacob frowned. From behind the door came sudden, choking sobs.
Jacob could hardly believe it. He had sneaked in here, and stumbled upon his stepbrother in a moment of weakness.
He wanted to push the door open and announce his presence, tell James that everything could be okay, that it wasn’t too late—
The sound of a chair scraping back as someone stood up made Jacob back away.
He lost his nerve, fleeing back the way he had come, sneaking out of the theatre and back across Sycamore Park.
By the time he had reached his little flat he was more confused than ever.
Perhaps, after all this time, he was wrong about everything.
James hadn’t come back here to Brentwell to cause trouble.
His stepbrother had come back to seek forgiveness.