‘Oh, no! How awful. Poor soul.’
‘It’s happening all around us, Jenny. My mother told me about the girl at the end of our street being sent away and not allowed to come home until she’d had the baby.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘Well, all I know is she’s home now.’
‘And the baby?’
‘Without the baby. It was put up for adoption.’
Michael was almost holding his breath, afraid his wife would become upset again. He waited. Suddenly, Jennifer smiled, then linked her arm through his. ‘I think I’d like to go home now. I’m tired tonight,’ she said, but Michael saw she was smiling. They chatted happily on the way home, although once or twice she seemed a little distracted and he had to repeat himself.
As they had walked away from the orphanage, Jenny had glanced back over her shoulder.
I wonder … she thought.
Reminiscences
Has it really been a year? thought Nancy as she settled down in her room and put her feet up for a while. It was late evening and all was going to plan this Christmas. ‘No last-minute catastrophes, Lord, please,’ she said, with a smile. If somebody had told her this time last year that they would adopt a puppy who would help a young child to talk and another to walk, she would have told them to stop bothering her with ridiculous notions. Yet that was what had happened and Oliver had brought joy to everyone, especially Billy, they were inseparable. It had been the perfect solution for Oliver to live with Mr Bell – yet it was clear whom he belonged to. It had been a coincidence, Mr Bell had thought, the first time Oliver had run to the door, scratching and barking to go out. When he’d got up and looked outside, he couldn’t see anything. ‘Silly boy,’ he said, about to close the door when Billy arrived.
‘Did you know I was coming?’ Billy had said, kneeling down for Oliver to lick his face. Now, according to Mr Bell, it happened often so he always knew Billy was on the way well before he arrived.
And Josephine was doing wonderfully well now and there was no longer talk of going to Heaven. Somehow Oliver had crept into her heart in a way nobody else could and helped her not only to walk but to want to walk. She was even trying to run and that was the main thing. Nancy smiled again remembering last week when the children were all laughing, saying her plaits were shaking all on their own, and Josephine got so excited she attempted a cartwheel. Fortunately the children caught her in time and they all ended up in a heap on the ground. Their squeals of laughter had brought a lump to Nancy’s throat. Billy was forever running round shouting and skipping through the woods with Oliver at his side, his eyes bright, and Nancy absolutely loved the sound of his voice chattering non-stop when he came back, telling her all about his adventures with Oliver.
They had turned into happy, healthy, talkative, energetic children who no longer spent hours staring at the stars or praying to go to Heaven, she thought. Eventually Nancy had found a train set for Billy, but the children’s favourite game was still to line up the chairs, blow the whistle and go adventuring on the Ragdoll Express. Nancy loved listening to them make up stories of where they were travelling to and what they could see. Imagination is a wonderful thing, she thought, not for the first time. ‘Yes, it’s been a good year,’ she told her holy pictures, then went to look out of the window. Smoke was pouring out of Mr Bell’s chimney. ‘Goodnight, and God bless you both,’ she said.
She sat on the chair by her table and poured herself a cup of tea. She raised her cup to her holy pictures. ‘And wishing all of us an extremely peaceful, uneventful Happy Christmas this year, thank you very much indeed,’ she said.
A Christmas Prayer
Nancy wasn’t the only one looking back on the year. Just a couple of miles away, Jennifer sat in front of the fire thinking how fast it had gone, even though not much had happened. She had talked to Michael about getting another puppy but still couldn’t decide whether or not it was a good idea. They had tried everything possible to find their puppy. Michael had walked for miles, putting up posters but the harsh weather had ruined most of them. They had checked with the RSPCA, asked all of the neighbours but to no avail. Jennifer had prayed that the puppy, which must now be a full-grown dog, was safe somewhere.
She had never returned to work and, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t put aside the heartache of not falling pregnant. Everyone around her seemed to be talking about Santa and how excited their children were. Jennifer was losing hope that they would ever sit around the Christmas tree with their own child. This time of year made everything harder and both families tried not to mention children in front of her. She knew it hurt Michael, too, that they had no child. She had wondered often about the children at the orphanage but something held her back, she just didn’t know what it was. The wireless was playing ‘Silent Night’ sung by a children’s choir, and Jennifer felt tears welling in her eyes. Oh, it’s all so unfair, she thought. I would be a lovely mummy. They had a lovely home to offer a child, and Michael even had his dream job now.
Jennifer wished she had gone back to work, it would have distracted her and eventually things might have got better. This next year would be different, she vowed. I can’t go on living a half-life. She had made such an effort lately to seem happy and not let Michael see how she really felt. She shivered and got up to put some more coal on the fire, then checked that all the presents were wrapped and under the tree. They had been invited to both Michael’s and her parents’ homes for Christmas Day but Jennifer had insisted on celebrating at home by themselves. ‘I can’t take the sympathetic looks and how everyone tries to pretend they wouldn’t rather see us arriving with a grandchild. I can’t do it, Michael. We can go for lunch on Boxing Day and you can have one whisky too many with your father. Then we can go to Mum’s for tea. Normal stuff, just not on Christmas Day. I won’t be miserable, I promise, but please, let’s just stay home.’
Michael, of course, had agreed. Anything for his Jenny, but he was disappointed.
He hurried off to work early one morning and as he walked into the station he made his way over to the Christmas tree that stretched almost all the way to the ceiling. The crowds had visited in their thousands to see the tree this year, especially the children. Children, he thought as a stab of pain touched him. He was the man of the house, supposed to keep things going, stiff upper lip and all that utter rubbish. The pain of losing his child had hurt more than he had shared with anyone, then on top of that he had given up counting how many times he caught his wife crying this year. He walked towards the tree where there was a little nativity scene that had been made by children from a local school. He knelt down at the shiny Star of Bethlehem standing on top of the stable. Well, it is Christmas, he smiled, supposed to be a time of miracles, so here goes. Michael closed his eyes and wondered, Do I make a wish or pray? Maybe prayers were wishes anyway. ‘Here goes,’ he said. Silently, on his knees, he prayed to God for a Christmas miracle, then stood up and watched the train running round and round the tree. God always heard your prayers, he had been told. Michael closed his eyes once more and prayed to God it was true before hurrying away to start his day at work.
The star of Bethlehem twinkled as it caught the lights of the Christmas tree. Had God heard Michael’s prayers?
The Photo on the Mantelpiece
A fire was blazing in the hearth and old Mr Bell sat beside it in the big old fireside chair. It was old and tattered but he loved it. His sister, when she came to visit, often said she would bring him a new one. Eventually he had to tell her that if she did it would get left outside. He was perfectly happy with the one he had. Oliver liked to curl up on it during the day and often they sat on it together. Tonight, as the flames danced and the coal crackled, Mr Bell stared at the photograph on the mantelpiece.
The pain would ease, they’d told him, but after thirty-eight years it hadn’t done any such thing. Of course, he didn’t think about them every day, like he had done at first, yet there were days when the pain would engulf h
im, as raw as it had been all those years ago. ‘My fault,’ he told himself, ‘my fault.’
He had lived his life with a guilt that was not his to feel, another victim of a pointless war in which innocent people had died, destroying the lives of those left behind. How brave he had thought he was, when he went off to war. On those nights when the nightmares returned he could still hear the guns, smell the gunfire, and would jolt awake, sweating and crying. He never told anyone how much he had cried in the early days. Men didn’t cry: they stood tall, chin up, and braved the world, shouldered the challenges that were thrown at them. Somehow his shoulders hadn’t been strong enough. And the death and destruction he had witnessed at war were nothing compared to what he’d had to face when he’d come home.
It was only thoughts of Hilda and little Margaret that had got him through the war. What tales he would have to tell when he got home, and he would work hard, harder than he had ever worked in his life, to provide for them. The photograph he carried of little Margaret was the only one they had, a present from Hilda’s uncle, the only member of her family who had a camera. Hilda and James Bell didn’t have such luxuries, but he was sure one day they would.
This last year there had been a slight easing of his soul. Young Billy and Oliver had seen to that, and he smiled. Those walks in the woods had brought him a comfort he could never have expected, and he remembered the day Billy had told him about the stars in the sky. Afterwards they had sat together on a huge log in the wood and looked up at the sky, Oliver sitting happily beside them. He had begun to cry silently, and the little lad had just sat beside him and held his hand. There had been no need for words and in thirty-eight years it was the first time a comfort began to settle over him.
After Oliver had been with him a few months he broke his silence. He had never told a living soul how he felt or why he had chosen to come here and help the children. It was his penance to do for other children something he had never done for his own.
Oliver had begun to follow Mr Bell everywhere. If he got up, so did Oliver, and the dog’s eyes gazed at him with understanding. ‘What’s up, boy?’ he had said one day, patting him. Oliver had looked at the photograph on the mantelpiece. ‘Want me to tell you all about it?’ he asked, as Oliver came and sat at his feet. So Mr Bell told Oliver, who seemed to understand perfectly and his tail hadn’t wagged once throughout the whole story. It had been strange and yet comforting that night to tell his story to Oliver.
Tonight Mr Bell slid a little further down in the chair as his head drooped. He was no longer in the cottage where he lived today. He was back at the small house he shared with his mother, sister, wife and daughter. He could hear his wife shouting at him and his young daughter crying. ‘Volunteers!’ she screamed at him. ‘It’s volunteers they’re asking for. You don’t have to go, James! What about little Margaret? Only thinking of yourself, James Bell.’
He had never seen her so angry and had tried to take her in his arms. ‘Let’s not fight.’
‘I won’t fight if you don’t try playing the hero,’ she said angrily.
‘I saw the poster again today, Hilda. I looked straight at it. It was our country talking to me. You know the poster I mean. You’ve seen it too. “We Want You,” it says.’
‘We want you too!’ she shouted. ‘Remember us? Your wife and child? We damn well want you too.’ At this point she’d burst into hysterical tears.
He waited until she had calmed down. ‘I’ve already done it, Hilda,’ he told her quietly. ‘If we all stayed at home because we had a wife and family there wouldn’t be anyone to fight for the country.’
Much later that day, she had looked at him with red eyes and said, with a catch in her voice, ‘Go on, James, go and be a hero and cover yourself in military glory but you’d better get your backside back here by Christmas. I am telling you now, and woe betide you if you’re not.’
That evening they had sat together in front of the fire and held each other tightly.
Now Mr Bell wiped away the tears that were once more falling. He could still remember the little damp patch on his shirt from Hilda’s tears.
James Bell had taken his place alongside his fellow volunteers. Some of those boys looked like children. ‘If he’s eighteen I’ll eat my hat,’ he’d said to the man at his side. Head held high, he marched forward with the rest. It would be a heroic adventure. ‘I’ll be home for Christmas,’ they all shouted, waving to their families as they left.
Thousands of them did not return home for Christmas. In fact, they never came home at all. James Bell was one of the lucky ones, they told him. Injured and broken, he came home to an empty house. On 1 April 1916 there had been a surprise attack by the German Navy off the north-east coast. His wife and daughter had been killed. The day they were married he had promised Hilda he would take care of her for ever. When Margaret came along, with the prettiest blue eyes he had ever seen, he had sworn to keep her safe always. Well, he had broken that promise. Not only had he not protected them but he had left them to die alone. Somehow, he believed that had he been at home, he would have saved them. The burden of guilt was a heavy one and each year the load seemed to get heavier.
Then, all those years later, along had come little Billy and Oliver. It had helped. And when Josephine said she wanted to go to Heaven, Mr Bell was the only who understood. He had remembered standing outside his empty house, screaming for God to take him too. It was his eldest brother, John, who told him about the job of caretaker at Nazareth House Orphanage, which had recently opened. ‘Apply for it,’ he had said. ‘You know, our James, you can fix, mend or build anything. You’ll be a Godsend to them.’ And so he had been. John had married and gone to live in Australia, where he had died many years before. Over the years when people asked how long Old Mr Bell had been there, nobody could actually remember, For ever, I think, they would say, laughing.
Mr Bell continued to dream and doze as the fire blazed.
Oliver lay in his basket by the fire. Suddenly, he lifted his head. The tone of that snore wasn’t right. Nothing any human would detect, but Oliver was cleverer than humans. He got up, went to Mr Bell and nudged his arm. No response. Oliver barked, then grabbed Mr Bell’s sleeve with his teeth and shook it, but the hand dropped down the side of the chair.
Oliver bounded to the door and jumped at the door latch. No luck at first, so he tried again and again until suddenly the door clicked open. He tore outside and raced through the woods to the door in the garden that led up to the nursery.
Nancy was dozing in her chair beside the window when she heard barking. She flung up her window. ‘Oh my goodness it’s freezing, Oliver, what in God’s name are you doing down there? It’s far too late to see Billy, they are all in bed. Go home now, good boy.’
Oliver continued to bark, refusing to go.
‘Oh Heavens, thought Nancy, so much for a peaceful night. She closed the window, grabbed her coat and hurried downstairs before Oliver woke the whole place up. ‘So much for no drama at Christmas,’ she muttered to herself. ‘God forbid we should have an uneventful one.’
Oliver was at her side as soon as she was through the door. ‘Go home, Oliver,’ she said again, but Oliver went on barking.
Sister Mary Joseph came hurrying up behind her, having heard the constant barking. ‘What are you doing out there, Nancy? Is that Oliver?’
‘It is indeed, Sister, and he won’t stop barking.’
Oliver looked at them, then trotted ahead, stopped and gazed back at them.
Nancy and Sister Mary Joseph took a few steps forward and Oliver repeated the process.
‘He wants us to follow him, Nancy,’ said a bemused Sister Mary Joseph.
‘Well, if you want to go dancing through the woods with Oliver like a Christmas fairy at this time of night, please be my guest, Sister.’
Sister Mary Joseph laughed. ‘Nancy, you are funny. Oh, look, he is doing it again.’
Please, Oliver’s eyes were saying, please listen to me.
Sister Mary Joseph had stopped laughing and she looked at Nancy. ‘Something’s wrong.’
Together they broke into a run, following Oliver to the cottage. They went inside and Nancy ran over to Mr Bell’s chair. ‘Mr Bell, can you hear me? Are you ill?’ There was no response. ‘Sister, go and wake Mother and ask her to ring for an ambulance.’
Sister Mary Joseph hurried off, and Nancy knelt beside Mr Bell as Oliver stood beside his chair, whining. ‘What a clever dog,’ said Nancy, ‘do you know how clever you have been? Clever, clever boy,’ she told him.
Before the ambulance drivers put the old man in the ambulance, they asked Nancy his name and age. ‘His name is, er, Mr Bell. I don’t know his Christian name or how old he is,’ she said. She took the caretaker’s hand. ‘How old are you, pet?’ she asked him. ‘When’s your birthday?’
His eyelids fluttered. ‘Don’t know,’ he whispered. ‘It’s never mattered.’
When the ambulance had left, Nancy picked up Oliver, held him closely and wept bitterly. ‘Doesn’t know or care when his birthday is. Oh dear God, that has got to be one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard in my entire life.’
There was a knock on the door. Mother Superior called out Nancy’s name and found her sobbing with Oliver in her arms. ‘Come along,’ she said gently. ‘I’ll make some tea.’
‘I’m not leaving Oliver. Mr Bell might have died if it hadn’t been for this clever dog.’
Mother sighed. ‘Unfortunately, Nancy, Oliver is not allowed into the convent. I’m so sorry.’
‘Then I’ll stay here, Mother,’ Nancy replied.
‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ said Mother, looking worried.
At that moment Dolly ran into the cottage – she’d heard the ambulance pulling away – and flung her arms around Nancy.
‘Mother, I have Dolly now so everything will be fine.’
The Puppy and the Orphan Page 17