“He’s a brilliant photographer. The family portrait he took for us is stunning. Mum’s very pleased with it. She says anyone who can make Luke smile in a photograph must be a genius.”
Dianne lifted a pine cone and turned it over in her hand. Her voice was wistful. “Paul was good enough to photograph royalty. If he’d stayed.”
Her tone made Jenna pause. Then she asked, “So why did he give it all up?”
Dianne shook her head. “He said he wasn’t giving it all up. He just wanted to come back home.”
Jenna smiled a little and said, “Back to his own God and his own devil.”
Dianne frowned. “What?”
“Nothing. It must have been an upheaval for you?”
“Well, I couldn’t make him change his mind so here I am.” Dianne placed the pine cone back, carefully arranging it amongst the others, draping the tinsel just so. “And I’m not ready to leave him here yet.”
Jenna looked down. The table covering was white with the green and red of holly twigs scattered across it. The word ‘yet’ bounced around inside her head, refusing to settle in any corner that would render it harmless. But the relationship between a married couple was no-one else’s business. Then she felt Dianne’s fingers on her hair, where it hung from her bent head.
“You need a good haircut, Jenna!”
“Do I?”
“Yes, you do. I’ve found a salon that’s not too bad. I’ll give you the name of it.” Jenna leaned away from her fidgeting fingers but Dianne pulled her hair across her cheeks, held it up a little, brushed down a mock fringe. “Tell them to cut it shorter and feather it down the sides and across your cheeks.” She cocked her head to one side, considering. “And get highlights.”
She let go and Jenna shook her hair back the way it had been. “Right,” she said.
“I could take you to a brilliant place in Knightsbridge. Pierre used to look after my hair all the time. He’s a sweetie. He was so desolate when I said I was going away.” She sighed. “Perhaps I’ll visit him when I’m home at Christmas.” She shrugged. “But you’re stuck with Belfast, I’m afraid.”
“Pity,” said Jenna.
At the table beside them, a toddler suddenly screamed. It was a little girl. Her harassed mother was trying to get a break. Whatever had provoked it, the child was giving a master class in tantrums. Her fist held a crushed piece of cake and she hurled it across the table.
Dianne got up. “Let’s go. I can’t stand children.”
Jenna squeezed her shoes on again, regretting taking them off. As they passed the next table, she put her face down to the child’s. “Boo!” she said. The child jumped, surprised into silence. Jenna grinned at the mother. “Happy Christmas,” she said.
The bus was crowded, it was cold, everyone was tired and Dianne was still talking.
“Thank goodness you were with me. I’d never have found half of those places without you.”
Jenna shifted slightly to restore feeling in her left foot. “Belfast’s a good place to shop now.”
Dianne wrinkled her nose. “But it’s not London.”
Thank God, thought Jenna.
They gripped their bags tightly as they alighted and dodged across the main road, the pace frantic, the lights fast and the noise making conversation impossible. Past the row of shops, they turned down the quieter street where Dianne and Paul lived, past the flickering lights of the Christmas trees in every front window. Up the drive past Paul’s car, Dianne put her key in the door.
She said over her shoulder, “You go on into the lounge. I want to put these bags upstairs.”
Jenna dropped her own shopping bags in the hallway. An arrangement of holly and candles garnished the hall table; a bell of tinsel hung from the ceiling. The lounge felt cold as she entered. To her left the Christmas tree stood in the window. It was one of those elegant ones with only gold and white decorations, and white lights.
She turned round and stopped. Paul was sitting on the floor by the open window at the other end of the room. His feet were bare, one leg crooked under him and the other drawn up as he leaned his camera on the sill. Jenna heard the soft click of the shutter. Beyond Paul’s head, in the garden, she could see a bird table. Around it there was a little storm of birds.
Silently, she dropped to her hands and knees and crawled over to the window. Paul must have felt her presence but he didn’t acknowledge it. He was totally still, his only movement the slightest tilt of the camera, the faint whirr as he shot another frame.
Nets of peanuts swung from the rim of the bird table. Two bluetits hung upside down, busy and alert. Several sparrows had possession of the top of the table, pecking, hopping, pecking. The shutter clicked again. A magpie swooped down with an arrogant swagger and the sparrows jumped into the air and fluttered to the bushes nearby. As the magpie snatched at the crumbs, it knocked more onto the ground. The sparrows regrouped on the winter grass that still showed the white of frost in the shaded hollows. Click.
On a bare branch of the bush where the sparrows had retreated, Jenna saw a robin. Its body was fluffed out into a round ball against the cold and stood proudly on two stiff little legs. It cocked its head from right to left, left to right, in anxious jerks. Come on, little guy, said Jenna silently. Come and get some before it’s all gone.
Slowly she brought her mouth close to Paul’s ear. “On your left. The bush. A robin,” she whispered.
The camera moved left silently. Click. He took several shots before the robin flew away. A rook dropped from the sky. All the other birds scattered, some to the bush, some to the wire of the clothes line next door. Keeping the camera braced on the window sill, Paul aimed at the rook. Jenna had never really studied a rook before. They were just big birds who walked busily around the manse garden and who played games with her cat, flying off just as she crouched to leap. Now Jenna looked at this rook as though through Paul’s lens, seeing what he was seeing. The sheen of the feathers, the thickness of the beak with its grey base, the line of the tail against the thrust of the strong legs. The shutter fired. It flew away.
The robin was coming back. It landed on the edge of the table. Its head bobbed, up and down, side to side, checking, watching, alert to life and death. Behind it, the bush gave a barren backdrop to the flame red of the bird’s breast. Momentarily it was alone. Jenna knew Paul had a clean shot. She stopped breathing, waiting for the click.
The door slammed. “It’s freezing in here! Paul! What are you doing? Shut that window.”
Outside, the garden emptied of life in a clatter of panic and feathers. Paul swore.
Dianne stopped and put a hand over her mouth. “Oh, I didn’t realise…”
“Did you get it?” Jenna asked.
“No,” he said, unfolding himself. He pulled the window shut.
“But you got it earlier? On the twig?”
He twisted the lens and removed it. “Yes.” He looked at her for the first time since she had entered the room. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” She searched in her pocket for her phone. “I’ll just ring Adam. He’s going to take me to the bus station.”
“I could have done that.”
“So you could.” She held the phone to her ear. “Thanks anyway.”
Paul followed Dianne into the kitchen. Jenna frowned; although Adam’s phone was ringing, there was no reply. Strange, he should have been waiting for her call. She hung up. She’d try later, but if she was to catch the bus to her parents in time for dinner, he’d need to get here soon.
The room was still cold. She slipped to the floor in front of the fire and sat cross-legged, leaning back against the sofa. When Adam and she had dinner here in October, she had seen Paul and Dianne sharing a secret hug, Dianne looking up at her husband, Paul with his hand on her shoulder.
Something had changed. She could hear them talking in the kitchen. Paul was asking about their morning. But it was different, formal, a polite request for information. She opened her bag and pulled out a sma
ll packet. Inside was an embossed jewellery case. She had bought her mother a pendant. The delicate cross lay golden across her palm as she examined it, the chain trailing to her knee.
She heard a click.
Paul was by the kitchen door, a different lens on his camera, pointing it at her. She opened her mouth to protest and he shot again. Before she could move, he had sprung onto the sofa and crouched on the arm, slightly behind her. A quick turn of the focus. Click.
Dianne appeared with a plate of sandwiches. “Paul! Leave the poor girl alone.”
Paul put the camera down. “She doesn’t mind. Do you, Jenna?”
“If you’d warned me, I could have combed my hair.”
“But I didn’t want you to do that.”
Dianne produced napkins from a drawer. “All women need to comb their hair before they get their picture taken,” she said and went back to the kitchen.
He had come to stand over her. Jenna looked up the length of him. “Why didn’t you want me to do that?”
“Because it wouldn’t have been you. It would have been Jenna with her hair combed for a photograph.”
He sat on the sofa, his feet only a few inches from her side. “But that’s me as well,” she said, her eyes on his long toes, so close she could touch them.
“But you don’t know who you are. You said so.”
Jenna turned her head sharply to look up at him over her shoulder. Dianne came in with a cake and set it on the table beside the sandwiches.
“Paul, pass Jenna a sandwich. I’ll make some tea. It’ll warm us up.”
She left again.
“That conversation doesn’t count,” Jenna said.
“It counted for me.”
She held up the golden cross, still in her hand. As it swung sparkling in the glow from the lights on the Christmas tree, she said, “I heard the Salvation Army Band today.” She glanced round at him and gave a half smile before she looked away. “I listened to them singing ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’. And I hoped I was good.”
“Why? Being bad’s more exciting.”
“And more dangerous.”
“You’re not a coward.”
“Are you?”
He grinned. “Depends.”
“On what?”
“What I’m afraid of.”
He was like a flint, striking sparks from her brain.
“What are you afraid of?”
“Lots of things.” He slumped back against the cushion. After a moment he relaxed. “Not getting any presents at Christmas. Now that scares me.”
She drew her knees up to her chin and hugged them. “Me too! What do you want for Christmas?”
She didn’t see his smile, but she heard it in his words. “World peace! That’ll do as the stocking filler.”
She turned her face sideways to look at him again. She felt his humour touch her gently, a gossamer strand of connection.
“Some stocking.” Without thinking, she brushed her fingertips along the arch of his foot. “Your feet don’t look big enough.”
Dianne came back with the teapot. “Paul, move those sandwiches a bit so I can put the teapot stand down. I’m just going up to change and get out of these boots.”
She went into the hall and Jenna heard her running up the stairs. There was a silence. Beside her, the foot vanished as Paul pulled it up and across his knee.
“I looked up that poem.”
She was hugging her knees again, not looking at him. “Did you? And?”
He spoke quietly, deliberately. “‘These laid the world away; poured out the red sweet wine of youth; gave up the years to be of work and joy, and that unhoped serene, that men call age; and those who would have been their sons, they gave their immortality.’”
She got to her knees and turned round to lean her elbows on the cushion beside him.
“They were fighting for peace.”
“Can you fight for peace?” he said. “Peace is the absence of fighting.”
“No, it isn’t,” she said. “Peace is a way of living. Even in the middle of a war, you can be at peace deep inside, because you feel right with yourself.” She shrugged. “And with God.”
He was looking at her intently. She returned his gaze, the gossamer thread tugging at her. His eyes were very blue, his mouth still as unique and mesmerising as she remembered.
Suddenly he leaned away from her and reached over the arm of the sofa to pull his guitar onto his knee. He settled it on his lap and strummed a chord.
“‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’, was it?”
She smiled and settled back on the floor at his feet. His voice was a full rich tenor and yet in the lilt of it there was an untrained ease. After the first two lines he took his eyes from the strings and turned to her, one eyebrow raised in invitation. She began to sing along with him.
“Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled.”
He knew the words. All of them, better than she did. After the first verse, she put her cheek down onto her hands, closed her eyes and listened. Total relaxation wrapped her like a blanket of wool and she felt the moment slipping softly, deeply into her memory.
“Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die,
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.”
He slowed the rhythm slightly as he came to the last chorus. She raised her head. He was looking at her. She sang it with him until his fingers trailed down the strings, across the last chord.
There was a silence. Neither of them moved. It seemed to Jenna that she heard his thought, picked it up along the gossamer thread. Her voice came out as a whisper. “This Christmas will be hard. Hard to sing words like that.”
He swung the guitar to the ground and held it by the neck between his knees.
“Words aren’t hard to sing. Or say.”
He was looking down. She touched his arm timidly. “Paul.” He looked sideways at her. “Don’t stop singing. Even if you don’t mean it.”
Dianne was coming down the stairs. Just as she came through the door, Jenna’s phone rang. She got to her feet and turned away to answer it.
“Hi,” said Adam. “Sorry I missed your call. I was in a shop and you know what the noise is like. I never want to hear Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer again. I’ll be there in fifteen, honey.”
Dianne dropped onto the seat beside Paul, pulling her legs up under her. She leaned across and put her face up for a kiss. He touched her cheek with his lips. Over her shoulder, his eyes met Jenna’s. He got up, propped the guitar against the wall beside the sofa and lifted his camera.
“I’m going to see if I can get some more shots before I lose the light.”
The room seemed smaller without him.
Dianne reached for a sandwich. “I heard you singing. He’s a nice voice, hasn’t he?”
“He’s a great voice.”
Dianne took a small bite of the sandwich. “Multi-talented, my Paul. He’s wasted here.”
Jenna sat in front of the fire. She wasn’t hungry.
9
JENNA HAD ARRIVED at the manse that evening to find her mother banging saucepans.
“Who does that man think he is anyway? Coming in here and planting such ideas. I wish I’d never thought of the portrait in the first place.”
Cora was supposed to be making the dinner, but the noise seemed to be an equal, if not more important goal. Jenna sliced some bread and set it on the kitchen table. It was set for three. Luke had made a tactical retreat to spend the weekend with a friend.
“But you like the portrait! It’s good of all of us.”
Cora stirred a pan of meat vigorously. Loud and plaintive meowing assailed the back door. “Let those kittens in, will you, before they drive me mad.”
Four kittens tumbled over each other into the kitchen, followed at a more dignified pace by their mother. Jenna hunkered down to play with them. One was tortoiseshell like its mother, two were an eve
n mix of black and white and one was pure black, except for a single white front paw.
Jenna detached one of the black and white ones from her leg. “Have you got homes for them yet?”
The lid of the potato saucepan banged. “Two are going to a farm. We’ll probably keep one, but one might have to be put down. Can’t find anyone to take it.”
“You can’t do that! You could keep two.”
“No, we couldn’t.” The oven door slammed.
Jenna stood up, leaving the kittens leaping on their mother’s twitching tail, trying to kill it.
“Mum, it’s Luke’s life. He’s old enough to make his own decisions.”
Cora spun round, a wooden spoon held aloft. “He never would have thought of it if it wasn’t for that man! He’s a bad influence. I thought he was odd at the time.”
One kitten, the one with the single white paw, had ascended as far as Jenna’s knee. She bent to unhook its tiny claws from her jeans and held it to her chin, tickling its ears.
“Just because you think he’s odd, it doesn’t mean he’s bad.” Even if he thinks bad’s more exciting, she didn’t add. “And Luke’s not saying he won’t go to university, for goodness’ sake. He’s just saying he won’t go this year. He just wants to travel a bit first. And he probably did think of it for himself anyway. Everybody thinks of it these days.”
“You didn’t. And your Dad’s devastated. He won’t say very much, but he’s devastated.” Cora bent to pull a tray of roasted vegetables from the oven. “Thank God for you, Jenna. That’s all I can say.” Her mother set down the vegetables, dropped the cloth she was holding and gave Jenna a quick hug. “You’ve always been a great girl. Never gave us a moment’s worry. Boys are always harder to rear.” She put her hands on her hips and looked at the table. “Call Dad. I think we’re ready.”
Jenna found her father bent over his papers in his study. He looked up as she put her head round the door.
“Dinner’s ready, Dad.”
His smile was strained and tired. “Thanks, Jenna.” He stretched out a hand and she came into the room and took it. “It’s good to see you this weekend. Your mum’s very upset.”
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