Entertaining Angels: A Christmas Novella

by M. J. Logue

  Breakfast was an odd meal. It was usually a cheerful festival, but mama was distracted, and daddy had a sort of watchful look, as if he were waiting for something to happen.

  Christmas, in all probability. Well, Thomazine was too old to get excited by Christmas, though she humoured the little ones, of course.

  She’d knitted some stockings for daddy for a New Year’s gift, and she flattered herself they’d come out all right. They were a sort of smoky grey blue coloured wool, and thick. He had plenty already, of course, mama not being the sort of lady who could sit idle, but they were a nice colour, and they’d be warm.

  A length of amber ribbon for Joyeux, who was gone potty on boys presently, to her parents’ despair. (It explained the propriety, at any rate. Boys, apparently, like the sort of girl who said pretty much what you expected her to say. Which was – in Thomazine’s unfeminine opinion – hideously dull.)

  A doll for Nell, that mam had made a dress for, in the last of that old scarlet worsted. A lavender sachet, for mam herself.

  It didn’t seem much like Christmas. It wasn’t snowing, it was just bitter cold and wet, and everything was black and grey. No life, no colour, no excitement. And Russell was no more than a worn-out, ragged old man. Joyeux had been at great pains to point that out, last night.

  He was still her friend, though.

  And he still needed looking after, though, and her mother was still up to the elbows in preparation for the feast at Christmas, and although Thomazine was pretty much grown up she didn’t consider herself to be capable of co-ordinating a formal supper for thirty people, and cleaning the house bottom to top, and finding time to go to church and to Uncle Luce’s for his annual Christmas Eve revel.

  And to make sure that her notoriously untidy father was presentable, and hadn’t nipped back upstairs and changed back into his plain grey Sunday suit where he was comfortable, instead of his festival blue silk.

  And that Joyeux had been parted from her mirror, and that Nell was decent - Nell took after daddy on the matter of personal presentation, and was prone to cat-lick toilettes if not watched carefully.

  Which was all right, so long as she hadn’t tried to conceal a streak of honey down her bodice with an artfully-disarranged collar, or put her hair in a cap instead of combing it - both of which she had some history of.

  Not being pretty herself, mind, Thomazine wasn’t bothered, so long as she was clean and decent.

  But it gave her pleasure to be in charge of taking care of the poor wretched man. It was Christmas, after all, and that meant there was frumenty for breakfast, rich and creamy and sweet with honey, and stiff with plums, and warmly spiced. (While their cook wasn’t looking she slipped in another great ladle of sweet cream, and then licked her fingers surreptitiously.)

  It was sort of a family thing, her mother’s recipe for frumenty – she put something in it that made it special and different to anyone else’s. She said it was a pinch of loving.

  Feeling oddly self-conscious, she ladled a bowlful into one of the everyday bowls –

  he wasn’t company, he was Russell - and, well, no, to the Devil with it. He was an old friend and a good one and he happened to have fallen on hard times and there was no reason she should feel ashamed about helping him. Thereby some have entertained angels unawares, remember?

  There was no reason at all why she should feel nervous. Possibly that she might trip over her own feet and drop frumenty in his lap. Or that he might be grateful, and she wasn’t sure what she would do if he was grateful, other than be embarrassed. (He would still be Thankful, of course. He would always be Thankful. It had always been the one and only joke he ever made in company.)

  She bent her head over the fragrant bowl, and breathed in the smell of home, and loving, and Christmas.

  She had not recognised him at first, last night, but then how should she? It had been a while and a while since, and she had dreamed him into many things in the meantime: he had been her rebel angel, back in the day, when he’d been daddy’s lieutenant and armed with nothing but zeal and a flaming sword.

  And now he was a tired, sick old man, and a vagabond, and the light faded out of the world again a little at that thought. But only a little, for he might have stories to tell, of when he had been young and lovely to look on and only a little bit broken.

  The only thing that troubled her was whether he was still breathing. And she wasn’t quite sure what she would do if he was completely dead this morning, instead of just partly. But she could hear him breathing, even if he whimpered as if it hurt him to do it, and he snored, a little bit. (Not as badly as daddy but then as mama said betimes, dear, nobody snores like your father.)

  On such things are childish dreams broken, she thought, feeling very grown up and womanly. Her rebel angel was a poor worn-out old soldier, and he snored.

  She pushed the door open with her foot.

  It was a nice room, she thought with satisfaction, and she thought it was good that he got to sleep here, because when you were old and poor you probably did not often get to be warm, or to sleep in a proper bed with enough covers and clean sheets. And to have good things to eat, like mama’s frumenty. At least, she thought, it wasn’t raining. Cold enough to freeze the birds in the trees, but dry this morning, and she felt the bottom of his bed for the brick that made it such a little bliss to climb under your quilts at White Notley.

  He was all huddled in on himself, even down to the way his eyes were pinched shut. Poor thing, she wondered how long it had been since he had been warm, properly warm. And for the first time Thomazine wondered what it was like to be poor - not to have enough to eat, not just not enough of the nice things like lovely buttery frumenty or honey cakes, but to be hungry all the time. And to be cold, to have holes in your stockings and not enough clothes, and -

  Just not to be loved.

  “I think you should not have gone away,” she said, her eyes filling with sentimental tears. “We would have looked after you.”

  He had moved in the night, from flat on his back like daddy had left him, to a rather more reassuring position. He appeared to have been fighting with the blankets, for he was half off the bed and rolled in his quilt. Definitely not dead, then, which was a great relief to all concerned. She wasn’t sure if it was the first rosy light of a very reluctant sun that gave him a degree of healthy colour, but he looked asleep, rather than freshly dug-up.

  He did not look much as she remembered. Even asleep, he looked irritated, but that might have been down to the shape of his eyebrows, which were quite level and really quite surprisingly dark, for a white-haired old man.

  He had a little scar through one - was that an old one, or not? She didn’t remember it - and a frowny sort of crease between his eyes, which didn’t mean much, because mam had a very similar one when she didn’t wear her glasses.

  Out of interest, she poked him, and he twitched and muttered and the scowl deepened as if he were screwing his eyes tighter shut.

  He had a very straight nose. It was rather a nice nose, she thought appraisingly, it wasn’t at all red or bulbous like you’d expect it to be if he was as, well, depraved in his personal habits as daddy had implied. (Daddy thought he was being discreet in saying such, but his idea of a subtle whisper was a little bit impaired by thirty years of standing on the wrong side of heavy guns.)

  A lot of silvery bristles. She didn’t recall him being quite so hairy, before. Maybe it was a thing that happened when you got old. White bristles on his chin, and patchy on his cheek, where the scarring was, giving him the look of a scalded side of bacon.

  Not pretty, she decided, setting the bowl down and kneeling down for a better look. He had lines about his eyes and his mouth, and a sort of ashy colour to his skin. All his bones showed.

  Black lashes, with gold tips to them, and long as a girl’s, curved on his colourless cheek.

  And she was peering at him from a distance of all of eight inches, in pity and fascination, when t
hose intriguing lashes fluttered.

  He stared back at her in complete incomprehension. (Stormy eyes, not black, but grey, like the stones of the church floor. Blank with sleep, and not a clue who she was. That hurt.)

  He frowned at her, and blinked, and then suddenly the dark lifted out of his eyes: she saw it go, and they were grey like the sky in autumn with the sun behind it instead.

  He was piteously thin, and she wondered if she could see things crawling in his hair, or if it was just her imagination.

  Maybe that was why he’d cut it so short, when he had been used to wear it long and tied in a tail down his back. Or maybe he was going bald, perhaps, in his old age –

  “What,” he said grimly, sounding very much like his old self, “are you peering at, mistress?”

  “Your hair,” she said without thinking.

  He unrolled himself abruptly from the quilts and glared at her. (Outrage rather suited him, actually. That snapping of indignation meant he looked like a man, and not an old bone.) “What about my hair?”

  “The lack of it?”

  “How dare you, madam!”

  Though he didn’t sound much like a vagabond, or a drunk, or – well, what did a villain sound like, anyway? He sounded like himself, and like he’d never gone away. Which was a little unfortunate, because –

  “You don’t remember me, do you?” she said, and she could not help the forlorn note creeping into her voice. It had been ten years, and a lot could happen in ten years, and perhaps she had not been as important to him as she had always thought she had been.

  “Remember you? Should I –“ he cocked his head to one side, and that was a trick he’d had then, too, that way of tilting his head to the side where the scar was, the better to think. He looked a little bit worried. “Madam, did I – have we – do I know you? Should I know you? I – it is not meant in discourtesy, mistress, I –“

  “It doesn’t matter.” She made her mouth smile. “I brought your breakfast, see? Eat it all up, and rest.”

  “But no – I should know you, I should, yet I –“

  It might have been a rude scrutiny, in anyone else: it was certainly ferociously intent. Frighteningly so. And yet he was the one who began to look frightened, and she was afraid all of a sudden that he might have some sort of relapse, or fit, or something – “Thomazine?” he said faintly, “Thomazine Babbitt? Is it you? Truly?” And then, sounding perfectly outraged about it, “But you are a woman grown!”

  “Well, I can assure you I didn’t do it to spite you!” she said tartly. “Of course I am, you stupid man! You have been gone ten years – what did you expect?”

  “I should hardly recognise you!” And then, shaking his head again, “Am I at your house? Where is your husband? Um – do you have a husband, or is that a stupid question?”

  “Yes,” she said, “it is a stupid question, and – Russell, I was sixteen this February past. Do you not actually know anything about girls at all?”

  In the old days, he would have answered her back tit for tat. Now, he simply looked at her in awe, out of the corner of his eye. “Your – parents? They are still – in good health?” he said warily.

  “They both enjoy perfect health. As do both of my sisters.”

  “Both of your sisters?” She wondered what else she might say to shock him. “Joyeux I know – I knew – but another? There was – there is – another child?”

  “Hardly, Russell. Nell’s almost ten. She’s not really a child. This is what happens, you see, when you disappear without a word to anyone. You miss all this.”

  “I –“ and he stuttered a little bit, and then looked up at her with his dark eyes all starry. “But this is a crowning wonder, Thomazine –“

  “That we are all still alive? So is most of the world, Russell, did you but look. Amazing how many people I know are not dead. Now, hush, and eat up your frumenty. Which mama makes special, it being Christmas. I think you timed your arrival perfectly.”

  He stopped talking and started eating, and she could almost see him filling out in front of her eyes, like a new-fledged butterfly when the sun uncrumples its wings. Which sounded considerably more romantic than he looked, with his raggedly cropped hair and all his bones sticking through his skin. He needed a shave, too. And he was sitting there, all prim and funny , trying to look as if he was still more grown-up than she whilst shoving mama’s frumenty into his head like he’d not seen good food in months.

  “I suppose you’ll be wanting some more,” she said, and he gave her a wry look, and shrugged, and grinned apologetically.

  And then, in the space between one breath another, he had keeled over fast asleep, as suddenly as a new baby, or a kitten. Leaving Thomazine feeling very odd indeed. Half delighted and half dissatisfied and - well, confused, for he was not at all what she remembered and yet he was not what she expected, either.