by Miss Read
As she made her way downstairs to prepare the Sunday dinner, she felt a flutter of excitement about both the shopping trip and the ceremony.
It was a few days later that Harold Shoosmith decided it was time to have a word with Bobby Cooke. He walked the short way down his garden path and leaned over the gate. Yes, he could see the lad’s figure over the churchyard wall. A sullen plume of smoke rose from somewhere close by, which meant that at last the leaves had been raked up and were now being burned. Harold looked at his watch: twelve-thirty so Albert would be out of the way in The Two Pheasants.
The previously unsettled weather had changed and a weak winter sun shone in a sky that was streaked with soft clouds. However, the sun belied the temperature and Harold popped back into the house to collect his sheepskin jacket. He walked down the green to the churchyard and, as he usually did, detoured slightly to the statue of Nathaniel Patten. As he approached, a blackbird that had been perching on the figure’s shiny head flew off with a squawk of alarm. Harold inspected the statue for any telltale white markings, but the good missionary was pristine.
The lime trees round the churchyard were now quite bare of leaves, of course, but Harold noted there were plenty of leaves still to be swept up this side of the church wall. There was always something of a dispute as to who was responsible for clearing them up - the sexton of St Andrew’s or the street-cleaner.
He found Bobby Cooke, a scrawny lad, desultorily sweeping up the twigs that had come down in the previous week’s gale. He was whistling a Christmas carol so totally out of tune it was difficult to know which one it was. A bit of everything, Harold decided.
‘Ah, Bobby,’ Harold said as he approached him.
Bobby stopped what he was doing and leaned on his broom, just like Albert did, Harold noted.
‘Af’noon, sir.’
‘Now then, Bobby, has Albert talked to you about his decision to retire?’
The boy shifted from one scuffed boot to the other. ‘Yeah, well, he did mention somethink about it. Christmas, I thinks he said.’
‘Well, the end of the year probably. Neater, don’t you think?’ Harold asked.
Bobby wasn’t sure whether he was meant to reply to that, so just grunted.
‘I know you do some gardening work for various people in the village, but I - at least, the PCC - was thinking that you would be the ideal person to take over Albert’s job full-time. How does that appeal to you?’
Bobby pushed his less than clean cap to the back of his head, and scratched at his mop of untidy hair.
‘Well, I don’t rightly know. What’s it involve, then?’
Harold pulled an old envelope out of his jacket pocket on which he had scribbled a few headings and peered at it.
‘To be honest, I think it’ll be just what you’ve been doing ever since you started helping Albert. Is there anything you don’t do?’
‘I don’t get all dressed up when there’s a funeral. I don’t ’ave a dark suit, see.’
‘But you do everything else?’
‘Yeah, and more besides. I do most of the diggin’ and liftin’ heavy things due to Albert’s rheumatics, like.’ A crafty look suddenly crossed his face. ‘What’ll be in it for me, then? I ain’t doing no extra work for the same wages. I’d need more, wouldn’t I, lots more.’
Harold had anticipated this, and had already cleared the details with the PCC treasurer.
‘Yes, we can certainly increase your wages. I suggest that I get a formal letter drawn up by the PCC with details of your duties and the wages we will pay you. Does that sound all right?’
Bobby shifted the broom from one hand to another. ‘Yeah, OK, but I’m not committin’ to nothink till I’ve seen that letter.’
‘Of course not, I quite understand. Equally, you will need to decide how much gardening you can do for other people. This job will come first.’
Bobby nodded.
‘Very well. I’ll have the letter ready for you tomorrow. Goodbye for now.’
Harold turned to leave but Bobby stopped him. ‘What about a suit, then? I won’t be able to afford a suit out of what I gets now.’
‘I’ll discuss it with the treasurer. We must be having you neat and tidy for any funeral.’
As he made his way home across the green, Harold wondered if that would ever be possible. The Cooke family were a tearaway lot, and Bobby was one of the worst. He hoped that these new responsibilities would settle the lad. He also wondered if there might be a dark suit among the piles of old clothes that Isobel endlessly collected from friends and neighbours, and then sorted through, setting aside garments that could go to the next village fund-raising jumble sale. He must remember to ask her, he thought, as he pushed open the gate.
‘Can I go and play with Toddy this morning?’ asked George Curdle at breakfast in Stable Cottage the following Saturday.
‘No,’ replied his mother, trying to persuade Billy, her youngest, to put the spoonful of cereal into his mouth rather than his ear.
‘Oh, why not?’ grumbled George.
‘Because,’ said Molly, looking up at the clock on the kitchen dresser, ‘you and Annie are due over at the school—’
‘But it’s Sat-tur-day!’ broke in George.
‘Because you and Annie,’ repeated his patient mother, ‘are due over at the school for a rehearsal of the Nativity.’
Little fair-haired Annie looked up, a bit of jam-covered toast hovering in mid-air. ‘Oh, Mum,’ she whined, ‘do we have to? We know the story and I’m right bored with them carols.’
Molly wasn’t surprised at her daughter’s reaction. She only had a small part as an angel. Like every little girl, she’d hankered after being the Virgin Mary, but Louise - a year older and a quiet, sensible girl - had been given the starring role.
George, on the other hand, brightened. ‘It’s not really boring, not when you’ve got things to do, like me,’ he said importantly. He was playing Joseph. ‘I just hopes I remembers me words.’
‘I think Mrs Lester is going to be trying on the costumes first thing,’ said Molly, giving up with Billy, and wiping his face. ‘We ought to leave here just before ten so, if you’ve finished, go and play quietly till then.’
George and Annie scrambled down from the table, leaving Molly to clear away the breakfast things.
‘High time them kids learned to clear the table,’ muttered Ben who was sitting in his armchair near the Rayburn. He was reading a magazine to do with cars.
‘It’s not worth the hassle, Ben,’ replied his wife. ‘More gets broke than washed up. They’re not bad at laying the table.’
‘I’m not needed at this rehearsal, am I?’ Ben asked.
‘Mrs Lester thought we’d need an hour to sort out the costumes. Can you come up about eleven?’ asked Molly, raising her voice a little above the noise of the tap filling the sink.
‘Fine,’ said Ben, getting to his feet. ‘I’ll just go and have a look at the car. It’s rattlin’ somewhere.’
Molly smiled. The car was her husband’s pride and joy, and a rattle was an insult to his considerable engineering skills.
‘See you then,’ she said, and waved a soapy hand at Ben’s departing back.
Up at Thrush Green School, Alan Lester, the headmaster, had pushed the desks back against the walls in the largest classroom to make space for the rehearsal. In the adjoining classroom, his wife was pulling some work tables together so the costumes could be laid out on them when they arrived. They were boxed up after each year’s Nativity and stored by Edward Young who had space in his attic.
‘Ah, I see I’ve arrived at the right time,’ said a voice from the doorway.
Margaret Lester turned, and then put a hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh. ‘Oh my! You do look funny!’
Edward was submerged under a chaos of angels’ cardboard wings and halos stuck on the end of thin pieces of wire.
‘Where do you want this lot?’ he asked.
‘On this table, please,’ replied Marga
ret, and helped Edward lay down his armful as gently as possible.
‘Hello,’ said Alan Lester, coming to join them. ‘Let me give you a hand in with the boxes.’
The thing about the school Nativity was that as long as the same good people of the village helped, the easier things were. They knew the ropes. And Edward was one of these. He didn’t have to be reminded that the Saturday before the Nativity was held would be ‘costume morning’.
This year, however, the Nativity was going to be a little different. The story - the greatest story of all time - would be the same, of course, but Phil and Frank Hurst had devised some changes to the production. Phil had suggested they become involved when, the previous year, her son Jeremy had declared he wasn’t ever, not never, going to do that boring play again.
No one was to know, that mid-December morning, quite how different it was going to be.
In various houses, big and small, parents - or more usually the mothers - were cajoling their youngsters to get ready for the rehearsal up at the school.
Little Louise, due to play the Virgin Mary, was going through her lines with her granny, who lived with them. Not that she had many lines; all she had to do really was sit quietly and look pretty.
‘I’m so tired, Joseph,’ she said.
‘That don’t sound as if you’re tired,’ said her gran.
‘But I ain’t. I’ve only just gotten up.’
‘You must pretend to feel tired. That’s what actin’s all about. Now, the words again.’
‘I’m so so ti-erd,’ said Louise through a great big yawn.
Her grandmother laughed. ‘That’s better, but it’d be better if you said the words and then yawned, rather than try to do both at the same time.’
In a large house on one of the roads leading north out of the village towards Woodstock, Mrs Gibbons was similarly instructing her twin boys in the parts they were to play - two of the Three Kings. Since Mrs Gibbons was chairman of the PTA, Alan Lester had thought it sensible to give the lads big roles. However, James and Anthony Gibbons were reluctant thespians. They reckoned the Nativity play was for the younger children, and had only agreed when they heard Paul Young and Jeremy Prior were going to take part. When the twins had been in the bottom class of the school, they had looked up to Paul and Jeremy, then at the top of the little village school.
‘We are the Three Kings come from afar,’ intoned James, who had slightly darker hair than his brother.
‘Just two at the moment,’ quipped Anthony. ‘The other will be along in a moment.’
‘Anthony, behave!’ said his mother sharply.
‘Come to see the baby,’ continued James.
‘Spin out the word “baby”,’ commanded Mrs Gibbons. ‘It’s what the whole play is about. Baaaaby.’
‘Ba-aa-by,’ giggled Anthony, baa-ing like a sheep.
‘I wish we could be sheep, just lying in the corner, and not having to be decked out in stupid robes,’ James grumbled.
‘Sheep are unimportant parts,’ said Mrs Gibbons sharply. ‘Now, once more, and then we must be off.’
‘Do you think we’ll ever get this play off the ground?’ Frank Hurst asked his wife anxiously over the breakfast table.
‘I don’t see why not,’ replied Phil. ‘Anything must be better than the Nativity being done in the same old way. I’m sure that having Paul and Jeremy in different parts of the church, with their voices coming from unexpected places, will keep people awake. I just hope the parents have coached the main parts properly. I know it’s difficult to do this during school because the children without parts tend to interrupt the whole time. Let’s hope this morning’s rehearsal, without the unwanted extras, will go better. Now, have you had enough coffee? We ought to leave in a moment - or at least I do because I said I would help Margaret with the costumes. You could come up later.’
‘I’ll do that.’
Phil bent down and gave her husband a little peck on the cheek. ‘I’ll see you at about eleven then.’
When Phil arrived at the school on the other side of the green, she found a hive of activity. In one classroom, eight or ten young children were practising ‘Away in a Manger’ to the accompaniment of Miss Robinson at the piano.
No, not Miss Robinson any more, remembered Phil. The young woman who taught the infants had got married that summer and was now Mrs Hope. Although the children had become quickly accustomed to her new name, some of the parents still found it difficult to remember so she was often called ‘Miss Robin-I-mean-Hope’.
Phil went into the other classroom which had been turned into the temporary dressing-room. She stood in the doorway and surveyed the scene in front of her.
Little Louise was sitting on a desk, her legs swinging in front of her. Behind her, the young probationary teacher was stitching something on the shoulder of the child’s long blue dress.
‘Oh bother!’ she exclaimed. ‘I’ve gone and sewn through to your vest, and will have to unpick it.’
Margaret Lester had dressed Anthony Gibbons without too much trouble, and had gone off to see to the shepherds. Mrs Gibbons was left to deal with James, who was wriggling inside a bright red robe that had been dropped over his head.
‘Can’t find the armholes,’ came a muffled cry from inside.
‘Shall I shine a torch down the front, Jimmy?’ called his brother.
‘His name is James,’ snapped Mrs Gibbons, who was trying to sort out the muddle from underneath. ‘Now stop struggling,’ she commanded. ‘You’re like a ten-armed octopus inside there.’
Finally, James’s head, hair all sticking up, emerged from the top of the robe, a rather pink face following. ‘Phew! Hot in there.’
His mother tied a length of coloured cord round the boy’s waist. She straightened the robe on the shoulders, pulled the hem down a bit at the back, then stood back to check on the overall effect.
‘You’ll do,’ she announced. ‘Or, at least, you will once everything is ironed. Now, off you go to Mrs Hurst to sort out your headdresses.’
Phil pulled a box marked ‘Headgear but not halos’ towards her. ‘Hello, you two, how’re things going?’
‘Awright, I suppose,’ mumbled James. He still wished he could be a sheep.
‘Now, which is which? I never can tell,’ asked Phil.
‘I’m Anthony,’ said James automatically. ‘And I’m James,’ replied his brother Anthony.
The boys grinned as Phil turned back to the box to rummage inside for the crowns that were set aside for the kings.
She put three crowns on the table and then looked at each of them in turn. ‘I think we might jettison that one,’ she said. ‘It’s got a bad tear in it. I’ll make a new one in time for next week.’
Mrs Gibbons, who had stopped to have a chat with one of the other mothers, now arrived. ‘I’ll do it, if you like,’ she said to Phil. ‘You’ll be busy with other things. I’ll get some gold card on Monday.’
Phil thanked her. Mrs Gibbons wasn’t so bad - her bark was much worse than her bite. And she had changed a bit since her husband had suddenly died the previous year. It almost seemed that she’d had to compete with her husband’s bossiness. Phil had gone out of her way to be friendly with the woman; after all, she’d known what it was like to be a single mother.
At the far end of the room, Alan Lester clapped his hands together. ‘Is everyone ready? It’s past eleven o’clock and we should be getting on with the rehearsal.’
Although this was not the official dress rehearsal, it was felt the children would perform better if they kept on the costumes they had been allocated, creased as they were. The angels, with neither wings nor halos yet attached, were a drab group.
There was a cry from one corner of the room. ‘I’ve gone an’ lost me crook. ’As anyone seen me crook?’
Margaret Lester unearthed a two-foot-high crook from under a pile of discarded jeans and jumpers, and waved it in the air. ‘Here you are, Patrick. Come along now, all next door.’
‘D
o you need us?’ called Ben Curdle, who had arrived and was sorting through bits of scenery with another parent.
‘No, I think you’re more useful there,’ replied Phil. ‘We’ll run through your part next Saturday morning when the costume arrives.’
The next hour was, to put it mildly, something more akin to a Whitehall farce than a Nativity play. Alan Lester and Frank Hurst took the narrators’ parts - Paul and Jeremy would just have the final rehearsal the following Saturday morning to learn what they were supposed to do and where - and Phil encouraged the youngsters as the play hiccupped from one little scene to the next.
One of the angels had a little ‘accident’ in the middle of the scene with Archangel Gabriel’s pronouncement that Mary was to have a baby, and everything had to stop while she was mopped up.
‘But now I ain’t got no knickers on,’ she wailed.
The shepherds and kings smirked.
‘It doesn’t matter, darling,’ soothed Phil. ‘No one can see.’
Finally, it was the turn of the Three Kings to make their entrance. When the little entourage stopped in front of the crib, James and Anthony remembered their lines perfectly - making Mrs Gibbons feel a trifle smug - but the third king, a slightly smaller lad called Davey Biddle, was very lacklustre.
‘I am - er - number - er . . . What number am I, miss? I can’t remember.’ The child wiped a finger under his nose.
‘Three, Davey, number three.’
The child stood and looked at Phil dumbly.
‘Go on,’ called Mrs Gibbons who was sitting on a chair to one side. ‘Number Three King.’
Little Davey took a deep breath and started again. ‘I am Number - er - Three King and - um - I bring you gold.’
‘No, not gold! My James has just brought the gold,’ Mrs Gibbons cried.
‘Thank you, Mrs Gibbons. Perhaps you could leave this to me,’ called Phil across the room. ‘In fact, I think the children would do better without any parents in the room. It’s been a long rehearsal. Could I ask you all to wait in the other classroom?’
