Christmas Roses Read online

  “I best go and tell my father-in-law he’ll have to stop his canoodling for now,” Ellen said from behind Amos. “No good him dressing up as Santa if he doesn’t hand out the presents.”

  A few minutes later, Sam walked round giving everyone a small parcel from out of his sack. But he left Flo until the last.

  “I’ve a special present for this lady,” he said gruffly. “I hope she’ll accept it.”

  “I accept it, Santa Sam,” Flo said, blushing as she took her present from him.

  “Ah, mistletoe magic,” Amos murmured to Arlene when Flo held her present from Santa above her head.

  And Sam’s grandchildren blew on their party whistles while Amos cheered loudly as his friend drew Flo close to honour the mistletoe tradition.

  An Unforgettable Christmas

  “Now you won’t forget to go straight round to Auntie Betty’s after school, will you?” Joy said to Doris and Donald, opening the front door. “And mind you behave yourselves.”

  “We’ll behave, Mum,” Doris said. “I hope Uncle Tom will be there, too. But, anyway, it will be like a party. It’s a market day today so Dilly, Dinah and Linda Butterworth will be there because Auntie Betty has them until their mum finishes working at her market stall. It’s a shame Linda’s name doesn’t start with D as well, then we’d be able to call ourselves The Five Ds.”

  “If we come and fetch Pebbles,” Donald said, bending to stroke their tortoiseshell cat as it walked down the garden path with them, “we could be the Five Find-Outers but it would have to be and cat instead of and dog. The Butterworths love Enid Blyton’s mystery books as much as we do so they’d like us calling ourselves that.”

  “If I find out you got into any mischief like those children in the book do, you’ll be in trouble,” Joy told them. “But if you’re good you can choose the bottles of drink from the Corona man when he comes tomorrow,” she added as they opened the gate and went on their way down Blakeley Road.

  Joy was sure they would behave themselves, they adored Betty and Tom Jones. They weren’t any relation, but most of the youngsters in the prefab village called their parents’ friends Auntie or Uncle. And Betty and Tom had been right good friends over the years – especially, Joy thought sadly, when my Albert died of influenza. That was coming up to five years ago now and she still missed him something rotten.

  Heavens, but it was icy cold out here. “If I don’t go back inside, I’ll be getting bronchitis or something,” she said to Pebbles. “And it’s too cold for you to stay out.” But she waited until Donald and Doris turned to wave before picking up Pebbles and hurrying back up the path and into the comparatively warm prefab.

  Leastways, the kitchen was comparatively warm, though nobody could say the same about the bedrooms, she thought as, after tidying the kitchen and living room, she went to make Doris and Donald’s beds before going to make her own. Her bed made, and room tidied, she opened her wardrobe door, wondering what to wear for going to visit her friend in hospital.

  There wasn’t that much to choose from, but she’d need to dress warm for the journey; first she had to go and draw her Family Allowance at the Post Office, then it would be two bus rides and a train and then a fair walk to the hospital. It might be warm inside though, best to wear the tweed skirt she’d bought on Radlington market off Maisie Butterworth’s Good as New rail and a jumper and cardigan under her winter coat then she could take off both coat and cardigan if need be.

  Joy went back into the kitchen with her clothes over her arm. She decided she’d close the curtains, light the gas oven, leave the door open and get changed in front of it. And a few minutes later she was stripped to her undies when there was a tap at the back door and someone walked in.

  “Blimey, Betty, it’s a good thing it’s you and not the bread man delivering my two loaves,” Joy said, laughing. “I completely forgot to lock the door.”

  Betty was laughing, too. “Tom offered to bring these,” she said, putting a couple of magazines down on the table. “He reckoned I might keep you talking and make you late.”

  “I always get ready too early when I’m going somewhere,” Joy said, stepping into her skirt before pulling her jumper over her head. “We’ve time for a cuppa before I need to go. I just wish that, if Rosemary had to be taken ill, it hadn’t happened when she was visiting her sister-in-law in York. I hope I can find my way to the hospital all right, we lived about a mile away from it when I was young. We moved when I was twelve though, so I’m not that sure I remember the area and it will have changed by now anyway.”

  After turning off the oven and then filling the kettle and lighting the gas under it, she glanced across at the table. “Thanks for the magazines, Betty.”

  “Woman’s Own is this week’s but Home Chat is from two or three weeks back,” Betty said. “I remember Rosemary saying one time she was here, she enjoys flicking through magazines. I thought you could take them to the hospital for her, but have a read of them first while you’re on the bus or train.”

  “Rosemary really likes magazines and books with home-making hints and ideas,” Joy said. “I always get her the News of the World Household Guide and Almanac for Christmas so this Home Chat will be right up her street. Oh, I do hope they’ll let her out in time for Christmas. She’s meant to be coming here you know, and I’ve been making bits and pieces for ages ready for her visit. Donald and Doris have been looking forward to her coming. They enjoy going to Rochdale for Christmas at hers, but I think they like being here best.”

  “I thinks it’s a lovely idea the way you still take it in turns to go to each other’s for the festive season,” Betty said. “You’ve probably plenty of happy memories to share of the times you all spent together.”

  “Yes. It seemed more important than ever to keep doing it after we were both widowed within months of each other.”

  Betty nodded. “It was a sad year for you, love.”

  “I had good friends like you and Tom to help me through,” Joy said. “And you’ve come to the rescue again having my two after school so I can go and see Rosemary.”

  “If you don’t get going now, Tom will gloat because I will have made you late,” Betty said, laughing. “And Doris and Donald will end up sleeping at mine, too, because you won’t be able to get home tonight.”

  *

  Joy had never been too keen on travelling but, really, she supposed, getting here hadn’t been that bad – even though it seemed a long, long time since she’d started out. Rosemary’s sister-in-law had said which ward Rosemary was on in the letter she’d sent. Now, Joy thought, as she went inside the building, she just had to find it.

  “It’s on the third floor,” the helpful lady on Reception said when Joy asked the way. “You can use the lift,” she added, with a smile. “It’s not that long since everyone had to climb the stairs to upper floors but now the lift saves everyone’s legs.”

  Feeling dubious about using it, Joy walked along in the direction of the lift. But, she told herself, it would be something to tell Doris and Donald about when she got home. When she got to the right place, she saw there was a young girl clutching a large notebook and a paper bag, and a lady who was obviously her mother, already waiting for the lift. It arrived all too quickly for Joy and her tummy churned with apprehension as she stepped into it behind them.

  “Isn’t it exciting?” the girl said. “It would take ages to walk up all the stairs, wouldn’t it?” she added, smiling at Joy.

  Joy nodded and tried to smile back at the pretty youngster with big brown eyes and sticky-out pigtails.

  “We’re visiting my gran,” the girl continued, dipping into the bag and pulling a yellow sweet and popping it into her mouth. “She’s eighty-four and she’s going to tell me about Christmases when she was young,” she said, in between crunching the sweet. “It’s for something our class is doing and I’ve got to write stuff down and take it to school tomorrow. Mum says I should have done it sooner ’cos now I’ll have to rush it.”

&nb
sp; Her mother nodded and gave a tight smile. Joy noticed she was holding one hand at her throat and her knuckles were white. She guessed her fellow passenger felt even more scared then she did inside this moving cage and tried to think of something reassuring to say. But before anything came to mind, the lift stopped on the second floor.

  Joy glanced at the lady who stepped in. She had salt and pepper hair was smartly dressed and had a Friend of the Hospital badge pinned on the lapel of her bottle green coat. Then the lift door closed and, as the lift started to move jerkily upwards, two or three yellow sweets fell out of paper bag the little girl was holding.

  “Pick them up, Monica,” her mum said in a whispery voice.

  Monica giggled and, as she bent to pick them up, the lift stopped. “Why’s it stopped?” she asked, straightening up without the sweets. “We’re not on the next floor already are we? Are we stuck?” she added, her voice rising.

  “The lift hasn’t been here long, it’s still learning how to do things right,” said the friend of the hospital, obviously trying to avoid panic.

  “I knew we should have walked.” Monica’s mum gasped loudly. “I hate being in small airless places.”

  “Mum, I’m s-s-scared,” Monica wailed after minutes passed and the lift remained still.

  “Not as scared as her mum,” the hospital friend whispered to Joy. “I think that paper bag might be needed. I’ll get the mum to breathe into it and you try to calm the young’un.”

  Joy nodded and, controlling her own panic, gently eased the bag from Monica’s clenched fingers. She handed it to her companion who emptied the remaining sweets into her coat pocket and then tried to persuade Monica’s mum to breathe into the bag.

  Joy turned to Monica. “This thing you’ve got to do for school, Monica. What if I tell you about Christmases when I was young?” Joy couldn’t tell if her words had registered or not because Monica didn’t reply. But she moved closer and snuggled in a bit.

  “Well, back then,” Joy said, “it always seemed to snow at Christmas. I remember one year near the end of the first world war, when it was hard to find anything very Christmassy in the shops, Mum and Dad crept outside before anyone else was awake and built a huge snowman in the field at the end of our garden. They hid all sorts of tiny hand-made presents in it for me and my sister…”

  Joy broke off for a second, and wondered what on earth had made her talk about that particular year when she’d been eleven and her sister twenty-one. It was the last Christmas they’d had together. Almost the last time she’d seen the sister she’d loved so much. It still hurt to think of it even after thirty-seven years.

  “What sort of presents?” Monica asked, and Joy came back to here and now. The little girl had sounded calm and the sound of her mum breathing in and out whispered around the lift. They were slow, steady breaths so Joy thought she was calmer, too.

  “Well, I remember a tiny rag doll with plaits made out of yellow wool, animals made from acorns, knitted rugs for my dolls’ house and… Oh, yes, a wooden flute. My dad made that. He loved music and singing. He wrote a carol one year—”

  “Did it get played on the wireless?” Monica asked.

  “We didn’t have wirelesses back then.” Joy shook her head. “No, he wrote it just for us, just for me and my sister. Nobody made a record of it or anything like that, but I reckon it was good enough. Anyway, after I’d tried to play a tune on the wooden flute, Dad took it from me and played the carol and as the rest of us sang it started snowing again. I’ve always wished someone had been there to take a photograph of us but there weren’t that many who had a camera.”

  “I wish I could have heard you singing the carol,” Monica said. “I know what! If you sing it now really, really loudly someone might hear…” her voice wobbled, “…and they’ll come and get the lift unstuck.”

  Joy didn’t really want to sing, but she knew she should think of Monica rather than herself so she took a deep breath and start to sing: “Can you hear the Christmas bells? Merrily they’re ringing. Can you…?”

  She couldn’t carry on; the memories were hurting too much. But to her amazement, she heard the next lines.

  “Can you hear the Christmas bells? Joyful news they’re bringing. Ring-a-ling-ring-a-ling-ring-a-ling…”

  “How does she know the carol?” Monica demanded. “You said your dad wrote it just for you and your sister. Is she your sister?”

  Joy turned round and stared at the woman who’d got in the lift on the second floor and, although she was smiling, there were tears streaming down her plump cheeks. “Hello, Joy,” she said softly.

  “Belle? Belle, is it really you?” Joy knew it must be and she felt the tears running down her own face. “But what are you doing here?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “She’s a friend of the hospital,” Monica said. “It says so on her badge. Friends of the hospital come to see people who have no family or friends to visit them. We learned that at school. Now,” she added impatiently, unaware of the miracle that had just occurred, “if you carry on with the carol somebody’s sure to come and help us.”

  Joy reached out for Belle’s hand and they sang together. “Ring-a-ling-ring-a-ling-ring-a-ling-ring-a-ling, Ring-a-ling-ring-ding-ding.”

  They sang two more verses, with Monica and her mum joining in the chorus, before the lift suddenly juddered upwards and then stopped on the third floor. The door opened, Monica picked up the sweets that had fallen out of the bag and they all scrambled out laughing and crying.

  “Don’t disappear again, Belle,” Joy begged. “I can’t not visit Rosemary and you’re probably going to see someone who won’t have a visitor, otherwise—”

  “And we’ve got to see Gran,” Monica interrupted. “Can we all meet up when visiting time is over?”

  “I was just going to suggest that,” Belle said. “I’ll have to get you some sweeties, the ones in my pocket will be sticky and covered in fluff.” Then smiling at Joy and squeezing her arm, she added, “My little sister and I have a lot of catching up to do.”

  *

  “We haven’t caught up on all the lost years yet,” Joy told Betty the following morning. It had been late when she’d arrived at Betty’s last night but, bursting with happiness she’d told some of the wonderful happening at the hospital before taking Doris and Donald home. And now, Betty had come round to hear the rest of the story.

  “I know now,” Joy continued as she poured them out a cup of tea, “that soon after our last Christmas together when Belle disappeared out of my life, she’d gone off with someone our parents didn’t approve of. She was twenty-one, so pretty and tall and slim, well, she seemed tall to me at the time. She’s not slim any more but she hasn’t really changed that much in looks, not now I know who she is. I think I was so scared of being in that horrible lift, even before it got stuck, that I didn’t really take in much about her. Of course I’ve changed since I was eleven so she didn’t recognise me.”

  Joy took a couple of sips of her tea. “I know I’m rambling a bit, Betty,” she said.

  “That’s not surprising,” Betty said. “It’s taking me all my time to take it all in, so heaven knows how you’re managing to think straight.”

  “Anyway, Belle didn’t need our parents’ approval so she got married and then they went to America. Can you imagine going all that way, Betty? It must have taken weeks. But the marriage didn’t work out and, after a couple of years, Belle came back to England. She told me she’d been almost broke and too proud to try and find her family. She lived and worked in London but she didn’t like it there and a year after the last war ended, she moved back to York, close to where we’d lived as children.”

  Betty shook her head. “The most amazing thing is that for the last eight years or so, you’ve been living a couple of hours away from each other without knowing it.”

  “I know,” Joy said. “And if it hadn’t been for Rosemary being taken ill while visiting her sister-in-law and me going to see her in ho
spital on the very day it was Belle’s turn of being a hospital friend, we’d never have found each other. Or if the lift hadn’t got stuck…”

  “But you have found each other and I’m sure you’ll be meeting up soon.”

  “Oh, I haven’t told you that bit. Doris and Donald are so excited about this. I never told them about Belle before, because…” Joy had to break off to wipe tears away, “It all happened so many years ago, I didn’t know if she was still alive. Now, in less than two weeks, an auntie they didn’t know they had will be coming to spend all of Christmas with us. They can’t wait to break up from school so they can make special things for her. It’s just like something out of one of their story books.”

  “I love stories with a happy ending,” Betty said. “What about Rosemary? Will she be well enough to come?”

  “The doctor told her that, as long as her temperature stays down and everything is working normally, she’ll be discharged tomorrow. She’ll stay at her sister-in-law’s a day or two before coming here and Monica and her mum have promised they’ll try to visit over Christmas, too. Because that’s another if, Betty. If Monica hadn’t asked me to sing Dad’s carol, Belle and I would have parted as two strangers.”

  *

  “Mum, I love how all the stalls have got Christmas decorations hanging up,” Doris said. “The ones Donald and I made are nicer though, and there’s more of them,” she added, as the three of them made their way around Radlington market on the day before Christmas Eve.

  “You made so many, I think if we went to all the prefabs in the village and counted up their Christmas decorations, we’d have more than all of them put together,” Joy said, laughing.

  “And a lot of them are for the tree,” Donald said. “I’m glad the ground’s too hard for us to dig up the Christmas tree from our garden. It’s not big enough to put all of the decorations on. We can buy a really big one, can’t we, Mum? That’s why I’ve brought my bogey. Even a huge tree will fit on it and we’ll be able to pull it along all right with these ropes.”