‘There’s no room in the inn,’ Lucille said, a convincing frown on her forehead as she glowered at Mary and Joseph.
Bel blinked back the tears as she proudly watched her little girl, standing arms akimbo, a cushion stuffed under a borrowed woollen jumper, acting her little heart out. The temperatures might be below zero outside, but inside the school hall it was warm and stuffy. Lucille’s cheeks were flushed red, which complemented her innkeeper’s look.
Lucille had forsaken her role of angel as the real innkeeper had become ill at the last moment and Lucille had been the only one not to cry when the teacher told her flock of little cherubs that one of them was going to have to ditch their wings to become the baddy who tells Jesus’s mam and dad they can’t have a room.
Bel and Joe were sitting in the second row from the front. Joe had a firm hold of his wife’s hand. Giving her a quick sideways glance, he could see the tears starting to glisten in her eyes. He knew those tears were not just because this was her daughter’s first nativity, but because it might be the last ‘first nativity’ she got to go to.
Joe looked behind him to see that his ma was not doing such a good job of holding back her own tears and was unashamedly letting them run down her face. Pearl was next to her and was decidedly dry-eyed. He wondered if this was her first nativity; he couldn’t imagine Pearl ever being present at Bel’s. Polly was standing at the back of the hall with baby Artie, who had started to get tetchy at the beginning of the performance when the shepherds, tea towels on their heads, had shuffled onto the stage.
An hour later, everyone was making their way out of the school building and buttoning up their coats as they faced the icy-cold weather outside. Joe said his goodbyes and went straight off to be with his unit, while Pearl hurried off to the Tatham.
Within half an hour of stepping over the threshold to the Elliot household, Polly had put Artie down and then ended up falling fast asleep herself.
Not long afterwards, seeing how shattered Lucille was after her stage debut, Bel had had little resistance in getting her daughter to bed.
‘Mammy …’ Lucille could barely keep her eyes open ‘… was there really no room in the inn, or was the man just being mean?’
Bel smiled down at her daughter. ‘I don’t know, sweetheart. Why don’t we have a chat about it tomorrow?’ She leant down and kissed the top of her head. ‘Sweet dreams.’
By the time Bel was drawing the door ajar, Lucille was asleep.
Walking into the kitchen, Bel was glad that there was just Agnes sitting at the table, a fresh pot of tea in the middle of it.
‘Do you think the innkeeper really didn’t have any room?’ Bel asked. ‘Or he just didn’t want the hassle of having a pregnant woman under his roof?’
Agnes laughed and poured their tea.
‘Well, it wouldn’t surprise me. Especially as they clearly had no money and weren’t married into the bargain.’
Now it was Bel’s turn to laugh.
‘Things haven’t changed much, have they?’
Bel eased herself into the chair. She was tired; she had been on her feet all day. She knew what Mary and Joseph had felt like, although she would have given anything to have been in Mary’s condition.
‘I kept thinking all during the nativity about how you took me in,’ Bel said, looking at Agnes. ‘I had nowhere to go, was locked out, Ma was God knows where, with God knows who – but you didn’t turn me away, did you?’
‘I think it would have taken a hard-hearted woman to have done that,’ Agnes said.
‘Of which there are many,’ Bel countered.
They were quiet for a moment while they drank their tea.
‘But it must have been hard work,’ Bel said, putting her teacup on its saucer and sitting back in her chair. ‘You had me to look after when you already had Pol and the twins to bring up – and let’s face it, the twins were a handful.’
Agnes smiled, thinking of her sons as young boys.
‘I didn’t really think about what it must have been like for you until I became a mother myself – and I’ve just got the one …’ Bel’s voice wavered.
Agnes reached over and took hold of her hand.
Bel swallowed back the tears. ‘I’m all right, really, Agnes … I wish I could just be happy with my lot.’
‘It’s a difficult time of year,’ Agnes said. ‘Baby Jesus this and Baby Jesus that …’
Bel laughed sadly. ‘I know. And all LuLu wants for Christmas is a baby brother or sister. I thought little Artie might keep her happy, but it’s as though now he’s arrived on the scene, it’s spurred her on in her determination to have a brother or sister all to herself.’
There were tears in both women’s eyes.
‘Life can be a funny one,’ Agnes said. ‘Takes us places we hadn’t expected or planned. But remember,’ she squeezed Bel’s hand before letting it go and getting up from the table, ‘the unexpected doesn’t have to be bad. It can bring surprises. Good surprises.’
Bel watched as Agnes bent over to get the single malt from the cupboard and poured a drop into both their cups.
Bel took a sip and swallowed, grimacing a little as she felt the burn of the whisky.
‘What I was going to say, before I nearly started to blubber,’ Bel said with a slight laugh, ‘is that you took me in when you already had your hands full. You were on your own, widowed, no family, no money, three children, and then I tipped up like Little Orphan Annie and you waved me in, clothed me, fed, looked after me—’ Bel swallowed more tears that were threatening to silence her.
‘But most of all,’ she said, ‘you loved me.’
‘Of course I did,’ Agnes said, looking at Bel. ‘How could I not? You were a totally lovable child. Who grew into a totally lovable young woman.’
Bel took another sip. Her mind was back in the past, remembering how Agnes had divided the few clothes Polly had to accommodate the little stray she had taken in. As Polly and Bel had only one dress each, it meant that every night when they’d got ready for bed, Agnes would wash both dresses, wring them out and hang them by the range so that they were dry the next day.
‘I used to wonder why you were always stooped over the poss tub.’ Bel smiled at Agnes. ‘It was only when one of the girls in the class – that awful girl … can’t remember her name – but it was only when she started taking the mick because Polly and I wore the same clothes every day that I realised why.’
‘I think that was Polly’s fault.’ Agnes’s smile grew wider as she recalled her daughter as a child. ‘She was such a tomboy. Forever getting into scrapes and ending up looking like she’d spent the day down the pit. You, on the other hand, would always keep yer dress in pristine condition. Hardly a mark on it. I only washed yer dress as well in case yer thought I was giving Pol preferential treatment.’
Bel looked at Agnes. Tears started to prick her eyes. ‘I’m so glad you did, though. I loved waking up and climbing into my clean clothes, still warm from the range. I can still smell the washing powder you used.’ She looked at Agnes. ‘You had that big box of Lux you kept right at the back of the scullery in the corner.’
Agnes whooped with laughter. ‘That was from my friend Val. She worked at the Luxdon launderette down Smyrna Place. She used to – how should I say it – acquire the odd box every now and again. She’d take half out for herself and give me the other half still in the box.’
‘Well, if I ever meet this Val, I’ll have to thank her. The smell was heavenly. I used to feel like a princess every day I walked to school with Pol. Smelling so nice and feeling so clean.’
Agnes took a slurp of her tea and chuckled.
‘Unlike Pol, who would have gone without a wash for weeks on end if I’d have let her.’
‘I know,’ Bel laughed. ‘It was like you were subjecting her to some kind of torture.’
The women smiled and sipped their tea, both enjoying their own memories.
‘You know, Agnes,’ Bel said, ‘I don’t think I’ve ever really thanked you for taking me in. God knows what would have happened to me if you hadn’t.’
Agnes dismissed Bel’s words with a shake of the head.
‘There’s a part of me that still feels guilty,’ Bel admitted. ‘For putting on you so. Not that I think I would have given you much of a choice if you had shut the door on me. I think if you had chucked me out, I’d have just sat on your doorstep and begged to be let back in.’
Agnes sat back on her chair and looked at Bel.
‘There’s something I’ve never told yer. Something I should probably have told yer before now,’ she said, putting her cup and saucer down on the table. ‘That day Pol brought yer back here, it wasn’t a chore. I didn’t have to wrestle with my conscience before reluctantly taking yer in. Far from it. I was glad.’
Bel looked surprised.
‘You see,’ Agnes said, ‘if Harry had made it back from the war, I’d definitely have had more children. I know I would have certainly kept going until I’d had another girl.
‘I’d been thinking that day,’ Agnes continued. ‘Had been thinking for a good while, to be honest, that Polly needed another sibling. Yer see, Pol absolutely doted on her two brothers, which mightn’t have been too much of a problem – if they hadn’t have been twins. Teddy and Joe loved Pol to bits, don’t get me wrong, but they were each other’s world. They were more like one than two separate beings.’
Bel nodded her understanding. She had thought more than a few times that it had been inevitable she would fall in love with Joe after Teddy was killed. It was like their souls were the same.
‘And then,’ Agnes continued, ‘all of a sudden, there yer were, looking like a little chimney sweep, eyes red raw and puffy because yer’d been crying so much, and it was as though, in a strange way, I’d got my wish.’
Bel was sitting stock-still, taking in every word Agnes was saying. This was the first time they’d ever talked properly about the past and how it was that she had become a part of the family.
‘I could see,’ Agnes said, her eyes staring at the range as though it were a porthole to the past, ‘that Polly was lonely, but also that she was trying to be like them so she could be a part of their gang. But she was hankering after the impossible. She was becoming more and more boyish and maybe because of that she wasn’t making any friends at school.’
Agnes brought her attention back to Bel.
‘So, yer see, it’s me that should be thanking you. Because when yer turned up looking like a little street urchin from a Dickens novel, it might have looked to the outside world that Agnes Elliot had a heart of gold and had taken the poor Hardwick child in, but in reality I needed yer as much as you needed me.’
Agnes looked at Bel and could see tears welling in her eyes.
‘We all needed yer. I did. Pol did. The boys did. Yer might have felt that I was doing all the giving, but I wasn’t. Anything I gave I got back in bucket loads.’
A solitary tear trickled down Agnes’s face and she wiped it away.
Bel had given up wiping her own away. Her face was wet now, and she didn’t care.
‘You know, Agnes,’ she said, her vision blurred, ‘I think that is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me.’