Christmas Night

Paul Westmoreland

Description

"It IS you, though, only you just don''t look the way I thought you would. But it''s the right name."James Rayburn, Rector of Saint Luke''s, faces various challenges as Christmas approaches. These include a sense of his own weakening faith, unhappy memories and what to say in his Christmas sermon.But Rayburn is to be distracted by the arrival at his house, one wintry night, of a sick, exhausted and seemingly destitute teenage girl called Corrie."Only now did the chill in her body and the aching in her legs take their toll, for only now did the unthinkable terror that ''they'' might catch her take hold - catch her before she could complete her mission."Who is this mysterious Corrie? Who is the mysterious person called Standerd who has apparently followed her?"I dunno whatever made you think you could hide from me, Corrie, cos I said I''d find you, and I trusted you with a secret."Clearly, she will need time to adjust before she begins to confide in James Rayburn as she recovers in the safety of the rectory. But by then, Corrie''s journey has led her to meetings with others in the narrative, including Kate Raynor, the Dowling family and several of the rector''s friends and colleagues. That journey, and the road she takes, "with its demanding, relentless highway" are ever before us as we come at last to Christmas Night.

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
• Date de parution: 12 décembre 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528966108
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Christmas Night
Paul Westmoreland
Austin Macauley Publishers
2019-12-12
Christmas Night About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © A Tale of the Recent Past 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63
About the Author
Paul Westmoreland was born and raised in Nottingham. Christmas Night is his second published novel following Raineland, which appeared in 2017. A few of his short stories can be found on his website.
His professional life has been as a teacher in Buckinghamshire, then Leeds and finally twenty-three years in Carlisle.
Paul Westmoreland lives with his wife in Penrith where Christmas Night was completed.
Dedication
Christmas Night is dedicated to all those who have supported me in my work.
Copyright Information ©
Paul Westmoreland (2020)
The right of Paul Westmoreland to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528930017 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528966108 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
A Tale of the Recent Past
1
Kate was busy writing her card sitting at her desk in the office. It was nearly the end of the working day and her mind was on Grant.
When you touched me , she wrote on the right-hand side, it was a beautiful, romantic thing.
She paused there. She looked at the words and knew they were not enough. She felt suddenly afraid that others in the office might notice what she was doing, but the desk next to her was unoccupied. Stella had gone early. Mr Grahame was nearest to her and he was busy with details on his computer screen. For the moment, all was safe.
Kate looked at what she had written, wanting it to be enough to make Grant understand, but inspiration in love, she found, was easier felt than written, and so she struggled. After an age of agonising, which occupied in real time only twenty seconds, she wrote:
Thinking of you, and then, Come early tomorrow xx
Her phone began to ring. Hastily, she slipped the card into its envelope and, leaving it unsealed in case she thought of something else to write, put it into the green file on the left edge of her desk. Even though she felt Mr Grahame’s eyes on her, she took a few seconds to hide the card before picking up the receiver. It was a late call when all was said and done. It was 5:26pm;—there were just a few minutes left—and, just to make things worse, the consumer was intent on making her complaint—a bill of £120—far too much! What did the board think it was doing? Had the lady on the receiving end not been, as she put it, of a ‘robust disposition’, the shock of such a big bill might have made her ill.
Kate apologised. There was probably an error in the meter reading.
“Probable error! What do you mean? Of course there’s an error! Look, who is your supervisor?”
Kate groaned inwardly. Oh, no! Not one of these!
She struggled with it. She was not at her best. The woman on the other end dug in her heels. She insisted on speaking to Kate’s supervisor.
In the end, Kate had to tell Mr Grahame about the problem. She hated having to admit her defeat because he had grumbled about another problem customer she had passed on to him earlier in the day…
But it was already 5.30. Any moment he might leave the office and then she would have the whole business to raise with him in the morning.
When Kate went across to speak to him, he seemed at first not to want to notice her. She found herself waiting there like a child waiting to speak to the teacher and she hated him for making her feel this way. Mr Grahame was tall and spare and shadowy and softly spoken and, at his worst, lethal. A shout would have been inappropriate had he ever delivered one but then, a smile also seemed out of place where his face was concerned.
Mr Grahame said little when she reported her problem, but his body language showed how little he wanted to be troubled.
“You’d better get home,” he told her.
Kate thanked him. She accompanied him to her desk long enough to pick up her jacket and her brolly and the all-important blue file on the edge of her desk. Moments later, she was on her way down the stairs and into the street.
Here was the world outside, with the shops in the city centre all brightly lit for Christmas. It was bitterly cold and the chill night air cut through Kate’s jacket and shirt immediately. The over-heated office had not prepared her, and she regretted not having a bigger coat on this frozen night with the sleet just beginning to fall. She put up the brolly, put her head down and set off across the road to the bus station.
She had travelled this main road many times in the last two years. This was the way the road had brought her and her husband into the city on the coach that day when they had moved here. Since then, she had caught a local bus to and from work each day. It was three miles back to her flat. It was a trying road, a road to make her sick of the sight of it.
But oh, the cold! Small wonder the people hurried along the streets. Many of the shops were open late so there was plenty of activity.
Kate was a tall girl in her early twenties. Grant had told her how beautiful she was; she had, he had told her, the figure of a professional model, and it had made her flush to the roots of her bright blond hair when he had said it, because she wanted him to be attracted to her. She had fine, elegant legs and she was pleased enough to think of his compliments as she strode along, her mind now filled with thoughts of him and what he might say when he got her message…
She crossed at the junction with a quickening step, her brolly shielding her from the sleet but not the cold. It was the way you cross when you feel that the cars waiting at the lights might be on you at any moment—the way you might hurry when you know your bus stop is still three hundred metres further up the road…the way you might hurry if you felt—and she suddenly found herself fighting the notion—that someone was following you.
Kate knew what had caused it. Just before the crossing, she had passed a doorway, not a shop entrance but a doorway, into some business premises. As she had strode past this building, someone had emerged and she had sensed that he had been in tow ever since. Just over the crossing, she paused to look into a jeweller’s and she had actually turned a little to look and she was sure there was someone. A man coming along behind suddenly changed direction and then stopped to look in at a window not far down the street. There were, of course, others coming and going in that crowded place—all of them part of the hurry and urgency of the road. But, for as long as she stood at her jeweller’s, this other shadow stood at his window…
Once before she had been followed; it was in the days of that secretarial course she had done, and that escapade had ended in her running for safety. But this time, there was no cause for alarm with the crowd around her and the bus stop only a short distance.
The buses were already standing in line. When she paid her fare, she was a part of a queue and the lights and the talk of the other people made her feel secure.
She sat downstairs and looked at the other people who followed her on board: a woman with shopping (downstairs), another woman with kids (downstairs), an old-ish man (upstairs) and a man in a dark blue anorak (upstairs). Then some old ladies (obviously friends) and some school kids. By the time the bus was moving, it left her with the man in the anorak as her possible pursuer and no one else. It left her also with the thought that her imagination might be getting the better of her. Certainly Kate felt agitated; her heart was going at a fair old rate. But this was because she had set her mind on making a delivery and she must not let her nerves get the better of her.
After only three stops, she got off the bus and found herself in a poorly lit street of old terraced houses.
“Is this Golden Road?” she asked the driver as she left the bus. The driver confirmed that it was. Kate thought him unfriendly, or maybe it was just the end of a bad day.
Kate was conscious of the three others who got off the bus here; but they melted away into the dark.
GOLDEN ROAD. The street sign was conveniently lit by a well-placed lamp, but this was a cheerless place, not what she had expected at all. She knew that Grant lived at 56. She would find the house, post the card and then hurry back to where she now stood and catch the next bus. It was a quarter to six but it felt like midnight what with the winter dark and the cold and the driving sleet.
Golden Road was a string of old terraced houses and she was close by number 16, as she discovered courtesy of the next street lamp she came to. She strode on as purposefully as she could, the brolly before her as her shield, until she got to the first side street. By then, with the weather worsening and her head down, she almost missed it. She was more aware of a dog barking nearby than she was of the person who came up rapidly from behind.
“No!” she cried.
It was as though someone had stopped her breathing, until she realised that her pursuer was no more than a girl who was much shorter than she was. When she understood this, Kate continued angrily, “What is