While Shepherds Washed My Socks Read online

  I imagined Keisha trolling in with a cat stretched round her neck like something out of The Worst Witch.

  “Oh.” I dug my nail into the palm of my hand and struggled to smile. Obviously there’d be no huge discount on mouse cages, then. “You’ll never believe…”

  I’d kind-of figured that the best conversation would be one where I did most of the talking. As I blurted that line though, I had no idea whether I was about to tell her about the Nativity play and Angel Gabrielle, or Charlie’s social failure, or the arrival of the mouse.

  “I’ve been growing my nails for a month,” I said, suddenly, nervous to start wittering about my week. “Ortho said I’ll need ’em to manipulate the tight retainer once my braces come off.”

  But soon enough, all the angely, mousy, cringy things started streaming out of my mouth, and by the time I’d relayed everything right back past Mr Wordsworth one-upping Andy, and life one-upping Charlie, and my old, new mobile phone, my mouth tasted like mouse poo and my throat felt like I’d swallowed the whole stock of sawdust.

  Fern made a trippy creaking sound, and then remembered and reached for the pad of paper beside her. She frantically flipped the pages back, lip curling with the realisation that they were all covered in doodly sketches of anything but the fairy design on her wall, and notes to her dad asking for more water, or a microwave teddy, or an ice lolly (a sure sign that she was pretty ill), all with a meticulous “please”s and “thank you”s.

  She gave up, and gestured at my hand and lap, before groaning and pulling her shaking arm back under the covers. I turned over my hand to reveal that all the digging of my unwanted fingernails and the stress of having none to chew in whacky moments had led to a pair of crescent cuts where my thumb met my wrist, with a smear of blood on the thigh of my jeans and a matching one on the bedspread. “Omigod…” I groaned, picturing the weekly guinea pig change ending in a rotten hand and the eventual loss of an arm. Or simply poo in my immune system, which sounded equally disgusting.

  I scuttled off to the bathroom for tissue, and considered not coming out. I considered leaving right away. I considered Aimee’s alien spacecraft zooming down to abduct me. Those were all perfectly sensible ideas (except maybe the last one), and I was utterly ready to try any one of them, but needlessly occupying the bathroom, running off home, and being intentionally abducted by aliens are not good ways to treat a sick friend.

  Instead I grabbed a wad of loo roll and pressed it into my fist, then wandered back in to inspect the damage. The blood on the bedspread looked genuinely morbid, and Fern clearly had a thing about that – and it wasn’t an intensely interested goth thing.

  Just as I was running my brain over her dad casually wandering in and thinking she’d sneezed blood or had a mortifying puberty moment, she flicked to the probably most-used page in her notepad, THANKS.

  I thought at first that she was being sarcastic, but Fern is your adorably sweet sort of person who would never be cynical and probably wouldn’t know how. She answered that thought with an icked-out look at the stain and a clacking of the keys on her Piglet-fascia’d phone. A moment later, she turned the screen to face me: Its one way to get Dad to buy me new sheets. He knows id never be able to sleep well knowing thered been blood on them!

  “I’m so sorry!” I squirmed.

  Its fine. He had to scrape rabbit mess off his best white jeans yesterday – hell live.

  “But it’s gonna cost!” I panicked. “On top of his jeans replacing that is…”

  She looked at me as if to say, “Did you think this is my scene?” and tapped, Ive had this duvet since I was five. Hes overdue parting with the cash...

  “Oh. Right.”

  I glanced around the room, and apart from the newly done-out fairytale walls, the clean pink cabinets, and the patch of Barbie’s blondeness which could be mistaken for a mouse-sized massacre, generally everything could pass for little-girly and nine years new.

  I heaved a sigh of relief and dragged back my end of the duvet for her in case she was still squeamish, wondering when would be the soonest acceptable time to leave.

  #11 Spangly, Bangly Tortoises

  The sea of cerise swamped Kay’s whole room.

  Not to worry – my bloody palm wasn’t destroying yet more decor, and nobody’d spilled the fabric dye this time.

  “Alfie’s sent me a Christmas card, Harley!” Kay grinned through four pins she was holding between her lips.

  “Mm-hmm…”

  “D’you want to see it?”

  No, I didn’t really want to see it, but my mate wanted me to see it, so that meant that I had to see it really, no choice in the matter. “Yeah, OK.”

  She passed me a card with a great big glittery picture of a tortoise in sunglasses on the front and inside it said:

  Dear Devon,

  Do not use the word “Christmas” in Spain. We have our own word “Navidad” and by the time I worked also in England celebrated the shop was out nice card Christmas cards. The only one I could find was this. Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year - Gee and I was wondering if you go to a New Year celebration. If you do, have fun.

  Alf.

  “Cute, isn’t it?”

  “The tortoise?” I said, stunned.

  “No, you twit! The whole going all that length to wish me a Merry Christmas…”

  In a world where walking to a shop and picking a card is “all that length”… OK, maybe I was just jelly because I hadn’t heard a thing from Gerardo as of yet.

  “Nothing from Gerardo,” I mused.

  “I’ll tell Alfie to remind him it’s Christmas.”

  “Um, I’m not that desperate, Devon. If he’s ‘Gee’ he’s totally aware it’s Crimbles. If he doesn’t send me a card, he doesn’t.”

  “Get his email addy,” she suggested. “You have a computer now, don’t you?”

  “Erm… I suppose. But maybe he wouldn’t like to speak to me every day.”

  “You mean, write to you every day,” she said technically. “I think you just can’t work email properly!” she teased. “And you don’t fancy him. He does look a lot like a mole, actually.”

  “Kayyy…” I groaned. “No, I don’t fancy Gee, and he probably doesn’t exactly cherish the look of me, but all the same I don’t want to have to retell my painful life story to somebody every night – it’s enough going over it all for Shells.”

  “Do what…?”

  “Shelley, my cousin.”

  “I know, duh. I mean writing it all out. You serious?”

  “I am serious, and before you suggest emailing that, think again – Harry hasn’t got us our own user areas yet, and he says it’ll be a while before we’re allowed our own emails. We’re all having to share an address. It’d be agonising if one or both of my brothers got to read all about it!”

  The doorbell went, and Kay did a double take. “In that case, do not, under any circumstances, email anyone!”

  “Speaking of,” I snickered. “Charlie and Laura got to emailing now. Maybe sharing an account account might be useful after all!”

  “I need to finish my sari before tonight,” said Kay. I realised she had not taken in a word I’d just schemed. “Eileen and I are going to the Christingle thingy tonight, and I was thinking of doing an I-love-EVERY-religion bit, clothing-wise!”

  “How would that help?” I giggled. “They’ll just think you’re some completely mad Hindu or Buddhist or something, showing up at church.”

  “What’s that about mad Hindus?” came a voice from the hallway.

  I jumped. Eileen had to be out, because most everyone got waylaid on the stairs when they were let into the house. (Not that it was a problem for me, since I’d stopped using the front door.)

  “Oh God, Rindi!” I cringed, brain going off on an unnecessary one about how what I’d just said could have sounded mildly racist.

  “What? I got paid in leftover cards for my paper round, so I thought you two might like some.” She raised a nea
t, dark eyebrow.

  “Sorry.” Kay winced at the large satin expanse.

  “What for?” asked Rindi, confused. “Hey, why’d you bother with all this? It’s horrible. Not your outfit, I mean, but… OK, your outfit. It reminds me of this awful thing I had to wear to my cousin’s wedding.”

  “Phew,” said Kay, adjusting her headscarf self-consciously. “I thought for a second that you thought I’m a racist.”

  “You, a racist?” sniggered Rindi. “No wayyy. But I do think it’s a children’s rights violation to be made to wear loose pink and yellow pattern trousers out in public, even for a special occasion. Especially for a special occasion! You got off lightly at your mum’s wedding, Harley!”

  I didn’t think so. As nervy as I’d have been wandering around in foreign garb (mostly in case anyone thought I was racist), the pink Harley Davidson top beat that for humiliating.

  Kay fumbled with the sheet and pile of probably more than twenty glittery pipe-cleaner bangles. “Any idea how to pin this up, Rind?”

  Rindi nearly fell back out of the room laughing. “Nope, sorry…”

  “I’m giving up on this…”

  #12 Warning: Made In China

  “It says ‘Made In China’ on Jesus’s bum!”

  “Kitty, you shouldn’t say that… here,” I warned her, gluing sequins onto the paper tablecloth on the Infant-height table by the door. While it’s totally OK to be mad as a starfruit in our own home, Kitty hasn’t quite grasped that people on the outside (a.k.a. the Sane Ones) can react very differently.

  “But it does!” she insisted, holding up the plastic doll that’d been lying bum-up in the plastic storage box “manger”.

  “All the same, I’m sure it makes no difference,” mused “Devon”. It was a virgin birth, so Jesus wasn’t actually made anywhere.”

  “Kay,” I hissed, motioning a cut throat to her over any comment that might probe Kitty to ask what exactly about Mary being a virgin (her definition: “pure and innocent”) meant Jesus wasn’t made anywhere.

  “Should I go and tell Miss?” persisted Kitty, thankfully still preoccupied over the stamp on the plastic doll’s behind, and not the details of the Immaculate Conception, or any conception for that matter.

  “Definitely not, hon.”

  “Where d’you reckon he was conceieved?”

  “God only kno-” I spun around, realising that it hadn’t been Kitty who spoke. “Charlie. Go home.”

  “No. This looks like good fun to me.”

  “You’re supposed to be getting ready for the Battle final.”

  “Whatever. We were conceived in China y’know…” he said, plonking his own bum down on the Infant-sized plastic chair that was supposed to belong to the hovering Kitty (who was now stroking the embossed plastic detail of “Made In China” on the little baby Jesus in a way that Miss Atherfold or any passing staff would surely find seriously questionable).

  I sighed. “I don’t care. I don’t care in public, or at home.”

  On the one hand I didn’t want to be the one who had to let poor, mopey Charlie know that the whole “conceived in China” thing was just one of Mum’s made up holiday stories, designed to make it sound like Dad had an accessible loving side (which arguably did Charlie more harm than good searching for it). On the other, I just didn’t want any sex talk in general around Kitty today – no need to get her all confused/enlightened before her big show.

  “‘Warning: Made In China’. That’d be a good name for a song…” he mused.

  Instead of the “No, Charlie, it really wouldn’t”, sensibly PC answer I’d usually have given, I flumped for, “Go home and write it, then.” I was exasperated, and tired of glitter and glue. We didn’t need his disturbance if he wasn’t even going to help.

  “Will do.” He shrugged, rose, and surprised me by disappearing out of the assembly hall. The five minutes home from the Primary school obviously seemed worth it, compared to being told to shut up unless he wanted to make an effort for the play. Such is the dizzy head of a lovestruck/mortified boy.

  “Harley, love – could you hold this bit of banner up while I staple it?”

  “Sure.”

  Kay and I were down for an afternoon of banner holding, tea-towel turban fixing, and face paint application for the poor kiddies subject to the hidden social embarrassment of being called “sheep”. I could remember when Mum used to do all the face painting for ours and Zak’s classes, back when she was still kind of a mum. This year you’d never think she had four children and another on the way.

  “Don’t you think she looks cute as Mary?” asked Kay, smugly, still tweaking Kit’s headdress thing.

  “Yeah. What you meant was: ‘Am I good or what?’, but in the spirit of Christmas I’ll let it go.”

  “D’you think it needs a bit more glitter?” she mused, going to pull out a glitter tube from her heavily-adorned handbag. It was as if Kay personally acted as a warehouse for the local craft shop, with her bag of TARDIS dimensions that somehow fitted all the “necessary” crap that goes everywhere with her.

  “Not really, no…” I mumbled. Kitty was struggling to move, for all the tassels and glittery bits already attached to her Mary outfit. She looked set to upstage the angels already when it came to sparkling heavenly glitziness, and I actually felt that it went kind of against the point of Mary, a lowly, ordinary girl, tasked with raising the son of God.

  “Maybe a bit of glitter glue on her eyebrows?”

  “No, Kay. Do you know how long it takes to fall out?”

  I was thinking of the decoration she’d given to Charlie’s HIM T-shirt.

  She wasn’t.

  “Oh yes. When I did that I was narked that I had to redo it so soon…”

  “Two minutes ’til the Juniors arrive!” Mrs Simpson called from the front of the hall.

  “Hey dare gawjus!” came the voice of a small someone with a stuffy nose.

  We all spun round, thinking it was probably another stupid Charlie-type joke. But it was Matty.

  Kitty blushed. “Hi, Matty!”

  “Kiddy, you are lookig stunnig today!”

  Every word that came out of his mouth seemed like a “line” – rehearsed, as if he didn’t quite understand what he was saying. I couldn’t picture his acting being any less stunted.

  “Thanks!” Kitty smiled. It was one of those little-kid smiles where the lips stretch over the teeth and the eyes light up.

  “Doesn’t he look sweet in that Joseph costume!” gushed Kay.

  “How’d you figure out he was Joseph?”

  “Because I can’t exactly see Kit pretending to be infatuated with some other boy.”

  “I’m Joseph!” someone announced from behind us. Someone who sounded suspiciously like my ten-year-old brother. “Joseph of the Amazing Technicolour Yawn!”

  “Zak…” I tutted. “Go and sit down…”

  “C’bon, Kiddy-Kat,” said Matty, sniffishly. “You will be abazig tonight!”

  I watched awed as he put his arm around her waist and towed her away to the front of the room and behind the curtain. I mean, sure, I might have married Andy once or twice in the playground when we were their age, but Matty’s attitude to Kitty bordered on being more mature than anyone Keisha’s been with since I knew her. Not mature as sexual; mature as in… mature.

  The rest of the Juniors filed in, and then parents. Kay and I took our “seats” stageside, disguised behind some cardboard palm trees. The room went dark, but not too dark, because y’know, five year olds were part of this. Before long, I heard and felt a thud next to me on the stage. Zak had joined us for a different view.

  The first narrator began: “A long time ago, in a land far, far away, lived a girl called Mary. Mary’s home was a town called Naz-ar-eff, where she lived a simple life.”

  Kitty came on, costume sparkling in the spotlight, and sat down on the edge of the low stage.

  “She loved everybody, but most of all she loved God,” continued the second na
rrator, to peals of parental laughter. “One day, an angel appeared to her. It was Angel Gabrielle.”

  Instantly, in a flash of party poppers, the Acute Angel appeared.

  “I am the Angel Gabrielle. Do not be afraid.”

  “Uh?”

  “You have been given a mysterious gift; the most precious of them all. You are pregnant with the son of God, and you will call your baby Jesus…”

  “That sounds wonderful. When is he due?”

  “On the twenty-fifth day of the twelfth month.”

  Hey, that probably wasn’t the kind of information that the Angel Gabe actually had to give away, but it sounded a mighty great deal more useful than Zak’s “So I’m in a stable with my husband, going into labour with God’s illegitimate baby in five… four… three… two… one – liftoff!”

  Actually, it sort of made me wonder about the ethics on making naïve kiddies act out the birth of a Christian role model. Sure, the census showed that less than 2% of people in our town claim to be anything other than atheist or some flavour of Christianity (OK, occasionally Jedi), but surely that 2% (and the atheists and Jedi Knights) deserve a choice? I never saw any letters go home asking permission for the children to participate, but everyone’s parents/guardians/childminders had come along to watch all the same. What sort of emotional witchcraft were they using? They had better not go selling it to dictators…

  “We need another wise man!” whispered Miss Atherfold, jolting me out of my Trance of Aww. “Where is he?”

  “Billy’s poorly today,” hissed Mrs Mould.

  “Harley and… Kay?” mouthed Miss Atherfold in our direction. “Would one of you fill in for Billy? He’s the one with ‘gold’ – it’s behind the manger.”

  Kay looked at me for encouragement (I couldn’t believe she needed to ask if I’d had my heart set on being Billy The Wise Man), before slipping back into her uncool-for-school red and purple striped Moroccan duffel jacket and strapping a tea towel to her head with an overstudded thick burgundy sweatband. Billy The Wise Man wasn’t looking so wise, and as usual I failed to see how hard it could be for people to decide if the three had been kings or learned gentlemen.

  I breathed a massive sigh of relief that it was her and not me.

  “Dead sweet, huh?” I whispered, as “Kiddy”/Mary and Matty/Joseph took over the stage from the chorusing angels, mumbling shepherds, fidgeting sheep, William Frankincense, Brett Myrrh and Devon Magenta of Gold once again.