Angels Passing: A Christmas story

I DON'T know if this is a true story. When I first heard it I had no doubt that it was. But that was a long time ago when I was a boy myself, the same age as the one in the story and in those days I believed everything my grandfather told me. His stories were better than anything on the television.

• Illustration by Clive O'Neill

I can still picture him in that winged chair with its crimson upholstery by the fireplace in our living room. He would be wearing that bottle-green velvet smoking jacket, a garment like no other worn by anyone in our village, and he would be smoking a cigar, to my mother's irritation. It was a cheap cigar - "not what I was used to," he would sigh, and he was aware of my mother's displeasure, but this didn't faze him. "Toby my boy," he said to me at least once a week, "you must never let a woman rule your life, that's the best piece of advice I can give you." Then he would take a sip of cherry brandy, a small sip, for he could afford to buy only one bottle a week, and both my parents were teetotallers. He was my dad's father and, if he was with us on sufferance, it was because Dad had a strong sense of duty. "That was your father all over," my mother said years later. "He never liked him nor approved of him any more than I did, but blood's blood and duty's duty, that's how he thought, and so he had his way." Be that as it may, I loved him and I couldn't get enough of his stories.

"They talk," he said, "of 'la douce France'. That's not our Scots word 'douce'. It has a different meaning in French: sweet, gentle, pleasant. The country is often like that, but not always, Toby, not by a long chalk. They have winters in France too and snow and cold winds coming south from the mountains - they call that wind the 'mistral' and it gets you between the ribs, believe me, son. Well, our drop went wrong. I never knew why. Maybe the pilot's instruments weren't working. But I jumped all the same - we all did - there were three of us, and it was beautiful when my parachute opened and I floated down with only the stars for company. It was a cold clear night, bitter cold, December '43, a harsh winter it was, with that mistral blowing hard and blowing me off course. It was my first operational drop, though I had done a dozen in practice, which was more than you were required to do to qualify. I remember the stillness and the happiness of it and then there was a moment of alarm when it seemed that I was being blown into the trees but I missed them, and landed, landed hard, and I knew straightaway that something was wrong. I called out in pain, I remember that, and knew I shouldn't have done so for fear my cry might be heard

"We'd been taught by our instructors: get away from your landing-place at once and bury your parachute or get it out of sight at least. Some hope! The ground was frozen hard as a pavement and I couldn't move. I tried to, struggled to my feet and fell over. I'd sprained my ankle or even broken it.So I lay there hoping that Jim and Trevor, my colleagues, were nearby and might find me. But they were - well I didn't know where they were, and in fact I never saw them again . It was a lot later that I heard they had fallen into the hands of the Gestapo, poor devils. So I thought to myself, 'You've made a right mess of things, George, and now it looks as if you'll freeze to death.' If I'd been a religious man I'd have said a prayer, but, do you know, it was a Harry Lauder song, not a psalm, that ran in my head…

"And what's more," he said, "I began to sing it. Out loud, daft-like."

"Keep right on to the end of the road,

Keep right on to the end.

Though the way be long,

Let your heart be strong,

Keep right on to the end…"

Grandpa had had, I believe, a fine rich baritone - he used to sing in concerts - but his voice was quavery now though it still filled our small living-room.

"And then I heard voices," he said, "children's voices, which was strange, out there at night, though we had been late in our drop and the dawn was breaking. So I said to myself, 'Well, George, you've a choice. You attract these kids' attention and take the risk that they or their parents betray you, or you freeze to death. Well, you can usually pick the winner in a two-horse race, so I sang out louder, not knowing if I was indeed coming to the end of the road. Still, they heard me and came towards my voice and then they were in front of me, a boy and a girl, brother and sister as might be, the boy about your age, Toby, and the girl maybe a year or two younger. They just stood and looked at me as if I was a curiosity. So I smiled and told them I was hurt and needed help. I spoke in French of course - I'd good French which was why I had been recruited by the SOE - I'd learned it at the High School and then perfected it when I spent a year selling whisky in Paris. They looked at me, very solemn, for a long time and then the boy said,

"We saw you fall from the sky. Marie thought you might be an angel."

"No angel me," I said. "Look, I've no wings. I'm a soldier and I've hurt my ankle , maybe broken it, and I can't move."

"You stay with him, Marie," the boy said. "I'll fetch Helmut."

Helmut? I didn't like the sound of that, it's a Jerry name, but there was nowt I could do about it, was there? So I just nodded and said thanks very much.

The wee girl sat down beside me, and said nothing for a long time.

Then, "I hoped you were an angel," she said. "There are angels, you know."

"Aye," I said, not liking to contradict her.

"Does it hurt?" she said.

"I've known worse," I said.

"Don't worry. Maman will make you better," she said.

"I hope so," I said, liking the sound of 'maman' more than the idea of Helmut.

"Don't worry," she said again.

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, I thought.

"I liked your song," she said. "Will you teach it to me?

"Maybe I will," I said, feeling more hopeful.Then at last the boy returned with a big blond fellow who stood over me and said,

"Englishman?"

"Scotsman," I said, as if it mattered, though, oddly, it did to me then in a daft sort of way.

"Scotsman. Jock. Kiltie," he said, speaking English.

He nodded - the nod of a man who has come to a decision and knows what's what. He cut me free from my parachute which he rolled up into a tight ball and gave to the boy.

"Maman can make herself silk sheets with this, Pierre. She'll like that. Christmas present from Scotland."

His French wasn't bad, not as good as mine, you could tell he was a foreigner, but not bad.

Then he leaned over me, took hold of me round the waist and slung me over his shoulder in what's called a fireman's lift as if I weighed no more than a sack of potatoes.

"OK, Scotty," he said.

"OK," says I, thinking, this is a rum do all right.

So he set off down the hill, the children by his side, and me dangling over his shoulder, until we came to a wee farmhouse, nestling in a hollow. He carried me up a stone staircase.

"Animals live below," he said. "Sheep and the cow and hens. We killed the pig to have us a Christmas."

Maman - her name as I learned was Albertine - greeted me as if I was a long-expected guest. Helmut settled me in a chair - "Scotsman", he said - and she shooed him away and attended to my ankle.

"Bad," she said.

"You're very kind," says I.

"Oh you speak French," she said. "That's good", and told Helmut to fetch me a nip of brandy. It was the sort of brandy they call marc, strong biting stuff with a fine kick to it.

"But you are going to have a fever, I'm afraid," she said. "You must go to bed and I shall make you a tisane."

"What's a tisane, Grandpa?"

"It's a sort of herbal tea. They're great ones for tisanes, the French. Well, she was right, I did have a fever coming on. So she made up a bed for me in the loft and Helmut helped me upstairs, and for two days I lay under a goosefeather quilt and was delirious. And either Pierre or Marie fetched me tisanes and when I came to I was weak as a kitten and found that the snow had fallen steadily and the farmhouse was cut off from the world. I sat by the stove and slowly regained my strength. I didn't worry about my mission, for there was nothing I could do about that until the snow relented. It was like we were out of the world and the war belonged to another country. I occupied myself whittling little animals out of wood for Pierre and Marie, like that squirrel I made for you last Christmas, Toby. I've often wondered if they are still in that farmhouse."

Albertine told me her story. The farm had been her father's and she had brought the children there when they fled Paris in 1940. Then her father died and she had word that her husband who had been taken prisoner had died of his wounds.So it was her and the children and the animals.

"And what about Helmut?"

I had hesitated before putting the question, but she received it with a smile.

"We found him wandering in the woods. He was in a bad way, very nervous. It was something he had seen. He won't talk about it."

But he did to me, because I was a soldier too, and would understand.

"It was truly horrible," he said, "and so I did the only thing I could do. I ran away. I deserted. I came south because most deserters are stupid and make for home and because this was then the unoccupied zone. I was sick, very sick at heart. Albertine has made me whole again."

We were playing chess and he took my queen and said, "I was never a Nazi. I hate them. In fact I'm a Communist. Like my father. He was a Communist and they put him in a camp and killed him. What about you, Jock?"

"I'm an auld Scots Radical," I said, "and that means I'm agin the government, any government."

"Shake hands, Jock," he said..

"Christmas Eve is the great feast in Provence," Albertine told me, and what a feast it was! We had smoked eel with horse-radish sauce and then the cassoulet. That's a dish of pork and spiced sausage and white beans and other vegetables and the pork is first browned and flamed with marc. It had been cooking in the stove for hours and the smell was a meal in itself. And then we had prunes that had been soaked in brandy and a cheese that Albertine had made herself from the cow's milk. It was her grandmother's recipe, like the cassoulet, she said. Helmut and I drank a litre of the local wine and we all sat back, replete, rubbing our bellies and happy. We had talked throughout the meal, the talk of good fellowship with no mention of the war and its suffering, and had laughed as you should laugh in good company. And then we fell silent, as silent as the night on the hillside, and I looked at my watch and said, "angels passing".

"It's a saying we have," I explained. "When a silence falls at twenty to the hour or twenty past, we say it's because the angels are flying by. I don't know why."

"It's a lovely thought," Albertine said, "and it might be true…"

"Angels?" Helmut said. "Well, I don't know about that."

Nor did I, but I kept quiet and gave myself another glass of wine and a slice of Albertine's cheese.

It was then that we noticed the children had slipped away.

"Pierre likes to look at the stars," Albertine. said. "They often go out at night. There's no cause for anxiety."

Then the door burst open and the children were there with faces alight with joy.

"Come quick," Marie cried, "it's the angels.The sky's full of angels, come quick."

We smiled at each other and got to our feet, to humour the child, and stepped outside into the cold clear silent night, and stood there amazed, for east and west the sky was lit up, golden and white, and there were shapes moving across the sky, golden and white, and if you strained your eyes , they might have been flying figures.

And Pierre said, very quietly, "Marie's right. It's the angels watching over us."

There was a sound of music too and singing, ethereal voices such as I have never heard before or since. Then the light faded and the singing died away and a cloud passed over the face of the moon, and, we found ourselves uttering the same thought, each in our own tongue..

"Gloire Dieu au plus haut des Cieux, et, sur la terre, paix aux hommes de bonne volonte…"

"Ehre sei Gott in der Hohe und Frieden auf Erden und den Menschen ein Wohlgefallen."

"Glory to God in the Highest and on earth peace and goodwill to all men…"

They were words I hadn't spoken since I was a boy in the church choir…

"The angels are passing, " Pierre said, "just as Jock told us."

"They're guarding us, "Marie said. "Nothing bad can happen now."

In the morning Helmut couldn't meet my eyes and I couldn't meet his.

"Angels," he said.

"I thought you were a Communist."

"So I am."

"Peace and goodwill to all men?"

"In time, in time."

"Glory to God in the Highest - or Stalin in the Kremlin?"

He smiled. "So this is the English embarrassment?"

"I'm not English. I'm a Scot. And I'm not embarrassed."

Which, Toby my boy, was a lie, I'm sorry to say.

"There was light in the East which is the Soviet Union," he said, "and in the West which is Britain and the USA."

"And it was shining over France," Albertine said, joining us.

"And it was the children, who are the future, who saw the angels first," Helmut said.

"And saw them most clearly," I said.

A few days later a thaw set in, the snow began to disappear, and I woke up one morning to hear shouts and angry voices. I pulled on some clothes and came down from my loft to find half a dozen young fellows in the room, Helmut pushed up against the wall, Albertine being held down in a chair while one fellow stood over her with a pair of scissors, and the children white-faced. I guessed who the men were, the maquisards whom I was supposed to meet. So I said,

"You're a bit late, boys, if you're looking for Rob Roy", this being my nom de guerre, the one I was going by.

A young lad with big brown eyes, who seemed to be the leader, stepped forward, explained that circumstances had prevented them from being at the dropping zone, and then the snow had made all movement in the hills impossible, and asked if I was the one to whom the money had been entrusted.

"I am indeed," I said, "and I have your money safe. So what's going on here?"

"We find this Boche here, living with a French woman.It's disgusting."

"And so what do you intend to do about it."

"Shoot the Boche and shave the woman's head."

"Not so fast, lad," I said, and explained the situation, how Helmut had saved my life - and their money - and how Albertine's husband had died for France and how they - well, never mind what I said about that, Toby. And then I took a chance. I knew that some of these Resistance boys were good French patriots and others were French patriots and good Communists too.

So, first, with a nod to Albertine, I took the bottle of marc from the press and a sufficient number of stubby glasses and poured us all a drink, and then I said,

"Helmut may be a Boche as you call it, which is something he can't help, being born that just as you were born a Frenchman and me a Scot, but he's no Nazi. In fact he hates the Nazis, just as you do and I do, which is why he deserted from the Wehrmacht. And what's more," I said, having taken a deep breath, "he is not only not a Nazi, he's a good Communist, as I think you may be yourself…"

Well, that did the trick. Before long it was a case of "camarade" and "Kamarad", and apologies were offered to Albertine who went through to the larder and returned with a ham and a loaf of bread, and I was sent to fetch wine, and little Marie tugged at my sleeve, and whispered, "You see, I was right, the angels are guarding us."

"And long may they continue to do so, darling," I said.

"And now, young fellow," Grandpa said, giving himself another tot of cherry brandy, "it's bedtime for you or I'll be in trouble with your mum…"

When she came to say "good-night", I told her how Grandpa had once seen angels.

"The only angels he's ever likely to see," she said, "live at the bottom of a bottle."

But I don't know. I really don't know. Every Christmas Eve I remember his story, and for that night of the year at least, believe it.