Jules Wake - Notting Hill in the Snow

Armadillo, Joseph and flamingos? What the …?

I went over to stand near the stage, feeling a touch like Alice in Wonderland. Who needed Mad Hatters when you had armadillos and flamingos?

‘You’re late.’ He barely looked up from the clipboard at me. ‘Right. Can I have Jack, the flamingos and Mary and Joseph to run through the first scene?’

The five children, two of whom were identical twins, shuffled on stage, four of them in school uniform grey shorts and skirts and green sweatshirts sporting the school logo, a golden tree. They all carried a single sheet of A4 paper which I assumed was the script. The fifth child wore a Buzz Lightyear outfit stretched lumpily over his school uniform.

‘OK, do you want to start?’

The five of them looked at one another and inched closer to each other, ducking their heads down behind the sheets of paper. A reluctance of children.

‘Jack, off you go.’

Jack looked up from under his eyebrows, his face full of surly suspicion. ‘I am the Christmas armadillo,’ he declared with stout, if stolid, wooden authority. I bit back a snigger; that sounded horribly familiar. ‘I am here. To guide. You. Across the far. Vast desert. It is a very long journey.’

I looked at the floor. Friends, that was it. The holiday armadillo. Ross in fancy dress. I swallowed the smile because Mr Williams definitely wasn’t seeing the funny side of anything this afternoon.

‘Joseph, you must follow me,’ continued Jack. ‘Our good friends, the flamingos …’ The twins looked at each other and immediately, with Midwich Cuckoos’ style telepathy, both stood on one leg, the other bent at the knee. They wobbled precariously. ‘… Will accompany us on this perry … perry louse journey where we will face many challenges. We have to cross the river of a thousand crocodiles …’ There was a pregnant pause and he looked meaningfully at several children seated on the edge of the stage, who looked towards Mr Williams and then one child began to clap her hands together and the others followed suit. ‘Climb the mountains of a hundred bears …’ Cue a group on the other side of the stage to start growling. ‘And navigate the shifting sands full of snakes …’ A storm of hissing broke out which went on for a good few seconds until Jack glared at the offending group and raised his voice. ‘Come. Follow. Me.’ He began to march around in a circle, the flamingos hopping after him.

The boy in the Buzz outfit stood there, looking down at the floor, while Mary, less of the virgin and more of the exhibitionist, had her skirt hoicked up and was flashing her knickers quite happily at the front row.

‘Come follow me,’ said Jack again, doing another circuit of the stage.

Still the boy didn’t move. On his third circuit, Jack gave him a sharp nudge. ‘Come follow me.’

The boy started. ‘To affinity and …’ he frowned and raised one arm in classic Lightyear pose ‘… to affinity and Bethlehem.’ With that he and Mary followed Jack and the flamingos, the five of them marching and hopping off stage.

‘Sir, sir …’ One of the boys in the audience had shot his hand up straight in the air. ‘You forgot the song.’

‘Yes,’ piped up another voice. ‘The crocodiles sing the song.’

Mr Williams – still no first name – peered down at his clipboard and winced. If I’m honest he looked slightly sick. Then he looked up and over at me with pure panic and desperation written all over his face.

‘Miss Smith, perhaps you might be able to help with this one?’

I crossed to his side, almost immediately aware of his masculinity. His business uniform, the jacket and tie, had been abandoned, tossed casually over the back of one of the wooden chairs on the other side of the hall, and his shirtsleeves were rolled back, revealing strong forearms covered in dark hairs, something I’d never considered the least bit sexy before. I could smell the faint scent of cologne and I was horribly conscious of the fineness of his cotton shirt, the broadness of his chest and the shadow of warm skin beneath the fabric.

I gave him a professional ‘of course, I’ve got this’ smile. I could play the piano and I had a pretty good repertoire of Christmas carols, although I was intrigued as to which it might be. I read the words on the page.

Crocodile Rock

‘OKaaaaay,’ I said. ‘Interesting choice.’

‘Mmm.’ His mouth twitched and I thought he was going to smile but then he went and spoiled it by saying, ‘Do you think you could play it?’

I gave him the look and rolled my eyes. ‘I think I can just about manage it.’ What did he think I was, some amateur? I could sight-read music from the age of eight. ‘If I had the sheet music.’ I looked at the clipboard in his hand hopefully. He shook his head.

‘Right, well, I suggest we practise the songs another time,’ I said in a bright, loud, this-is-so-much-fun voice for the benefit of the children before lowering it to say to him, ‘I’ll try and get the music for this for another day. Why don’t you carry on with the next scene?’

‘I can’t,’ he muttered under his breath.

‘Why not?’

‘The teacher only wrote the first scene. She was rushed into hospital with appendicitis last week and has been signed off for six weeks. The only other thing I’ve got is a cast list.’ He ripped a sheet from the clipboard. ‘Mrs Roberts has left the rest up to us.’

‘Oh, sh … shoot.’

‘Exactly. Shoot creek. Paddle-free.’ He handed me the sheet of paper. ‘It gets worse – read that. There are sixty kids.’

I scanned the sheet.

Armadillo – Jack

Bears – Sophie, Emily, Theo, Charlie, Oliver

And so it went on, every letter of the alphabet was covered; there were dolphins and elephants and marmosets and narwhals through to unicorns, yaks and zebus.

‘Oh, dear God and who organises the costumes?’

He looked at me. ‘We do.’

The end of the rehearsal couldn’t come quick enough. We managed to hook up my iPhone to the school sound system and had the children singing along very badly to Crocodile Rock . Thankfully, according to the snapshot of script we had, the crocodiles only had to sing one verse but even so I cringed. The words didn’t even come close to relating to Christmas.

As the children of Oak and Apple classes trooped back to their respective classrooms, I heaved a sigh. Mr Williams had slipped his jacket back on, tucked his tie in his pocket and was now shouldering into a heavy wool pea coat.

‘Can I ask you a question?’ I blurted out.

He nodded warily.

‘What is your name?’

Relief blossomed bright and sudden. ‘It’s Nate. God, I thought you were about to throw in the towel.’

‘Not sure I’m allowed to,’ I said with a disconsolate smile. ‘I’m stuck with it. Thanks to your mother-in-law, I believe.’

‘I’m stuck with it too. I’m a governor and … I promised my daughter I’d help with something. I assumed I’d be on crowd control duty.’

‘I assumed I’d be on Christmas carol duty.’

‘Looks like we’ve both been dropped in it from a bloody great height.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I could murder a coffee. Fancy one? Strategy meeting?’

‘Sounds like a plan.’

‘We’re going to need more than a plan. We’re going to need a Christmas miracle.’

All week the papers had been threatening a cold snap from the east with night-time temperatures expected to be sub-zero. They hadn’t been exaggerating; the light was dimming and the cold air bit sharply at my face with cruel icy teeth as we stepped onto the street. Like a swarm of ants, everyone funnelled out of the school gate and the pavement was now full of small children bobbing along next to adults, their features hidden by hats and scarves and bowed like turtles by the outsize school-logoed backpacks on their backs.