Free Christmas At Thrush Green by Miss Read Page A

Lester unearthed a two-foot-high crook from under a pile of discarded jeans and jumpers, and waved it in the air. ‘Here you are, Patrick. Come along now, all next door.’
    ‘Do you need us?’ called Ben Curdle, who had arrived and was sorting through bits of scenery with another parent.
    ‘No, I think you’re more useful there,’ replied Phil. ‘We’ll run through your part next Saturday morning when the costume arrives.’
    The next hour was, to put it mildly, something more akin to a Whitehall farce than a Nativity play. Alan Lester and Frank Hurst took the narrators’ parts - Paul and Jeremy would just have the final rehearsal the following Saturday morning to learn what they were supposed to do and where - and Phil encouraged the youngsters as the play hiccupped from one little scene to the next.
    One of the angels had a little ‘accident’ in the middle of the scene with Archangel Gabriel’s pronouncement that Mary was to have a baby, and everything had to stop while she was mopped up.
    ‘But now I ain’t got no knickers on,’ she wailed.
    The shepherds and kings smirked.
    ‘It doesn’t matter, darling,’ soothed Phil. ‘No one can see.’
    Finally, it was the turn of the Three Kings to make their entrance. When the little entourage stopped in front of the crib, James and Anthony remembered their lines perfectly - making Mrs Gibbons feel a trifle smug - but the third king, a slightly smaller lad called Davey Biddle, was very lacklustre.
    ‘I am - er - number - er . . . What number am I, miss? I can’t remember.’ The child wiped a finger under his nose.
    ‘Three, Davey, number three.’
    The child stood and looked at Phil dumbly.
    ‘Go on,’ called Mrs Gibbons who was sitting on a chair to one side. ‘Number Three King.’
    Little Davey took a deep breath and started again. ‘I am Number - er - Three King and - um - I bring you gold.’
    ‘No, not gold! My James has just brought the gold,’ Mrs Gibbons cried.
    ‘Thank you, Mrs Gibbons. Perhaps you could leave this to me,’ called Phil across the room. ‘In fact, I think the children would do better without any parents in the room. It’s been a long rehearsal. Could I ask you all to wait in the other classroom?’
    Mrs Gibbons looked affronted, but moved next door with a handful of other parents.
    ‘Now, Davey, will you try again?’ asked Phil gently. ‘You are bringing myrrh.’
    ‘Can’t I bring gold?’ the boy pleaded. ‘I knows what that is.’
    ‘We’re bigger than you,’ said Anthony Gibbons, giving the smaller boy a little push. ‘And we get to bring the frankincense and gold.’
    Phil intervened. ‘Now then, lads, go easy. The kings mustn’t be seen to be having fisticuffs.’ She turned to young Davey. ‘Myrrh isn’t difficult to say, Davey. It might be spelt in a funny way, but it’s pronounced “mer” - just like “her” but with an “m”.’
    To her horror, the boy dissolved into tears. ‘I want to go home.’
    Mrs Hope, who was sitting at the piano and in whose class the child was, came across the room. ‘This is very unlike you, Davey,’ she said. ‘We chose you because we felt you would do it so well.’
    But the child wasn’t to be comforted. ‘I want to go home to my mum.’
    Phil nodded in resignation. ‘We’ll go and see if we can find someone to take you home. Did he come with a parent?’ she asked Mrs Hope.
    ‘Yes, he’s next door with the scenery.’
    Phil took the sobbing child by the hand. ‘Come along then. When I get back, Mrs Hope, we’ll have another run-through of “Silent Night”. It’s much too dirge-like at the moment.’
    Phil took Davey into the other classroom and reunited him with his father who was holding a papier-mâché palm tree while Ben plugged a hole near the bottom of its trunk.
    Phil explained the situation and suggested Mr Biddle should take the over-wrought child back to his mother.
    ‘Come along, then, son,’ he said. ‘We’ll get you home. All been