The Christmas Mouse (11 page)

The boy looked at his hands, and said nothing.

‘You’re going to go back, Stephen, and get into that house as quietly as you can, and get into bed. Can you do it?’

‘Of course. The larder window’s never shut. I’ve been in and out dozens of times.’

‘And you say nothing at all about what has happened tonight. It’s a secret between you and me. Understand?’

‘Yes,’ he whispered.

‘There’s no need for anyone to be upset by this, except
you. I hope you’ll have learned your lesson well enough to be cheerful and grateful for all that you are given, and all that’s done for you, on Christmas Day. Do you promise that?’

The boy nodded. Then his eyes grew round, as he looked at Mrs Berry in alarm.

‘But s’pose they’ve found out?’

‘I was coming to that,’ said the old lady calmly. ‘You tell them the truth, make a clean breast of it, and say you’ll never do it again – and mean it, what’s more!’

The child’s eyes grew terrified. ‘Tell them about coming in here?’

‘Of course. And tell them I should like to see them, to explain matters.’

‘And the police?’

‘If the police have been troubled, then you apologize to them too. You know what I told you. You must face the consequences whatever they are. This night should make you think in future, my boy, and a very good thing too.’

She stood up, and moved to the window. Outside, the rain had stopped, but a stiff wind blew the ragged clouds swiftly across a watery moon, and ruffled the surface of the puddles.

It was a good step to Tupps Hill, but Stephen must be on his way shortly. Mrs Berry was not blind to the dangers of the night for a young child walking the lanes alone, but it was a risk that had to be taken. At least the weather was kinder, the child’s clothing was dry, and he had eaten and slept. He had got himself into this situation, and it would do him no harm, thought Mrs Berry sturdily, to get himself out of it. In any case, the chance of
meeting anyone abroad at half-past three on Christmas morning was remote.

‘Put your clothes on,’ directed the old lady, ‘while I make us both a cup of coffee.’

She left him struggling with the toggle fastenings as she went into the kitchen. When she returned with the steaming cups of coffee, the boy was lacing his shoes. He looked up, smiling. He was so like Pepe, in that fleeting moment, that the years vanished for old Mrs Berry.

‘Lovely and warm,’ Stephen said approvingly, holding up his feet.

Mrs Berry handed him his cup, and offered the biscuit tin. As he nibbled his Ginger Nut with his prominent front teeth, Stephen’s resemblance to a mouse was more marked than ever.

The old lady shuddered. Was her own little horror, the mouse, still at large above? Mrs Berry craved for her bed. She was suddenly stiff and bone-tired, and longed for oblivion. What a night it had been! Would the boy ever remember anything that she had tried to teach him? She had her doubts, but one could only try. Who knows? Something might stick in that scatterbrained head.

She motioned to the child to fetch his coat, turned the sleeves the right way out, and helped to button it to the neck. His chin was smooth and warm against her wrinkled hand, and reminded her with sudden poignancy of her own sleeping grandchildren.

She held him by the lapels of his raincoat, and looked searchingly into his dark eyes.

‘You remember the promise? Say nothing, if they know nothing. Speak the truth if they do. And in future, do what’s right and not what’s wrong.’

The child nodded solemnly.

She kissed him on the cheek, gently and without smiling. They went to the front door together, Mrs Berry lifting a bar of chocolate from the Christmas tree as she passed.

‘Put it in your pocket. You’ve a long way to go and may get hungry. Straight home, mind, and into bed. Promise?’

‘Promise.’

She opened the door quietly. It was fairly light, the moon partially visible through fast-scudding clouds. The wind lifted her hair and rustled dead leaves in the road.

‘Good-bye then, Stephen. Don’t forget what I’ve told you,’ she whispered.

‘Good-bye,’ he whispered back.

He stood motionless for a second, as if wondering how to make his farewell, then turned suddenly and began the long trudge home.

Mrs Berry watched him go, waiting for him to turn, perhaps, and wave. But the child did not look back, and she watched him walking steadily – left, right, left, right – until the bend in the lane hid him from her sight.

B
ack in the warm living room Mrs Berry found herself swaying on her feet with exhaustion. She steadied herself by holding on to the back of the armchair that had been her refuge for the night.

It was years since she had felt such utter tiredness. It reminded her of the days when, as a young girl, she had helped with the mounds of washing at the vicarage. She had spent an hour or more at a time turning the heavy mangle – a monster of cast iron and solid wood – in the steamy atmosphere of the washhouse.

She looked now at her downy nest of feather pillow and eiderdown, and knew that if she sat down sleep would engulf her. She would be stiff when she awoke for every nerve and sinew in her old body craved for the comfort of her bed, with room to stretch her heavy limbs.

She would brave that dratted mouse! Ten chances to one it had made its way home again, and, in any case, she was so tired she would see and hear nothing once she was abed.

She glanced round the room. The fire must be raked through, and the two telltale coffee cups washed and put away. Mrs Berry had no intention of telling Mary and the little girls about her visitor.

She put all to rights, moving slowly, her limbs leaden, her eyes half-closed with fatigue. She drew back the curtains, ready for the daylight, and scanned the stormy sky.

The moon was high now. Ragged clouds skimmed across its face, so that the glimpses of the wet trees and shining road were intermittent. The boy should be well on his way by now. She hoped that he had avoided the great puddles that silvered his path. Those shoes would be useless in this weather.

The old lady sighed, and turned back to the armchair, folding the eiderdown neatly and putting the plump pillow across it. Gathering up her bundle, she took one last look at the scene of her encounter with young Stephen. Then, shouldering her burden, she opened the door to the staircase and went, very slowly, to her bedroom.

Exhaustion dulled the terror that stirred her at the thought of the mouse still at large. Nevertheless, the old lady’s heart beat faster as she quietly opened the bedroom door. The great double bed was as welcome a sight as a snug harbour to a storm-battered boat.

Mary had turned down the bedclothes. They gleamed, smooth and white as a snowdrift, in the faint light of the moon.

The room was still and cool after the living room. Mrs Berry stood motionless, listening for any scuffle or scratching that might betray her enemy. But all was silent.

She switched on the bedside lamp, which had been Mary’s last year’s Christmas present. It had a deep-pink shade that sent a rosy glow into the room. The old lady replaced her pillow and spread out the eiderdown, then, nerving herself, she bent down stiffly to look under the bed and see if the intruder was still there.

All was as it should be. She scanned the rest of the
floor, and saw the mousetrap. It was empty, and the second piece of cheese was still untouched.

Mrs Berry’s spirits rose a little. Surely, this might mean that the mouse had returned to his own home? He would either have been caught, or the cheese would have been eaten, as before. But the trap must not be left there, a danger to the grandchildren, who would come running in barefoot, all too soon, to show their tired grandmother the things that Father Christmas had brought.

Mrs Berry took a shoe from the floor and tapped the trap smartly. The crack of the spring snapping made her jump but now all was safe. She could not bring herself to touch the horrid thing with her bare fingers, but prodded it to safety, under the dressing table, with her shoe.

Sighing with relief, the old lady climbed into bed, drew up the bedclothes and stretched luxuriously.

How soon, she wondered, before Stephen Amonetti would be enjoying his bed, as she did now?

At the rate he was stepping out, thought Mrs Berry drowsily, he must be descending the long slope that led to the fold in the downs at the foot of Tupps Hill.

She knew that road well. The meadows on that southern slope had been full of cowslips when little Amelia Scott and her friends were children. She could smell them now, warm and sweet in the May sunshine. She loved the way the pale green stalks grew from the flat rosettes of leaves, so like living pen wipers, soft and fleshy, half hidden in the springy grass of the downland.

The children made cowslip balls as well as bunches to carry home. Some of the mothers made cowslip wine, and secretly young Amelia grieved to see the beautiful flowers torn from their stalks and tossed hugger-mugger into a
basket. They were too precious for such rough treatment, the child felt, though she relished a sip of the wine when it was made, and now tasted it again on her tongue, the very essence of a sunny May day.

On those same slopes, in wintertime, she had tobogganed with those same friends. She remembered a childhood sweetheart, a black-haired charmer called Ned, who always led the way on his homemade sled and feared nothing. He scorned gloves, hats, and all the other winter comforts in which loving mothers wrapped their offspring, but rushed bareheaded down the slope, his eyes sparkling, cheeks red, and the breath blowing behind him in streamers.

Poor Ned, so full of life and courage! He had gone to a
water-filled grave in Flanders’ mud before he was twenty years old. But the memory of that vivacious child remained with old Mrs Berry as freshly as if it were yesterday that they had swept down the snowy slope together.

In those days a tumbledown shack had stood by a small rivulet at the bottom of the slope. It was inhabited by a poor, silly, old man, called locally Dirty Dick. He did not seem to have any steady occupation, although he sometimes did a little field work in the summer months, singling turnips, picking the wild oats from the farmers’ standing corn, or making himself useful when the time came round for picking apples or plums in the local orchards.

The children were warned not to speak to him. Years before, it seemed, he had been taken to court in Caxley for some indecent conduct, and this was never forgotten. The rougher children shouted names after him and threw stones. The more gently nurtured, such as little Amelia, simply hurried by.

‘You’re not to take any notice of him,’ her mother had said warningly.

‘Why not?’

A look of the utmost primness swept over her mother’s countenance.

‘He is sometimes a very rude old man,’ she said, in a shocked voice.

Amelia enquired no further.

His end had been tragic, she remembered. He had been found, face downwards, in the little brook, a saucepan in his clenched hand as he had dipped for water to boil for his morning tea. The doctor had said his heart must have failed suddenly. The old man had toppled into the stream
and drowned in less than eight inches of spring flood water.

Young Amelia had heard of his death with mingled horror and relief. Now she need never fear to pass that hut, dreading the meeting with ‘a very
rude
old man’, whose death, nevertheless, seemed unnecessarily cruel to the soft-hearted child.

Well, Stephen Amonetti would have no Dirty Dick to fear on his homeward way, but he would have the avenue to traverse, a frightening tunnel of dark trees lining the road for a matter of a hundred yards across the valley. Even on the hottest day, the air blew chill in those deep shadows. On a night like this, Mrs Berry knew well, the wind would clatter the branches and whistle eerily. Stephen would need to keep a stout heart to hold the bogies at bay as he ran the gauntlet to those age-old trees.

But by then he would be within half a mile of his home, up the steep short hill that overlooked the valley. A small estate of council houses had been built at Tupps Hill, some thirty years ago, and thought the architecture was grimly functional and the concrete paths gave an institutional look to the area, yet most of the tenants – countrymen all – had softened the bleakness with climbing wall plants and plenty of bright annuals in the borders.