The Christmas Mouse (9 page)

It was not long before Pepe’s exploits, much magnified in conversations among scandalized matrons, were common knowledge in the neighbourhood, and it was Gloria Jarvis who was named as being the chief object of his attentions.

Gloria may have lost her heart to Pepe’s Latin charms, but she did not lose her head. An Italian prisoner of war had little money to spend on a girl, and Gloria continued to see a great deal of her American admirers who spent more freely. Those of them who knew about Pepe dismissed the affair good-naturedly. Gloria was a good-time girl, wasn’t she? So what?

Pepe, on the other hand, resented the other men’s attentions, and became more and more possessive as time went by. He certainly had more hold over the wayward Gloria than his rivals, and though she tossed her blonde Edwardian coiffure and pretended indifference, Gloria was secretly a little afraid of Pepe’s passion.

The war ended in 1945, a few months after their first meeting, and Pepe elected to stay on in England as a farm worker. By this time, a child was on the way, and Gloria and Pepe were married at the registry office in Caxley.

The child, a girl, had Pepe’s dark good looks. A blond boy, the image of his mother, appeared a year later, and the family began to be accepted in Beech Green. Pepe continued to work for Jesse Miller and to occupy one of his cottages.

For a few years all went well, and then Pepe vanished. Gloria and the two children had a hard time of it, although Jesse Miller kindheartedly allowed them to continue to live in the cottage. It was during these difficult days that Mrs Berry had got to know Gloria better.

She was vain, stupid and a slattern, but she was also abandoned and in despair. Mrs Berry helped her to find some work at a local big house, and now and again looked after the children to enable Gloria to go shopping or to visit the doctor. The old Jarvises were dead, by now, and the older sisters were little help.

Mrs Berry showed Gloria how to make simple garments for the children, taught her how to knit and, more useful still, how to choose the cheap cuts of meat and cook them so that a shilling would stretch to its farthest limit.

Happily married herself, Mrs Berry urged Gloria to
find Pepe and make it up, if only for the sake of the family. But it was two years before the errant husband was traced, and another fifteen months before he could be persuaded to return.

He had found work in Nottingham, and came back to Beech Green just long enough to collect Gloria and the children, their few poor sticks of furniture and their clothes. They left for Nottingham one grey December day, but Pepe had found time to call at Mrs Berry’s and to thank her for all she had done.

Handsomer than ever, Pepe had stood on her doorstep, refusing to come in, his eyes shy, his smile completely disarming. No one, least of all Mrs Berry, could have remained hostile to this winning charmer with his foreign good manners.

‘I did nothing – no more than any other neighbour,’ Mrs Berry told him. ‘But now it’s your concern, Pepe. You see you treat her right and make a fresh start.’

‘Indeed, yes. I do mean to do that,’ said Pepe earnestly. He thrust his hand down inside his greatcoat and produced a ruffled black kitten, which he held out to Mrs Berry with a courtly bow.

‘Would you please to accept? A thank you from the Amonettis?’

Mrs Berry was taken aback but rallied bravely. She knew quite well that the kitten was their own, and that they could not be bothered to take it with them to their new home. But who could resist such a gesture? And who would look after the poor little waif if she did not adopt it?

She took the warm furry scrap and held it against her face.

‘Thank you, Pepe. I shall treasure it as a reminder of you all. Good luck now, and mind my words.’

For some time after this Mrs Berry heard nothing of the Amonettis. The kitten, named Pepe after its donor, grew up to be a formidable mouser and was much loved by the Berry family. Years later, someone in Caxley told Mrs Berry that Pepe had vanished yet again, and that Gloria had returned to live with a sister in the county town twenty miles away. Whilst there, she had had one last brief reconciliation with Pepe, but within a week there had been recriminations, violence and police action. After this, Pepe had vanished for good, and it was generally believed that this time he had returned to Italy.

The outcome of that short reunion must be Stephen,
Mrs Berry thought to herself, as she stood in her draughty kitchen preparing the boy’s meal. Gloria’s present circumstances she knew from hearsay. She continued to live in one room of her sister’s house and was what Mrs Berry still thought of as ‘a woman of the streets.’ No wonder that the boy had been taken into the care of the local authority. His mother, though to be pitied in some ways, Mrs Berry told herself charitably, was no fit person to bring up the boy, and heaven above knows what the conditions of the sister’s house might be! Those Jarvis girls had all been first-class sluts, and no mistake!

Mrs Berry picked up the tray and carried it back to the fireside.

The child’s smile was stronger this time.

‘You are very kind,’ he said, with a touch of his father’s grace, reaching hungrily for the food.

She sat back in the armchair and watched the boy. Now that he had eaten and was getting warm, the pinched look, which sharpened his mouselike features, had lessened. His cheeks glowed pink and his lustrous dark eyes glanced about the room as he became more relaxed. Given time, thought Mrs Berry, this boy could become as bewitching as his father. But, at the moment, he was unhappy. What could have sent the child out into such a night as this? And furthermore, what was to be done about it?

Mrs Berry bided her time until the second bowlful had vanished, then took up the poker. The boy looked apprehensive, but Mrs Berry, ignoring him, set the poker about its legitimate business of stirring the fire into a blaze, and then replaced it quietly.

‘Now,’ she said, in a businesslike tone, ‘you can just
explain what brings you into my house at this time of night, my boy.’

There was a long pause. In the silence, the clock on the mantel shelf struck two and a cinder clinked into the hearth. The wind seemed to have shifted its quarter slightly, for now it had found a crevice by the window and moaned there as if craving for admittance.

‘I’m waiting,’ said Mrs Berry ominously.

The boy’s thin fingers fidgeted nervously with the toggle fastenings. His eyes were downcast.

‘Not much to tell,’ he said at last, in a husky whisper.

‘There must be plenty,’ replied Mrs Berry, ‘to bring you out from a warm bed on Christmas Eve.’

The child shook his head unhappily. Tears welled up again in the dark eyes.

‘Now, that’s enough of that!’ said the old lady. ‘We’ve had enough waterworks for one night. If you won’t tell me yourself, you can just answer a few questions. And I want the truth, mind!’

The boy nodded, and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. Mrs Berry pointed in silence to the paper hankies beside him. Meekly, he took one and dried his eyes.

‘You say you live at Tupps Hill?’

The child nodded.

‘Who with?’

A look of fear crept over the mouselike face.

‘You tellin’ the police?’

‘Not if you tell me the truth.’

‘I live at Number Three. With Mrs Rose.’

‘Betty Rose? And her husband’s Dick Rose, the road-man?’

‘That’s right.’

Mrs Berry digested this information, whilst the child took advantage of the lull in the interrogation to turn his shoes in the hearth. They were drying nicely.

Mrs Berry tried to remember all she knew about the Roses. They had been married some time before her own girls, she seemed to recall, and Betty’s mother had been in good service at Caxley. Other than that, she knew little about them, except that they were known to be a respectable honest pair and regular churchgoers. Dick Rose was a slow methodical fellow, who would never rise above his present job of road sweeper in Caxley, from what Mrs Berry had heard.

‘Any children?’ she asked.

‘Two!’ replied the boy. He looked sulky. Was this the clue? Was the child jealous for some reason?

‘How old?’

‘Jim’s eleven, two years older ’n me. Patsy’s eight, nearly nine. A bit younger ’n me.’

That would be about right, thought Mrs Berry, trying to piece the past together from her haphazard memories, and the child’s reluctant disclosures.

‘You’re lucky to live with the Roses,’ observed the old lady, ‘and to have the two children for company.’

The boy gave a sniff, but whether in disgust or from natural causes it was impossible to say.

‘You get on all right?’

‘Sometimes. Patsy tags on too much. Girls is soppy.’

‘They’ve usually got more sense than boys,’ retorted Mrs Berry, standing up for her own sex. ‘You notice it isn’t Patsy who’s run out into a storm and got into trouble.’

The child stuck out his lower lip mutinously but said nothing. The drenched raincoat was now steaming steadily, and Mrs Berry turned it on the back of the chair. The boy’s thin T-shirt, which had been hanging over the fire screen, was now dry, and Mrs Berry smoothed it neatly into shape on her knee before folding it.

‘Patsy’s got a watch,’ said the boy suddenly.

‘Has she now?’

‘So’s Jim. They both got watches. Patsy and Jim.’

‘For Christmas, do you mean?’

‘No, no!’ said the child impatiently. ‘Patsy had hers in the summer, for her birthday. Jim had his on his birthday. Last month it was.’

‘They were lucky.’

She waited for further comment, but silence fell again. The boy was clearly upset about something, some injustice connected with the watches, some grievance that still rankled. His fingers plucked nervously at a piece of loose cotton on the hem of the duffel coat. His face was thunderous. Pepe’s Latin blood was apparent as his son sat there brooding by the fire.

‘They’re their own kids, see?’ said the boy, at length. ‘So they give ’em watches. I reckon my real mum’d give me one – just like that, if I asked her.’

Light began to break through the dark puzzle in Mrs Berry’s mind.

‘Do you know where she is?’

The child looked up, wide eyed with amazement.

‘Course I do! She’s with me auntie. I sees her once a month. She says she’ll have me back, soon as she’s got a place of her own. Ain’t no room at Auntie’s, see?’

Mrs Berry did see.

‘I want to know more about these watches. When is your birthday?’

‘Second of February.’

‘Well, you might be lucky too, and get a watch then.’

‘That’s what they say!’ said the boy with infinite scorn in his voice. His head was up now, his eyes flashing. The mouse had become a lion.

‘If they means it,’ he went on fiercely, ‘why don’t they let me have it for Christmas? That’s what I asked ’em.’

‘And what did they say?’

‘Said as there was too much to buy anyway at Christmas. Couldn’t expect a big present like a watch. I’d ’ave to wait and see.’

‘Fair enough,’ commented Mrs Berry. The Roses had obviously done their best to explain matters to the disappointed child.

‘No, it ain’t fair enough!’ the child burst out. ‘Dad Rose, ’e gets extra money Christmastime – a bonus they calls it. And all his usual pay. They could easy afford one little watch. The other two’ve got theirs. Why should I have to wait? I’ll tell you why!’

He leaned forward menacingly. Mrs Berry could see why Pepe had had such a hold over poor stupid Gloria Jarvis. Those dark eyes could be very intimidating when they flashed fire.

‘Because I’m only the foster kid, that’s why! They gets paid for havin’ me with ’em, but they won’t give me a watch, same as their own kids ’ve got. They don’t care about me, that’s the truth of it!’

The tears began to flow again, and Mrs Berry handed him a paper hanky in silence. It was coming out now – the
whole, sad, silly, simple little story. Soon she would know it all.

‘I thought about it when I got to bed,’ sniffed Stephen Amonetti, mopping his eyes. ‘Soon as Jim was asleep, I crept out. They never heard me go. They was watching the telly. Never heard nothing. I knows the way.’

‘Where to?’