The Christmas Mouse
To Elizabeth Ann Green
who started this story
Miss Read
THE CHRISTMAS MOUSE
Illustrated by J. S. Goodall
Contents
Cover
Dedication
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
About the Author
Books by Miss Read
Copyright
CHAPTER ONE
The rain began at noon.
At first it fell lightly, making little noise. Only the darkening of the thatched roofs, and the sheen on the damp flagstones made people aware of the rain. It was dismissed as ‘only a mizzle’. Certainly it did not warrant bringing in the tea towels from the line. Midday meals were taken in the confident belief that the shower would soon blow over. Why, the weather-men had predicted a calm spell, hadn’t they, only that morning?
But by two o’clock it was apparent that something was radically wrong with the weather forecast. The wind had swung round to the northwest, and the drizzle had turned to a downpour. It hissed among the dripping trees, pattered upon the cabbages in cottage gardens and drummed the bare soil with pock marks.
Mrs Berry, at her kitchen window, watched the clouds of rain drifting across the fields, obscuring the distant wood and veiling the whole countryside. A vicious gust of wind flung a spatter of raindrops against the pane with so much force that it might have been a handful of gravel hurled in the old lady’s face. She did not flinch, but instead raised her voice against the mounting fury of the storm.
‘What a day,’ said Mrs Berry, ‘for Christmas Eve!’
Behind her, kneeling on the rush matting, her daughter Mary was busy buttoning her two little girls into their mackintoshes.
‘Hold still,’ she said impatiently, ‘hold still, do! We’ll never catch the bus at this rate.’
They were fidgeting with excitement. Their cheeks were flushed, their eyes sparkling. It was as much as they could do to lift their chins for their mother to fasten the stiff top buttons of their new red mackintoshes. But the reminder that the bus might go without them checked their excitement. Only two afternoon buses a week ran past the cottage, one on market day, and one on Saturday. To miss it meant missing the last-minute shopping expedition for the really important Christmas presents – those for their mother and grandmother. The idea of being deprived of this joy brought the little girls to partial submission.
Mary, her fingers busy with the buttons, was thinking of more mundane shopping – Brussels sprouts, some salad, a little pot of cranberry jelly for the turkey, a few more oranges if they were not too expensive, a lemon or two. And a potted plant for Mum. A cyclamen perhaps? Or a heather, if the cyclamen proved to be beyond her purse. It was mean the way these florists put up the prices so cruelly at Christmas. But there, she told herself, scrambling to her feet, the poor souls had to live the same as she did, she supposed, and with everything costing so much they would have to look after themselves like anyone else.
‘You wait here quietly with Gran for a minute,’ she adjured the pair, ‘while I run and get my coat on, and fetch the baskets. Got your money and your hankies? Don’t want no sniffing on the bus now!’
She whisked upstairs and the children could hear her hurrying to and fro above the beamed ceiling of the kitchen.
Old Mrs Berry was opening her brown leather purse. There were not many coins in it, and no notes, but she took out two silver fivepenny pieces.
‘To go towards your shopping,’ said the old lady. ‘Hold out your hands.’
Two small hands, encased in woollen gloves knitted by Mrs Berry herself, were eagerly outstretched.
‘Jane first,’ said Mrs Berry, putting the coin into the older girl’s hand. ‘And now Frances.’
‘Thank you, Gran, thank you,’ they chorused, throwing their arms round her comfortable bulk, pressing wet kisses upon her.
‘No need to tell your mum,’ said Mrs Berry. ‘It’s a little secret between us three. Here she comes.’
The three hurried to the cottage door. The rain was coming down in sheets, and Mary struggled with an umbrella on the threshold.
‘Dratted thing’ – she puffed – ‘but can’t do without it today. I’ll wager I forget it in some shop, but there it is. Come on now, you girls. Keep close to me, and run for it!’
Mrs Berry watched them vanish into the swirling rain. Then she shut the door upon the weather, and returned to the peaceful kitchen.
She put her wrinkled hand upon the teapot. Good, it was still hot. She would have another cup before she washed up.
Sitting in the wooden armchair that had been her husband’s, Mrs Berry surveyed the kitchen with pleasure. It had been decorated a few years before and young Bertie, Mary’s husband, had made a good job of it. The walls were white, the curtains cherry-red cotton, and the tiles round the sink were blue and white. Bertie, who had set them so neatly, said they came from a fireplace over in Oxfordshire and were from Holland originally. The builder, a friend of his, was about to throw them out but Bertie had rescued them.
A clever boy with his hands, thought Mrs Berry, stirring her tea, though she could never understand what poor Mary saw in him, with that sandy hair and those white eyelashes. Still, it did no good to think ill of the dead, and he had made a good husband and father for the few short years he and Mary had been married. This would be the third Christmas without him – a sad time for Mary, poor soul.
Mrs Berry had once wondered if this youngest daughter of hers would ever marry. The two older girls were barely twenty when they wed. One was a farmer’s wife near Taunton. The other had married an American, and Mrs Berry had only seen her twice since.
Mary, the prettiest of the three girls, had never been one for the boys. After she left school, she worked in the village post office at Springbourne, cycling to work in all weather and seeming content to read and knit or tend the garden when she returned at night.
Mrs Berry was glad of her daughter’s company. She had been widowed in 1953, after over thirty years of tranquil marriage to dear Stanley. He had been a stone-mason, attached to an old-established firm in Caxley, and he too cycled daily to work, his tools strapped securely on the carrier with his midday sandwiches. On a day as wild and wet as this Christmas Eve, he had arrived home soaked through. That night he tossed in a fever, muttering in delirium, and within a week he was dead – the victim of a particularly virulent form of influenza.
In the weeks of shock and mourning that followed, Mary was a tower of strength to her mother. Once the funeral was over, and replies had been sent to all the friends and relatives who had written in sympathy, the two women took stock of their situation. Thank God, the cottage was her own, Mrs Berry said. It had taken the savings of a lifetime to buy when it came on the market, but now they had a roof over their heads and no weekly rent to find. There was a tiny pension from Stanley’s firm, a few pounds in the post office savings bank, and Mary’s weekly wage. Two mornings of housework every week at the Manor Farm brought in a few more shillings for Mrs Berry. And the farmer’s wife, knowing her circumstances, offered her more work, which she gladly accepted. It was a happy household, and Mrs Berry was as grateful for the cheerful company she found there as for the extra money.
Mother and daughter fell into a comfortable routine during the next few years. They breakfasted together before the younger woman set off on her bicycle, and Mrs Berry tidied up before going off to her morning’s work at the farmh
ouse. In the afternoon, she did her own housework, washed and ironed, gardened, or knitted and sewed. She frugally made jams and jellies, chutneys and pickles for the store cupboard, and it was generally acknowledged by her neighbours that Mrs Berry could stretch a shilling twice as far as most. The house was bright and attractive, and the door stood open for visitors. No one left Mrs Berry without feeling all the better for her company. Her good sense, her kindness and her courage brought many people to her door.
Mary had been almost thirty when she met Bertie Fuller. He was the nephew of the old lady who kept the Springbourne post office and had come to lodge with her when he took a job at the Caxley printing works.
Even those romantically inclined had to admit that nothing as fantastic as love at first sight engulfed Mary and Bertie. She had never been one to show her feelings and now, at her age, was unlikely to be swept off her feet. Bertie was five years her senior and had been married before. There were no children of this first marriage, and his wife had married again.
The two were attracted to each other and were engaged within three months of their first meeting.
‘Well, my dear, you’re old enough to know your own mind,’ said Mrs Berry, ‘and he seems a decent, kindly sort of man, with a steady job. If you’d like to have two rooms here while you look for a house you’re both welcome.’
No, the villagers agreed, as they gossiped among themselves, Mary Berry hadn’t exactly caught ‘a regular heart-throb’, but what could you expect at thirty? She was lucky really to have found anyone, and they did say this Bertie fellow was safe at the printing works, and no doubt was of an age to have sown all the wild oats he wanted.
The wedding was as modest as befitted the circumstances, and the pair were married at Caxley registry office, spent their brief honeymoon at Torquay, and returned to share the cottage with old Mrs Berry. It was October 1963 and the autumn was one of the most golden and serene that anyone could recall.
Their first child was due to arrive the following September. Mary gave up her job at the post office in June.
The summer was full of promise. The cottage garden flowered as never before, and Mary, resting in a deck chair, gazed dreamily at the madonna lilies and golden roses, and dwelt on the happy lot of the future baby. They had all set their hearts on a boy, and Mary was convinced that it would be a son. Blue predominated in the layette that she and Mrs Berry so lovingly prepared.
When her time came she was taken to the maternity wing of the local cottage hospital, and gave birth to a boy, fair and blue eyed like his father. She held him in her arms for a moment before returning him to the nurse’s care. In her joy she did not notice the anxious looks the doctor and nurse exchanged. Nor did she realize that her child had been taken from her bed straight to an oxygen tent.
In the morning, they broke the news to her that the boy had died. Mary never forgot the utter desolation that gripped her for weeks after this terrible loss. Her husband and mother together nursed her back to health, but always, throughout her whole life, Mary remembered that longed-for boy with the blue gaze, and mourned in secret.
A daughter, Jane, was born in the spring of 1966, and another, Frances, in 1968. The two little girls were a lively pair, and when the younger one was beginning to toddle, Bertie and Mary set about finding a cottage of their own. Until that time, Mrs Berry had been glad to have them with her. Mary’s illness, then her second pregnancy, made her husband and mother particularly anxious. Now, it seemed, the time had come for the young family to look for their own home. Mrs Berry’s cottage was becoming overcrowded.
The search was difficult. They wanted to rent a house to begin with, but this proved to be almost impossible. The search was still on when the annual printing-house outing, called the wayzgoose, took place. Two buses set off for Weymouth carrying the workers and their wives. Mary decided not to go on the day’s outing. Frances had a summer cold and was restless, and her mother had promised to go to a Women’s Institute meeting in the afternoon. So Bertie went alone.
It was a cloudless July day, warm from the sun’s rising until its setting. Mary, pushing the pram along a leafy lane, thought enviously of Bertie and his companions sitting on a beach or swimming in the freshness of the sea. She knew Weymouth from earlier outings and loved its great curved bay. Today it would be looking its finest.
The evening dragged after the children had gone to bed. Usually, the adults retired at ten, for all rose early. On this evening, however, Mrs Berry went upstairs alone, leaving Mary to await Bertie’s coming. Eleven o’clock struck, then twelve. Yawning, bemused with the long day’s heat, Mary began to lock up.
She was about to lock the front door when she heard a car draw up. Someone rapped upon the door, and when Mary opened it, to her surprise she saw Mr Partridge, the vicar, standing there. His kind old face was drawn with anxiety.
‘I’m sorry to appear so late, my dear Mrs Fuller, but a telephone message has just come to the vicarage.’
‘Yes?’ questioned Mary.
The vicar looked about him in agitation. ‘Do you think we might sit down for a moment?’
Mary remembered her manners. ‘Of course; I’m so sorry. Come in.’
She led the way into the sitting room, still bewildered.
‘It’s about Bertie,’ began the vicar. ‘There’s been an accident, I fear. Somewhere south of Caxley. When things were sorted out, someone asked me to let you know that Bertie wouldn’t be home tonight.’
‘What’s happened? Is he badly hurt? Is he dead? Where is he?’
Mary sprang to her feet, her eyes wild.
The vicar spoke soothingly. ‘He’s in Caxley hospital, and being cared for. I know no more, my dear, but I thought you would like to go there straight away and see him.’
Without a word Mary lifted an old coat from the back of the kitchen door.
The vicar eyed her anxiously. ‘Would it not be best to tell Mrs Berry?’ he suggested.
She shook her head. ‘I’ll leave a note.’
He waited while she scribbled briefly upon a piece of paper, and watched her put it in the middle of the kitchen table.
‘No point in waking her,’ she said, closing the front door softly behind her.
The two set off in silence, too worried to make conversation. The air was heavy with the scent of honeysuckle. Moths glimmered in the beams of the headlights, and fell to their death.
How easily, Mary thought – fear clutching her heart – death comes to living things. The memory of her little son filled her mind as they drove through the night to meet what might be another tragedy.
At the hospital they were taken to a small waiting room. Within a minute, a doctor came to them. There was no need for him to speak. His face told Mary all. Bertie had gone.
The wayzgoose, begun so gaily, had ended in tragedy. The two buses had drawn up a few miles from Caxley to allow the passengers to have a last drink before closing time. They had to cross a busy road to enter the old coaching inn, famed for its hospitality. Returning to the bus, Bertie and a friend waited some time for a lull in the traffic. It was a busy road, leading to the coast, and despite the late hour the traffic was heavy. At last they made a dash for it, not realizing that a second car was overtaking the one they could see. The latter slowed down to let the two men cross, but the second car could not stop in time. Both men were hurled to the ground, Bertie being dragged some yards before the car stopped.
Despite appalling injuries, he was alive when admitted to hospital, but died within the hour. The organizer of the outing, knowing that Mary was not on the telephone, decided to let the local vicar break the news of the accident.
Mr Partridge and poor Mary returned along the dark lanes to the darker cottage, where he aroused Mrs Berry, told her the terrible story and left her trying to comfort the young widow.
If anyone can succeed, Mr Partridge thought as he drove sadly to his vicarage, she can. But oh, the waste of it all! The wicked waste!
CHAPTER TWO
In Caxley it would not be so rough, she hoped. Most of the time her family would be under cover in the shops, but out here, at Shepherds Cross, they always caught the full violence of the weather.
Mrs Berry’s cottage was the third one spaced along the road that led to Springbourne. All three cottages were roomy, with large gardens containing gnarled old apple and plum trees. Each cottage possessed ancient hawthorn hedges, supplying sanctuary to dozens of little birds.
An old drovers’ path ran at right angles to the cottages, crossing the road by Mrs Berry’s house. This gave the hamlet its name, although it was many years since sheep had been driven along that green lane to the great sheep fair at the downland village ten miles distant.
Some thought it a lonely spot, and declared that they ‘would go melancholy mad, that they would!’ But Mrs Berry, used to remote houses since childhood, was not affected.
She had been brought up in a gamekeeper’s cottage in a woodland ride. As a small child she rarely saw anyone strange, except on Sundays, when she attended church with her parents.
She had loved that church, relishing its loftiness, its glowing stained-glass windows and the flowers on the altar. She paid attention to the exhortations of the vicar too, a holy man who truly ministered to his neighbours. From him, as much as from the example of her parents, she learned early to appreciate modesty, courage, and generosity.
When she was old enough to read she deciphered a plaque upon the chancel floor extolling the virtues of a local benefactor, a man of modest means who nevertheless ‘was hospitable and charitable for all his Days’ and who, at his end, left ‘the interest of Forty Pounds to the Poor of the parish forever.’
It was the next line or two which the girl never forgot, and which influenced her own life. They read: