The Christmas Mouse Read online

  Her mother nodded. ‘D’you remember the Roses?’

  ‘Vaguely,’ said Mary. ‘Why?’

  There was an intensity about her mother’s gaze that made Mary curious.

  The old lady did not answer for a moment, her eyes remained fixed upon the shadowy hill beyond the rising mist.

  ‘I might call on them one day,’ she said, at last. ‘Not yet awhile. But some day – some day, perhaps.’ She turned suddenly. ‘Let’s get home, Mary dear. There’s no place like it – and it’s getting cold.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was hardly surprising at teatime, to find that the family’s appetite was small, despite the afternoon walk.

  ‘I’ll just bring in the Christmas cake,’ said Mary, ‘and the tea tray. Though I expect you’d like a slice of your Madeira, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ replied Mrs Berry hastily.

  She pondered on the fate of the Madeira cake as Mary clattered china in the kitchen. It certainly seemed a terrible waste of sugar and butter and eggs, not to mention the beautiful curl of angelica that cost dear knows how much these days. But there it was. The thought of those pink paws touching it was enough to put anyone off the food.

  Perhaps she could cut off the outside, and slice the rest for a trifle? Waste was something that Mrs Berry abhorred. But at once she dismissed the idea. It was no good. The cake must go. No doubt the birds would relish it, but she must find an opportunity for disposing of it when Mary was absent from the scene. Explanations would be difficult, under the circumstances.

  Mary returned with the tray. To the accompaniment of cries of appreciation from the children the candles were lighted on the Christmas tree and at each end of the mantelpiece.

  Outside, the early dusk had fallen, and the shadowy room, lit by a score of flickering candle flames and the glow from the fire, had never looked so snug and magical, thought Mrs Berry. If only their menfolk could have been with them . . .

  She shook away melancholy as she had done so often. The time for grieving was over. There was much to be thankful for. She looked at Mary, intent upon cutting the snowy cake, and the rosy children, their eyes reflecting the light from the candles, and she was content.

  And that child at Tupps Hill? Was he as happy as her own? She had a feeling that he might be – that perhaps he had been able to let the Christmas spirit soothe his anxious heart.

  Jane’s Christmas cracker had yielded a tiny spinning top that had numbers printed on it. When it came to rest, after being twirled on the table, the number that was uppermost gave the spinner his score. This simple toy provided part of the evening’s play time, and all four played.

  Later, Mrs Berry played Ludo with the children – a new game found in Frances’ pillow slip – while Mary wrote some thank-you letters. By seven o’clock both children were yawning, although they did their best to hide this weakness from the grown-ups. It would be terrible to miss anything on this finest day of the year.

  ‘Bed,’ said Mary firmly, and as the wails greeted her dictum, she relented enough to say: ‘You can take your toys upstairs and play with them for a little while.’

  Within half an hour, they were safely in bed, and Mary and her mother sat down to enjoy the respite from the children’s clamour.

  ‘Why, there’s a new Christmas card!’ exclaimed Mrs Berry, her eye lighting on Mary’s from Ray.

  Mary rose to fetch it from the mantelpiece and handed it to her mother.

  ‘Someone dropped it through the letterbox first thing this morning. I bumped into Ray yesterday when we were shopping and he helped us on to the bus with our parcels.’

  ‘Typical of the Bullens,’ commented Mrs Berry, studying the card with approval. ‘I knew his mother when she was young. A nice girl.’

  Mary took a breath. This seemed as propitious a time as any other to mention the invitation.

  ‘There is a note somewhere. He has asked me to go to the New Year’s Eve concert. Would you mind? Looking after the girls, I mean?’

  ‘Good heavens, no! I’m glad to think of you getting out a little. You’ll enjoy an evening with Ray Bullen,’ said her mother easily.

  Mrs Berry leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. It had been a long day, and she was near to sleep. A jumble of impressions, bright fragments of the last twenty-four hours, jostled together in her tired mind like the tiny pieces of coloured glass in a child’s kaleidoscope.

  Stephen’s mousey face, his pink hand spread like a starfish upon his knee, with a shining tear upon it. Her own shadow, poker in hand, monstrously large on the passage wall as she approached the unknown intruder. The furry scrap crouched on the windowsill with the wild weather beyond. Stephen’s resolute back, vanishing round the bend of the lane as he marched home. The reflection of the candles in her grandchildren’s eyes. The candles in the church – dozens of them today – and the sweet clear voices of the choir boys.

  She woke with a jerk. The clock showed that she had slept for ten minutes. Her last impression still filled her mind.

  ‘It was lovely in church this morning,’ she said to Mary. ‘Flowers and candles, and the boys singing so sweetly. You should have come.’

  ‘I will next Sunday,’ Mary promised. ‘A New Year’s resolution, Mum.’

  There was a quiet happiness about Mary that did not escape Mrs Berry’s eyes, but in her wisdom she said nothing.

  Things, she knew in her bones, were falling, delicately and rightly, into place.

  ‘I’ll go and tuck up the girls,’ said Mrs Berry, struggling from her chair, ‘and switch off their light.’

  She mounted the stairs and was surprised to see that both children were in her own room. They were kneeling on her bed, very busy with something on the windowsill.

  They turned at her approach.

  ‘We’re just putting out a little supper for the Christmas mouse,’ explained Jane.

  On the ledge was one of the doll’s tin willow pattern plates. Upon it were a few crumbs of Christmas cake and one or two holly berries.

  ‘They’re apples for him,’ said Frances. ‘When people call you should always offer them refreshment, Mummy says.’

  Mrs Berry remembered the steaming bowl of bread and milk clutched against a duffel coat.

  ‘She’s quite right,’ she said, smiling at them. ‘But somehow I don’t think that mouse will come back.’

  Stephen’s dwindling figure, striding away, came before her eyes. The children looked at her, suddenly forlorn. She offered swift comfort.

  ‘But I’m sure of one thing. That Christmas mouse will remember his visit here for the rest of his life.’

  The rising moon silvered the roofs at Shepherds Cross and turned the puddles into mirrors. The sky was cloudless. Soon the frost would come, furring the grass and hedges, glazing the cattle troughs and water butts.

  Dick Rose, at Tupps Hill, was glad to get back to the fireside after shutting up the hens for the night.

  The table had been pushed back against the wall, and the three children were crawling about the floor, engrossed in a clockwork train that rattled merrily around a maze of lines set all over the floor. Betty sat watching them, as delighted as they were with its bustling manoeuvres.

  ‘It’s only fell off once,’ said Stephen proudly, looking up at his foster father’s entrance.

  ‘Good,’ said Dick. He never wasted words.

  ‘Are you sad Father Christmas never brought you a watch?’ asked Patsy of Stephen.

  Dick’s eyes met his wife’s. Patsy was still young enough to believe in the myth, and the boys had nobly resisted enlightening her.

  Stephen turned dark eyes upon her.

  ‘Never thought about it,’ he lied bravely. ‘I’ve got all this, haven’t I?’

  He picked up the little train, and held it, whirring, close to his face. He turned and smiled – the radiant warm smile of his lost father – upon his foster parents.

  ‘You’re a good kid,’ said Dick gruffly. ‘And your birthday
ain’t far off.’

  For the first time since Stephen’s tempestuous arrival, he thought suddenly, the boy seemed part of the family.

  There was a stirring beneath the third bush in the hawthorn hedge. A sharp nose pushed aside the ground-ivy leaves, and the mouse emerged into the moonlight.

  It paused, sniffing the chill air, then ran through the dry grass by the shed, negotiated the mossy step by the wellhead, and stopped to nibble a dried seed pod.

  On it ran again, parting the crisp grass with its sinuous body, diving down ruts, scrambling up slopes, until it gained the wet earth behind the wallflower plants.

  Between the plants and the brick wall of the cottage it scampered, until it reached the foot of the rosebush, where it stopped abruptly. Far, far above it, lights glowed from the windows.

  A tremor shook its tiny frame. Its nose and whiskers quivered at the sense of danger, and it turned to double back on its tracks, away from the half-remembered terrors of an alien world.

  It hurried out into the moonlight and made for the open field beyond the hawthorn hedge. There among the rimy grass and the sweet familiar scents, its panic subsided.

  Nibbling busily, safely within darting distance of its hole, the Christmas mouse was at peace with its little world.

  Miss Read, or in real life Dora Saint, was a teacher by profession who started writing after the Second World War, beginning with light essays written for Punch and other journals. She then wrote on educational and country matters and worked as a scriptwriter for the BBC. Miss Read was married to a schoolmaster for sixty-four years until his death in 2004, and they had one daughter.

  Miss Read was awarded an MBE in the 1998 New Year Honours list for her services to literature. She was the author of many immensely popular books, including two autobiographical works, but it is her novels of English rural life for which she was best known. The first of these, Village School, was published in 1955, and Miss Read continued to write about the fictional villages of Fairacre and Thrush Green for many years. She lived near Newbury in Berkshire until her death in 2012.

  Books by Miss Read

  NOVELS

  Village School

  Village Diary

  Storm in the Village

  Thrush Green

  Fresh from the Country

  Winter in Thrush Green

  Miss Clare Remembers

  Over the Gate

  The Market Square

  Village Christmas

  The Howards of Caxley

  Fairacre Festival

  News from Thrush Green

  Emily Davis

  Tyler’s Row

  The Christmas Mouse

  Farther Afield

  Battles at Thrush Green

  No Holly for Miss Quinn

  Village Affairs

  Return to Thrush Green

  The White Robin

  Village Centenary

  Gossip from Thrush Green

  Affairs at Thrush Green

  Summer at Fairacre

  At Home in Thrush Green

  The School at Thrush Green

  Mrs Pringle

  Friends at Thrush Green

  Changes at Fairacre

  Celebrations at Thrush Green

  Farewell to Fairacre

  Tales from a Village School

  The Year at Thrush Green

  A Peaceful Retirement

  Christmas at Thrush Green

  ANTHOLOGIES

  Country Bunch

  Miss Read’s Christmas Book

  Mrs Griffin Sends Her Love

  OMNIBUSES

  Chronicles of Fairacre

  Life at Thrush Green

  More Stories from Thrush Green

  Further Chronicles of Fairacre

  Christmas at Fairacre

  A Country Christmas

  Fairacre Roundabout

  Tales from Thrush Green

  Fairacre Affairs

  Encounters at Thrush Green

  The Caxley Chronicles

  Farewell, Thrush Green

  The Last Chronicle of Fairacre

  Christmas with Miss Read

  NON-FICTION

  Miss Read’s Country Cooking

  Tiggy

  The World of Thrush Green

  Early Days (comprising A Fortunate Grandchild & Time Remembered)

  Copyright

  An Orion ebook

  First published in Great Britain in 1973 by Michael Joseph

  First appeared in ebook in Christmas at Fairacre published in 2010 by Orion Books

  This ebook published in 2013 by Orion Books

  Text copyright © Miss Read 1973

  Illustrations copyright © John S. Goodall 1973

  The right of Miss Read to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-4091-4866-1

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London, WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK company

  www.orionbooks.co.uk