The Christmas Mouse Read online

  ‘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?’

  ‘Me mum, of course. She’d understand. I bet she’d give me a watch for Christmas, and let me stay with her too, if she knowed how I was feeling. Anyway, you wants your own folk at Christmastime. I fair hates the Roses just now.’

  He blew his nose violently, threw the hanky to the back of the fire as instructed, and flopped back in the chair, with a colossal shuddering sigh. The duffel coat fell apart, displaying his skinny bare legs. His hands drooped from the arms of the chair.

  Mrs Berry stooped to put another log on the fire, before beginning her lecture. That done, she settled back in the armchair.

  ‘As far as I can see,’ she began severely, ‘you are a thoroughly silly, spoiled little boy.’

  She glanced across at her visitor and saw that she was wasting her breath.

  Utterly exhausted, his pink mouse nose pointing towards the ceiling and pink mouse mouth ajar, Mrs Berry’s captive was deep in slumber.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Upstairs in her draughty bedroom Mary stirred. Some faint noise had penetrated the thick folds of sleep that wrapped her closely. Too tired to open her eyes or to sit up, she tried bemusedly to collect her thoughts.

  Could she have heard voices? She remembered that her mother was below. Perhaps she had turned on the little radio set for company, she told herself vaguely.

  Should she go and inspect the mousetrap? The bed was seductively warm, her limbs heavy with sleep. To stir outside was impossible. Besides, she might wake the children as well as her mother.

  Exhausted, she turned over, relishing the comfort of her surroundings after the bustle of the day. She began to slip back into unconsciousness, and her last remembrance of Christmas Eve was the sight of Ray Bullen’s smile as he hoisted young Frances on to the bus.

  With a feeling of warm contentment, Mary drifted back to sleep.

  Old Mrs Berry rearranged the eiderdown and put her tired head against the back of the chair. Through half-closed eyes she surveyed her visitor.

  He was snoring slightly, and Mrs Berry’s maternal instinct made her want to approach the boy and quietly close his mouth. It was shameful the way some people let their children grow up to be mouth breathers – leading the way to all sorts of infections in later life, besides encouraging snoring, an unnecessary complication to a shared bedroom. Why, Mrs Berry could recall, from when she was in service, many a shocking case among the gentry of couples agreeing to separate bedrooms simply on account of snoring!

  However, on this present occasion, Mrs Berry proposed to let sleeping dogs lie. The child was not her permanent responsibility. But Betty Rose ought to look into the matter herself, and quickly, before the habit grew worse.

  Her thoughts hovered round the events that had led to the boy’s presence under her roof. As far as she could judge, the boy was sensibly cared for by the Roses, who seemed to have tackled the child’s grievance sympathetically.

  There was no doubt in Mrs Berry’s mind that the child was far better off where he was than with that fly-by-night mother of his. As for thinking that she would have him back permanently to live with her – well, that was just wishful thinking on the child’s part. The local authority would not allow that, especially in the sordid circumstances in which Gloria now appeared to live and work.

  Stephen Amonetti! Mrs Berry mused, her eyes still on her visitor. He would not be an easy child to bring up, with Pepe and Gloria as parents. She pitied the Roses, and commended them for having the pluck to take on this pathetic outcome of a mixed marriage. He would need a firm hand, and plenty of affection too, to right the wrongs the world had done him. It could not be easy for the Roses, trying to be fair to their own two and to fit this changeling into their family.

  She remembered Pepe’s quick jealousy of Gloria’s earlier rivals. Plainly, this child was as quick to resentment as his father had been. She remembered the fury in those dark eyes as the boy spoke of the watches. That smouldering jealousy was a legacy from his Latin father. The thoughtlessness, culminating in the flight from home, careless of the feelings of others, was a legacy from his casual mother.

  This boy was going to be a handful, unless someone pulled him to his senses, thought Mrs Berry. The Roses, respectable people though they were, might well be too gentle with the child, too ineffectual, although they apparently were doing their best to cope with this cuckoo in their nest. After all, Dick Rose left home early in the morning and was late back at night. It would fall upon Betty’s shoulders, this responsibility, and with two children of her own to look after the task might be too great for her.

  The child had been thinking on the wrong lines for too long, Mrs Berry told herself. He had harboured grievances, resented authority, and indulged in self-pity. The old lady, with the strong principles instilled by her Victorian upbringing, condemned such wrong-headedness roundly. That the child was the victim, to a certain extent, of his circumstances, she was ready to concede, but the matter did not end there. She was heartily sick of the modern theories that condoned wrongdoing on the grounds tha
t the wrongdoers were to be pitied and not blamed.

  Every individual, she firmly believed, had the freedom of choice between good and evil. If one were so wicked, or thoughtless, or plain stupid enough to choose to do evil, then one must be prepared to take the consequences. Children, naturally, had to be trained and helped to resist temptation and to choose the right path, but to consider them as always in the right, as so many people nowadays seemed to do, was to do them a disservice, thought old Mrs Berry.

  Her own children had been brought up with clear standards. Little Amelia Scott had learned the virtues early, from the plaque in the church extolling modesty and economy, from her upright parents, and from the strict but kindly teachings of the village schoolteachers, the Scriptures and the vicar of the parish. These stood her in good stead when she became a mother.

  She had also been told of the things which were evil: lying, boasting, stealing, cruelty and loose living and thinking. It seemed to Mrs Berry that in these days evil was ignored. Did modern parents and teachers think that by burying their heads in the sand, evil would vanish? It had to be faced today, as bravely as it always had been in the past. It was there, plain for all to see, in the deplorable accounts of murder, bloodshed, violence and exploitation appearing in newspapers and shown on every television screen. The trouble was, thought Mrs Berry, that too often it was shrugged off as ‘an aspect of modern living’, when it should have been fought with the sword of righteousness, as she and her generation had been taught to do.

  It was a great pity that the seven deadly sins were not explained to the young these days. There, asleep in the chair, was the victim of one of them – Envy. Had he been brought up to recognize his enemies in time, young Stephen might have been safely asleep in his own bed, instead of lying there caught in a web of his own weaving.

  For, one had to face it, Mrs Berry told herself, this self-indulgence in envy and self-pity had led the boy to positive wrongdoing. He was, in the eyes of the law and all right-thinking people, a burglar and a would-be thief.

  He was also guilty of disloyalty to the Roses, who were doing their best to bring him up. And he had completely disregarded the unhappiness this flight might cause them.

  All this she intended to make clear to the child as soon as he awoke. But there was a further problem – a practical one. How could she get the child home again without involving her own family or the Roses?

  Would they have missed him yet? Would they have rung the police? As soon as the child woke, she would try and find out the usual practice at night in the Roses’ house. Would they on Christmas Eve have put the children’s presents on their beds, as she and Mary had done? If so, would they have noticed that the boy was missing from their son’s side?

  All this must be discovered. Meanwhile, it was enough that the boy was resting. She too would close her eyes for a catnap. They both needed strength to face what was before them.

  She dropped, thankfully, into a light doze.

  The boy woke first. Bending to feel his drying shoes, he knocked the poker into the hearth. This small clatter roused the old lady.

  She was alert at once, as she always was when she woke up, despite her age.

  The clock stood at twenty minutes past three, and although the wind still moaned at the window, there seemed to be no sound of rain pattering on the pane. The worst of the storm appeared to be over.

  Mrs Berry felt the raincoat. It was practically dry. She carefully turned the sleeves inside out and rearranged the garment so that it had the full benefit of the fire’s heat.

  It was very cosy in the room. Refreshed by her nap, the old lady looked with approval at the two red candles on the mantelpiece waiting to be lit at teatime – today, Christmas Day, the day they had prepared for, for so long.

  The Christmas tree sparkled on the side table. The paper chains, made by the little girls’ nimble fingers, swayed overhead and the holly berries glimmered as brightly as the fire itself.

  ‘Merry Christmas!’ said Mrs Berry to the boy.

  ‘Thank you. Merry Christmas,’ he responded. ‘It don’t seem like Christmas, somehow.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. You haven’t made a very good start with it, have you?’

  Stephen shook his head dismally.

  ‘What’s more,’ continued the old lady, ‘you’ve put your poor foster parents, and me, to a mint of worry and trouble, by being such a wicked, thoughtless boy.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said the child. There was something perfunctory about the apology which roused Mrs Berry’s ire.

  ‘You say it,’ she said explosively, ‘but do you mean it? Do you realize that all this trouble stems from your selfishness? You’ve been given a good home, food, warmth, clothes, comfort, taken into a decent family, and how do you repay the Roses? You ask for something you know full well is too expensive for them to give you, and then you sulk because it’s not forthcoming!’

  The boy opened his mouth as though to protest against this harangue, but Mrs Berry swept on.

  ‘You’re a thoroughly nasty, mean-spirited little boy, eaten up with envy and jealousy, and if you don’t fight against those things you’re going to turn into a real criminal. You understand what I say?’

  ‘Yes, but I never—’

  ‘No excuses,’ continued Mrs Berry briskly. ‘You see what your sulking and envy led you to – breaking into my house and helping yourself to my Madeira cake. Those are crimes in themselves. If you were a few years older, you could be sent to prison for doing that.’

  The child suddenly bent forward and put his head in his hands. She could see that he was fighting tears, and remained silent, watching him closely, and hoping that some of her words of wisdom had hit their mark.

  ‘Have you ever had a spanking?’ she asked suddenly.

  ‘Only from me real mum. She gave me a clout now and again. The Roses don’t hit none of us.’

  ‘They’re good people, better than you deserve, I suspect. I warrant if you’d been my little boy, you’d have had a few smacks by now, to show you the difference between right and wrong.’

  There was a sniffing from the hidden face, but no comment. Mrs Berry’s tone softened.

  ‘What you’ve got to do, my child, is to start afresh. You’ve seen tonight where wickedness and self-pity lead you. For all we know, Mr and Mrs Rose are distracted – their Christmas spoiled – just because you must have your own way. And if they’ve told the police, then that’s more people upset by your thoughtlessness.

  ‘No, it’s time you thought about other people instead of yourself. Time you counted your blessings, instead of making yourself miserable about things you covet. No selfish person is ever happy. Remember that.’

  The boy nodded, and lifted his head from his hands. His cheeks were wet, and his expression was genuinely penitent.

  ‘What we’ve got to do now,’ said Mrs Berry, ‘is to put things right as quickly and quietly as we can. Tell me, do you think the Roses will have missed you?’

  The child looked bewildered.

  ‘They don’t never look in once they’ve tucked us up. They calls out, softlike, “Good night,” when they goes to bed but don’t open the door.’

  ‘Not even on Christmas Eve?’ asked Mrs Berry, broaching the subject delicately. Did the child still believe in Father Christmas? He had had enough to put up with this night, without any further painful disclosures.

  ‘We has our presents on the breakfast table,’ said Stephen, catching her meaning at once. ‘And our stockings at teatime, when we light the candles on the Christmas tree.’

  ‘So they may not know you left home?’

  ‘I don’t see how they can know till morning.’

  ‘I see.’

  Mrs Berry fell silent, turning over this fact in her mind. There seemed to be every hope that the child was right. If so, the sooner he returned, and crept back to bed, the better. It seemed proper in her straightforward mind, that having done wrong the boy himself should put it right. She discounted the
wrong done against herself and her own property, although she sincerely hoped that the child had learned his lesson. It was his attitude to his foster parents, and to all others with whom he must work and live, that must be altered.

  ‘Do you go to church?’ asked Mrs Berry.

  ‘To Sunday school. Sometimes we go to Evensong.’

  ‘Then you’ve heard about loving your neighbour.’

  The child looked perplexed.

  ‘Is it a commandment? We had to learn ten of those once, off of the church wall, at Sunday school.’

  ‘It’s another commandment: “Love they neighbour as thyself.” Do you understand what it means?’

  The child shook his head dumbly.

  ‘Well, it sums up what I’ve been telling you. Think about other people and their feelings. Consider them as much as you consider yourself. Put yourself in your foster parents’ place, for instance. How would you feel if the boy you looked after was so discontented that he ran away, making you feel that you had let him down, when all the time you had been doing your level best to make him happy?’

  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?’