The Christmas Mouse (8 page)

‘Here, strip off,’ commanded Mrs Berry.

‘Eh?’ said the boy, alarmed.

‘You heard what I said. Take off those wet clothes. Everything you’ve got on.’

The child’s face began to pucker. He was near to tears.

‘Lord, boy,’ said Mrs Berry testily, ‘I shan’t look at you. In any case, I’ve seen plenty of bare boys in my time. Do as you’re told, and I’ll get you an old coat to put on while your things dry.’

She stood a chair near the fire and hung the child’s sodden coat across the back of it. His small sneakers were placed on the hearth, on their sides, to dry.

The boy slowly divested himself of his wet clothing, modestly turning his back towards the old lady.

She thrust more wood upon the fire, looking at the blaze with satisfaction.

‘Don’t you dare move till I get back,’ warned Mrs Berry, making for the kitchen again. An old duffel coat of Jane’s hung there. It should fit this skinny shrimp well enough. Somewhere too, she remembered, a pair of shabby slippers, destined for the next jumble sale, were tucked away.

She found them in the bottom of the shoe cupboard and returned to the boy with her arms full. He was standing shivering by the fire, naked but for the damp towel round his loins.

He was pathetically thin. His shoulder blades stuck out like little wings, and every rib showed. His arms were like sticks, his legs no sturdier, and they were still, Mrs Berry noticed, glistening with water.

‘Sit down, child,’ she said, more gently, ‘and give me that towel. Seems you don’t know how to look after yourself.’

He sat down gingerly on the very edge of the armchair, and Mrs Berry knelt before him rubbing energetically at the skinny legs. Apart from superficial mud, Mrs Berry could see that the boy was basically well cared for. His toe nails were trimmed, and his scarred knees were no worse than most little boys’.

She looked up into the child’s face. He was pale with fatigue and fright, his features sharp, the nose prominent; his small mouth, weakly open, disclosed two slightly projecting front teeth. Mouselike, thought Mrs Berry, with an inward shudder, and those great ears each side of the narrow pointed face added to the effect.

‘There!’ said Mrs Berry. ‘Now you’re dry. Put your feet in these slippers and get this coat on you.’

The child did as he was told in silence, fumbling awkwardly with the wooden toggle fastenings of the coat.

‘Here, let me,’ said Mrs Berry, with some exasperation.
Deft herself, she could not abide awkwardness in others. The boy submitted to her ministrations, holding up his head meekly, and gazing at her from great dark eyes as she swiftly fastened the top toggles.

‘Now pull that chair up close to the fire, and stop shivering,’ said Mrs Berry briskly. ‘We’ve got a lot to talk about.’

The boy did as he was bidden, and sat with his hands held out to the blaze. By the light of the fire, Mrs Berry observed the dark rings under the child’s eyes and the open drooping mouth.

‘Close your mouth and breathe through your nose,’ Mrs Berry told him. ‘Don’t want to get adenoids, do you?’

He closed his mouth, swallowed noisily, and gave the most appallingly wet sniff. Mrs Berry made a sound of disgust, and struggled from her chair to the dresser.

‘Blow your nose, for pity’s sake,’ she said, offering him several paper handkerchiefs. He blew noisily, and then sat, seemingly exhausted by the effort, clutching the damp tissue in his skinny claw.

‘Throw it on the back of the fire, child,’ begged Mrs Berry. ‘Where on earth have you been brought up?’

He looked at her dumbly and, after a minute, tossed the handkerchief towards the fire. He missed and it rolled into the hearth by the steaming sneakers.

Mrs Berry suddenly realized that she was bone tired, it would soon be one o’clock, and that she wished the wretched child had chosen some other house to visit at such an hour. Nevertheless, duty beckoned, and she girded herself to the task.

‘You know what you are, don’t you?’ she began. The boy shook his head uncomprehendingly.

‘You are a burglar and a thief,’ Mrs Berry told him. ‘If I handed you over to the police, you’d get what you deserve.’

At this the child’s dark eyes widened in horror.

‘Yes, you may well look frightened,’ said Mrs Berry, pressing home the attack. ‘People who break into other people’s homes and take their things are nothing more than common criminals and have to be punished.’

‘I never took nothin’,’ whispered the boy. With a shock, Mrs Berry realized that these were the first words that she had heard him utter.

‘If I hadn’t caught you when I did,’ replied Mrs Berry severely, ‘you would have eaten that cake of mine double quick! Now wouldn’t you? Admit it. Tell the truth.’

‘I was hungry,’ said the child. He put his two hands on his bare knees and bent his head. A tear splashed down upon the back of one hand, glittering in the firelight.

‘And I suppose you are still hungry?’ observed Mrs Berry, her eyes upon the tear that was now joined by another.

‘It’s no good piping your eye,’ she said bracingly, ‘though I’m glad to see you’re sorry. But whether ’tis for what you’ve done, or simply being sorry for yourself, I just don’t know.’

She leaned forward and patted the tear-wet hand.

‘Here,’ she said, more gently, ‘blow your nose again and cheer up. I’ll go and get you something to eat, although you know full well you don’t deserve it.’ She struggled from her chair again.

‘It won’t be cake, I can tell you that,’ she told him flatly. ‘That’s for tea tomorrow – today, I suppose I
should say. Do you realize, young man, that it’s Christmas Day?’

The boy, snuffling into his handkerchief, looked bewildered but made no comment.

‘Well, what about bread and milk?’

A vision of her two little granddaughters spooning up their supper – days ago, it seemed, although it was only a few hours – rose before her eyes. Simple and nourishing, and warming for this poor, silly, frightened child!

‘Thank you,’ said the boy. ‘I like bread and milk.’

She left him, still sniffing, but with the second paper handkerchief deposited on the back of the fire as instructed.

‘Not a sound now,’ warned Mrs Berry, as she departed. ‘There’s two little girls asleep up there. And their ma. All
tired out and need their sleep. Same as I do, for that matter.’

She cut a thick slice of bread in the cold kitchen. The wind had not abated, although the rain seemed less violent, Mrs Berry thought, as she waited for the milk to heat. She tidied the cake tin away, wondering whether she would fancy the cake at tea time after all its vicissitudes. Had those grubby paws touched it, she wondered?

She poured the steaming milk over the bread cubes, sprinkled it well with brown sugar and carried the bowl to the child.

He was lying back in the chair with his eyes shut, and for a moment Mrs Berry thought he was asleep. He looked so defenceless, so young, and so meekly mouse-like, lying there with his pink-tipped pointed nose in the air, that Mrs Berry’s first instinct was to tuck him up in her dressing gown and be thankful that he was at rest.

But the child struggled upright, and held out his skinny hands for the bowl and spoon. For the first time he smiled, and although it was a poor, wan thing as smiles go, it lit up the boy’s face and made him seem fleetingly attractive.

Mrs Berry sat down and watched him attack the meal. It was obvious he was ravenously hungry.

‘I never had no tea,’ said the child, conscious of Mrs Berry’s eyes upon him.

‘Why not?’

The boy shrugged his shoulders.

‘Dunno.’

‘Been naughty?’

‘No.’

‘Had too much dinner then?’

The child gave a short laugh.

‘Never get too much dinner.’

‘Was your mother out then?’

‘No.’

The boy fell silent, intent upon spooning the last delicious morsels from the bottom of the bowl.

‘I don’t live with my mother,’ he said at last.

‘With your gran?’

‘No. A foster mother.’

Mrs Berry nodded, her eyes never moving from the child’s face. What was behind this escapade?

‘Where have you come from?’ she asked.

The boy put the empty bowl carefully in the corner of the hearth.

‘Tupps Hill,’ he answered.

Tupps Hill! A good two or three miles away! What a journey the child must have made, and in such a storm!

‘Why d’you want to know?’ said the boy, in a sudden panic. ‘You going to send the police there? They don’t
know nothin’ about me runnin’ off. Honest! Don’t let on, madam, please, madam!’

The ‘madam’ amused and touched Mrs Berry. Was this how he had been told to address someone in charge of an institution, or perhaps a lady magistrate at some court proceedings? This child had an unhappy background, that seemed certain. But why was he so scared of the police?

‘If you behave yourself and show some sense,’ said Mrs Berry, ‘the police will not be told anything at all. But I want to know more about you, young man.’

She picked up the bowl.

‘Would you like some more?’

‘Can I?’ said the child eagerly.

‘Of course,’ said Mrs Berry, resting the bowl on one hip and looking down at the boy.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Stephen.’

‘Stephen what?’

‘It’s not my foster mother’s name,’ said the boy evasively.

‘So I imagine. What is it, though?’

‘It’s Amonetti. Stephen Amonetti.’

Mrs Berry nodded slowly, as things began to fall into place.

‘So you’re Stephen Amonetti, are you? I think I knew your dad some years ago.’

She walked slowly from the room, sorting out a rag bag of memories, as she made her way thoughtfully towards the kitchen.

A
monetti!

Pepe Amonetti! She could see him now, as he had first appeared in Beech Green during the final months of the last war. He was a very young Italian prisoner of war, barely twenty, and his dark curls and sweeping black eyelashes soon had all the village girls talking.

He was the youngest of a band of Italian prisoners allotted to Jesse Miller, who then farmed a large area at Beech Green. He was quite irrepressible, bubbling over with the joy of living – doubly relishing life, perhaps, because of his short time on active service.

As he drove the tractor, or cleared a ditch, or slashed back a hedge, he sang at the top of his voice, or chattered in his pidgin English to any passer-by.

The girls, of course, did not pass by. The string of compliments, the flashing glances, the expressive hands, slowed their steps. Pepe, with his foreign beauty, stood out from the local village boys like some exotic orchid among a bunch of cottage flowers. In theory, he had little spare time for such dalliance. In practice, he managed very well, with a dozen or more willing partners.

The young lady most in demand at Beech Green at that time was a blonde beauty called Gloria Jarvis.

The Jarvises were a respectable couple with a string of flighty daughters. Gloria was one of the youngest, and had learned a great deal from her older sisters. The fact that the air base nearby housed several hundred eager
young Americans generous with candy, cigarettes and nylon stockings had hastened Gloria’s progress in the art of making herself charming.

As was to be expected, ‘them Jarvis girls’ were considered by the upright members of the community to be ‘a fair scandal, and a disgrace to honest parents.’ Any man, however ill-favoured or decrepit, was reckoned to be in danger from their wiles, and as soon as Pepe arrived at Beech Green it was a foregone conclusion that he would fall prey to one of the Jarvis harpies.

‘Not that he’ll put up much of a fight,’ observed one middle-aged lady to her neighbour. ‘Got a roving eye himself, that lad.’

‘Well,’ replied her companion indulgently, ‘you knows what these foreigners are! Hot blooded. It’s all that everlasting sun!’

‘My Albert was down with bronchitis and chilblains all through the Italian campaign,’ retorted the first lady. ‘No, you can’t blame the climate for their goings-on. It’s just that they’re made that way, and them Jarvis girls won’t cool their blood, that’s for sure.’