Christmas Roses

by Pat Posner

  “I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am, Gloria. Though I must admit I was a bit surprised when I realised your idea was for you to go tatting.”

  “Yes, it came as a surprise to Mum and Dad as well,” Gloria said. “Dad’s enjoyed himself this last two days, though, even though it’s a lot different to driving her Ladyship round in that big car of hers.”

  “John thought it really funny thinking of your dad driving the cart,” Mary said. “Nearly burst his stitches laughing, he did. I’m sure knowing things are going on almost as usual is making him recover quicker.”

  “Well, tell him he’s not to get back to it too quickly, I’m more than happy to keep doing it. I reckon I’ll be a bit sad when I’m not needed any more. Right now, though, I’ll go home and give Bernard the news. Even though he isn’t one for getting up early, he’ll be chuffed to little pieces when I tell him he’s coming with me on Easter Sunday morning to fetch Moses here to lead Broome Park Village’s Easter Parade. And it’s all because your John had his appendix out,” she added.

  “More like because you stepped in and went tatting,” Mary said, laughing.

  Travelling Tulips

  “Mummy,” said Jilly, peering out of the living room window, “I think Daddy’s marked out a place for the sand pit. There’s a sort of square shape in the lawn and it looks like some of the grass inside the shape has been lifted up a bit.”

  “I reckon that’s wishful thinking, Jilly,” said Doreen as she watched her two-year-old god-daughter, Elaine, dip toast soldiers into a softly-boiled egg – and creating a right mess in the process. “I asked Daddy last night when he’d get round to making the sand pit and he said he couldn’t start anything until the weekend. It’s a shame his firm don’t have this week for Wakes Week like those round here.”

  “Someone’s done something, Mummy. Maybe it was Paul.”

  “No. Your cousin only just got himself out of bed in time to do his paper round. He’s got further to go from here than from his own house.”

  “Daddy might have got up early and—”

  “Daddy won’t have even looked at the garden. He’s on an early shift at work so he left long before the Claytons’ cockerel crowed to welcome dawn.”

  Doreen sighed. Bane of her life was that cockerel from next door but one. Woke Elaine every morning without fail. Still, Mary Clayton was generous enough with the eggs the hens laid, so she shouldn’t complain. And, on and off, Jilly was best friends with the two Clayton children, so it would be hard to say anything really.

  “Well, maybe some of Susan and Barry’s hens came into our garden and pecked around then. Because there really are some lumpy bits of grass, Mummy. Oh, and I think the hens pecked at something in Mrs Stone’s garden as well because she’s out there with Miss Harper and they look a bit cross.”

  Doreen felt sorry for her two elderly neighbours sometimes; the other five prefabs on Broome Avenue had families with young children. It could get noisy when they were all playing out. Still, Connie Stone’s three grandchildren who lived on Blakeley Road were often round at their Nana Connie’s, so maybe the noise didn’t bother Connie and her sister Flo.

  But, thought Doreen, joining Jilly at the window after having checked Elaine was safely strapped into her highchair, something is definitely bothering them now. And Jilly’s right. There are some lumpy bits of grass in our garden.

  “You better go along to the Claytons’, Jilly, and ask Susan and Barry to check if any of their hens are missing.”

  *

  Jilly had been gone a few minutes and Doreen was outside the back door putting Elaine into her pram when Connie Stone arrived.

  “Got something to tell you, queen,” she said.

  “’Morning, Connie. Come inside. Elaine won’t settle if we’re stood here chatting. Likely she’ll start yelling anyway, bless her. I’ve only popped her in her pram until I get her playpen set up.

  “Has something happened in your garden, too?” Doreen continued after Connie had followed her into the kitchen. “We wondered if the Claytons’ hens had been pecking round in ours. Jilly’s gone to ask Barry and Susan to check if any are missing.”

  Connie leant against the sink and sighed. “Flo and I were made-up when we moved from Liverpool and got a prefab here in the same village as our Pearl and the grand-kiddies. Shame we had to have hens next door and Broome Park at the end of the back garden, though. Because with them and all sorts of wild animals from the park, we do get a few plants dug up.”

  Doreen hid a smile as she visualised tigers and lions digging in their gardens.

  “I mean rabbits and foxes, queen,” said Connie, as if she’d read Doreen’s mind. “But neither them nor next door’s hens would dig up leeks and carrots and then put them back in the soil in a different place. And that’s what’s happened in our garden.”

  “I’ve not had chance to go and see yet,” said Doreen. “But Jilly said it looked like someone had lifted up some clumps of grass in our lawn.”

  “Flo and me are entering our vegetables in the competition at the flower and vegetable show next month. It’ll be the last time we do a joint entry what with Flo getting wed next week. Be her and Sam entering together next year. That’s by the by, though. Today, we wondered if someone had dug up our leeks and carrots to see how big they were and then put them back in afterwards.”

  “Nobody would’ve dug up clumps of grass for that reason, though, Connie. Are you sure your carrots and leeks were put back in a different place? Maybe something pecked or dug around them and that loosened the soil?”

  Connie shook her head. “We’re very particular about the way we space out our veg in nice neat rows. They aren’t in neat rows now.”

  Jilly came running back in before Doreen could say anything else to Connie.

  “Guess what, Mummy? Oh, sorry. Hello, Mrs Stone. Mummy, guess what? All Susan and Barry’s hens are there and there’s no holes in the wire fencing around the hen run so they didn’t get out and then go back in. But Auntie Mary…”

  Jilly glanced at Connie. “She isn’t really my auntie, Mrs Stone, I just call her auntie because Susan’s my best friend. Anyway, Auntie Mary thinks some of the rocks in her rockery have been moved. And hens couldn’t do that so it must be something else. Maybe a fox or a stray dog.”

  “We’ve ruled them out, Jilly,” said Connie, going on to explain about her vegetables. “And don’t you go thinking it might be them two grandsons of mine. Rob and Jimmy love playing tricks but neither of them would meddle with my vegetables.”

  “That’s strange, Mrs Stone,” said Jilly, frowning. “It’s a bit of a mystery then. Like something in an Enid Blyton book. Or like the Elves and the Shoemaker and someone’s helping out with jobs in our gardens instead of making shoes. Because where the grass has been loosened in our garden would be just the right place for Daddy to make the sand pit for Elaine to play in when she comes to stay. And maybe somebody thought your leeks were too close together or something.”

  “Well, slap me in the face with a finnon haddie. Do-good elves is one way of looking at it.” Connie smiled at Doreen. “I’ll get back to Flo now. I tell you what, though. Us two will be taking it in turns to watch out of the window tonight. If we catch an elf, we’ll bring it round here for you, Jilly.”

  “What’s a finnon haddie, Mummy?” asked Jilly when Connie had gone.

  “Yellow haddock, I think.”

  Jilly giggled. “Mrs Stone says some funny things. I’d be in trouble if I slapped her with a bit of fish.”

  “You’d be surprised if she brought you an elf round,” Doreen said.

  They were still laughing when Paul got back from his paper round. Jilly told her cousin everything that had happened.

  Doreen was surprised to notice how closely Paul concentrated. Aged eleven, almost six years older than Jilly, he usually thought he was too grown-up to listen to her tales.

  “That’s interesting, Jilly,” he said. “Let’s go and have a good look at the
mysterious patch in your lawn.”

  Blow the washing-up for a few more minutes, thought Doreen and followed the two of them into the garden.

  “It does look like a few clumps have been dug or pulled up and then put back in,” she said. “I reckon Connie’s right. This wasn’t done by an animal. Maybe someone did want to check her carrots and leeks, but I can’t think why anyone should dig up bits of our grass.”

  “Or move Auntie Mary’s rocks around,” added Jilly.

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Paul. “Maybe there was a robbery round here sometime and the robber thought he was being chased so he buried his haul in a garden. But it was dark so he couldn’t see which garden. Or maybe it’s quite a while since he buried it and when he came to get it he couldn’t quite remember the exact spot.”

  “You’ve been listening to too many Sherlock Holmes stories on the wireless,” Doreen told him.

  “Or watching Dixon of Dock Green on his friend’s television set,” said Jilly.

  “That’s given me an idea.” Paul grinned at them. “When I deliver his newspaper in the morning, I’ll ask your very own Dixon of Dock Green – Policeman Ken of Broome Park Prefab Village – if there’s been any burglaries round here.”

  “I think we would know if there had been, Paul.” Doreen had tried to make light of his suggestion but, deep-down, she wondered if he could be right. That worried her. She didn’t like the thought of a criminal wandering round the prefab gardens at night.

  “Anyway,” she added. “Standing here isn’t doing any good. I’m going to set up the playpen for Elaine. Be a good girl, Jilly, and fetch some of her favourite toys.”

  “And I said I’d call for Anthony to go fishing,” Paul said. “I wonder if anything happened in their garden. He was doing his paper round, too, so he might not have been out there yet.”

  Doreen glanced across at her other next door neighbours’ garden. “Sheila’s got her washing out. I’m sure she’d have noticed if there was anything different there.”

  *

  Doreen stretched and yawned when the Claytons’ cockerel, followed by the sound of Elaine bouncing in her cot brought her fully awake. She hoped today wouldn’t be as hectic as yesterday had been.

  Word about strange diggings in Broome Avenue’s gardens had spread quickly and there’d been a constant flood of folk coming to have a look and give their ideas on what and why.

  Apparently, there had been a burglary at Broome Hall a year or so ago – most of the families on Broome Avenue hadn’t been living here then – but all the stolen items had been recovered. Nobody had heard of any local burglaries since then.

  “It likely was a stray dog or a fox after all,” she muttered as she jumped out of bed and hurried to take Elaine out of her cot before the little monkey bounced her way through the springs.

  That explanation proved to be unlikely when, a couple of hours later, Sheila Grove came round from next door. “It’s my tulips, Doreen,” she said.

  “What is? Put Fay in the playpen with Elaine,” she added, smiling at her neighbour’s pretty two-year-old. “I’ll pour us a cuppa and you can tell me.”

  “They’ve been travelling,” Sheila said. “Moved a couple of inches nearer the edge of my flowerbed. Someone must have dug them up and put them back in.”

  “Were you going to enter them in the competition at the flower show next month?” Doreen asked, remembering what Connie had said yesterday.

  Sheila shook her head. “They won’t still be in flower then. I only grow them because they look pretty and brighten the garden up.”

  “Well, it’s got to be one of the older kids playing silly tricks. There’s no other explanation.”

  “Whoever it was might have been wearing a cardie or dress that’s got buttons like this. I found it in the soil where the tulips were before they got moved.” Sheila reached in her pocket and pulled out a red, purple and green oblong-shaped button. “Unusual, isn’t it? I don’t remember seeing any like this, and I think I would have.”

  “Oh, it’s so pretty,” said Jilly, who’d wandered in just as Sheila produced the button. “Please can I have it for my button collection? I haven’t got one that’s anything like this.”

  “I reckon we should show it to Maisie Butterworth, her who lives on Knott Lane,” said Doreen. “She makes frocks and other things to sell on her market stall and to folk round here. She might have sewn buttons like this onto something for someone.”

  “It isn’t a market day today.” Sheila stood up. “I’ll pop round and get Fay’s pram then you and I can go round to Maisie’s, Doreen.”

  *

  “Have you heard about what’s happened in some of the gardens on Broome Avenue, Maisie?” Doreen asked.

  Maisie nodded. “My girls told me about it when I got back from the market yesterday.”

  “Well, last night Sheila’s tulips were messed with. And she found this.” Doreen showed Maisie the button. “We think it might belong to whoever’s been moving plants around.”

  Maisie nibbled her lip and looked worried as she gazed at the button.

  “You know who it belongs to, don’t you?” said Sheila.

  “Yes. But she wouldn’t go digging round in gardens in the night. I mean, why should she?”

  “Why should anyone?” asked Doreen. “That’s what we can’t work out. But if you tell us who this belongs to, we might get an answer.”

  “I’m sure as eggs are eggs it wasn’t her,” said Maisie. “But she might be able to come up with an answer because she’s got a knack for solving things. And talk of Old Nick…” Maisie looked up as Gloria Turner, her younger friend who lived next door and also helped her on the market appeared.

  “Jeepers,” said Gloria when the three others had explained things. “This is off the cardie I lent to a friend last week when she were going listening to that brass band playing in Broome Park.

  “The bandstand isn’t that far away from your gardens. Maybe the button fell off and one of those birds that like shiny things picked it up and then it dropped out of its beak when it was flying off somewhere with it.”

  “Sounds likely, I suppose,” said Doreen. “We do get a lot of jackdaws and magpies.” She sighed. “So we’re still no nearer at solving the mystery of why someone should come digging things up.”

  “It solves the mystery of why my friend didn’t return my cardie this morning on her way to work like she promised she would,” Gloria said. “It’s because she lost a button off it. She works lunch times at The Woodman on Thursday so I’m off to have a few words with her. I’ll come back later, Maisie.”

  “And I promised Jilly she could ask Susan round for a picnic tea in the garden,” said Doreen. They want gingerbread men biscuits so I best get back and start baking.”

  “I’ll make some little fairy cakes if you like,” Sheila told Doreen as they walked home. “Then I can bring Fay round and she and Elaine can have a picnic of their own in Elaine’s playpen.”

  “The more the merrier,” said Doreen, laughing.

  *

  Somehow, Doreen ended up with most of the neighbours in her garden. Even Connie and Flo had come round with one of Connie’s grandsons. “We saw you were having a picnic, queen, so we made some lettuce and mustard and cress butties for the kiddies.”

  Naturally enough, talk amongst the grown-ups turned to the mystery of the strange happenings in their gardens. Connie and Flo had taken it turns to keep watch last night but neither of them had seen anything.

  “And even though it must have took someone a while to move your tulips, we can’t see your garden too well from our back bedroom window, Sheila,” said Connie.

  “Told you, Nana Connie,” said her grandson, “it was aliens from outer space. If Captain Jet Morgan and Lemmy can reach the moon, them living on the moon can reach Earth and dig things up to experiment with them.”

  Doreen groaned. “Paul listens to Journey into Space, too. I’m going in to top up the tea pot and we’ll all have a
nother cuppa. I bet they don’t get cups of tea in Space,” she added.

  When Doreen went back out with the teapot, she saw Gloria and a lass about the same age arriving in the garden from round the front.

  “This is Natasha,” Gloria said. “The friend who borrowed my cardie. And she’s got something to tell you and the others who’ve had their gardens messed with. Looks like they’re all here. That’s handy.”

  Natasha took a deep breath. “It was me. I dug up things in your gardens but I put them back and I tried not to damage anything. I’m really, really sorry.”

  “But why, queen?” Connie was the first to recover from the surprise.

  Natasha sniffed and wiped away a tear. “After we’d listened to the brass band playing in the park last week, me and my Raymond went for a bit of a… A walk round.” She blushed as Gloria snorted.

  “Anyroads, a bit later, we had a heck of an argument and it ended up with me taking off my engagement ring and chucking it at him. Only I’m a rotten shot and the ring went flying up in the air and I saw it land in one of the gardens. But Raymond stalked off and I went running after him to say sorry.

  “He wouldn’t make up so I thought good riddance to my ring and went home. I spent the next days in tears but I’d already decided to come and look for my ring when Raymond came round with a big bunch of flowers and a box of my favourite chocolates.”

  “And she came at night because she didn’t want the world to know what had happened,” said Gloria, taking over from her friend. “Only she couldn’t quite work out which garden they’d been standing near. So she started from the far end and did three gardens and last night, wearing my cardie and losing a button off it, she searched the last garden along here.”

  “Never mind your cardie, Gloria. Did you find your ring last night, Natasha?” Doreen asked gently. She could see the poor lass was really upset.

  Natasha shook her head. “It rained really heavy a couple of nights after my argument with Raymond. I think my ring soaked into the soil somewhere and it’s lost for ever.” She finished on a sob.

  “I think we should all have a cup of tea and work out what we can do,” said Doreen. “I’ll send Jilly inside for two more cups.”