A Christmas to Remember

by Katie Flynn

  She began the preparations for the evening meal which had once been Gran’s prerogative, and turning on the wireless set she realised that she had missed Dick Barton, Special Agent and would have to make do with light music, if she could find a channel which was not intent upon improving her mind by broadcasting the latest news. Rushing round the kitchen she tidied frantically, attacked the washing-up and unearthed a tin of peas to go with the meat and potato pie. Fortunately, Albert was a methodical man and she knew he would take at least twenty minutes over his own preparations before he arrived at her front door.

  She was right. She heard Albert’s knock and ran down the stairs, realising as she opened the door how she was looking forward to telling him all that had transpired between herself and Gran.

  Beaming, she ushered him inside, poured two mugs of tea and turned the radio down. Then she produced the pie from the oven and opened the can of peas. Very soon the two of them were eating, and between mouthfuls Tess told Albert that she now knew Gran was not, after all, her grandmother, and in fact was no relation.

  ‘. . . and Gran told me you already knew, so now there will be no more secrets,’ she was saying, when Albert held up a finger.

  ‘I’m truly glad that Edie’s come clean at last,’ he told her. ‘But I think there’s something wrong with your wireless set, dear. It’s making the most peculiar whining noise.’

  Tess cocked her head on one side and listened hard. She could hear nothing, except the sound of one of her favourite tunes, ‘How High The Moon’, and when Albert persisted in saying that the wireless had a squeak she frowned. Surely he was not criticising the melody? But when he went on frowning and staring at the set she got up and turned it off. Immediately, as though on cue, she too heard the noise. It was almost a howl, and for a moment she stared at the set, unable to believe that it could still make a racket when switched off. She turned to Albert. ‘What on earth . . .?’ she began.

  ‘It’s not coming from your wireless set; I think it’s outside,’ Albert said. ‘Dear me, it sounds like an animal in distress. Had we better go down? If it’s a dog or cat that’s been hit by a car . . .’

  Tess was already at the door and the pair of them thundered down the stairs. Oddly, as the two of them erupted on to the pavement the noise immediately stopped. Tess stared all around her. Darkness had fallen and the street lamps flared, lighting up pavement, roadway and shops. Had there been an injured animal it too would have been illuminated, but both road and pavement were empty.

  Tess looked at Albert and they both shrugged, and Tess, remembering how delicious the meat and potato pie had tasted, turned back towards the stairs which led to the flat. ‘Whatever it was, it’s gone,’ she said. ‘Come on, Albert. We don’t want our grub to get cold.’

  They were back in the kitchen when they both heard the noise again. It was almost a wail, and seemed to be coming from the cupboard in which the Williamses kept their food. Tess flew across the room, snatched the door open, and scanned every shelf with keen attention. Nothing lurked in the bread bin, or behind the jars of jam, or amongst the tinned goods neatly arranged. Tess emerged from the cupboard and shut the door with some force. ‘This is absurd,’ she said angrily. ‘The sound must be travelling from somewhere else. We had better ignore it and get on with our meal.’

  But once they had both acknowledged that the sound was not the radio, nor their imaginations, it became increasingly difficult to ignore. They finished their meal in rather uncomfortable silence, and then Albert banged his hand down on the table and pointed downwards. ‘We want our heads examined!’ he exclaimed. ‘Miss Foulks has been gone two or three days, during which time her place has been empty and no one has so much as peered inside. That noise is coming from her shop . . . coming up through the floorboards into your kitchen, plain as plain. Some animal has got itself trapped in there and of course during the day no one would hear its yowls because Heyworth Street is both busy and noisy. And in the evenings you are either visiting your gran, playing your gramophone or listening to the wireless, and anyway, it probably didn’t realise it couldn’t get out at first. It would only have been as it got hungrier that it realised it was trapped, and began to shout for help. Do you have the keys?’

  Tess clapped a hand to her mouth, then lowered her fingers. ‘No, I don’t. Oh, Albert, whatever shall we do?’

  But Albert was already across the kitchen and beginning to descend the stairs. ‘We’ll see if there’s any possible means of entry,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Miss Foulks must have had a back door for stock deliveries, and so she could use the communal lavatory. I wouldn’t go breaking the new window or the door in the front of the property, but if there’s a window round the back . . .’

  ‘There is,’ Tess said, pointing as they approached the wall. Immediately the yowling stopped. It was dark in the yard, the only light coming from the Williamses’ flat above their heads, but when Tess asked Albert if he thought the animal might have escaped of its own accord he shook his head. ‘It’s listening,’ he told her. ‘It knows there are good people and bad, and it wants to be quite certain that we’re the good sort before it reveals its hiding place by crying for help again.’ He pointed to another door. ‘Does that lead into the shop?’

  ‘It must do, but I can’t see any way of getting in,’ Tess said. ‘I wonder if we should get in touch with the police? I remember being told once that scuffers have the names of all key holders – people who can be contacted at night if the owner of the premises is not available. Do you think we ought to . . .’

  But Albert was staring at the small window which was probably the only means by which daylight entered the millinery shop’s stockroom. Then he looked at Tess, a look so calculating that she guessed he was about to suggest something uncomfortable. ‘I believe this window isn’t latched,’ he said. ‘If I gave you a bunk up do you think you could open it? And then wriggle through? Once you’re inside you can unlock the door, because I’d put money on the fact that the key will be hanging beside the lock.’

  ‘Right,’ Tess said. ‘Up we go!’

  Five minutes later she had managed to open the window and was wriggling through it, commenting to Albert that she just wished she knew what she was going to land on, when a voice spoke behind them. ‘What have we here? Midnight goings-on? Don’t you know the shop’s empty? You ain’t likely to find anything but a coupla musty old hats which Miss Foulks couldn’t sell.’

  The beam of the torch directed straight into his eyes made Albert blink, and caused the torch-holder to say in a surprised tone: ‘Well, if it ain’t Mr Payne! Wharron earth are you doin’, Mr Payne, sir? And don’t tell me you’ve took to house-breaking, because I shan’t believe you.’ The torch beam shifted to Tess’s nether regions, for she was still half in and half out of the window. ‘And who’s your young friend?’ His voice changed. ‘Nice knickers house-breakers wear these days!’

  Tess tried to turn round in the narrow space and nearly stabbed herself on the window ledge, but she had recognised the voice. ‘It’s me, Tess Williams, Constable Agnew,’ she said breathlessly. ‘There’s a cat or something shut in here and yowling fit to bust. Mr Payne thought that if I could get through the window I might be able to unlock the back door and let us both out, me and the cat, and he was quite right about one thing: the key is in the lock.’

  Constable Agnew sighed. ‘I can’t hear no animal, not cat, nor dog, nor guinea pig,’ he muttered. ‘And likely, when you get the door open, whatever it is will leg it so fast we’ll never know if it were fish, fowl or good red herring. But carry on. It’ll save me goin’ back to the station and knockin’ up Mr Egbert, what’s the landlord, then bringin’ him down here and stayin’ with him while he checks his property . . .’ He stopped speaking as Tess, wriggling frantically, suddenly disappeared from view, landing on the floor of the stockroom with a thump and a yelp. Albert, standing on tiptoe, could see nothing, but before he could so much as enquire if she was still alive, the key grated in the
lock and the back door creaked open.

  Tess grinned from Albert’s face to the round and ruddy one of the police constable. ‘There’s a not very nice smell coming from somewhere . . . and the creature, whatever it is, can’t get into the shop because the door between is closed. But it’s very frightened, too frightened to make a bolt for the yard, so if you wouldn’t mind, Constable Agnew, I’d like to borrow your torch and we’ll shut the back door until we find out just what has spent the last three days trapped in this room. Are there skunks in England? Phew, what a pong!’ She took the torch from the constable and began to sweep the beam methodically around the walls. ‘Aha! Oh, look, Albert. Look, Mr Agnew. Isn’t that a pretty sight?’

  The ‘pretty sight’ was a smoke-coloured cat whose big golden eyes stared up into the torch beam unblinkingly. She lay on her side with four kittens tugging at her probably empty teats.

  Albert sucked in his breath. ‘Poor little blighter, no wonder she was so desperate and created such a din,’ he murmured. ‘Of course, even if she could have got out by some means she wouldn’t have left her kittens. And the old felt material Miss Foulks used for making her hats makes an excellent bed.’ He turned to the policeman. ‘If I go to my shop and bring back a cardboard box, could we transfer her and the kittens into it?’ The constable agreed and Albert went off, to return moments later with a roomy cardboard box which he stood on the floor of the stockroom. ‘I’m sure Miss Foulks will want the cat, if not her babies. I suppose this cat did belong to Miss Foulks?’ he said as he re-joined them.

  The constable shrugged, but Tess shook her head. ‘No, Miss Foulks didn’t like animals at all. If a stray cat wandered in she’d get really frightened and ask anybody handy to chase it out of our yard. She’ll be horrified when she hears of tonight’s work, because the cat must have come in to have the kittens whilst the shop was still open. But before you try to move her, I’ll fetch a bribe so she won’t object when she and her kittens are put into the box.’

  The constable laughed. ‘Have you got a couple of mice up there?’ he asked jovially. ‘She’d get into the box for one of them, I reckon.’

  Tess gave him an indulgent glance in the torchlight. ‘Not a mouse; milk,’ she said briefly, and disappeared, to reappear moments later carefully carrying a deep saucer full of milk, which she placed in the cardboard box. The little cat stretched its neck and sniffed the air hopefully, then jumped voluntarily into the box and began to lap. Tess lifted the babies with great care and put them into the box beside their mother, then took a length of the felt which had been the little cat’s nursery and placed it across the top of the box. She and Albert watched as the constable closed the small window, ushered them into the yard, relocked the door, and put the key into his tunic pocket. Then they parted, Tess and Albert to return to the flat, Albert carrying the cats in their box and Tess going first to unlock and lock the doors. Constable Agnew had undertaken to return the key to Mr Egbert and tell him of the night’s doings and Tess, bubbling over with excitement, remembered her first visit to the farm after the war when Jonty had taken her to see Tibbs’s progeny, and thought that the next time she spoke to him she must tell him that she was now the proud owner of a mother cat and four beautiful kittens. She was saying as much to Albert when they reached her kitchen.

  Albert smiled down at her but his kind brown eyes were worried. ‘I agree cats are pretty independent, but surely the same can’t be said of kittens,’ he pointed out. ‘Can you find good homes for them over the weekend? Because once you’re in work again, who’s to look after them? The smell in that stockroom was something awful; you wouldn’t want your gran to come home to a flat stinking of cat do-dos, would you?’

  Tess was watching the little mother cat eagerly disposing of the milk, into which she had just crumbled half a round of bread, but she turned a look of astonishment on Albert. ‘Find homes for them over the weekend?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Albert, they’re only two or three days old; their eyes won’t open until ten to fourteen days after they’re born. And they can’t leave their mother until they’re six or eight weeks old. But they’re awfully pretty kittens, so I’m sure there’ll be no difficulty in finding them homes then. In fact, I think I’ll sell them, because folk value something for which they have paid good money.’

  ‘You know much more about such things than I do,’ Albert said ruefully. ‘Have you ever thought of opening a pet shop?’

  There was a moment of stunned silence whilst Tess’s eyes got rounder and rounder and her mouth dropped open. For a moment she and Albert stared at each other, both bereft of words, but then Tess spoke. ‘Albert Payne, you’re a perishin’ bloody genius,’ she breathed. ‘Why on earth didn’t I think of that? Oh, Albert, the last time I spoke to Jonty on the telephone he was quite cross because he said all I talked about was an ice cream parlour, about which I knew nothing. He said there must be something I was interested in, but all we could think of was that I had learned to type, though not terribly well. He suggested I might look for a job as office junior, and make my way up until I was good enough to apply for secretarial positions. Neither of us thought about the one thing I really do know about, and that’s what they call “animal husbandry”. Oh, Albert, Miss Foulks’s shop would be absolutely ideal, because at the moment if someone wants to buy day-old chicks and rear them in their back yard they have to either go into the country and try to buy stock direct from a farmer or go to the market, and you may be sure that buying that way, with no knowledge of poultry, you’ll be sold rubbish. But if you went to a local pet shop owned by someone with a great deal of experience, who knew exactly what she was doing, not only would you get good birds, but if something went wrong, if they died or sickened, you could take them back, because a pet shop can’t up and off the way a market trader can.’

  Albert stared at her, a flush creeping up his neck. ‘I believe you’ve hit on the only idea which really might work,’ he said. ‘But what about setting-up money? I can’t see a bank shelling out to a girl of your age, even with Gran to add respectability.’

  Tess began to say that maybe he was right, maybe it was not such a good idea after all, but then she stopped. ‘I won’t be put off,’ she said fiercely. ‘The rent is cheap because the shop isn’t very big, so the cost of setting up would be tiny. I’ll find some lad who’ll knock me up cages from old orange boxes and chicken wire. Gran’s got savings and I’m sure there are other people, folk who are fond of her, like her fellow workers at Deering’s, who’d put up a few bob to get us started. Deering’s could be enormously helpful because of the crumbs. If you’d seen the quantity of crumbs they chuck out for the pigeons every night, you’d know what I mean.’ She glanced rather defiantly at Albert and saw he was regarding her admiringly.

  ‘You’ve set your heart on it, haven’t you?’ he said in a wondering tone. ‘The minute I mentioned a pet shop you realised it was what you wanted to do more than anything else. As for setting-up costs, you can discuss that with our financial adviser, but for myself I think you’ll find backers. In fact, I’ll talk to my fellow members of the Chamber of Trade . . .’

  But Tess was no longer listening. ‘I shall need bales of straw for bedding, hay and grain for feeding, poultry meal, and a great many other things,’ she was murmuring. ‘I’ll talk to Jonty tomorrow evening, because I’m sure he would put a couple of bales of hay and a couple of straw and probably a sack of poultry meal on to the train so that I could pick it up at this end. I know that things are moved about the country by train, so why not animal feed? Unless, of course, I found I could buy it more cheaply locally. Then there are goldfish; I’ve yet to meet a kid who doesn’t yearn to have a goldfish after a visit to the fair. There’s a Christmas fair here every year; I’m sure the fair people would tell me where they get their goldfish if I ask politely. Of course all pet shops sell rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters and the like, and until we’re established and can breed our own . . .’

  But Albert was laughing, clapping his hands,
trying to break into her monologue. ‘All right, all right, I’m convinced,’ he said. ‘First things first, however! Before you can start doing anything, you must get Edie’s consent to the scheme. After all, it’s not everyone who would fancy living over a pet shop full of live animals and birds. And if you intend to ask her to use her savings . . .’

  ‘. . . and kittens and puppies, of course; everyone loves kittens and puppies,’ Tess went on, oblivious. ‘Why, these dear little kittens could be our first attraction, because a box of kittens playing together would have every child for miles with its nose pressed against the windowpane. Parents might baulk at the price we would have to ask for a puppy, but kittens are not only cheap to buy, they’re cheap to keep. Oh, and I can go round the slaughterhouses, down by the ferry port, and buy meat which isn’t fit for human consumption, and sell it for dog and cat food . . .’

  Albert was still laughing, holding up his hand like a policeman stopping traffic. ‘All right, all right, I get the idea,’ he said. ‘It’s time I left you, and you went to bed. Think it over, and tomorrow we’ll both go to the hospital and see how Edie feels about her granddaughter starting up in business as a pet shop owner.’

  Next day Tess went to the nursery wondering how she would get through the day until work finished and she could go to the hospital and tell Gran all about her exciting new scheme. But she enjoyed her work and somehow the time passed until she found herself at last making her way across the hospital foyer, heading for Gran’s ward. When she pushed her way in through the doors, along with a crowd of others, Albert was already there and for a moment Tess felt the old familiar flame of jealousy flare up. He would have told Gran the news, said it was his own casual remark which had given her the idea, taken the credit for it. Not for the first time, she felt she hated Albert. But as she walked towards the bed and saw Gran smiling at her she chided herself. How could she have had such an ungenerous thought? She knew very well, really, that Albert would not have said a word. So she returned Gran’s smile, and when Albert moved up she slid on to the bench beside him.