A Christmas Cracker

by Trisha Ashley

  He sat down, in order to take it all in and better consider his options, his tail lashing from side to side like a slow metronome.

  ‘Pye,’ I warned him, ‘behave yourself!’

  ‘Mmmrow!’ he said crossly, expressing his indignation that first I’d abandoned him for weeks on end, then closed him up in a box for a couple of hours. He decided to show me how far from favour I’d fallen by getting up and advancing in a friendly way on Mercy, who made much of him. Then he turned his attention to Silas, even going so far as to jump on his lap and sit looking triumphantly at me.

  ‘This place is more like it!’ he seemed to be saying.

  ‘He must know that Silas and I are fond of cats,’ Mercy said. ‘What a clever, handsome creature he is!’

  ‘Speak for yourself. Unless they catch mice, I’ve no use for the creatures,’ Silas snapped, though his thin hand, knobbed with rheumatic joints, was slowly stroking Pye’s black fur. ‘Are we never to have any dinner?’ he added, obviously feeling the civilities had been completed.

  ‘Of course, but it’s still so early that you’ve not long since had your tea! I’ll just show Tabitha her rooms and then call you into the kitchen when dinner’s ready to dish out. There’s no point in setting the dining table just for the three of us.’

  I picked up my bags again and followed Mercy through another door into a small dining parlour and on into a big kitchen with an outside door equipped with a cat-flap. Pye, who had elected to follow us, was a large cat and looked at it dubiously before sticking his head through to see whether what was on the other side was worth the effort.

  ‘Should you let him go out right away?’ asked Mercy. ‘Perhaps we should keep him in for a day or two, so that he knows this is his new home? Or put butter on his paws?’

  ‘Please, don’t even attempt that,’ I begged her. ‘And he won’t go far from me, because we’re sort of joined at the hip, even though he’s mad at me right now because he thinks I abandoned him.’

  ‘Well, if you’re sure,’ she said doubtfully as the rest of Pye squeezed out into the night like black ectoplasm. ‘Come on, let’s just put your bags in your room and then you can unpack and settle in properly later.’

  ‘Yes, the tagging people could turn up at any minute, too. They said they’d be here between five and seven and it’s well past five now.’

  From the back of the kitchen a short passage led past a pantry, scullery and a cloakroom to a tiny, square parlour furnished and decorated in Victorian style, except for a new electric fire in the grate. The boxes containing my worldly belongings – and, I hoped, Pye’s litter tray, bowls and other necessities – were piled against one wall, along with the small yellow velvet nursing chair that was the one piece of furniture I’d not parted with after Mum died.

  ‘The chair looks very well in here, doesn’t it?’ said Mercy. ‘We managed to squeeze all your belongings into the back of the car quite comfortably. And through here is the bedroom – not palatial, but in the days when the family had a cook-housekeeper, having her own plumbed washbasin was the pinnacle of luxury. I’m told she was the envy even of the housekeepers in the local big houses.’

  It was indeed a small room, containing a single brass bedstead covered in a fluffy modern duvet, a chest of drawers with a clouded mirror on top and a narrow wardrobe. The walls had been papered in a leafy William Morris design and an oval braided rag rug sat like a faded Technicolor island on the green lino.

  ‘All Victorian mod cons, as you see,’ Mercy said, indicating the solid washbasin in the corner. ‘And the cloakroom is just down the passage, too. I hope you’ll be comfortable here – the central heating does run this far, but it’s not terribly efficient,’ she added. Then she opened what I’d thought to be a cupboard door in the passage right outside the parlour, revealing a small spiral stone staircase.

  ‘This takes you up to the west wing, where the door directly ahead is a bathroom. My room is further along the landing, in the central part of the house, and Silas has a small suite downstairs in the east wing, behind the library, so he doesn’t have to tackle the stairs.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, wondering if her energy ever flagged, because mine certainly had!

  I think she noticed I was tiring, because she said, ‘Not to worry, I’ll give you the guided tour in the morning, when you’re rested – and here comes Pussy again.’

  Pye stalked down the passage towards us and then head-butted my legs meaningfully.

  ‘I think he’s hungry.’

  ‘Like Silas,’ she said.

  ‘I hope there are some tins of catfood in one of those boxes along with his dishes and stuff,’ I said.

  ‘No matter for tonight, for I’m sure I can find a tin of tuna in the cupboard, if he would like that, and I have lots of odd saucers he can use until you find his own crockery.’

  She made it sound as if he always travelled with a complete Minton dinner service, but I agreed that he would love tuna.

  ‘Did you say he was called Pie?’

  ‘Yes, but spelled P-Y-E, short for Pyewacket. It’s from an old film called Bell, Book and Candle, which my mother loved.’

  Too late, I thought that perhaps Quakers might not be that keen on films about witchcraft, but she said cheerfully enough, ‘Oh, I remember that one – hokum, but amusing. I used to be very fond of going to the cinema when I was a young thing. Now, come along with me, Pye, while Tabitha freshens up. Join us in the drawing room when you’re ready, dear. I’ll pop the nice hotpot I made earlier in a slow oven to reheat and we can have dinner as soon as these Tag People have been.’

  She made them sound like a tribe.

  When I arrived back at the drawing room, it was to find two strangers there and Mercy explaining to Silas what they were going to do.

  ‘I did tell you earlier, Silas,’ she pointed out. ‘I knew you weren’t listening.’

  ‘I’d have heard if you’d told me someone was going to come and put a tag on the new girl’s leg, as if she was a pigeon,’ he said testily. ‘Load of nonsense.’

  ‘It’s so they know if Tabitha has left the house at night,’ Mercy said.

  ‘Yes, I can’t leave between seven at night and seven in the morning, until the tag is removed in a couple of months – isn’t that right?’ I turned for corroboration from the newcomers, a man and a woman, and they said it was.

  The tagging was soon done, but the layout of the house gave them problems, it being very much wider than it was deep. My tag must allow me to walk from one end to the other – but then, it would also allow me to leave the house and walk a short way. But when Mercy pointed out that I still couldn’t get beyond the moat, they thought that would be acceptable.

  Mercy invited them to stay to dinner and seemed genuinely disappointed when they said they couldn’t, even waving them off from the front door as if they had been old friends she hadn’t wanted to part with. I deduced that she extended this amicable spirit to most people she met, because although the taggers (whose names I hadn’t managed to catch) were nice, they weren’t that nice. I mean, I’ve never indulged in an ankle bracelet because I think they’re naff, and now I had a super-naff semi-permanent plastic one.

  In our absence, Silas had hobbled through to the kitchen and was now seated at one end of the long pine table, with a checked napkin tucked into his blue lambswool jumper. Pye was sitting on a Windsor chair by the big Aga stove, though I noticed there was a utilitarian electric one nearby, too.

  It was a strangely homely meal. Mercy dished out bowls of rich brown casserole in which bobbed dumplings and chunks of beef and carrots, served along with a basket of warm and floury soft bread rolls, and we set to. I discovered I was hungry. I’d forgotten what that felt like.

  We followed that with cheese and biscuits and the remains of a big sherry trifle, into which I nearly slumped, since by then I was so dazed with food and exhaustion my backbone seemed to be wilting.

  ‘Here, take the coffee tray through to the drawing room, Tabby
, and sit with Silas, while I pop everything in the dishwasher,’ Mercy suggested.

  ‘I’ll help you first,’ I said.

  ‘No, no, you’re too tired tonight. Go and pour the coffee and I’ll be with you in a minute. We keep early hours here, so you can get off to bed as soon as we’ve had it.’

  ‘I’ll be off to my bed straight after the coffee, too,’ Silas agreed.

  ‘I know you like to watch the news on the TV first,’ Mercy said, then explained to me, ‘I’m afraid Silas has the only TV in the house. I don’t bother, because I like to listen to the radio. But I could get a little one for your room, if you missed it.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind in the least. I like to read, or work on my papercuts, in the evening.’

  Pye came into the drawing room with us and continued to make much of Silas, who seemed to like him more than he did me, for he still glowered at me from time to time. But then, that might just be his natural expression. His nose and chin appeared to be attempting to join forces and his eyes were sunken under amazingly bushy eyebrows, which didn’t help.

  Silas went to his rooms the moment he had had his coffee, and I told Mercy I would, too.

  ‘Yes, do go, dear. I’ll lock up and follow suit. Of course, when I’m away Job makes sure that the house is secured for the night before he leaves, after serving Silas his dinner. Silas has those frozen ready meals delivered that you just heat up in the microwave – he loves them – but when I’m home I cook the dinner with a little preparation beforehand by Freda, Job’s wife, and we eat together. Then, in the morning, do help yourself to breakfast in the kitchen if I’m not there, and give Pye anything he wants.’

  I nodded, taking in only half of this through crashing tidal waves of tiredness. Mercy seemed to produce a running commentary to her life, but I thought perhaps if I missed something it would come round again … and probably again after that, too.

  ‘It will be such fun, showing you over the house and mill tomorrow!’ she said, before kissing me warmly and with such kindness to someone who was not only a stranger but, for all she knew, a criminal, that it brought tears to my eyes.

  ‘I hope you’ll be very happy here,’ she said. ‘Good night, my dear.’

  Pye, following me back into the kitchen wing, made brief use of the cat-flap again, before joining me in my quarters and watching with interest as I unpacked the basic necessities before getting into bed. It was soft, lavender-scented and warm, and felt as if it was undulating … perhaps it was and I was floating away on the moat among the quacking ducks …

  I half woke as four furry feet landed next to me with a heavy thump.

  ‘Good night, Pye,’ I said, wondering, as I fell asleep, at the astonishing turn my life had taken.

  Chapter 9: Rumbled

  Q:Who delivers presents to cats?

  A:Santa Paws!

  I’d slept deeply and dreamlessly and woke feeling the heavi-ness and warmth of Pye hogging most of the bed. For a moment I thought it was some kind of lovely dream and I was still in my room at the open prison. But then Pye rabbit-kicked me a couple of times with his back legs before leaping off the bed and I was wide awake, seeing the unfamiliar shapes of the furniture in the small room and remembering where I was. I could feel the tag around my ankle, too.

  I switched on the bedside lamp, for it was only just starting to get light, and looked at my watch. It was five and the rest of the house was, naturally, still silent.

  Pye indicated he wanted to go out and so I opened the doors through to the kitchen so he could use the cat-flap. Then I tiptoed up the spiral stone staircase with my spongebag, in search of the bathroom.

  There was a dim light burning in a wall bracket in the passage at the top, and lots of closed doors, but I opened the one directly opposite the stair head, as I’d been instructed, and, after some fumbling in the dark, found a light switch on a cord.

  It illuminated a scene of Victorian splendour: the room was palatial, with a black and white chequered lino floor, on which stood a claw-footed cast-iron bath, a throne-like toilet with a metal chain running down from a water cistern balanced overhead on metal brackets, and a washbasin large enough to bath a baby in.

  The only incongruous note was struck by the large and roomy modern corner shower, but I was very glad to see it, because the radiators were as cold as stone and I’d probably have frozen to death by the time I’d run a bath.

  There were fluffy fresh towels on a rack and also some wrapped French rose soaps in a bowl. I thought the latter were probably intended for guests, but I couldn’t resist taking one into the shower with me.

  I wouldn’t say there was a great deal of water pressure, but at least it was hot, though the way the water pipes clanked made me guiltily hope I hadn’t woken anyone up.

  I washed the prison off my outer self, shampooed my hair with a bottle of something that looked even more expensive than the soap, then stepped out feeling if not like a new woman, then at least one ready to take on the world again.

  I went back downstairs in a cloud-soft towelling robe that was hanging on the back of the door – that too looked new – and untangled my hair. Then, while I was making a cup of coffee in the quiet kitchen, Pye materialised through the cat-flap and I went to rummage for his bowls in the boxes piled in my sitting room. I discovered them quite easily, along with a few tins of his favourite food, half a bag of dried mix, some kitty litter and his tray, because Jeremy, a teacher to the last, had not been able to resist labelling the cartons with things like: ‘Cat: Equipment for the Maintenance Of’ and ‘Kitchen: Sundry Utensils’. He must have got bored after a while, though, because there were an awful lot of ‘Miscellaneous’ and two that weren’t labelled at all.

  I fed Pye, who indignantly expressed strong disappointment that it wasn’t a tin of tuna like last night.

  ‘Don’t get ideas above your station,’ I warned him. ‘Silas thinks you ought to catch mice for your living.’

  ‘Pfft!’ he said, with a scathing look.

  After I’d filled his water bowl I scalded out the saucers Mercy had put down for him last night, before setting up the litter tray in one of the many unused rooms, little more than a cupboard, off the passage. Pye gave it a cursory glance, but though he much preferred to go out, he also hated heavy rain, so it was as well to be prepared.

  Taking another mug of coffee through into the sitting room, I started to sort out the boxes. Most of my clothes were in the small tin trunk that had belonged to Mum, who’d kept her materials in there when she’d worked as a dresser and costume assistant. Her old Singer sewing machine, a black and inlaid mother-of-pearl thing of beauty in its own right, was sitting on the floor in its carrying case, and I put it on the wide windowledge before rummaging for clean clothes.

  It was odd to picture Jeremy, who I’d once thought the love of my life, unable to resist folding everything neatly before putting it in there. He so hated untidiness and mess …

  I felt better when I was dressed head to foot in new clothes – black jeans, a T-shirt and sweatshirt, socks and old baseball boots. My slippers must have been Miscellaneous, because they were nowhere to be seen.

  Any garment that had been in prison with me was going straight into the washing machine and then on to the nearest charity shop, because the tag on my ankle was reminder enough. There was a laundry basket in the scullery and I tossed everything in there.

  I began unpacking and my clothes and shoes were soon stowed away in the bedroom, with my balding teddy bear sitting on the chest of drawers alongside the locked box of my small treasures … the key was still on my ring.

  Books, photograph albums and a few ornaments went into a small, empty bookcase or on the mantelpiece, and once I’d pulled the yellow velvet chair in front of the electric fire and hung a framed theatre poster on a vacant picture hook, the little room started to look very much more like home.

  I left the two unlabelled boxes for later – things just seemed to have been randomly tossed into them i
n a most un-Jeremy way – and repacked anything I wouldn’t need into two cartons, which I stowed with the unopened kitchen ones in another of the small flagged rooms off the passage, which didn’t seem to be being used for anything. It had stone-slabbed shelves along one side, so had probably been another larder.

  My freshly washed hair was now dry and hung straight and thick almost to my waist. It could do with a trim and so could my fringe, which was practically in my eyes, but it would have to wait. I twisted my hair into a practical plait, the end secured with an elastic band, and felt ready for anything: I was determined to earn my place here, and Mercy Marwood’s trust.

  And since I could now hear her moving about in the kitchen, clashing pots and pans and clinking china, I went through to offer my help with breakfast with a cheery ‘good morning!’ on my lips … only to discover two total strangers there, instead.

  One was a tall, cadaverous elderly man with suspiciously boot-black hair parted in the middle, dressed in a dark suit with a deep red tie. He returned my greeting in a fruity, mellow Noël Coward voice, and made a kind of strange half-bow.

  ‘Ah, you must be Miss Coombs,’ he intoned. ‘Madam told us you were taking up residence here. I am Job Carpenter, Mr Silas Fell’s personal servant, and this is my wife, Freda, who helps Mrs Marwood with the housekeeping.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re being so formal, when she’s one of us,’ said his wife in a broad Yorkshire accent. She was a comfortably plump woman with a wild shock of permed white-gold hair and was dressed in a dark purple fun-fur coat under which stumpy legs were clad in pink leggings and blue and white spotted wellies.

  ‘What shall we call you, love?’ she asked me. ‘Tabitha or Tabby?’

  ‘Tabby is fine,’ I said.

  ‘Then Tabby it is,’ she agreed. ‘So, what were you in for, then?’

  Chapter 10: Crumbs!

  Q:What do snowmen eat for breakfast?

  A:Ice Krispies!

  I stared at her, shocked, and then glanced down my leg to see if my tag was visible.