A Family Christmas

by Katie Flynn

  Glenys looked at the older woman more closely. She had a large hooked nose, shrewd little eyes behind blue-tinted spectacles, and a thin-lipped mouth which made Glenys think uneasily of rat-traps. She was not a prepossessing figure, but Glenys told herself firmly that it was wrong to judge by appearances, and began to make the speech she had rehearsed as they walked towards the blue curtains. ‘I’m so sorry that I was unable to contact you earlier in the day . . .’

  Mrs Hughes cut her short. ‘You’ll be wanting two rooms, right? I’ve a little slip of a room for the boy, just a bed and a washstand, and a double which you can share with the girl. I does a good breakfast and can provide an evening meal for an extra couple of bob a head. But cold it is in here; follow me.’

  She led them down a dark corridor and into a brightly lit kitchen, sat them down at the table and began to make a pot of tea, producing some homemade biscuits and offering Mo a glass of warm milk. The largest black cat Mo had ever seen was sitting on the hearth rug, apparently staring at a picture which hung on the wall. Mo gave a frightened squeak. ‘Them’s witches!’ she said. ‘They’s wearin’ witches’ hats!’ Then she pointed at the cat. ‘And he’s a witch’s cat . . . oh, Auntie Glenys, I don’t want to stay here.’

  Mrs Hughes gave a creaky little laugh. ‘We don’t wear those hats no more, cariad, even on Sundays; that’s a real old picture that is. I’ll tell you the story behind it one day. And me cat’s not a witch’s cat, either. He’s Solomon Grundy, ’cos he were born on a Monday. Only if you’s scared of cats . . .’

  Mo promptly flung herself on her knees beside the cat and Mrs Hughes started forward in alarm, but then relaxed as the big animal began to purr for all the world like a tractor. ‘He likes you,’ she said as the child began to stroke the huge domed head. She turned back to Glenys. ‘Now, to business.’

  By the time Glenys had seen Jimmy into his ‘little slip of a room’, helped Mo to undress and put on her cotton nightie, and asked Mrs Hughes what time she would like them to come down to the kitchen for their breakfast, she had begun to think they had fallen on their feet.

  Next morning they sat down to porridge and boiled eggs, as well as tea and toast, and the saga of the supply teacher who was supposed to have come to take the place of Miss Teleri Jones was explained, and Glenys’s own position made clear. Both Miss Jones and the supply teacher had succumbed to the measles, leaving the school with no teacher at all. ‘But a school with only one teacher?’ Glenys had exclaimed in astonishment as the other woman explained the situation. ‘I didn’t know such things existed; good Lord, this is the twentieth century, not the nineteenth! But as it happens I’m a teacher, and I’m looking for supply work. And, of course, I’m on the spot. I noticed there was a public call box quite near the station. If you could furnish me with the telephone number of the Education Department, perhaps we could come to some arrangement.’

  ‘There is no need to go to the public box; I am on the telephone. It is necessary for bookings in high summer,’ Mrs Hughes said haughtily. ‘You are welcome to ring the Education Department; there’s a box for the money beside the phone, and the exchange will tell you what you owe.’

  Later, when Glenys had called the Education Department, been given the necessary details and accepted the job, she went down the road to the station and telephoned the number Frank had given her. It rang out for a long time, but no one picked up at the other end, and Glenys pressed button B to get her money back. Disappointed, she stepped out on to the pavement. Never mind, she told herself, I’ll try again sometime. I’d really like to let Frank know we’re all right and starting afresh.

  When term started, Glenys prepared for her first day at the school by eating a hearty breakfast and adjuring Mo to hurry as they had a good walk in front of them. Jimmy had refused point-blank to go with them to what he called ‘the babies’ school’, and Glenys had laughed and agreed that a few extra days’ holiday would do him no harm. ‘So you’re staying here today?’ she said now, helping herself to a round of toast and buttering it. ‘Perhaps you can meet a few of the locals – ask them whether there are many farms in the area,’ she added meaningly, while across the table Mrs Hughes raised her eyebrows.

  ‘A good thing it is for us – and no doubt for you too – that you was on a walking holiday in our area just in time to step into Miss Teleri Jones’s shoes until she gets over the measles,’ she observed. She gave a grim little chuckle. ‘You didn’t arrange it? No, no, Miss Jones is a very upright woman, a pillar of the chapel, but it does seem strange, don’t you think?’

  ‘I believe I did tell you we were not on a walking holiday,’ Glenys said rather stiffly. ‘I teach at a private school; they have much longer holidays, so we decided to try to contact relatives who we believe live somewhere in this area . . . the name’s Griffiths. Do you know a family by that name?’

  Mrs Hughes chuckled. ‘I know a lot of families by that name, all living within five miles of the town,’ she assured Glenys. ‘Have you anything other than a surname to go by? A trade perhaps, or a nickname?’

  Glenys hesitated. ‘The children’s mother was called Grace,’ she admitted at last.

  Mrs Hughes shook her head. ‘It generally goes with the fellers, not the girls,’ she said. ‘Do you know how many Dai Hugheses there are just on this one street?’ She began to tick them off on her fingers. ‘Dai the coal, Dai the cane – his father was the schoolmaster – Dai the bread, and the one they call Dai Tacsi . . .’

  ‘Stop, stop!’ Glenys cried, half laughing and half dismayed. ‘I can see this is going to take much longer than I had imagined. Tell me, are we going to find Griffiths all over Wales with only nicknames to distinguish one from t’other? Only I’d not realised . . .’

  Mrs Hughes nodded portentously. ‘Yes, a hard task you have set yourself,’ she said. She stared curiously up into Glenys’s face, her eyes suddenly sharp behind the blue lenses. ‘You say they’re your nephew and niece; an odd thing it seems that none of you seem to know very much about your family . . .’

  Glenys stood up quickly and reached for her shoulder bag. ‘Well, now we are doing what we may to change that,’ she said sharply. ‘Eat up, Mo; I want to get settled into my classroom before the majority of my pupils arrive.’

  Bristling with affront, Mrs Hughes began to clear the table, and before Glenys could leave the room the landlady spoke again. ‘One rule I forgot to mention, Miss Trent. My guests are welcome to use the facilities of this house, but not between nine o’clock in the morning and six o’clock in the evening. In between those hours they must amuse themselves.’

  Glenys had a hand on the doorknob, but now she spun round. ‘Oh, but Mrs Hughes, you said nothing of this.’ She glanced towards the window, at the distant prospect of rain-shrouded hills. ‘Jimmy’s very quiet and helpful; he’ll give you a hand in any way he can, and in this weather—’

  ‘Rules is rules,’ Mrs Hughes interrupted. ‘Different it would be if you was with the children yourself, but I know lads and I know my house. Take him with you to the infant school, for without the Welsh he’d be no use to Mr Feather, who runs the school for the older children.’

  ‘Oh, but—’ Glenys began, but Jimmy interrupted her.

  ‘It’s awright, Auntie Glenys,’ he said firmly. ‘I’ll occupy meself one way or another. I seen a nice roomy woodshed agin the privy in Mrs Hughes’s back yard, and today’s market day, so I’ve heard. I love a market I do, and sometimes a likely lad can earn hisself a few pennies, helpin’ to herd sheep or drive a pig out of a pen and into the sale ring. Don’t you worry about me, I’ll be fine.’

  For a moment Mrs Hughes looked dumbfounded, but then her expression changed to one of annoyance. It was clear to Glenys that the landlady was deliberately making life difficult for them, probably because she resented Glenys’s refusal to pander to her curiosity, and the younger woman tried not to show the dismay she felt. Market day probably only came round once a week; what would Jimmy do on the other four?


  But Mo, who was still eating, slid off her chair and went over to the coats hanging beside the back door, jerking her own and Glenys’s off the hooks and taking them over to the table. ‘Jimmy will be all right,’ she said reassuringly through a mouthful of toast and marmalade. ‘I see’d a barn up the road when I looked out of our window this morning – if it rains he can shelter in there. And there’s shops to look at, ‘specially if he’s earned a few pennies helpin’ at the market. Oh, aye, Jimmy’ll be just fine.’

  The man leaned on the long counter. ‘I came here believing you might help me, and all you’ve done is ask a lot of damn fool questions,’ he said in an aggrieved voice. ‘I’m telling you, someone’s kidnapped two children, and I bloody well know who did it.’

  The large police constable behind the counter pulled a form towards him and picked up a pencil. ‘Who?’ he enquired stolidly.

  ‘Huxtable,’ the man said impatiently, and began to spell it.

  ‘Address?’

  ‘Solomon Court, off the Scottie,’ the man said viciously. He snorted and smote the counter with a large fist. ‘What the devil does the address matter? They aren’t there now, because, as I’ve been trying to tell you, they’ve been bloody well kidnapped.’

  The police constable leaned back and folded his arms, which seemed to infuriate the man on the other side of the counter still further. But Constable Jones was not the man to frighten easily. ‘Proof?’ he asked, and seeing the man’s eyes flame added stolidly: ‘We’ve only got your word for it, sir. So before we discuss whoever kidnapped these children, if anyone did, I’d like to have a few details . . .’

  Across the counter the man’s dark eyes bulged, but then he turned away. ‘Thanks for nothing,’ he said bitterly. ‘I thought I’d get help, but all I’ve had is obstruction, so I’ll continue with my own search. There’s a reward in it for anyone who finds them before I do, but you needn’t bother to apply.’

  The constable got ponderously to his feet, but before he could even come out from behind the counter the man was opening the door and letting in the wind and the rain. The constable blinked as the wind picked up the papers lying on the counter and swirled them into the air. ‘Just you come back here, sir . . . I want a word with you,’ he began, even as the door slammed. Hastily he crossed the room and opened the door, peering out, but the man had disappeared.

  Chapter 8

  IT HAD STOPPED snowing. Ever since Glenys had taken on the job of supply teacher it had snowed on and off, but Mrs Hughes’s rules, it seemed, were indifferent to the weather. Once the clock in the kitchen over the mantel announced that it was nine o’clock a grim-faced Mrs Hughes ejected Jimmy without so much as glancing at feathery flakes that might be falling from a dark grey sky. After the first day Miss Trent had insisted upon making him a packed lunch from bread, cheese and apples bought in the small town, and with this he had to be content. Jimmy could tell from the hard look in their landlady’s eyes that guests were not welcome to make packed lunches, but when she had grumbled that she did not want people working in her kitchen when she was preparing breakfast, Glenys just shot her a glance in which amusement and displeasure were nicely mingled. ‘Rules is rules, Mrs Hughes,’ Glenys had said, imitating their landlady’s tone. ‘Young Jimmy here leaves the house when we do and comes back when we do as well. I must remind you that, had your rules been less inflexible, we would have paid for evening meals here. However, since school finishes at three thirty and we are not welcome in your house until after six o’clock, we have had no alternative but to eat in Cath Jones’s kitchen.’

  Mrs Hughes had said nothing, merely screwing up her mouth until her lips had all but disappeared. ‘I might relax the six o’clock rule . . .’ she began, but Glenys, sensing that for once she had the advantage of the old woman, forestalled her.

  ‘It’s all right, Mrs Hughes, we’re managing very well,’ she had said. ‘Mo and I, of course, simply remain in our warm classroom until we can go to the Glas Fryn, and Jimmy has found a friend whose parents are delighted to welcome him after school hours, when I must admit I should not like to think of him wandering the streets.’

  Mrs Hughes sniffed. ‘I take it you’re referring to that idle woman Mrs Dai Bread,’ she said disdainfully. ‘She’d take anyone in she would. I’d not like a lad of mine . . .’

  But here Glenys had held up a warning finger. ‘No gossip if you please, Mrs Hughes,’ she said briskly. ‘I saw Miss Teleri Jones this morning and she hopes to be back in school in a week, so we shan’t impose on your – your hospitality for much longer.’

  But now the snow had stopped and Jimmy was sitting on the top of his friend’s pigsty wall waiting for Wynne to appear. The baker’s son was no lover of school and already Jimmy knew that he was being blamed for Wynne’s erratic attendance, but as the weather worsened more and more children who normally came in to the town from villages several miles distant failed to arrive, and Wynne assured him that once the ice on the pond was thick enough to bear there would be more absentees yet. Jimmy reflected now, as a spiteful little breeze blew down the neck of his corduroy jacket, that his first opinion of Mrs Hughes had not only been the right one but was also shared by at least half the townsfolk. Their landlady was known to be what Jimmy would have called clutch-fisted and Wynne described succinctly as mean as hell, but however much she might grumble about the extra work involved in accommodating two children as well as the supply teacher, everyone knew there was little fear of her giving them notice. It would have meant losing their rent money, and this she was obviously not prepared to do.

  Sitting on the pigsty wall, Jimmy swung his legs backwards and forwards and thought about the weekend ahead. A party of boys and girls from Wynne’s school meant to go sledging, taking a packed lunch and indulging in all the ploys which the snowy weather allowed. Wynne had told him that parents usually provided the young snowballers with flasks of hot tea and hefty cheese sandwiches, and Mrs Dai Bread had offered to supply Jimmy’s food as well as her son’s.

  ‘An’ after school on Friday you and me will go off and make slides,’ Wynne had said. ‘You won’t have a sledge, bein’ as how you’re stayin’ with the old witch, but she might let you borrow an old tin tray or somethin’.’

  Jimmy had shaken his head regretfully. ‘She wouldn’t lend me a cold in the head,’ he had said dismissively. ‘She guards that perishin’ house as though it were Buckingham Palace. But the next time she goes out shopping I’ll sneak back in – not into the house, since she’s the only woman in this town what locks her doors, but into the outbuildins. I’ll surely find somethin’ amongst the old clutter.’

  But now, sitting on the pigsty wall, Jimmy knew ruefully that he would have to disappoint his friend. He had rootled, poked and pried, both in the woodshed and in what she termed the twll gogoniant, where she threw anything not wanted at the moment, but she thought might come in handy in the future. But neither search, though thorough, had led to the finding of even the tiniest tray, so it looked as though Jimmy would have to content himself with snowball fights and similar pleasures.

  He was still sitting on the wall and swinging his legs when he remembered the old biscuit tin in Mrs Hughes’s kitchen. It was square and much battered but the lid, he thought, might be used if he squeezed up small. He wondered how he could acquire the tin, then put it out of his mind as his friend came slogging up the lane towards him. As they set off towards the hills where they would practise both the art of sledging and the making of slides, he admitted to Wynne that he had not managed to find a tray but had hopes of a tin lid for the next day. His friend shrugged.

  ‘It doesn’t matter; we’ll take it in turns on mine,’ he said generously. He chuckled. ‘I bet your sister will breathe fire when she finds we’ve gone sledging without her.’

  Jimmy shook his head. ‘She won’t,’ he assured Wynne. ‘She’s not like that. For one thing, she’s never sat on a sledge in her life, ’cos when our mam was alive she said such things were dangerous for gir
ls, and then the woman we lived with never let us do anything except work in the house and do her messages. That’s shopping,’ he added hastily, seeing bewilderment on his friend’s face. ‘I don’t know why it is, but everyone in Liverpool – or all the kids at any rate – calls the shoppin’ “the messages”.’ He grinned widely. ‘So you Welsh rabbits ain’t the only ones to have two languages,’ he concluded.

  Wynne laughed. ‘I reckon all kids is the same: we have one language for grown-ups and another what we use between ourselves. See ahead? That’s the hill we’re makin’ for. It ain’t as high as Moel Famau, and Snowdon makes it look like a molehill, but it’s the highest one around here, or at least the highest that you can sledge down. You get a grand view from up there, too; you can see for miles.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say I were much of a one for views,’ Jimmy panted as they reached the summit. ‘Do it have a name, this hill? Gosh, don’t the town look little when you see it from here?’

  ‘I s’pose it just looks so little to you because you’re used to a great old city,’ Wynne said. ‘My sister had a toy farm a couple of years back. It had little pigs, little cows and even a little farmhouse. She loved it for ages, and even now she plays with it a couple of times a week. Does your sister . . . what’s up? Why are you grabbin’ my arm?’

  Silently, Jimmy pointed down the hill towards the town. Glenys had bought him an old pair of rubber boots just like Wynne’s, and now he was pointing at their tracks, which led plainly from the town below. ‘See that man follerin’ our boot marks?’ he said in a hollow voice. ‘He’s too far away for me to see his face. Is he – is he anyone you know?’

  Wynne shrugged. ‘I dunno. Does it matter?’ he said indifferently. ‘I don’t know every bleedin’ feller what climbs in the hills. I expect he’s a farm worker takin’ a short cut home for his tea.’