The Christmas Menagerie

by Minna Howard

  ‘I didn’t get him enough jerseys. He gets so grubby at school.’

  ‘There’s so much mud about,’ she said, ‘and they seem to get covered in it, the boys anyway. He’s not the only one.’ She smiled at him, feeling sorry that Jules had to deal with it all without his wife. She wondered if Cynthia was helpful, but rather doubted it.

  ‘Thank you anyway, Jules, for letting us in to see the place.’ She lowered her voice. They were standing close to one another, Sophie and Rufus further away taking everything in, talking quietly together.

  ‘I am shocked at the state of it, no wonder you shut it down. Amazing that no one else saw it. That other vet, how could he have let them take in pets with it like this?’

  ‘I think it only got really bad when the winter came, but as you see, I had to do it for the sake of the animals and Dodi and Jim. They could easily have been charged for cruelty to animals, though I’m sure they didn’t mean it. It just all got too much and Dodi was struggling on alone, Jim not being up to it. That generation have a sort of pride, don’t they? Getting on with things, not asking for help.’

  ‘But you are getting all the flak for it, yet you saved them from…’ She paused. ‘Possibly prison? People ought to come and see how bad it is before blaming you,’ she finished sternly.

  He smiled. ‘If people had seen the state of it, I’m certain someone would have reported them or not left their animals here, warned others it was not safe. By not having people going to the actual kennels to settle their pets in, they avoided it. While I was here seeing to their sick cat, I insisted on seeing them.’ He sighed, remembering. ‘Dodi was very upset, but it was better that I persuaded her to close it. Now they are both happily settled with her sister and well out of it. But, as you can see, it has to be completely rebuilt, and that will be expensive. It’s up to Rufus or his aunt to decide what to do about it.’

  ‘You did the right thing, and kindly too,’ she said, feeling a sudden closeness to him. Their eyes met and then Dickon came whooping over to them, holding something in his hand that he thrust at them.

  ‘Look, I found this snail shell. The snail’s not in it so I can take it home.’

  29

  Dickon talked all the way to the shops about the kennels and what would have happened if there were still animals left there, perhaps forgotten by their owners.

  ‘It was lucky that so many went to stay with Amelia,’ he said. ‘She looked after them properly though she didn’t know much about tortoises, but luckily I did. She thought it had died, didn’t she, Dad?’

  ‘Not everyone knows about which animals hibernate,’ Jules said, remembering that first time he’d met her. He thought she’d taken on too much but then it was he who had closed the kennels where the pets had been booked in for the Christmas break. He was relieved that Dodi and Jim were now far away from here and safe. He’d had a New Year card from her, thanking him for being so kind and they were now happily settled with her widowed sister, bringing some comfort to her.

  They reached the town and parked the car close to the shop that sold the school uniform as well as other clothes. He bought Dickon another school jersey and more school socks as he seemed to lose so many.

  ‘I don’t like the jersey much, I’d rather have that top with North Face on it.’ Dickon pointed to a grey T shirt on a hanger on the side.

  ‘You can’t wear that for school,’ Jules said reasonably.

  ‘I could wear it for home.’

  ‘It’s not very warm for the winter,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll wear it indoors,’ Dickon said, looking longingly at it.

  He’d never heard of North Face, but Dickon seemed to know it. He was not very good at buying the right clothes for him. Marina would know what it was. He felt the familiar pang without her. We’re doing our best, love, he said to her silently.

  ‘Please, Dad, just this once.’ Dickon regarded him hopefully.

  ‘All right, just this once,’ he agreed, turning to the man who had just packed up the school jersey. ‘And one of those in his size, please.’

  ‘I’ll wear it now; he needn’t put it in the bag. He could put in the one I’m wearing.’ Dickon began to pull his jersey over his head,

  ‘It’s too cold to wear it now. We’ve got other shopping to do. We’ll take it home and you can wear it indoors,’ Jules said, taking out his credit card to pay for them both.

  Cynthia rang him just as they left the shop.

  ‘There’s a good film on in Ipswich, we could have supper there afterwards.’

  Dickon heard what she said and immediately looked sad. ‘I thought we were going to watch Britain’s Got Talent together,’ he said. ‘Uncle Giles wants to watch it too.’

  ‘I know,’ he mouthed at him. It was one of Dickon’s favourite programmes and he enjoyed it when he watched it with him, giving his own verdict on the efforts of the contestants.

  Cynthia was going on about meeting up with friends to try a new restaurant she’d heard of but seeing Dickon’s pleading face he felt he’d rather stay with him.

  ‘Another time, Cynthia. I promised Dickon I’d stay in with him this evening and watch one of his favourite TV programmes. He’s had a long week at school and—’

  ‘But surely he’ll be in bed by supper time or should be anyway.’ Her voice was taut.

  ‘We’ll do it next weekend,’ he said firmly, ringing off before she could elaborate.

  Dickon’s sadness vanished as he slipped his hand in his. ‘And can we have popcorn while we watch it? There’s a popcorn machine in the kitchen. I saw it in the cupboard.’

  ‘I don’t know if there is any popcorn though,’ said Jules. ‘We’ll have to find some here.’

  Cynthia rang him again later. ‘There are no good films on, the one I thought was on is coming next week, so we’ll make a plan for that. So I thought I’d pop round this evening and watch that programme with you all. I’ll bring some supper for us.’ She rang off before he could think of a way to put her off.

  ‘What does Cynthia want to do?’ Dickon said, frowning, obviously worried she had persuaded him to go out with her instead of staying in with him.

  ‘Oh, she’s coming round to Uncle Giles’s to watch television with us,’ he said, ‘but we can still have popcorn.’

  Dickon looked sulky. ‘I don’t want her to come. I’d rather Amelia came, she’s so much nicer. She’s so kind at school. I wish she was my teacher. Why can’t I be in her class?’

  Dickon sunk into one of his silent moods and to Jules’s surprise he felt a bit like that himself. Amelia would be an easier companion for the evening. Perhaps he’d ask her round as well.

  30

  There was no way that even the most optimistic person could imagine that the kennels in the state they were in now could be opened again. Amelia saw how shocked Sophie and Rufus were as they took in the tatters of a once flourishing business. Jules had left with Dickon, which was wise of him, leaving them to see for themselves how he’d had no choice but to close them down. She wondered why Cynthia hadn’t told Sophie that he’d left the keys at the surgery.

  ‘Jules, a stranger to the district, had no right to barge in like that and close them down and chuck poor Dodi and Jim out,’ had been Sophie’s refrain before she had seen the kennels. But now, as Amelia watched them both taking in the pathetic attempts to cobble the broken pens together, she saw how shocked they were at the state of them. But ever the optimist, Sophie said encouragingly, ‘We can get them open again, Rufus. It will be hard work, but we’ll do it.’

  ‘It will cost a fortune and we don’t have that sort of money.’ Rufus turned away from them in despair. ‘Let’s look at the house though. My aunt said I could live in it and as I’ve nowhere else to go, I’d like to see what’s it’s like. It was fine when I was here a couple of years ago, but then,’ he sighed, ‘so were the kennels.’

  ‘Okay, you got the key?’ Sophie followed him back through the arch towards the house, then turned to her. ‘I can
’t believe it’s so bad, thank goodness you were able to take in some of the pets, Mum. I’d hate to think of Ziggy shut in here and imagine how that diva, Cleo, would have coped.’

  ‘I don’t know why that other vet, the one who’s been here forever, didn’t do something about it,’ Amelia said, amazed they’d got away with it for so long, though if as Stacy had told her, the pets were dropped off in the stable, the owners never saw the shambles the once-smart buildings had become.

  ‘I heard he’d had to retire, so perhaps he couldn’t do anything about it. I see now how Jules had no choice but to close them,’ Rufus said. ‘I’ll thank him when I next see him, I think he saved my uncle and aunt from a whole lot of trouble.’

  Amelia followed behind them, wondering if, now they had seen what a huge mountain there was to climb here, Sophie would back down and return to London and Dom.

  Her job in London might have finished but she should be back there looking for another. She probably would have been if the drama of the kennels had not appeared right on her doorstep and given her something exciting to get her teeth into, just as Dom became so tied down with his job.

  Rufus unlocked the back door of the house and they went in. It smelt musty and was icy cold. They went down a passage and into a living room, a pile of books and catalogues on the floor by the sofa, the curtains half drawn. As they walked round the house it was obvious that his aunt and uncle had left quickly. The wardrobes were almost empty, as were the drawers in the main bedroom. Amelia thought that it felt rather as if the occupants had just gone on holiday, only taking the clothes they needed, locking the house behind them, which was waiting for them to come back and carry on with their life.

  ‘Do you think they’ll come back, Rufus?’ Amelia asked him.

  ‘Not to live here again, no,’ he said. ‘Dodi… she likes me to call her by her name, says it makes her feel young,’ he laughed, ‘not surprisingly she’s exhausted by it all and it sounds as if Jim’s lost the plot and was unable to be much help here, anymore. She’s enjoying living with her sister. They’d always got on and now Jilly’s alone after her husband’s death, they’re both looking after Jim. I must go and see them, but in the meantime, I can live here.’ He went into the hall and into a smaller, snug room with a television.

  ‘It will be fine,’ Sophie said. ‘You need to open all the windows and doors to let in the fresh air, but it’s quite big. How many bedrooms does it have? You could have lodgers here, make some money.’

  ‘So is the place yours now?’ Amelia asked him.

  ‘Pretty much. They want some of the furniture and books and stuff, as they left in quite a hurry. Dodi has left the place to me in her will, but hopefully she won’t die for ages. I’ll have to give her some money for her to live on, perhaps I’ll get a mortgage on it or something.’ He looked worried.

  ‘But if we crowdfund and get the kennels up and running again, you can make money that way,’ Sophie said excitedly.

  ‘That won’t happen anytime soon,’ Rufus said. He turned to Amelia. ‘I’ve a small advance to write a book on the history of France and Britain and I’ve always wanted to farm, rear sheep and possibly other animals, so hopefully, if I’m careful I could combine the two, write and farm.’

  ‘Sounds good.’ Amelia could see there could be other possibilities to make the place work, but it was up to Rufus to decide what to do, so she said nothing until they got home again, and she and Sophie were alone in the kitchen.

  ‘Rufus hasn’t much money, and I don’t have any, so we are going to start a crowdfund. If people want a wonderful home from home place to leave their pets when they go away, they’ll have to help us get it rebuilt.’

  ‘That’s all very well, love’ Amelia faced her. ‘But what about Dom? Surely he’s missing you, expecting you back?’

  ‘He’s fine about it, he has to work such long hours in this job, and he’s got his mates, he’s fine,’ she repeated. ‘He might come down one weekend, see how it’s going.’

  ‘It would be lovely to see him.’ Amelia decided to say no more about it just now.

  ‘It would be good if Dom came down.’ Rufus picked up their conversation, as he came into the room. He’d known him from their early days in university. ‘Great to see him. He might have some ideas how to raise the money, isn’t his job in the money market?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s only just started there, so he might not know much about it yet.’ Sophie said. ‘Anyway,’ she turned to her mother, ‘Colin, Rufus’s builder friend is going to tell us how much he thinks it will cost to build a completely new kennel from scratch, and we are going to do some events and crowdfund until we get enough to get it up and running.’ She shone with enthusiasm.

  ‘Well, you’ve obviously thought it all out.’ Amelia wondered if it would be feasible. ‘Though, maybe when you’ve transformed it, your aunt and uncle will want to come back. After all it was their life for many years.’

  ‘Then she’s welcome. My own parents were pretty hopeless and she and Jim almost brought me up. That’s one of the reasons I’m determined to help them now,’ Rufus said, taking a brownie from the plate Sophie handed him. ‘Mmm, delicious.’

  He always seemed to be starving, and maybe his parents’ lack of care was one of the reasons why when he saw food he always tucked in, whatever it was, Amelia thought, feeling sorry for him. She preferred his healthy attitude to food than that of some of Sophie’s picky friends who seemed always to be on some sort of a strange diet and could never eat what was put before them.

  ‘Well, it all sounds very exciting.’ Amelia felt she’d better agree with it than risk Sophie’s grumbles. Though it seemed, by the way Rufus was talking, that it was Sophie who had won him round in trying to reopen it. Did this mean that she would be staying down here for some time? Getting the whole place ready to fit Jules’s strict requirements would take some time. And what would Dom really think about that?

  31

  Winter bit with a vengeance. Amelia woke up to a white coating of frost icing the garden and the car. She searched through the downstairs cupboard for a scraper to get the ice off her windscreen before she set out for the school. She’d been meaning to tidy out this cupboard for ages and hadn’t got round to it and it took some time to find a scraper, which was buried under a box of spare lightbulbs.

  Rufus, who always got up early, saw her backing out of the cupboard with the scraper in her hand. He insisted on taking over the task of de-icing the car for her.

  ‘You don’t want to get frozen before you start work,’ he said, pulling on his wellingtons, not bothering with a coat, before unlocking the front door and letting in an icy blast.

  Relieved and touched that he had taken this cold and tiresome chore from her, Amelia made a large cafetiere of coffee and sat down with a bowl of muesli and the newspaper on her iPad. She heard Rufus come back in, shutting the front door behind him and stamping the snow off his boots on the mat. He came into the kitchen shivering, rubbing his icy hands.

  She got up and poured him some coffee to warm him up.

  It was the first time they’d been alone without Sophie, and she took advantage of it.

  ‘How likely do you think it is, Rufus, that you will be able to rebuild the kennels to Jules’s exacting standards? I’m sure there are many more health and safety rules and regs now than there used to be when your aunt and uncle started the place, and you’ll need to raise quite a large sum of money to do it.’ She hoped she sounded casual and non-judgemental; her daughter seemed so quick to take offence when none was intended.

  He shrugged, cupping his hands round his mug of hot coffee to thaw them out. ‘It might be tough, but we are going to give it our best shot,’ he said. ‘Sophie seems very determined.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t see her giving up without a fight.’

  ‘But are you determined too?’ she asked, wondering now if he was only trying to reopen the kennels as he thought it would please his aunt and uncle, or even to impress Sophie who she suspected he
was attracted to.

  Vero had asked her why she thought Sophie was showing such an interest in the kennels. ‘Has she got her eye on Rufus, perhaps?’ she’d asked.

  ‘I think it’s more likely he’s got his eye on her,’ Amelia had said. ‘You know how keen she is on causes and this is quite a good one.’ She’d explained that Sophie was also an animal-lover and had had lots of pets before she went to uni and then moved in with Dom.

  ‘I don’t know how long Sophie will stay here, Rufus. I’m sure she’ll soon want to get back to Dom in London,’ she continued, ‘but you know how hard he’ll have to work at this job and she’ll have to find one herself, so maybe, just now, she’s finding the kennels more interesting.’

  Rufus shrugged. ‘She hopes he’ll come down here for a weekend, but yes, it would be good to get it going again and bring in some money. I enjoyed helping out when I went to stay there as a child. The kennels were always full in the summer and at times like Christmas. Sometimes they had to turn people away, it was so popular. It was quite a money spinner and I need to find a way to earn more myself.’

  ‘So, if it comes off, who will run it? Will you, or will you find others to do it, though then you’ll have to pay them?’ She pressed on.

  Sophie appeared, catching the last bit of the conversation. ‘Don’t try and put us off, Mum. I hope you won’t side with Jules and try and discourage us.’ She frowned. ‘We’ve got some good ideas on how to raise money, so at least give us a chance.’ She poured herself a mug of coffee and sat down at the table nursing the mug in her hands.

  Amelia got up. ‘I’m not siding with anyone, now I must get on or I’ll be late. Have a good day.’ She smiled at them both. ‘Thanks again for defrosting my car, Rufus.’

  She put on her coat and scarf, picked up her bags and made for the car. The cold air enclosed her, and she sat a moment to let the engine warm up before backing out, the frost crunching under her tires as she set off. The roads from her house, as yet unused, were very icy, the hedgerows stiff and frozen. She drove slowly, the ice crunching under her wheels, thinking that at this rate she would hardly have time for another boost of coffee before she started the first lesson. There was nothing she could do; she would not go any faster and risk skidding.