A Christmas Cracker: The only festive romance to curl up with this Christmas!. Trisha Ashley

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СКАЧАТЬ falls down a chimney?

       A: Santa Claws!

      I followed my new employer into a large, flagged inner hallway, from which a wide staircase ascended into darkness. We went through a door to the left into a huge and rather splendid room, wood-panelled to dado height and with an intricately moulded ceiling.

      For all Mercy’s assurances that Mote Farm was not a grand house, it seemed pretty impressive to me. An immense, dimly hued carpet covered most of the floor, and old sofas, chairs and tables were randomly grouped around, like early guests at a party.

      There was a larger cluster around the flickering fire, which as I drew nearer proved to be a realistic gas log one. The room resembled a surreal filmset and I began to feel somewhat swimmy-headed with tiredness and the stress and emotions of the day.

      ‘Now, Silas,’ Mercy said loudly, advancing on a small elderly man who was peacefully dozing in a high-backed chair before the fire. ‘Here’s Tabitha come to join us.’

      He started awake and bestowed a look of acute loathing on both his sister and myself, before struggling painfully to his feet.

      ‘Please don’t get up!’ I begged him, but he ignored me, tottering forward to shake my hand, using only his sandpaper-dry fingertips.

      ‘One must do these things, however agonising it is. Rheumatism is a dreadful thing and bouts of sciatica even worse,’ he said, in a martyred way that seemed to cheer him up. Then, relieved from the burden of good manners, he subsided back into his chair.

      ‘Mercy says you’ve come to help with the cracker factory at the mill. It was too much for me. I’m a sad invalid, you know.’

      ‘You’re a sad, grumpy old malingerer,’ Mercy said. ‘You just couldn’t be bothered, I know.’

      He glowered at her. Then his eye fell on the jumping and increasingly shredded cardboard pet carrier. Pye had been quiet for some minutes, but now emitted a bloodcurdling scream.

      ‘Tabitha’s brought her sweet little pussycat with her,’ Mercy told him. ‘I was going to get a cat now I was home again, so that has saved me the trouble. I think he’d like to get out, Tabby.’

      ‘I’m afraid he’s very far from being a sweet little pussycat,’ I began to warn her, but before I could leap forward and stop her, she’d popped open the carrier and out shot Pyewacket, all snarl and claws.

      His first view of the strange, vast room stopped him dead in his tracks, his odd-coloured eyes wide. If he’d been able to raise his eyebrows, he’d have done it.

      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.’

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