A CHRISTMAS COMPACT DISC

The odd thing is, last night I had a dream and the first part of this is what I remember of it...

Charles felt odd, standing at the front of an indecently long queue in the bank and explaining to the teller (a woman with a distressed face and a hairy wart) that he wanted to pay for a Compact Disc of Christmas songs and two other small and altogether insignificant items. Because, a bit of him suggested, you don’t buy CDs or insignificant things at banks: banks are just there to deal with money. So what was he doing here trying to spend thirteen pounds odd on them?

“I must pay by cheque,” he told the distressed face.

“That’s all right sir,” she said wearily, “just sign the cheque and all will be well.”

“Will it? It seems a bit strange to me,” he murmured, searching through his pockets for a pen. But it turned out this was one of those days when he didn’t have one. Not even one of those little stubby pens the catalogue shop doesn’t mind you stealing because they’re worth less than a penny. He couldn’t find a pen anywhere, but look: in his hand was a pencil.

A blunt pencil, true, the point had broken off somewhere in his pocket, but it was a pencil.

“That will never do,” said the distressed teller, shaking her head sadly. “It must be pen. We don’t like pencils. Pencils can be rubbed out and altered. No, you must sign with a pen.”

“I’ll use yours, then,” said Charles, trying to sound decisive because the queue behind him was beginning to sound irritable.

“That’ll be fifty pence, then,” she said, proffering a cheap plastic pen that he knew sold in the pound shop in clumps of a dozen.

“I didn’t say I wanted to buy the pen!” he exclaimed, “and even if I did fifty pence would be too much!”

She stood up behind her counter with an outraged expression on her face and pressed the button that suggested to those in a dark back room that something was terribly wrong. It might be a robbery with guns being levelled at the staff and all hell getting let loose with bullets flying everywhere and coarse men shouting obscenities whilst gathering armfuls of high denomination notes from the terrified minions who worked there, or it might be a great deal less, like someone with a runny nose daring to wipe it in the presence of currency.

“You poor soul,” he murmured, looking at her as she stood behind her counter, shaking, “with holes in your shoes...”

And the door from the strong room at the back of the bank burst open and two security guards with semi-automatic guns and wearing devilish crash helmets rushed in and pushed their guns up his nostrils, one for each side, while they snarled unintelligibly at him.

“He won’t pay for the use of my pen,” explained the teller.

“He won’t, then, won’t he?” snarled the first guard, and he turned to his companion. “Did you hear that, Terry?” he almost exploded, his anger plainer than a teenage spot on an old man’s face as he twisted the business end of his semi-automatic weapon in Charles’s nose, making it bleed profusely, “he wants summat for nothing!”

“I did hear it, Tommy, and it’s outrageous!” spat he who was apparently called Terry, “He ought to be horse-whipped, that’s what ought to happen. But it won’t, not in this liberal namby-pamby land of ours where jerks like this think they have the right to life and the free use of pens!” Then he turned to a quivering and bleeding Charles.

“You can get out of here, buffoon, and go to see Sir Pennypinch and ask him what he thinks! He owns this bank and he’ll sort you out!”

“And on the way you can call on my poor little crooked-legged son, Tiny Tim,” wept the teller, pleased for once that notice was being taken of her. “He lives at the same address. Now be off with you!”

Terry and Tommy simultaneously jabbed him in the ribs (painfully, I might add, and the cracking sound told its own woeful tale of shattering bones) and pushed him back towards the doors whilst those in the the queue, who had stared at the proceedings with horror and hatred, hissed at him as he limped out of the bank.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” snarled Tommy.

“But he’ll be back,” gloated Terry, “if he wants his CD, that is!”

Charles was almost in tears as, bleeding nose and shattered ribs, he struggled along the high street and caught a number nine bus to the posh end of town, where Sir Pennypinch lived.

The house was easy to find. There was a sign to start with, “PENNYPINCH MANSION” it read, “FOUR MILES.”

It was a long four miles because the number nine bus didn’t go down that drive. So he had to walk, in pain and still bleeding, feeling faint from loss of blood and dizzy from shattered ribs.

Pennypinch Mansion was every bit as grand as he expected it to be. He paused and just had to admire the vast collection of chimneys, most of which were belching smoke and toxins into the atmosphere. And the windows: he’d never seen so many windows in one building. They were magnificent and all, he was certain, trimmed with old cut diamonds in platinum mounts

“I just wanted a cheery CD of Christmas music,” he muttered to himself as he loped towards the gigantic front door, a massive affair of oak and steel and with a brass knocker in the shape of o gigantic pound sign.

“Money,” he sighed.

It took ages for the door to be opened after he knocked it and when it was a weedy man in the most extravagant uniform he had ever seem, trimmed down both legs with what must surely have been gold thread and with an egg stain on one lapel.

“I’ve been sent to see Sir Pennypinch,” muttered Charles, “about a fifty pence charge.”

“Well he won’t see you,” snarled the eggy butler, “he’s arranging to have me flogged on account of the egg he threw at me. So sod off.”

“But I’ve come...” stammered Charles, and added, “all this way, bleeding and in pain.”

“I said sod off and sod off’s what I meant,” growled the butler.

“What about Tiny Tim, then?” asked Charles, needing to achieve something on this merry seasonal day.

“The brat?” spat the butler, “he lives there, look, in that residence.”

And he pointed at what was no more than a wretched and broken garden shed with a white lace curtain covering the broken glass of a dirty window and the name PRIMROSE COTTAGE scratched onto a wedge of cracked wood hanging loosely from a nail above the door.

“That shed?” asked Charles.

“It’s more than the lazy brat deserves,” snarled the butler, “if I can be flogged for egg that I didn’t spill then why should that creature from Hell have any luxury?”

“Time, Bones!” roared a voice from deep within the mansion, “I’ve got the birch in hand, so come, you filthy excuse for a serving man!”

“I must go,” wittered the butler, “this is going to hurt like mad...”

He slammed the massive door and Charles wondered what manner of world he lived in. Then, needing to say to himself that he’d achieved something, he made his way to Primrose Cottage and knocked the door carefully for fear of the entire feeble structure falling to pieces.

The door was opened by an urchin with a leg that had, in the past, been shattered and allowed to heal all by itself without the guidance of a skilled surgeon. He was around eight years old, give or take, and he was coughing as though his lungs were about to yield to the grim reaper.

“Are you Tiny Tim?” asked Charles, astounded.

The boy nodded. “My mum works to the bank,” he coughed, “and she won’t be home until nearly dawn if it’s she you want.”

“Oh Lordy me,” whispered Charles, “what manner of world do we live in? What happened to the dream we once had, of one man being equal to another and love being around every man and woman as they sing their Christmas songs?”

“I dunno sir,” coughed Tiny Tim, “I just dunno. But I reckon old Pennypinch owns the whole blooming lot.”

© Peter Rogerson 11.12.17