THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

What may or may not be a fresh twist on a tragic tale of childhood...

Ginger Bosmith was a very naughty boy. He knew he was though he wasn’t quite sure how it came about. But his mother told him so often enough, and therefore it must be true. Mothers don’t tell lies, do they?

And this or that piece of naughtiness came to a head when the world was surfing towards Christmas this year. Mummy (that’s what he called her when she was being nice to him. When she was being less than nice he called her something particularly offensive, in a whisper inside his head for fear of being heard and consequently punished for harbouring wicked thoughts)

Mummy was spending a great deal of time frowning, and then she came out with it. The bombshell. The nasty piece of witchcraft, so to speak.

“Santa won’t be coming this Christmas on account of you being a very naughty boy,” she said. “It’s either Santa or food, and we both need to eat.”

Santa hadn’t come last Christmas either. Or the one before. In fact, Santa hardly ever came, and certainly rarely at Christmas. It all had to do with his tendency to naughtiness. He knew that but was at a loss as to what to do about it. He didn’t want to be naughty but apparently naughty was what he was.

He didn’t know what to say and knew if he said anything at all it would be construed as naughtiness. What could he say, really? After all, mummy knew all about grown-up stuff like money and he didn’t, and it seemed to him that money and Santa were very much related to each other. Money and Santa and his naughtiness.

“Perhaps Santa will go to daddy’s house?” he said after a great deal of thought and with an equal amount of trepidation knowing what mummy thought of daddy.

He liked daddy though he hardly ever saw him on account of mummy’s shouting when he did. And he liked Auntie Agatha who lived in the same house as daddy and hardly ever wore many clothes when she sat on his knee and they watched television together.

“Don’t you dared mention that man in this house!” roared mummy, and she swiped him on the back of the head really hard, so that he began seeing several constellations of flaming stars and felt tears pricking the back of his eyes. And when mummy swiped him it always hurt. She had been a lady wrestler famous for her swiping before he’d been born and had made quite a lot of money for doing it.

The money, of course, had long since evaporated. That’s what money does. He knew that much about the adult world.

“But daddy might...” he began, but stopped as consequence of being on the receiving end of a second swipe and a voice inside told him it isn’t healthy being naughty when mummy’s in a swiping mood.

“Get to your room!” screamed the enraged ex-wrestler who he was now mentally referring to as b***h. And he did. Straight away because swipes often came in multiples of three and if he hung around much she might remember that.

His bedroom was at the very top of a narrow but quite tall house, in the attic with a roof that had a sloping window in it. If he climbed onto his bed and craned his neck he could even see the chimney out of that window, and sometimes the smoke from the fire downstairs found its way past a loose window pane and into his room, making it all stinky and acrid and most unpleasant.

He flung himself on his bed and grabbed his one and only toy.

Most boys at school had strange things to play with, like tablets joined to the internet and, they said, they could secretly look at pictures of naked ladies when nobody knew what they were up to. He wondered what was so special about that. He’d seen mummy naked once or twice when she’d been staggering up the stairs to her own room and he’d never thought it a particularly appealing sight. They also had other fascinating toys like very, very smart mobile phones that they could use for all sorts of fascinating things, like playing at battles or beating up wrestlers, and the girls even had extremely clever fluffy animals that could do sums and poo. At least they said that was what they did.

He only had Jumbo.

Jumbo was a knitted elephant stuffed with wood shavings that leaked out and had been a present from daddy before the gigantic explosion that had sent him away to live in a house of his own with Auntie Agatha, who did look kind of nice when she wore fancy frilly lacy things about their nice tidy house.

He clutched Jumbo tightly to him and wept.

Weeping was a naughty thing to do because it made his eyes go red and mummy said that if some of the strangers who visited them saw that he had red eyes she’d have to whip him. Strangers, she said, don’t like to be upset by seeing boys who cried a lot. And of all the things she did to him, whipping was the very worst. He mentally called her all sorts of horrible names when she did that, b***h being one of the nicer ones.

“There’s no need to cry,” said Jumbo.

Ginger was a clever boy. He’d always been clever, even when he’d been a baby, and he knew fully well that knitted elephants can’t talk.

“I’m upset,” he told Jumbo nevertheless.

“I know,” sighed the elephant, “I’d be upset too, if I were you.”

“What a nice thing for you to say,” sighed Ginger, and he gave Jumbo a special squeeze that had a pinch of real proper love in it.

“What’s upset you?” asked Jumbo.

Ginger looked the picture of true despair as he replied “Mummy says that Santa isn't coming here again this year,” he moaned, “and Santa goes to all the other children’s houses because some of them manage to stay awake and see him. Terry even said he watched as Santa kissed his mummy right next to the Christmas tree and they did things together...”

“Then we’d better make sure that Santa comes here,” said Jumbo with a conspiratorial wink.

“Who are you talking to?” came mummy’s voice from downstairs in a kind of threatening bellow, and he hid Jumbo under the sheets because she didn’t know he had a Jumbo and would have burnt it straight away had she known who gave it to him, and replied, “to myself, mummy,” as convincingly as he could.

“That’s the first sign of madness,” she retorted from half way down, on the lower landing. “I’m going out to the pub and won’t be back for hours. You be a good boy and if you are I’ll bring you back something nice for tea.”

And he heard the way she cursed at her coat when her arms wouldn’t go down the sleeves easily, and then open the front door and slam it behind her before locking it with her big iron key.

He spent the rest of the day with Jumbo, and truth to tell it didn’t seem so long because he soon went to sleep and dreamed of tablets that talked, fluffy toys that pooed and a knitted elephant striding amongst them like a giant colossus. Yet it was dark when he woke up because mummy had come back and staggered through the front door, singing a ribald song and banging around like a blind person in a labyrinth.

But she did have something nice for tea if a bag of pork scratchings and half a cucumber constitute nice.

And, unbeknown to him it was Christmas eve and even more unbeknown to him it was the special day when all the other children in the town would be visited by Santa and he, because he was him and a very naughty boy, wouldn’t…

TO BE CONTINUED

© Peter Rogerson 13.12.17