THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS 2

The second and final part of a sad little story.

The night was growing old when Ginger finally passed into sleep. After all, he'd slept for most of the day and there's a limit to how much sleeping even a small boy can do before he finds himself to be tantalizingly incapable of any more. But finally, with a small packet of pork scratchings and half a cucumber rattling around and almost fermenting in his stomach, he slipped into a dreamless sleep with his knitted Jumbo clutched tightly to his small-boy bosom.

Or was it dreamless?

“Hey, sleepy-head, do you hear that?” said Jumbo to him, nudging him hard enough to jolt him from sleep.

“What?” asked Ginger, blearily.

“Those bells, deaf-head,” retorted Jumbo.

And he did.

Somewhere in the big black world outside his bedroom there were bells. Not the large, boring, heavy dull sort that churches favour in order to get those foolish enough to believe in fairy stories to go and worship their big bearded wizard but nice tinkling little bells. The sort familiar from Christmas records that the teachers played at school when they wanted to get something other than education to occupy the minds and attention of their charges. The sort that played on the radio until mummy switched them off with an angry unseasonal “I don't need to have that crap in my ears” as she slurped her medicine which must be for a pretty severe illness because it was call g and t, and g and t probably stood for grand tonic or something like that.

Mummy was probably ill and didn't like tinkling bells because, and this was Ginger guessing, tinkling bells reminded her of Heaven where she might be going very soon if she turned nice and became a good person. Anyway, she turned tinkling bell records off when they came on the radio and cursed Chris Evans for playing them.

Daddy was different.

Ginger sighed. He didn't see daddy or Auntie Agatha, daddy's pretty young friend who wore frilly things even in winter, very often and only when mummy had so much on her plate, as she put it, that she needed a break, did she get taken to daddy's lovely house.

“Hello young urchin,” daddy would say cheerily when he was pushed through his front door by a mummy who was already rushing off in order to be busy. And he would swallow and blush and mutter hello daddy, hello auntie Agatha in the smallest possible voice, and be taken into a warm and welcoming front room and given some cake and lemonade before any more words were spoken.

Daddy was, in essence, all things to Ginger, and possibly the greatest thing about him, besides Auntie Agatha, was the way he never, absolutely never, turned tinkling joyous bells off when they came on the radio. Daddy was special.

But that wasn't now, it was rarely, and it was now that Ginger was being told about tinkling bells by a knitted woollen elephant stuffed with crumbling wood shavings and in need of a good wash.

“They're very tinkly, aren't they?” whispered Jumbo, “do you know what they are?"

“No,” replied Ginger, because he didn't.

“Are you talking to yourself again?” roared mummy from her room downstairs.

“No,” replied Ginger for a second time, louder, “I'm having a nightmare!” he added.

“Then have it quietly, or I'll whip you!” screeched mummy, and he knew why she screeched. It was her medicine. It might be making her better from whatever nasty disease she was suffering from, but it did make her bad-tempered and it almost always made her screech.

“We'll have to whisper,” whispered Jumbo into his ear.

“All right,” he agreed.

“And stop them blasted bells from tinkling!” screeched mother. In his head she was mother now, not mummy, and if she took that whip to him she'd become, to start with, b***h (silently in his head, of course) and then the words would get increasingly nasty as the pain increased.

“They're outside,” he replied. “Outside my window and on the roof.”

“Liar!” she snorted, and he could hear her starting to stagger up the stairs, the cube of ice in her medicine glass tinkling almost as sweetly as the bells as it rocked against the side of the glass.

“Oh no,” he sighed, fearing the worst.

And there was a tap at his sloping window, the one set into the roof and through which he could just about make out the chimney and its smoking breath.

“Is that you banging the house down!” roared b***h as she fell back down the stairs, spilt her medicine, spluttered ouch, b*****d, and started the climb again.

“I'm for it now,” whispered Ginger to Jumbo, “she''ll skin my hide for sure now that she's had to come up the stairs!”

“She's not here yet,” grinned the elephant as they heard her slip back down the stairs and the sound of her medicine glass shattering as she squawked grrr, bugger and landed with a crash on her more than adequate buttocks.

There was another tap on the window.

“Ginger,” hissed a voice, “open up before I break the glass!”

“Better do what he says,” observed Jumbo, “it might be important. It might even be Santa.”

“He's not coming this year,” replied Ginger, because that's what mother had guaranteed more than once. 

“Open please!” hissed the voice, and although he was always considered to be the most naughty boy in the world by his often irate mother, he was generally obedient, and he set about opening the window.

And when it was open Santa dropped in. He had to drop because the window was on the roof and sloped at a precarious angle.

Ginger was amazed. He had seen pictures of the great man, of course, pictures of Santa were just about everywhere and there was so much red cloth and white hair in the world he sometimes thought that folks were going mad.

“That's better,” grinned Santa underneath an excessively bushy beard and handlebar whiskers on his top lip. “It's Christmas!” he added, stating the obvious with a “Ho, ho, ho!” for good measure.

“Are you Santa?” asked Ginger, wondering how come this magical elf dared disobey his mother, who having replaced her medicine glass could be heard attempting the stairs for a third time.

“Of course I am!” boomed the red-coated man, “and it's Christmas!” he added.

Ginger was about to tell him that there was no point him calling this year because mummy had spent all her money on vitally important medicine and going out, but there wasn't time because a sudden crashing sound followed by the tinkle of another glass being smashed indicated that the stairs had foiled the good woman yet again.

“That's three times,” grinned Jumbo.

“So come on, my lad, let's climb through the window and I'll take you to paradise!” said Santa.

“Isn't it dangerous?” asked Ginger, suddenly doubtful.

“You'll be safer with me! Ho, ho, ho!” laughed Santa. “Come here, give me your arm!”

And that's what happened. He took Ginger by the arm and heaved him out of the window. But Ginger was as light as a spirit, seemed to be no weight at all as Santa propped him up on the seat of his sleigh next to where he sat, and with a “Onwards, my good lads!” encouraged a strange assortment of reindeer to paw at the skies and then race off, pulling sleigh and Santa and Ginger (still clutching Jumbo) behind them.

“Ho! Ho! Ho!” roared Santa, and then, “you'll have a good time where you're going,” he added, a happy glint in his cheery eyes.

“Goody!” replied the naughtiest boy ever as the wonderful craft and its equally wonderful passengers raced off through the night.

So he never saw, next morning when mummy or mother or b***h had recovered and the doctor was standing in the attic room, the grubby attic room by a grubby attic bed, how that good man shook his head in sorrow and muttered about it not being the right sort of day at all, not for a moment, for a sad little half-starved boy like that to be forced to eating way-out-of-date pork scratchings and suffering the very, very fatal consequences of that sort of diet. Not at Christmas. Not on Christmas day. It made him want to weep.

So weep he did.

© Peter Rogerson 14.12.17